Current state of affairs

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I’ve been on Wellbutrin for a couple of weeks now and the effect has been interesting. I’m definitely finding it easier to focus on things like chores (and heck, my kitchen is the cleanest it’s been since the remodel got finished, and my dining room is well on its way to not being a disaster), but on the other hand it’s disrupting my sleep a lot and I end up feeling tired throughout the day. My dreams have also been way more intense.

Right now I’m feeling sick with my usual winter sinus crap, so I’m a bit wobbly and a lot nauseous.

Between the Wellbutrin and playing DDR my pain levels are a bit lower but still not amazing, and I’m still finding it easy to hit a fibro wall™. Tomorrow I have a followup with my pain doctor to try to finally get on low-dose naltrexone. I also have the next two weeks off from work and hopefully I won’t end up just working too hard on personal projects instead. (That said, I have a couple of creative output gift swaps with deadlines coming up that I really should start on at some point.)

Anwyay I guess I don’t have a lot else to say. Oh well.

Pain, music, and DDR

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I’m fully off the nortriptyline and I haven’t had withdrawal side effects for several days now. On the other hand, my persistent fibro dizziness is back, and when I hit a wall with a pain flare I really feel it. I’d forgotten just how much more intense that was before nortriptyline. (Of course, while on nortriptyline it’s not like the end result was any different so I don’t feel like I’ve made a big mistake getting off of it.)

My pain doc recommended trying low-dose naltrexone, which is something my previous pain doc had scoffed at1, but anyway I’ve sent a message to my GP asking about getting on it, and if she can’t take care of that then maybe my psychiatrist can, or maybe the pain doc can (but unfortunately he’s really busy and appointments with him are booked to well over a month out at this point).

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Nortriptyline discontinuation complete?

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The taper down to 10mg/day was a bit difficult, but the final discontinuation seems to have gone pretty smoothly. I suspect I could have actually discontinued sooner, and the withdrawal symptoms I was having ont he last few days of 10mg/day was specifically because I was toggling right around some threshold for things. But I’m glad I took it slow all the same, and in any case I feel like the worst is behind me at this point.

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Pain management and ADHD medication

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I seem to be stuck in an annoying situation.

Short recap: I have both ADHD and fibromyalgia. These two conditions tend to have a lot of overlap (they are both thought to essentially be dopamine dysregulation issues), and both of them have a “let’s try different things out” treatment regimen.

Because of ADHD I have great difficulty in focusing on my work.

Because of fibromyalgia I have great difficulty in focusing on anything other than pain.

The medications which help me with fibromyalgia preclude me from being prescribed medications which help me with ADHD.

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Nortriptyline updates

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I’ve been at 30mg of nortriptyline for 6 days now, and I’m trying to figure out if this is how I felt on it before. Going through my nortriptyline tag I see that I actually was up to 40mg on my initial tapering, and after sitting there for a while I decided it wasn’t doing enough for my pain and that’s when I tapered down to 20. In one entry I complained that it wasn’t helping my sleep at all, and how it was making me constantly dizzy and tired and headachey.

This time around it’s definitely helping my sleep, and I’m not dizzy, although I am quite tired (despite actually getting a full 8 hours of sleep every night, for once!) and today I had a headache all day. Also plenty of nausea. But at least I got a nice long walk in.

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ADHD and fibromyalgia and nortriptyline

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Yesterday I finally met with a new psychiatrist (having lost access to my previous one back in, oh, March), with the intention of figuring out what to try next in terms of ADHD medication.

As a recap, the first medication I tried (Concerta) just made me irritable and gave me tachycardia, and the second one I tried (Adderall) worked really well for my brain but also made my blood pressure skyrocket.

Anyway, on Tuesday I had also met with my pain doc and the decision we came to was that we should try increasing the nortriptyline again, since 20mg is doing something but not enough, and I couldn’t really remember why I felt like 30 was too much. He wants me to target 40-50mg for my eventual long-term dosage.

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pain management update

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Today i had a followup appointment with the pain clinic. Unfortunately, as soon as I started working again my pain flareups came right back. But the doctor was able to pinpoint a few things which are probably the underlying causes, and gave me some more exercises to try. We also decided to try increasing my nortriptyline dose again; I’m on 30mg for the next week then going up to 35 after that (update: and mentioned an eventual target of 40-50, forgot to mention that).

It’s also pretty clear that stress is a huge factor, and boy howdy have I been under a lot of it. Fortunately my new workplace is hugely into giving generous vacation benefits and making sure people actually use them, so in a couple weeks I’m taking a trip out to Port Angeles and staying in a tiny house for a week. I’ll probably bring a guitar and my iPad and try to just, like, decompress, and Be, and spend a bunch if time in the olympic peninsula and enjoy the small town vibe.

Everything I’ve seen about Port Angeles indicates it is a pretty good place with a lot of comfort potential. Maybe even the sort of town I’d want to retire to. And apparently it’s even pretty trans-friendly! I look forward to seeing this year’s Clellam county election results.

Healthcare followup

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Today I had a followup with my doctor after the cessation of gabapentin. My blood pressure is the lowest it’s been in years (118/75!) and she was really happy to see how much less stress I’m under. After discussing the current medication status we agree that I should stay on the nortriptyline for now, and she’s glad that physical therapy has been helping me a lot, as well as me getting better at mindfulness and other stress reduction things.

She also encouraged me to get going with a psychiatrist again so that I can possibly get back on Adderall or to try something else. I think before I do that I’ll see how well I tolerate caffeine. Which I’ve had a bit of over the past few days and it’s not been hecking me up at all, so this seems really promising.

Anyway she gave me a lot of words of encouragement and is also grateful that I’m taking such an active role in trying to make my own life better on multiple fronts. Hopefully this trajectory can continue.

Gonebapentin

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Thursday night was my last dose of gabapentin; I am now off it entirely.

Today I mostly just napped a lot, and had occasional dizzy spells when I was active. I feel no different in terms of pain levels. My blood pressure seems to reliably hover around 120/80. Hopefully it’ll stay that way.

Between the physical therapy I’ve been doing and some lifestyle stress-reduction stuff I’m feeling pretty good. I need to just keep remembering to do my stretches and not let work affect me emotionally.

Medication conflagration

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Gabapentin has been raising my blood pressure (and weight) pretty steadily since February, and it hasn’t actually been helping me with my pain issues. Back before I started on it my blood pressure was generally around 115/85, and as of last Thursday my rest blood pressure was 144/98. Which is, you know, pretty darn high.

So on Friday I decided to cut my dose from 200mg/day to 100mg/day, and see what that did to me.

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