acquiring labels daily

I know that it can be tempting to put off treatment if the meds start taking some of that edge of performance that you are used to. You are used to the energy and productivity that mania brings, and have become dependent on it. But there is a price. You are already paying it with your body, but what you are experiencing now could be only the tip of the iceberg, and I don't only mean physically. Humans weren't meant to burn at that high of a rate of mania forever. We do burn out eventually, and sometimes spectacularly. You say that you aren't prone to depressions. That is excellent, until you are thrown into the depths of a serious one for the first time. Conversely, a mania can become so serious that you can become psychotic, losing touch with reality. You have been walking a razors edge until now where you have been able to do 1001 things, and have the energy to get them all done. What happens to those jobs and your thesis deadline when you have to be hospitalized because your mania got out of control? So it might be worth having to learn to slow down a little bit now, even if it is a time when you think that you can least afford to. The energy that you are living off of is a false one. It is not sustainable over time, regardless of your long mania, and you need to learn to work and live under the constraints of a normal attention-span, need for sleep, and energy level sometime. Don't fool yourself, there will always be that next job, promotion, project, new house to save for, new baby, etc. that will have you putting off compliance with medication if you don't commit yourself. Just something to think about. Good luck

the site seems to be down this morning, which worries me because i have to do a bunch of work before class tonight

Tizanidine doesn't make me sleepy at all, so it wouldn't make me sleepy at all- though I do sometimes use it as part of a cocktail to try to bomb a stubborn migraine to get some relief.

I have taken Topamax for migraine prevention for years. It doesn't do anything to break a migraine once it has started, but it has seriously reduced the number of attacks that I suffer. I can now go for months headache free. This is wonderful to me, as like you, my migraines can last days to weeks once they get started. BTW, Tizanidine does a wonderful job of staving off my migraines if I take it early enough in the process. If I take it early enough in the migraine it won't transform and be with me for days on end so it is my go to med once I get a migraine, even before my Maxalt.

I am currently in a bit of a bind as well. I had emergency surgery in July and my insurance company has denied the entire hospital bill as being non-covered. That is $30,000 in my case. I just found out on Friday and couldn't get anyone to talk to me on Friday. Apparently they were all already out of the office for the holiday. There is no way that I am going to pay that bill. I have already met my maximum out of pocket for the year and it was emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction. I don't know how they could say that it wasn't covered. grrrr

I am watching the mini-series. There are several things that make me irate. 1. Jamie's last name is McTavish. WTH is wrong with Frasier? makes me boil every time. 2 He's not a red-head, and I personally think that he looks too young for the actress that is playing Claire. 3. They have Claire as a nurse and not a doctor. Claire is a SURGEON. In the mini they have her as a battlefield nurse that dabbles in the medicinal qualities of plants in her spare time. I thought that one of the things that made Claire the most interesting was that she was that rare bird in HER time. A woman who had gone to medical school. I am sure that other things will come to me, but those are the things that jump out at me week after week. I am still watching though. I can't seem to help myself

I think that I was always different and I think that my peers always knew it. I think that it was one of the reasons that I was bullied from the time I was about in the 3rd to 4th grade. They could sense it in me the way that animals can sense when something isn't right with one of the flock/pack. I knew that I just never fit in. I could never relate to others in the way that they related with each other. I was apart. I was isolated from a very young age, and it was exacerbated by the fact that I responded by withdrawing into a book. It didn't help that there were problems and abuse in the home. Physical, mental, and emotional abuse that lasted my entire childhood and that continue to affect me to this day. Add substance abuse in the home, and it was certainly not a place where I felt welcomed, much less wanted to bring any friends that I managed to make.

I have been told many times that my pdoc has never heard of (x) as a side effect, but that he supposes that it could be 'possible'. It is infuriating. I also understand about the med merry-go-round, and the ever-dwindling hope that the next tweak will be the one that magically leads to stability- if only temporarily. The only thing that has brought me out of my cycle has not been the meds i believe, but a predictable schedule. and i am losing the ability to have that. with a work schedule that is changing I feel as if yet another treatment has stopped working for me. except it hasn't. it is just a treatment that has been taken away from me.

It wouldn't be possible. The every other weekend thing is a requirement of everyone. It was only by very special arrangement that I was able to have a regular schedule at all. To try to use my diagnosis as a disability to get me the schedule that I would need could actually serve to endanger my job. Those that regulate my profession don't take to kindly to us nut jobs. See us as a possible threat, you know. I really have no recourse other than to find a job with a Monday-Friday schedule. Those are hard to come by in my field, and I have had no luck in doing so.

I was unstable for years. Nothing worked. I cycled through med after med after med with little if any effect on my moods. My seasonal mood swings just kept charging through- doing their dance in my mind; getting worse if anything. I was suicidal at least 1/3 of the time, hanging on by my fingernails Then 6 months ago I was able to finangle my way into a stable work schedule. I work in an industry where the norm is for 12-hour shifts, and every-other weekend. This leads to a haphazard schedule where every week is different. With the change I was able to work it out with a co-worker so that she worked every TH-F-SA, and I worked every Sun-Mon-Tues. With the change in schedule, my mood stabilized. I was able to go from 4 pmeds to 2. No more AAP's, just a mood stabilizer and an AD. My yearly summer depression failed to materialize. Things were good. Now my schedule partner is quitting and I can't find anyone else to take over her half of the schedule. Without her I have to go back to working every other weekend, and that irregular schedule. To make things worse, they won't even let me go back to working with the weekend group of co-workers that I was working with before. On top of that, the window for self-scheduling for the next schedule has closed, so I will end up filling all of the holes in the schedule and will thus end up with the most undesireable of all schedules. I can just feel my stability draining away and there is nothing that i can do about it.

Frankly i wouldnt continue to go there. Sounds really shady. I would be suspicious that they are billing medicare but are charging you full price as well

I asked my pharmacy about it today and they said that they did have problems last month and that is why they substituted name brand for generic. they say that they are no longer having any problems receiving their normal supply.. . however...they always go with whichever supplier is currently selling it the cheapest. i never count on getting my meds from the same manufacturer two months in a row

I just found this thread and it is making me a little nervous as i go to pick up my meds tomorrow. Last month the pharmacy didn't say anything about a shortage, just said that they were out of the generic and were giving me the brand name at no extra cost. i also missed a call from my pdoc's office yesterday-though they didn't leave a message. now i wonder if it has to do with the shortage. it will be interesting to see what i get tomorrow