Posted on 05/19/2007 5:36:59 PM PDT by Scutter
That is why a lot of persons become addicted to it so quick. Actually if I'm home I can take two pills a day sometimes. If I go shopping in the dreaded Walmart I take an extra pill sometimes two if during busy hours and I don't stay long.
Cold medications can be tricky. Do not take any cold medication with antidepressants unless the doctors says to do so not even over the counter. I take Singulair and Claritin on a daily basis for allergies with no ill effects.
Good luck to you and your son. We've been at this almost 22 years now. Near as we can tell a likely missed mild case of Polio came back on my wife at age 35. It took years to figure that out but her rehab doctor suspected it because of differing limb measurements. The medical term is Transverse Myleitus simply meaning side to side spinal cord inflammation. She got hit with it at C-5,C-6 and the quadriplegia is incomplete. She got a major portion of her arms and hands back along with some trunk muscles.
Another member of my family takes Luvox though with no problems.
I've done plenty of it believe me especially with my state. People can not understand catastrophic illness till it happens in their family. I don't care how good of insurance you think you have it's not good enough. Most employers discontinue coverage after 30 days missed worked and the persons insurance is lost upon discharge from the hospital. That leaves you with Medicaid and Medicare.
Our state put Medicare into a semi Universal Health Care system for the state and things really got bad. At one time she was over eight months without a doctor and the prescriptions nearly ran out.. Nobody would take her as a patient because they got less money than even a Medicaid patient.
That got a whole lot better about 5 year ago with a new governor who demanded accountability and cleaned up the corruption. I will say this when I take on our HMO I win :>}
We are fortunate to have private individual plans.
Yes very spendy but more than pays for the 8 grand a month it costs to keep him with top of the line medical equipment and I am actually saving the ins. co money buy refusing care that will hurt him and demanding home care.
I do his careproviding but I finally managed to get a private lab on orders to do blood draws at the house.
You know it takes hours to get up to go out and then break it all down again. (compulsive hyper comes in handy at that point).
But for a 2min blood draw and right now he is just recovering from a great staff 12 day hosp stay but the twin bed was more than his flailing limbs could endure even with siezure pads on.
So decided if he is going to stay here with me on earth we have to make some care changes.
He wants to go like someone without a disabilty but after 28yrs (may 23rd) we gotta slow down if we are going to live.
Lungs go into bronchial spasms now when he gets stoked aka happy to see freinds/socialize and all the bronch dialators ect in the world ain’t gonna fix the brain damage that is not getting the message to his lungs.
We also have to carry suction when going out now due to the copious and I mean copious secretions he makes Oregon rain look like a drought LOL.
IOW he is as I aging so for now it is lay low and his social arena are sending postcards/cards to him.
He loves when I come back from my walk to the mailbox and yell “MAIL CALL”.
Got to be innovative in all you do when on a team like this.
God Bless.
I was fine within a week.
Had no problems after that, if they antibiotics were worthless, they did the trick.
I know for sure I wasn't depressed and at least he was quick to tell my parents he didn't think I had mono (which is what some friends thought).
The first doc was just abrasive and arguing that I was depressed and that he had the cure.
My first doc was just fighting that I was in some kind of deep depression (me saying I wasn't was a sign of denial and depression according to that jerk).
I think its safe to say I would know if I was depressed or even unhappy, my case was simply tired, sleeping alot, and having no energy, my friends thought it was mono, it was a simple virus, with a simple solution, that was taken care of.
Since I was in High School, I suspect that the doc just made a broad assumption (the whole teen agnst crap) and its quite easy to push depression drugs on kids with a little scare tactics on the parents.
I'm not anti-doctor, and I have alot of respect for them, but this guy was just and out and out jerk trying to medicate me for a problem I didn't have, while not treating or doing anything about the problem I did (a simple virus).
The fact that he argued with me telling me how depressed I was, when in fact I was being agitated by him, since I wasn't sad or depressed, just tired, and the fact that he tried using scare tactics on my parents, just ticked me off.
At least my second doctor wasn't a quack, and did the basics and I was fine, he did say one thing which struck me, about how its "kind of fad" to just diagnose everything as depression.
Marking
If you are asking if I am in NY no I am in IN
If you are asking if IAHP is in NY I believe they are in PA and maybe IA
There are many anecdotal stories regarding medicine, but I think they all point to one truth. As patients (or people who love patients) we must educate ourselves about illnesses and take responsibility for our own healthcare. That means reading the science and questioning your doctor’s suggested treatments. Remember that no one has as much of an interest in your health as you do.
You are not suggesting, are you, that this young man be put back on these atypical psychotics because statistical studies supposedly show they work?
The mother who wrote this does not claim that her son's experience trumps all contrary evidence. Even the doctors at Mayo Clinic that she cites make no such claim. They said this happens in about 15 percent of the cases. That is statistically significant in its own right and ought to serve to put the prescribing psychiatrists on notice.
Too bad it didn't. It makes you wonder how many other "anecdotal" families are living in pure hell because of the apparent gross incompetence of such psychiatrists.
No, of course not. Don't be silly. I would expect ANY parent with a child having medical problems to closely monitor their health when they start taking a new drug. All the more so messing with the brain chemistry of someone with a brain problem. What I am saying is that this one case or even a number of cases is no reason for making a drastic regulatory decision. Start studies? Sure. Warnings and label changes if there is sufficient cause? Absolutely. Take the drug off the market, potentially ignoring the anecdotal evidence that a greater number of patients ARE helped by the drug? No.
Gross incompetence of the psychiatrists? They aren't usually in contact with the child 24x7. While I agree there is shared responsibility and the prescribing doctor can't simply fire-and-forget with the prescription pad, the parents have a significant duty too, to monitor the effects of the new meds and to get the doctor's attention pronto if something is wrong.
It’s a long story, but I’ll try to summarize.
She was a twin born 3 1/2 weeks early and weighed 5 1/2 lbs at birth.
At 6 wks old (7 1/2 lbs), she got a respiratory virus (RSV). She got very congested and started swallowing some of the gunk. This caused her to start vomitting.
We took her to the doctor on Wed. and she was running a fever, but they didn’t put her in the hospital. By Saturday, she was doing worse and vomitting more. The doctor was not in, and a pediatric assistant saw her. She sent my husband home with glucose water to give her because they were out of pedialyte. We gave that to her 2 times until we bought pedialyte that evening.
She held the glucose water.
After we gave her pedialyte, she started throwing up again.
We called the doctors office, they told us to give her glucose water.
Basically by morning, she was despondent and her electrolytes were messed up and her sodim had plummeted to 116 (An adult would have died of those levels, but because her fontenel was not closed her brain could swell). She started seizing. We took her to the hospital, and they brought up her sodium level too fast (that’s what probably caused the brain damage).
The doctor’s don’t know what actually caused the brain damage. That’s why we don’t have a malpractice case (we tried). Some say she got the brain damage before she was born (but her twin sister is okay).
I don’t remember what the MRI says about where the damage is. I do know the neurologist said on a scale of 0-10 (0 meaning no damage, 10 meaning dead) she was a 5. My husband and I could even see the damage on the MRI because it is so bad.
However, she is a great kid. She has a great work ethic, and this will do a lot for her as she gets older She looks pretty normal. She can walk, run, ride bikes. She’s gifted at math, and she should go to college. She’s also very pretty.
She does have speech problems, but she can talk now. Reading is hard for her, but she is only a little behind grade level (4th grade) and she continues to improve. Her left side is weaker than her right, and my husband really notices this when she walks. I notice it when she swims.
That’s the summary.
I have yet to meet anyone that really needed this crap.
________
I will happily extend an invitation for you to come and meet my mother.
But one of the side effects appears to be an increase in appetite. It's actually SO wonderful that even tho they each gained 25 to 30 pounds, they don't seem to give a damn.
sw
I agree to some degree, but how do you tell if a patient will benefit from a medication. Just because 35 % of patients do not benefit from a given med does not mean they have bad side effects/ A very good friend of mine suffered from severe depression 8- 10 years ago, was suicidal, and admitted to a psych unit at a local hospital. WIthin a month, he was 80 % better. He had 2 little boys and obviously a lot to lose. If the psychiatrist had chosen not to treat with the antidepressant, he would have killed himself. If 35% of patients had bad side effects, do you think the medication would ever be approved by the FDA> Would the pharma company take on the liability ? No Way!!!
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