You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘wtf’ tag.
i have been researching & making a list of information related to suddenly stopping lamotrigine & the withdrawal affects. i met with my counselor today & discussed the situation with her. she tried to get me in to speak w the director, but he was busy. got a card though. i went to the NAMI monthly meeting today & aired my grievance there. it was (of course) agreed by all in attendance, professional & consumer alike this was a serious issue of immediate concern. i got the contact info for my state MH rep & called her leaving a message for her to call me ASAP (it was after 5pm when i called & no need to go 911 on it). the meeting was at the MHC, so i completed a grievance form before leaving. i actually caused a ruckus with that, because it was time for them to lock up when the NAMI meeting ended, but i refused to leave till i finished my grievance. she tried to tell me i had to leave & bring it back tomorrow. i told her i lived a half hour away & would not be bringing it back; i would be done in a minute. as i was & turned it in. still working on my letter to oprah, obama, & glenn close. & anyone else who will listen.
Had an infuriating experience at the MHC this morning & as a result will no longer be using medication in my treatment. Having Bipolar Disorder I am concerned about this, but their policies have shown me that the “professionals” do not consider me taking this medication to be very important. For the full story, I am just going to c+p my post to the psych central forums.
Begin c+p:
I have been going to the local MHC here for a few months, since I moved home & actually managed to get in there (which is another story of incompetence itself). I’m in a rural area & on SSD, but my Medicare won’t kick in till next year so I have no insurance till then. I am on SSD for my Bipolar, so mental health treatment is the most important thing for me right now, as I previously worked as a professional & hope to get back on my feet & able to return to work. The MHC is a half hour from me & even if I had insurance there is nowhere else here to go without driving closer to an hour.
So, I have been on generic Lamictal for the last few months, & we have been working to get the dose right. The nurse has only been prescribing me enough medicine at a time to get me through till my next appt. I already had to postpone this appt due to having to be in court last month, so I had to move my therapy appt back, & they wouldn’t let me see the nurse till I saw my counselor. I skipped a few pills here & there, so I had enough to get through till today without running out. So today, I was running late. My clock showed closer to 5mins late, but the clock in the reception said 10mins which is the cut off, so they would not let me see the nurse. The next appointment I could get was a month away. When I mentioned I would need some more meds to get me through till then, I was callously told I couldn’t have any more meds till I saw the nurse.
I left hurt & confused. I know I was late & I understand needing to reschedule, but I don’t understand why I have to go off my meds for a month over 10mins? I have been very regular about keeping my appointments. I have been late once before & had to reschedule a therapy appointment. The last time I was there I got called out because I had to cut my hour therapy appointment down to half an hour because my gas light came on as I pulled up & I need the rest of the money to get home. I never got to talk to the nurse, this all came from the receptionist.
After leaving I decided I was not going to do the bouncing on & off medication thing. By the time I get back in to see her, the lamotrigine will be out of my system & I’ll have to start all over building back up to my current dosage. So I called the MHC & told the receptionist to cancel my appointment, I was going to be going off my meds permanently & will no longer need to see the nurse. I also asked for the nurse’s voicemail to leave her message letting her know why I would no longer be seeing her. I was told she doesn’t have voicemail & had to leave a message with the receptionist. I have yet to hear from her, but there’s still a couple of hours left in the business day. If she calls me back I’m hoping to get her to either call me something in or advocate on my behalf, & on behalf of others in the same situation.
It’s either important that I take the meds, or it is unimportant. My meds can’t only be important when I’m on time. And if they aren’t important, why bother? Everything I’ve read points to NOT suddenly stopping lamotrigine.
The official Lamictal site:
| Do not stop LAMICTAL without first talking to a healthcare provider. |
from crazymeds.com:
Quote:
| Like any anticonvulsants, if you’ve been taking Lamictal (lamotrigine) for more than a couple months and you’re up to or above 100mg a day (give or take, depending on other meds you might be taking) you just can’t stop cold turkey if you’re not at the therapeutic dosage for another anticonvulsant that you know works for you, otherwise you risk partial-complex, absence seizures, or even tonic-clonic grand malsdespite your never having had a seizure disorder before! The risk is worse if you’re taking a lithium variant, and/or any antidepressants, especially Wellburtin (bupropion hydrochloride). Even if you are taking something else Lamictal (lamotrigine) has its own set of issues with sudden discontinuation, namely intense headaches and sudden, intense and sometimes suicidal depression. That’s right, Lamictal (lamotrigine) will give you headaches when you take it and it will give you headaches it you suddenly stop taking it. Anyone with a history of a seizure disorder who needs to stop taking an anticonvulsant cold turkey needs to be discussing that with two neurologists and not getting your information from some stupid web site. Get off your computer and start making appointments! |
For an agency established to assist people with mental health problems, & this includes my experiences with other MH agencies too, I feel as though we as consumers are punished for exhibiting the symptoms of our disease. For today specifically, I understand I was late & they needed to reschedule me to avoid backing the entire schedule up. I get that, but what I don’t get is why I so casually forced to go cold-turkey on my meds? I went through this repeatedly with the whole MH system where I was living. Including having to go off meds everything I transitioned from the hospital to MHC to residential treatment back to the MHC. Every time I was turned out with no meds & told to get them from the MHC, who refused to give me anything till I saw their psych who always then started me on something entirely different.
Long story short, I feel like I am being punished in a very cruel & callous fashion, that is completely unethical. I was 10mins late & I’m being treated like a pillbilly who only shows up with I need a fix. I make all my appointments, am honest & active in my therapy, take my pills regularly as prescribed (cash pay btw, they do not provide them for me), & on my own time work towards improving myself & my situation. I am so confused & angry about this. Even if I don’t hear back from the nurse, I have an appointment with my therapist Thursday & I’m going to discuss it with her & see what she can do. I’m ready to report this to NAMI & my state, & anyone else who will listen, but would love some feedback from you guys.
How standard is this practice? Am I overreacting? Did I bring this on myself & therefore deserve to have the meds pulled out from under me?
Thanks to those of you who take the time to read all this & thanks again to those who leave their 2c below.
EDIT: Forgot to mention I have been on 150mg qd.
blah, i bought a box of lovely, big gingerbread men to use at part of my xmas gifts. it was a long wkend, so i ok, i ate them. i had made sure to buy a box where none i could see were broken, & when i opened them up i found they were all perfect & whole.
went back today & bought 2bxs, because i figured up i have about 12 gifts to wrap. again made sure to buy boxes with no visible breaks. got them home & opened them up to put together my candy bags. inside the first box one on the bottom was broken & in the second one two on the bottom were broken.
isn’t that just the way it goes? lol i’m going to finish up the ones i’m working on, eating the broken cookies of course, & see how many more cookies i really need, if any. maybe not everyone needs or deserves a cookies. some of the people on my list are just lucky they aren’t getting a picture of my ass to kiss for xmas:~p
i spent my friday night sorting through piles & piles of unopened mail, some going back over a year. i set up a database to enter my debts into, just to get a jump start on fixing them all. i tallied them up at the end & i am over $75K in debt. wow, huh? of course the vast, vast majority of that is student loan debt & the next big chunk are medical bills. even seeing that number, i feel okay. there may be a couple of things missing too. i need to check on them.
i have a few little bills i can go ahead & take care of when i get my check, & most of the others i can settle with when i get my back pay. the student loan & the big hospital bills i can make payment arrangements on. i won’t leave me debt free, but it will put me in a much better place than i am now. which is a very, very good thing.
there are a couple of extremely difficult calls i need to make. both are about my things that have been in storage. one is a local place i had written off a couple of years ago. i had gotten everything out of it i wanted, except maybe a couple of boxes & a chair, but the rest was some big/heavy furniture i didn’t want. i left my job & couldn’t make the payments, so in my typical, head-in-the-sand, dysfunctional fashion i just quit making payments on it. well, they have continued to send me bills, which have of course gotten in to the hundreds of dollars, & i don’t know if they still have my stuff or not. they are owned by the same people who own the funeral home that buried my mother, & they are local to home, so i think they have extended me a great deal of grace in the area. their letters state when they sell my things off i will recieve a notice about it & i haven’t, so i feel i should contact them & if they do still have my stuff i should make arrangements to pay what i owe them & get it.
the other is about the rest of my stuff my former landtroll had taken that i couldn’t get the last time i was there. i don’t know if they still have it or have dumped it either. i know by legal standards, & any sane standard really, i have abandoned those things, & i’m okay if they are gone, but i think i should at least find out for sure since i’m trying to get my life straightened out. though the idea of making those calls hurts me. maybe i can convince some kind person to make them for me…
ooh, & something scary that happened! i tried to get one of my free credit reports tonight (which is scary, but the not the scary something i’m talking about). during the identity verification process they asked me some questions regarding information in my credit report. they mentioned i had taken out a home mortgage in april 2009 & asked me a couple of questions about that. WTF? i thought it must be a trick question & answered “none of the above” to both questions, but when it was all said & done they refused to give me my credit report, but weren’t clear about why. so i need to mail my request in. this has me worried that someone has stolen my identity, though i honestly have no freaking idea how anyone using my identity could get any kind of credit, much less get a mortgage. i can’t even write a check at walmart, lol. which is weird, because i don’t have any outstanding bad checks. i’ve never looked into the matter though. i just assume it has something to do with my credit. maybe someday i’ll be brave enough to find out about that too. for now, i don’t even have a checkbook anymore, so it doesn’t matter. but i do need to find out about my credit report.
*sigh* while signing up for an online roommate service, my first choice of screen name was taken. so while trying to come up with a suitable alternative “myleftnut” came to mind.
uh – why? i have no idea where that came from. but it confirms my decision to ignore the 23yo guy looking for a roommate. i just don’t have it in me, & apparently my mind can’t handle the exposure.
i don’t know what i did to earn this, but i had 53 blog views yesterday, with my stalking post being #1 with 11 (& btw, it is my most popular post with a total of 15 views, the orig w-m post is 2nd with 12). only 5 of my friends actually know about this blog & only 2 i know of actually read it. i only have one subscriber too.
i know it’s because i left it open to searches, because i think something i say might help somebody, even it is just because they can see somebody else feels the same way they do. and because of that i don’t use identifying info, that i’ve caught anyway.
but it just makes me wonder who is looking at this & why, lol.
