[Junior]

Maureen

I know what you mean. I went through the majority of my / our IVF treatment (most of it centred on me..blah) without suffering depression. I remember going through a particularly hard time after the 2nd fully stimulated cycle as I was beginning to question, "what if IVF never works?" Took me months to get over that and to feel like I wanted to have another attempt. The roller coaster of emotions was just... just.............
... yet I didn't suffer depression. It horrifies me to hear of people having been put on drugs like the SSRIs for grief. The only way to get over grief is to go THROUGH it. It is a normal and necessary process. Makes me wonder about the integrity of some drs. What's wrong with referring someone for counselling?

Junior

[snicklefritz]

Junior, thanks for sharing. You have been following me, so I am ahead!!!! You may also e mail me if you do not feel like sharing on this board. When Prozac first came on the market, I was on top of the world. It eventually stopped working, and I did great with Remeron. They are the only two that have helped. I think I have given up trying to find anything else. I first started taking Prozac when I lost my mother 22 years ago, and its been one long uphill battle. I spent one period of about 6 months, truly happy, and that was wiped away in a tragic way, just a couple of days before Christmas about 10 years ago. I have been at the bottom of that hole since then. One of the theories the doctors have is that it was the beginning of the state of my health as it is right now, and I need to do something about it. I am in some ways doing what you are, and just trying to take a break and put things in perspective/order. My first priority is to loose weight, food has been my drug of choice and I have gained almost 100 pounds, definately an asset to my arthritis!!

Please keep in touch."
Love
Vanessa

[nursedeborah]

Junior,
I too found your list just the way I was feelings while I was on Cymbalta, and still
have so much of them to this day.

Reading your story does show you know the hell it is like to have Major Depression.
I never had anything like this, not even close until after the surgery, but mostly
it is due to the Cymbalta, and it's side effects.

I still jusy don't have any energy, motivation, have the GAD really bad, but that is
also mixed in with my being house bound, and also the side effects of the Cymbalta.

Living in pain is also not something that is easy to do, I think at times I will just
ignore it all, and just get on with my life, so stuff anyway, but the body can only
take so much pain, and it does get to your head after awhile.

All I do know is that I have never been this bad off before until I toof, and stayed
on Cymbalta for 3 years! I am hypersensitive to all meds, maybe that's another
reason this has hit me so hard? All I know is that it SUCKS, and I want it all to
go away!

Debbie

[snicklefritz]

Debbie I would love for you to share your story with me. You vcan send it to vanessamcoe@msn.com if you would like some privacy. We have so much in common, and if you are like me, you will feel you are the only one in the world that is stuck in the house. I am too, and it sucks big time.

Please take care of yourself.
Love
Vanessa

[nursedeborah]

Vanessa,
Thank you so very much for offering you support. We really do have so very much in common.
People with physical disabilities, and severe pain are not easily understood by most people.
Some just don' t want to bother. I know that's how I lost everyone in my life, add something else
that they thought was going on with me, but it wasn't, it was all due to PTSD, due to me surgery
I had just 4 years ago this past oct 24.

I was to have had just a lamiectomy, but this doctor ended up doing a spinal fusion on me, and
also used the wrong size of equipment. He ended up tearing the nerve to my bowel/bladder, and
I ened up numb on my right side of my back, right butt, and no feeling down below. I had no one
to help me, and had to crawl around on the floor for over a year. I couldn't get out of this studio I
was living in either, no one to talk to, then was put on the Cymbalta.

I have been on pain meds as well, but have never taken more that two pillls per day, and I wera a
pain patch. None of this helps, and they have even given me more pain med, but I don'r even use them as
they do not take the pain away.

I then after 17 mo. from the first surgery had to have a second one to remove all the hardware, and due
to how it was put in there, it was on my spinal cord, had I ever fallen I would have ended up a quad, numb
from the nack down. What did happen was that it tore a hole in the spinak core fluid, and then a few hrs
later I had the worst headache of my life. I had to lay flat in bed for 10 days, which for me was so easy as
I had been in bed already for so very long.

I then had to learn how to walk all over agin, and that took me 7 months. Oh I never thought I would ever
ever walk again. I really have forgotten how far i have come. Oh I did forget to mention that when I had
the first surgery, they didn't give me anything for pain, and also took me off what I had been on for about
1 1/2 years for pain, so I ended up going into narcotic withdrawls right away, with no detox meds.

I have always been very active, and always been able to support myself being a nurse, so to just wake up
oneday, and find myself like was did a real number on me mentally, but I was nothing like I am now due
to have benn on that Cymbalta for so long, and now the withdrawls. I feel at times I am just not getting
anywhere with this at all, but I know i am, I just still have so many phobias from having taken it, add my
PTSD.

I went and saw a really great shrink, and he put me on so many different meds for the PTSD, depression,
on top of the Cymbalta, but nothing has helped me to ever get any kind of energy at all. It has been gone
since I started cymbalta, or gotten tens times as worse. I am so hypersensitive to meds, always have been
and it's like I just do better when I am not on anything at all.

I will start e-mailing you too, as there is more to my life than just this, I willl have to start it off with what
happened just a few weeks before the surgery that changed my life. Yes Cymbalta really did do a number on me,
and being that I was so damaged, I think it really did affect me harder than most. It started changing me, but i
didn't know that as i was alone, and it had just made me so out of it.

Thak you again for reaching out, I am here for you too, here's my email address freed2we@verizon.net.

Hope your are feeling safe today, I was to go to my meeting, but have decided to just stay home as my back
really hurts bad, this all just adds to the rest of the shit!

Love Ya,
Debbie

[snicklefritz]

Debbie I have to admit we have all been through the wringer. I have had to deal with doctors that do not like me interfering with my own health, imagine that! I have so much I wantrr to say but have really had the equivalent to a small breakdown today and I need to sleep. Im gladd I checked. We all need each other dear friends, and I am glad I found you.
Love
Vanessa

[MaureenV]

Are you o.k. now Vanessa?



Maureen. xx

[Junior]

Debbie and Vanessa

Thinking of you both.

Junior

[Junior]

I have some good news!!!

FINALLY got rid of my crappy wireless internet and got ADSL.. yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I was having to log in and out 437518461-38 times per day because it just didn't want to upload or download anything. OR..it would drop out... I remember one day when I reckon I spent more time logging in than actually being ON the net! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

So.. no more having to copy everything before I press submit..yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Sorry.. I know this is a bit much for you all.... I'll shut up now ;-p
*sips coffee*

Junior =D

[nursedeborah]

Vanessa,
Hope your ok. I know I had a break after my surgery. No one can have a surgery like I did,
and then not be given any pain meds, and also have to go through a narcotic withdrawl at
the same .

The shrink, and therapist said I was the most severe case they had ever seen. I woke up,
and knew right away something was wrong with my back, then add all that physical pain.
I then got home, and started to realize I had no memory of my past, and also had forgotten
how to spell too! It was so very traumatic, and then to not have anyone to help me, and no
way to do anything for myself.

Then here we are with the side efffects of Cymbalta, the withdrawls, and who knows what.
I do have to say that we must hold on to the fact that it will get better! The thing I heard
hear when I got here was that it's just the drug talking! I know all of this is so very hard to
do when you feel l ike we do. I do just keep trying to tell myself that.

I do think this does so more damage to certain people, and if one was already really having
some major problems, this just added to it that much more!!! Also because we are all made
so different, or can work through things differently than others do. We all have our own path
to take in life, and on getting off this stuff.

I see some of the ones that come here, and have no problems at all getting off this stuff, and
just find that all so hard to believe, but then again like I said we are all different!!! I do get
paranoid, and wonder if they are just coming in here to say stuff like that? Like maybe is a
rep? See how crazy my thinking gets!!!

Well I just hope that your ok, I do know we are going to find out way out of this terrible hell
that God is helping us both. I do believe in the power of prayer, and positive thinking as well,
and having a woman who is helping me with that right now.

Talk to you later, you are loved!

Debbie

[snicklefritz]

Dont be surprised if it is a rep, I have heard of that type of thing happening. Thank you all for checking on me. I am ok. I had a "disagreement" with one of my best friends yesterday, and I am beginning to think that I need to walk around with a sign on me saying "Dont pay attention to what I say its withdrawal from Cymbalta talking". I mean what are you supposed to do? Advertise to everyone how hard it is and what is happening to you? I feel as if I am constantly saying sorry to people. Then people think its just a bunch of bull anyway because they dont understand true depression in the beginning. Wow am I glad I found all of you - finally PEOPLE UNDERSTAND ME!!!!!!!

[MaureenV]

HI Vanessa,


relieved to hear from you!

To be honest, I've not shared much of what's happened to me with many people. Only two friends know, neither of whom see my family or other friends - both are mostly email.

I wouldn't be able to deal with it if they weren't supportive, so best I don't look for it. As Debbie says, don't to go the bank looking for ice cream (although I've just realized you can get hundreds and thousands at the ice cream shop!).


I suspect depression is almost impossible to understand if you've never had it. Those who mistakenly think they have been (or even like me, told I was depressed one time, and only realized I hadn't been when I really DID get depressed years later) and managed to get themselves out of their low mood naturally think we can do the same.

Even when I'm not depressed, I can't really, fully, identify with how I felt. All I can do is look at lists like Junior's and say yep, yep, yep it was like that. I can 'recall' the sense of dread that overwhelmed me when I woke, but I can't put myself back in those shoes.


I'm not sure most people can understand anything much that's outside their experience; eg. I had an elective Caesar, and I can't comprehend what labour must be like (apart from painful!); I knew it was frightening having an asthma attack, but until I had a bad one, couldn't imagine just how claustrophobic it can feel to not be able to breathe.

Don't know whether I'm just getting more cynical as I get older, or more realistic.:)



List of things you don't want to hear during your surgery:

* if that's the spleen, then what's this?

* has anyone seen my watch?

* there go the lights again!

* what do you mean, she's not insured?

* FIRE!

* oops!


:)))


Maureen.