Things are going ok I guess. We had an appointment with the neurologist a couple weeks ago, and he said to drop from 12mg of the nortrip to 5mg for a week, and then none. (He also seemed to think that any vomiting she had after a 2% drop per week was psychological, although I didn't agree--she never knew when I was dropping it, and she hadn't had vomiting as a symptom of anything prior to taking the nortrip.) I thought that was too fast, but I figured I could try to reduce her by 4% a day and see how far we got. It was a little rough, but no where near as bad as the side effects were a couple of months ago. Sunday she started demanding more lorazepam and muscle relaxers (I redirected her well enough to avoid an argument because I wasn't giving her more of anything--it does no good to reduce one thing if we're increasing others), and her anxiety was starting to get the best of her (but no screaming/crying fits...at least none in the same league as a couple months ago). So I paused the taper on Sunday at 8mg and left it there for the week. She has seemed to improve a little bit, but now her anxiety seems to be there almost all the time. She's complaining of nausea quite a bit, eating very little until the evening, and having some vomiting (I think dry heaves, as it was in the morning and she hasn't been eating anything in the morning). Thursday morning she got up at 3am and stayed in the bathroom until at least 7am when I went to work--apparently nauseous and constipated. Friday morning she seemed much better to me, but she said she didn't get her 7am pills until after 8am as she was so nauseous. She made an appointment with our family doctor this afternoon and he just prescribed a mild medication for constipation, although I honestly think her constipation is extremely mild compared to the constipation she has had over the previous two years. It improved greatly when we were reducing the lorazepam in May-June, and the neurologist agreed that that was probably the reason. But...
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I tried reducing the lorazepam by 1% three weeks ago, and she did well for 3 days. I then got too confident and tried reducing it 2%. Within 2 days she was having such a rough time in the morning she was demanding an ambulance, claiming she had an infection, could barely move...all of the symptoms she had when reducing the lorazepam previously. So I moved some of her evening doses into the morning that day, and she snapped out of it by 9AM. So from that point I just went back to the 2.25 of lorazepam for now, and focus entirely on trying to get off the nortrip first.
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At this point I think I'll have to leave her at 8mg for at least another week before trying to reduce again, hopefully down to 6mg over a few days and then leave it there for a while. Her walking has improved quite a bit--she says she needs her walker, but today seemed to forget to use it most of the time. She even did some chores around the house today. (Dad fired the caregiver a couple weeks ago. So far it doesn't seem to have made much difference.)
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Our follow up appointment with the neurologist is in January, so I'm hoping we can be off the nortrip completely by then. I wish I had just said no to the nortrip from the beginning because now it looks like we've lost almost another year because of medication changes and withdrawals. Granted, it wasn't nearly as bad as the lyrica withdrawal last year, but she was doing so well in June, for the first time in such a long time...we should have just left things alone.