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1:27pm April 14, 2015

So the mess that’s been going on…

I can’t describe it all to you but I can tell you the basics:

I started at some point taking too much Benadryl and Lorazepam because I was so badly sleep-deprived that I would do anything for sleep.  This is because I’m on steroids that I have to be on in order to survive, but they mess up my sleep, plus I have several sleep disorders to begin with without the steroids.

I was able to go back down to my normal dose of Benadryl, even below it.

I was not able to do the same with Lorazepam because I ran out a week and a half early.

I went into withdrawal for four days before I was able to tell anyone.

Obviously this has not been my brightest few months as far as decision-making goes.

But the doctor told me this is a known thing, that it’s different from addiction, it’s basically when a patient tries to meet a medical need on their own rather than contacting a doctor.  Then we’re usually too ashamed to admit to it and it spirals out of control from there.

I told my doctor I want off of Lorazepam for good – it’s the one that may have caused or intensified the delirium, and definitely caused a  lot of memory loss, some of which may or may not come back.  And I want nothing to do with the stuff anymore.

So he’s got me on a tapering schedule to get me off of it without the (extremely serious, potentially lethal) consequences of lorazepam withdrawal.

There’ve been insurance problems.  So I’ve been having to pay ridiculous out-of-pocket costs for some of this.

I’m never going to mess around with my meds again, though, I can tell you that much.  Withdrawal was hell.  They put me back onto it and are taking me off the safe way.

And they’re sending me to the sleep clinic to deal with the sleep issues because they said it’s way too complicated for a GP to handle.

So that’s why I’ve been disoriented and weird all last week.  I was too ashamed to tell anyone what was going on, until I got too scared not to tell anyone what was happening.  I still feel really stupid.  The only way I caught what was happening was through my iPad app that tells me how much meds I take and when.  But this is definitely up there in my list of recent fuckups as far as bad ones go.