Quote:
Originally Posted by Littlepaw
Hi CDWall,
Sorry to hear about the rough ride and current stress. I am wondering about a couple of things. As we approached my higher dose I remember the infusion nurse (who gives these all the time) saying that people acclimate to the dose increases. So part of it may be that what knocked you out before is no longer doing so. The answer to this is increasing the versed or benzodiazepine they are giving you to counteract the weirdness.
I wonder also if your heightened stress, increased adrenaline, sympathetic activity etc. is making you more resistant to being knocked out like before.
I would ask next time before you begin if they can plan to give more of the calming medication if it happens again so a plan is on board. We decreased the versed given during my last infusion with the understanding that if I got agitated they would add it back in. The end result was we stuck with the lower dose and my infusion was decidedly weirder but I felt less wiped all day.
I have no idea if your experience will affect the effectiveness. My main concern is if your stress level is affecting your pain and ability to cope with it.
How much are they giving you total over the four hours BTW? I get about 55mg total dose given in an hour. Just curious....
I hope things settle soon. Sending soft hugs,  |
Hi Again. So as I said, I'm getting 500 mg which is considered a pretty whopping dose. (I'm really little). I've read some people getting more in one infusion but it's pretty rare, and usually built up to that higher dose. 500 mg should have knocked me completely out but I fought it like the devil. And I wasn't jabbering either, I was making sense and describing how I felt.
One problem is my husband of 32 years left me completely out of the blue and is marrying a girl 25 years younger than him in a couple of weeks. I'm not handling it well. I was devastated and heartbroken when he left and haven't gotten over it. (Yes, I'm in therapy and on drugs.) The other main problem is my mother is about to die from Alzheimer's. Then there's dealing with CRPS and the restrictions my increasingly worse POTS is causing. I'm mostly bed bound these days from the POTS. I wanted to talk about these things but it was keeping me from settling down and made my BP go up too high so my sister had to work the entire time to keep me away from these subjects. Bless her heart. Last time she could just read while I was completely out of it.
I know they gave me Ativan and Zofran, I believe the same as my last infusions. I don't know if they give me Versed but I remember everything. (I have a long history of remembering everything despite versed anyway.) I've been having trouble with too much Ativan the last two infusions such that I had to stay hours after everybody normally has to stay before I've been fit to leave. I probably got the same amount of Ativan, but was just very emotional and overrode what they gave me. It's hard to match a patient's exact needs for any given day I suppose.
At any rate, I'm feeling better now. I hope my fighting the infusion won't affect my results. Every infusion needs to work the best it can. It's a big deal for me to set up help for treatments like this because I live alone now.
Thanks for your help.