VENT:
I'm gunshy about doctors. A few years ago a pdoc added seroquel to my lamictal. Within a month my normal brain function was gone and I started tripping all the time. Within three months I'd had a fall resulting in surgery and was melting down over being stupid at work. I was an emotional train wreck and I was drama queen venting to him - not the patient he was used to seeing. I couldn't problem solve well enough to make the seroquel connection and my pdoc didn't bother. About a year later (by this time I'm tripping at least once a week) I do my own research and find out that Seroquel can cause imbalance. Weaned myself off and I haven't fallen since. Most of the foggy thinking went away but it's been two years off it now and my brain never has completely returned to the way it was before the seroquel. I can do my job and do it well but I'm slow and it frustrates me to have to keep going to get things I've forgotten.
The guy:
- gave me a medication that made me ill (honest mistake - psych meds are a crapshoot as we all know)
- didn't question why his normally stable patient was an emotional wreck
- didn't question a bad fall taken while on a new med
- never noticed how stupid I was getting.
My gp renews the lamictal prescription and I think I'll keep it that way for awhile. The worst result of all this is that my professional self confidence is gone. My brain gets slowly better all the time but I despair of ever completely recovering. I went from being a respected professional, one of the key players, to being the worker who gets the job done but is seen as merely competent.
Be wary of doctors.
END OF VENT