Kay,

That is great about being discharged.
Sorry to hear about the sore spot.

M

I may have given out to much information about possible bed sores. I'm sorry. I apologize.

It's been a difficult year for me. BF:hug::hug::hug:

Don't worry BF, I know plenty about bed sores... I worked as a CNA in hospitals for years (was also a nursing student) and helped treat bed sores as bad as most pictures found on the internet.
It's a small stage one, my skin is intact. Fortunately, I'm mobile enough to stay off of it. And I'll use a barrier cream to protect the skin. It should go away soon.
Enough about that... Gross.

I think my body has adjusted to the 400mg dose of Gabapentin :) I'm not waking up feeling sedated. Sometimes with the anti-anxiety meds I feel sedation, but the rest of what I'm dealing with is just baseline. I realize the rise and fall of my cognitive problems and fatigue aren't due to meds now, it's probably just the MS and anxiety.

I tried the 50mg of Seroquel. It causes a tolerable level of sedation, was fairly effective the first time, but doesn't last as long for anxiety as I thought it would. I guess it makes a little sense, since the pm dose never carried over to the am and I had to take prns to treat my hypomania.

I had an appointment with my pdoc this morning. I took the 50mg of Seroquel. My cab was a half an hour late, so I was 10min late for my appointment. Pdoc got to see how effective the Seroquel was today lol. I freaked out. I was a mess.
1.5mg of Klonopin works the best, the longest. My anxiety is at it's height in the morning, I'll take it then. I can take up to 3mg a day, but I doubt I'll get up to that. If the Klonopin isn't enough for my am anxiety, I'll throw some Seroquel at it.
I took a Klonopin when I got home, so I'm a little sedated, but it's for a good cause.

Kay

What did your pdoc say when she saw you like that?
good for you for keeping up with your meds.
You are doing great!
bizi

She had to spend some time calming me down, she's never seen me like that (and she's seen me PLENTY), so obviously she realized that 50mg of Seroquel isn't effective in managing major anxiety by itself.

So that's why we went with the 1.5mg of Klonopin- it works better and longer. I have a 3mg daily limit. I'll still have the Seroquel there if I need it. I need more anti-anxiety med in the am, a little less in the afternoon, and I don't take anything in the evening because of that 600mg pm dose of Seroquel.
I actually told her what BF had to say about being careful with the benzo's. Obviously she agreed, and she thinks he's a very smart guy ;)
We talked about alternatives to benzos on my last visit, but not yesterday. I still like to have control... I'd like to get back to where I was before my last hospital visit. I was managing my anxiety better and was averaging 1mg of Xanax a day. I'm a long way off right now though.

We also talked about my OCD. She said that we might have to start talking about treatment for that sometime in the future, but I shut that down. I won't take anything for OCD unless it's to the point where it's handicapping because the treatments will leave me too vulnerable to mania. I was adamant about that.

Integrative Interventions

I stumbled upon glycine for sleep difficulties besides muscle strength and i saw it was also recommended for ocd..there appear to be a lot of studies showing that it works. these are all non prescription.
bobby




http://www.lifeextension.com/Protoco...er/Page-01?p=1

Inositol: In a double-blind controlled trial of patients with OCD, oral inositol resulted in a significant reduction in the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) score, while placebo treatment resulted in average Y-BOCS score reductions of less than one point.
N-Acetyl L-Cysteine (NAC): In a randomized controlled trial, 48 patients with OCD who had not responded to a 12-week course of high-dose SRI medication received either additive NAC or placebo for an additional 12 weeks. In the NAC group, almost 53% had a full clinical response (defined as a decrease in Y-BOCS score of more than 35%), while only 15% in the placebo group achieved a full clinical response.
Glycine: In a randomized controlled trial in OCD patients, very high-dose glycine or placebo was added to ongoing pharmaceutical or behavioral therapy. Patients in the glycine group experienced a mean decrease of over six points in Y-BOCS score compared with a mean one point decrease for those receiving placebo.
Milk thistle: A double-blind randomized trial in participants with OCD compared milk thistle extract to fluoxetine (Prozac). Judged on the basis of change in Y-BOCS scores, milk thistle extract and fluoxetine were similarly effective.
Valerian: In a placebo-controlled trial of valerian root extract in patients with OCD, those taking valerian showed statistically significant reductions in Y-BOCS scores at four, six, and eight weeks compared with those taking placebo.

Kay Thank you. BF:hug::hug::hug:

From the same article:

" In a randomized controlled trial in 24 OCD patients with a Y-BOCS score greater than or equal to 18, very high-dose glycine (60 g/day) or placebo was added to ongoing pharmaceutical or behavioral therapy. Patients in the glycine group experienced an average decrease of over six points in Y-BOCS score compared with an average one point decrease for those receiving placebo. Eight of twelve participants in the glycine group dropped out of the study due to side effects from the large dose of glycine, though two patients who responded to glycine treatment continued to take glycine for over a year (Greenberg 2009).

In a case report of a 22-year old male patient with severe, debilitating OCD and no satisfactory response to SSRIs, five years of glycine treatment led to a large reduction in OCD symptoms, and resumption of education and social life (Cleveland 2009)".

It sounds promising, but they're not there yet. The research sample was very small, and it 2/3 of the test subjects taking glycine found the side effects of the high dose too much to tolerate and dropped out.
But I will mention glycine to my pdoc.


Right now I'm hoping that getting a handle on my general anxiety will help with the OCD. Intrusive thoughts are back. I'm not hoping for a cure. Just a some relief.

Kay

there are a lot of articles about glycine. it seems to help a lot of things.
bobby

My NP said that I may need a new OCD medication. She said that one of her patients became use to the Luvox,and it wasn't working anymore. I've been on Luvox for about 20 years.

Recently I have had so many painful thoughts that they appear to be panic attacks. It seems that I get obsessed with a concern,and I think that it's more of a panic attack,and OCD. With the OCD,it's hard to turn the page so to speak in my mind.

Panic attacks hit me like a ton of bricks one night when I was a teenager. I got better,then I got worse after going away to school. BF:hug::hug::hug: