I still feel terrible today. I haven’t had a decent day in so long. Every other time I’ve taken Lyrica, it has led to a week of good days right away. This time I have only had bad days. I don’t know why this is happening. It’s the only medication I’m taking, so there aren’t any kind of interactions. I’m following the same routine as I had in the past, but no luck this time. Figures, right? One thing that could help me doesn’t help anymore. Now that I have a (I think) consistent prescription, it’s not working. So now the question is do I ramp up to 100mg per day, or do I just stop it? It will lead to probably 2 more bad days if I stop it right now. If I ramp up, then I’ll get more bad days from stopping it. The more you take, the harder it is to stop this medication. The only thing I can think of is the Lyrica is not agreeing with the guaifenesin, but I haven’t taken that in 3 or 4 days. There are no interactions between those two drugs either. No metabolic competition or anything. Usually I feel like stopping medications ends up doing more good than adding more, which makes me want to stop the Lyrica, but I also feel like I need to give it a better shot than I have in the past. I need to try anything and everything that can possibly help.
I had a hell of a nap today. I was super tired, and have been for days. I didn’t sleep much last night. I still feel pretty terrible, but a little less so now. Finally ate something at 4:30. Whew. I think I’m going to give Lyrica until tomorrow. I’ll do one last dose tonight, and if I don’t feel any better by tomorrow, then I’ll stop it. Something is different this time around, and I have no idea what. I’ve tried it 3 times before I think. Every time it gave me a great first week. This time around it has only made things worse. It could be a progression of the disease. Who knows. As difficult as it is dealing with this disease, it’s a little easier when you don’t have a drug in your system completely weighing you down. You get just that slight bit more of mental clarity to deal with it. I don’t mind a drug clouding up my brain and distracting me from the horror, but it has to be in a good way, not this terrible way. And no drug offers any kind of nice feeling without causing some other massive set of problems.
I went out for a walk and felt better for it. When I got home, I noticed I had a bad headache starting in the back of my head. Now it has moved to the front. It’s getting worse. No idea where this one came from. It’s always something. Never a decent day. Maybe because I didn’t eat all day. That does it sometimes.
I took the Lyrica tonight. I thought about it for a while. I’ll give it one last chance. If I don’t feel any better tomorrow, I’ll stop it. The withdrawals shouldn’t be very bad after only 5 days on it. Maybe 2 days of being uncomfortable as it clears out. 50mg/day is the starting dose, so that’s as easy as it gets to quit. I’m not a fan of “polypharmacy”. When you keep adding medications, you start getting unpredictable interactions and side effects. If it’s not helping, then there’s no reason to leave it in the mix. Dump the side effects and whatever other damage the medications do. I really don’t know why it’s not working this time. I stopped the guaifenesin before I started the Lyrica. It only has like a 24 hour elimination time, so it should have been out of my system. There are no interactions either, so there just shouldn’t be any issues. Oh well. We still have one more chance to see if it helps.