tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466691337834051176.post6893690810888719775..comments2024-03-01T03:37:20.420-05:00Comments on I'M SOMEWHERE ELSE: about med stuffAmanda Foresthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04200794053287551087noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466691337834051176.post-7882394871587478022010-10-17T05:55:06.943-04:002010-10-17T05:55:06.943-04:00@Anne Corwin
I know what you mean. I was rushed o...@Anne Corwin<br /><br />I know what you mean. I was rushed onto haloperidol for my tics when I was referred by my psychologist to my psychiatrist. To his credit he really did listen and I really did need the medications to get me through a particularly bad period where my tics were very severe and I had not yet learned how to emotionally cope with them.<br /><br />After I had a bit of respite and had asked the psychiatrist to wean me off of the drugs he had me referred to a neurologist to have my diagnosis confirmed (the psychiatrist treated me only because it was an emergency). The psychiatrist specifically wrote in his letter that I did not want to be treated with medication and that I was just being referred to make sure that it was Tourette's syndrome and not a brain tumor or Wilson's disease.<br /><br />What was the first thing the neurologist said after he introduced himself? "I was looking at your chart and noticed you haven't tried Risperidone yet..." and spent the next ten minutes trying to convince me to take medications.<br /><br />I, of course, told him that I was only interested in knowing whether or not I'm going to degenerate, which he glanced at me and assured me it really was TS and that I couldn't have Wilson's because he glanced in my eyes and declared that I don't have Kayser-Fleicher rings and thus couldn't possibly have Wilson's (I have since found out that most KF rings need specialized equipment to detect and you just can't glance to rule them out and that not everyone with Wilson's has them anyway). Given my very unusual onset for TS the differential diagnoses should have been much, much more carefully considered.<br /><br />Also, he managed to divine that my autism diagnosis was "clearly wrong" because I could communicate vocally. (seriously! and he made the proclamation while I was busy hand-flapping too!)<br /><br />I digress.<br /><br />I find it really amazing that a doctor can't understand the statement "I really don't want treatment for X condition because I'm happy the way I am but I'd like you to rule out Y and Z differential diagnoses because, left untreated, those conditions could cause further damage or kill me."The Untoward Ladyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18035737424208837888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466691337834051176.post-57669374471746851212010-10-16T00:47:02.097-04:002010-10-16T00:47:02.097-04:00The very first "psych med" I was put on ...The very first "psych med" I was put on was an antipsychotic (Risperdal, to be precise). Because as a teenager I was referred to a random psychiatrist by a counselor lady I was seeing due to some court thing related to my parents' divorce (side note: I was happy my parents were divorcing when they did, seeing as it was awful living with people who didn't get along). And the psychiatrist guy observed me for like 10-15 minutes and promptly wrote a prescription. He did not even suggest a diagnosis, and all I remember him saying was something about "anxiety" (even though I wasn't really anxious). Anyway I had a horrible reaction to the Risperdal -- like ridiculous levels of physical weakness, emotional blunting to the point where it felt like I didn't have any feelings except panic at the fact I didn't have feelings, and inability to understand my homework anymore. So thankfully I wasn't forced to keep taking that stuff. <br /><br />I was put on Ritalin after that which I actually did pretty well on, though it didn't make me "normal" or anything. I've been on and off that and similar meds ever since. I actually presently do take adderall XR and it seems to help somewhat with like...executive functioning-type stuff. As in, it's somewhat easier to transition into tasks I wouldn't necessarily "want" to do otherwise. I think stimulants can be okay for *some* ASD people, but in general I think if someone takes anything they don't react well to they shouldn't be forced to take it.<br /><br />But anyway, the point of all this (other than "different people react differently to different meds" which doubtless you already know) is that gah, the whole process of getting given meds? Is really really haphazard, and in my experience it was almost like how I imagine medieval medicine must have been. As in, nobody made any real attempt to get below the surface and figure out what was actually going on, and I just seemingly randomly got prescribed stuff based on really superficial impressions. <br /><br />And it's an intriguing observation on your part the way meds vs. accommodations are given out. In college, for instance, I was supposed to get accommodations but it was so confusing and awful of a process to actually set them up and deal with forms and stuff that I didn't always have access to them. And overall it seemed like...there were roadblocks at every turn, and people always wanted to check your papers and such. And even then, I had some teachers look at my DRC forms and tell me they just flat-out weren't going to cooperate, and I had no communication skills to deal with that so I'd just be all "oh okay" and would put the papers away. But it seemed like whenever I went into a psychiatrist's office I would walk out with a prescription. Very odd indeed.Anne Corwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04940566603711834053noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466691337834051176.post-13356735693055636622010-10-15T02:23:28.341-04:002010-10-15T02:23:28.341-04:00hey there, just wanted to say i feel sorry for wha...hey there, just wanted to say i feel sorry for what happened to you, makes me feel really glad that i was never diagnosed as a kid (and i'm older that you, who knows what they would have done to me in the eighties? shock treatment? *shudder* )i am also very silly about medication, paracetamol is ok but i tend to skip the rest...can't imagine swallowing antipsychotics ...our symptoms bother Nts more than they bother us i think. from your story i form the question: who's the least empathetic group here?clarinettehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11407633860396579887noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466691337834051176.post-40957217765234659682010-10-15T01:50:31.711-04:002010-10-15T01:50:31.711-04:00I think one of the things that is most hurtful par...I think one of the things that is most hurtful part of being told you have to be on medication you do not want, even if you're able to refuse it, is that it leads to yet another way your disability becomes minimized. I refuse to take drugs for my tourette syndrome which, by all accounts is severe. Yet, because I don't take medication people compare me, and I compare myself, to people who are like me and who's symptoms are as bad as mine who are on medications. I feel that because I'm not on medications that my disability isn't really as severe as it actually is because if I were to just accept the treatment, I tell myself, it would be so much easier.<br /><br />Sometimes I tell myself that I'm a drama queen or an attention seeking snowflake because I refuse to take medications. Sometimes I feel like I actually want my symptoms to be worse because I need to feel validated as a disabled person.<br /><br />Sometimes I feel guilty because the outward symptoms of my disability might be reduced if I were to accept medication and those symptoms are sometimes very disruptive and negatively impact people around me. I feel like a nuisance who, because I will not accept treatment, wants to be so.<br /><br />I tell myself that the reason I don't take the drugs for it is because they did nothing to ameliorate the stigma and that the side effects of the drugs made life truly miserable (antipsychotics, I can relate). This is true yet the real reason I don't take drugs is because drugs are not right for me because I do not want them. The truth is that's all there is to it.<br /><br />And that's okay.The Untoward Ladyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18035737424208837888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8466691337834051176.post-34001685861051769522010-10-15T01:38:02.273-04:002010-10-15T01:38:02.273-04:00Back when I was a little girl they diagnosed my at...Back when I was a little girl they diagnosed my atypicality as ADHD rather than autism and subsequently doped me to the gills with methephedrine and, when that failed to do squat, they put me on dextroamphetamine and continued to up the dose, even past recommended levels, to make me "normal." I don't really remember that much about being on those drugs or what it was like before I was on those drugs. I was very young. I remember I didn't want to be on those drugs but my parents wouldn't let me just stop the drugs because I didn't want to be on them.<br /><br />It took years to finally figure out how to get off of them. When I did, I don't think I even really remembered what life off the drugs was really like. I lied to my mother and told her that the drugs were causing a mild tremor and that I couldn't play my violin because of my tremor. It was finally this that got me off of those damned pills.<br /><br />To this day I'm very leery of taking any kind of medication and the only drugs I will take are my hormones.<br /><br />No real point to that, I just thought I'd share my experiences with drugs, too, to say I think I understand.The Untoward Ladyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18035737424208837888noreply@blogger.com