alltheavenueslookugly

side effects. stupid bullshit butthead side effects. don’t read on if you can’t handle what gross side effects some of these medications can bring to the table.

i’ve been on the 100mg of imipramine since november 04. i had noticed that it gave me horrible cotton mouth – fairly quickly if i wasn’t sipping on water almost every minute of the day. it also caused me to have bubble brain about half an hour after i took it at night – symptoms of bubble brain include nonsensical babbling, feeling of floating head, nodding off, etc.

after i had been on it for a couple of weeks it started to make me constipated. in fact, it did so for almost an entire week. it was more annoying than anything else, but afterward, things seemed okay again. everything was working fine.

until last thursday.

i came home from work and at some point tried to use the restroom. and i couldn’t. and it had already been a couple of days since the last time i had. i tried not to worry, but over the next few hours i found myself unable to pee either. and i knew i definitely needed to do that.

by friday morning i was in pain. so much so that i couldn’t begin to imagine going to work and being on my feet all day. i couldn’t sit down. i could barely walk. i had slept only a few hours and found myself standing outside the grocery store, waiting for them to open, at 6 a.m. i bought laxatives, walked home and took them, called in to work, and prepared for an ugly day.

it’s really just fucking awful to feel like you need to go, know you need to go, but nothing happens. i would get a strong urge, think to myself ‘maybe this is it!’ run to the bathroom, and then nothing. except pain. pain so intense i was crying after not too long. i was certain my neighbors could hear me because i was pretty sure i was screaming for some of those minutes.

even when i found myself able to pee, it wasn’t nearly enough, and certainly nothing was happening on the other end. i couldn’t eat anything, wasn’t hungry, was so sleepy, and my stomach was on fire.

i was able to sleep for another few hours friday night, and then got up saturday morning and went into work. the pain was sharp, would come out of nowhere, and stop me where i stood. it would come in waves, and was so intense that i found myself having to hold onto something because i felt like i could pass out. i managed to work on two people that morning before i had to leave again. most of saturday was spent that way. i stayed on my couch, on my side, and just suffered and whined about it to an empty apartment.

i did have one person who i was checking in with constantly. she really helped me through this whole thing.

sunday morning i decided i had had enough of it and i went and bought an enema. it was embarrassing, but i didn’t care. i imagined it was going to be horribly uncomfortable, but i didn’t care. at that point, i was desperate and was willing to try anything, no matter how weird and/or humiliating.

i did it on my bathroom floor and i don’t even remember what music i might have been listening too.

the minutes went by. i kept myself close to the bathroom, just in case. after 45 minutes, i had to accept that this wasn’t going to work either.

so my friend – the one who had been there since the start of it – told me i should go to the doctor.

it being sunday, my doctor wasn’t available. so i drove myself to the hospital (funny enough, it was the same hospital i worked at for years, and also where i recovered after 2, maybe 3, serious suicide attempts.)

i went into the emergency room, checked in, and waited. and waited.  the waiting room was just big enough for everybody except me to have a screaming child with them.  and fuck, those children screamed and cried and laughed and it all sounded like it should have been shattering the glass windows around us.

five hours later i got called back. they hooked me up to a blood pressure and heart monitor.

and i got this thing:

and then i had this face:

they took a bunch of blood out of me and wheeled me back to the imagining department to take  x-rays of my abdomen.

after an hour of sitting in the room alone and staring at the clock, the nurse came back in. she told me i was so blocked that nothing i could try at home was going to help me. they discharged me a couple of hours later with a prescription for halflytely and they promised it would completely clean me out and that i would be better soon.

the stuff was horrible. horrible.

but i think i lost like 6 pounds in just a few hours.

and yes, i immediately took myself off of the imipramine. i see my psychiatrist this morning.  it’s going to be another frustrating visit, as both he and i were looking forward to this medication doing something positive as we are  scraping the bottom of the barrel.

hopefully today he will have another idea. a good idea, or another bullshit routine that makes me feel awful and pushes me deeper into a hell that i never get to wake up from. i just want to feel better. i just need to feel better.

~ by alltheavenueslookugly on 2013/12/13.

Posted in medication, re-blogs
Tags: bipolar disorder, depression, electroshock therapy, guilt, hating self, medications, mental illness, psychiatrist