(Once again I forgot to hit Publish when I wrote this. What’s up with that??? I’ll blame it on the meds. *snicker*)

My main bipolar med is what definitely what’s eating my stomach alive. *sigh* I discovered that going up on the dose of that does not work at all. It recreates the situation I got about a year ago, not realizing it was the med. Prilosec OTC has kept it at a reasonable level until I upped the dose of said sanity med. The higher dose brings back the rabid squirrel to live at the base of my esophagus and play loud rumbly music and dance on the ceiling at all hours. I do not like that squirrel. It also brings back the snake twisty enough to be worthy of a Caduceus to wrap around other internal organs and squeeze. Must be a twisty boa constrictor. I’m not fond of the snake either. To say the least. The ER docs I saw when I couldn’t walk from the squirrel-and-snake pain, who originally thougth they’d be removing my gall bladder that day, said the squirrel-and-snake was named “Acute Gastritis” but it changed its name after the Prilosec OTC for a few days to “Chronic Gastritis.” Shifty little critters. No wonder I’m not fond of them.

I really didn’t want to know that my bipolar med is causing my innards to be attacked by critters. I really didn’t want it to be so. Eventually, say after 10 or 15 years, even the lower dose may cause the squirrel-and -snake to come back to stay for good. *sigh* I don’t want to risk that if there’s any other reasonable option. So back on the meds merry-go-round I go. Whoopdeefuckindoo.

I did at least get in to discuss it with the meds shrink today instead of months from now, though. And lo and behold, she’s a fan of Lamictal, the med I originally wanted to be on, but was not allowed to try. W00t!

Why hadn’t tried that one already? Well, Lamictal is rather famous for causing rashes if you go up on the dose too fast or start too high. And one of those rashes is a potentially fatal thing called Steven-Johnson’s Syndrome or Toxic Epidermal Necrosis. Something about having your skin peel off in sheets so that bacteria leap in and kill you is a tad intimidating. I had a friend who got TEN a few years ago from rheumatoid arthritis meds. Not a pretty sight. I don’t intimidate too easily though. I learned that it’s not likely to happen or be a significant problem, if you go slow, pay attention to your skin, stop if you get rashes and a fever, even if it does happen, you can go to the ER immediately and not become a skinless mummy croaking of some weird bacteria. My old meds shrink had a patient get Steven-Johnson’s syndrome and die, so she wouldn’t prescribe it to anyone again. Old meds shrink was straightforward about it, didn’t shilly shally around or overinflate the idea I’d get something awful from it. She just said she wasn’t comfortable prescribing it, and that was cool with me. So we started elsewhere.

Elsewhere, after Depakote seemed to be trying to eat my liver, turned out to be Trileptal. Most of the time it works really, really well. And even when it’s not super, it’s still darned good even when a true mania is trying to send me into orbit. Without a huge heap of horrid side effects. Except the squirrel and the snake.

Back to the square I wanted to be at before liver-eating and banana-smelling drugs came into my life. Good. Lamictal is the only anti-convulsant mood stabilizer known to have a significant effect on depression as well as mania. That’s why I wanted to take it in the first place. So here we go.

Wish me luck. Or at least wish me no rashes eh?