I need to take a break from my "Cannabis For Us Oldsters" posts due to a fairly recent brush with "I think I need to go to the emergency room" scare. Well it scared me at least. Please remember everyone is built different and reacts differently to each and every prescribed drug. Thus the manly voice with machine gun verbosity at the end of every T.V. drug commercial extolling why you wouldn't take the advertised drug.
I've been fortunate to have, except for one, the greatest doctors and medical care since I was diagnosed. The one exception? A crotchety urologist who thought humor was during my biopsy saying "really my thumbs aren't getting larger." Yuck fucking Yuck. Jimmy Fallon look out. By the time he was done explaining my malady I was pretty sure I would be dead before I even made it across the parking lot to my car. Eighteen months Doc? Guess what.
Prescription wise, I have dutifully, taken anything my doctors have told me to take. For some inexplicable reason I seem to frequently fall into the "in only 1% of cases such and such including such and such has been reported." of adverse effects.
Recently, after a visit to my Onc where I complained about mild depression, she suggested Effexor. A drug prescribed to depressed breast cancer patients that has the added advantage of controlling the insane hot flashes that come with hormone therapy.
Please note. I am not a doctor. All I can tell you is what happened to me and make a point.
Of course that sounded great to me and I walked out of the office prescription in hand. I even emailed a very close friend whom unfortunately is also a Cancer buddy asking if she had ever taken Effexor. Her reply was that the drug had helped her quite a bit.
I'm not going to bore you with what happened when I took the drug [only two doses]. Fortunately before I slit my wrists or headed to the emergency room my caregiver went to the internet and found comments left by others who had taken the drug without happy results. This saved money because once I learned that others had hallucinated their brain falling onto the living room carpet or similar I adopted my old 1970's attitude of just riding a bad trip out. What else are you going to do?
My point. I didn't do due diligence. I didn't read, as I, or my caregiver had in the past, what the side effects could, or in this case would be. Just because your Doc writes the scrip please remember if you are statistically probable as terminal your Docs are probably writing a scrip that are probably pretty damn powerful.
Doctors are very smart people. So are you. Ask, advocate and take action. Read the side effects. Feel free to wonder if the benefits out weigh the risks.
Sometimes the cure can become the curse.
Talk to you later.
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