Tag: Risperdal


Intervention: Janet-style

29
June

About thirty hours ago, my mom called me.  Only hours after telling me to tell my dad that we should stay home and stay out of the (very) rainy weather, she was calling me.  At the first phone call, my mom sounded confident (almost happy–for her) and was sure that she was going to spend the day sleeping.  By the time she made the second call, she was having a panic attack.  She was crying and worried that Willow wasn’t getting enough attention while she was at the hospital.  She tried, at first, to conceal the crying.  It didn’t take long, though, for her to break down.  I could tell, by the shift, that she was depressed.  She sounded extremely depressed.  Extremely depressed doesn’t go well with my mom.  She told me that she wasn’t getting her pain medicine.  (She was still getting morphine instead of Talwin NX.)  She also said she was getting half of her psychiatric medicines.  (I found out when I got there that she wasn’t even getting some of it.)

When she started crying, I knew one thing above anything else.  I knew that I had to get there.  I knew that if my mother was sitting there depressed and no one was checking on her or giving her the proper care that she was going to get worse.  I was afraid that if we waited too long to get there that she would harm herself.  I thought about trying to see if any of my friends who work in the medical district (or at the hospital) could get a few minutes to stay with her so she wouldn’t be waiting alone for the half hour or so that it would take us to get there.

I didn’t ask.  I knew we could get there quickly.  I hoped that she would be okay.    All I had was hope for her and anger at the hospital.  When we finally got there, though, my mom was about ready to break down more.  She then told me that her nurse was also being rude to her.  The nurse told her that she couldn’t help her get up and get around.  She also told her that she needed to give them at least 30-45 minutes notice of anytime that she needed to go to the bathroom.  This was the day after they had had my mom on a catheter, so she wasn’t fully aware that she needed to go until she went.  (This is normal, according to the nurse that took last night’s shift.)  She had been hostile towards my mother and was not concerned about helping her get her doctor to order the proper medicine.

When the nurse (Tabatha) finally came in, she was half-assing around the room.  When she looked at the bottles of pills that we brought in to show that my mother was definitely prescribed certain pills, she just said, “Oh, I gave her that.”  She didn’t pay attention to the doses, and (for some) she said that my mom had been given pills that were never ordered.  She was quite snippy prior to my saying anything.  I could tell that the only way to get her attention was to get loud and assertive.

I never really yell at people.  My yelling is generally ineffective, but there have been instances where it has worked.  I called on the temper that used to get me some level of respect and awe from my social work program days.  I started by telling her that my mother was depressed and that she was not being given the proper medicine and that which was being given was not at an adequate level.  Tabatha denied it, getting a bit more hostile with my increased temper.  I asked her if there was a way that she could possibly contact the pain clinic or the Mental Health Center to get proper orders for her pain and psychiatric medicine.  She refused.  She said that the only doctor who could consult was my mom’s family doctor.  That is bullshit. She also said, in a snippy manner, that she had 6 other patients who were on pain medicine so she really couldn’t keep up with the medication.  This is also bullshit.

If you’ve read this blog anytime since November of 2008, then you might know that my mom has been in the hospital a few times.  I understand the hospital system from that.  I’ve previously dealt with this hospital system when my grandfathers were patients.  There is no time when a doctor who isn’t the primary care giver is considered irrelevant to a person’s case.  The family doctors don’t always know what is going on at other clinics.  They don’t always understand the specialties.  (When I finally talked to someone from the UAB Clinic, they said that they had never heard of Talwin before my mom’s case.)  The whole reason that specialties exist is to make sure that people get proper care for their specific issues.

Apparently, Tabatha was not aware of this.  I tried to change her perspective.  When it didn’t work, I asked to speak to her supervisor.  (If you can’t get the proper treatment  from one level, you go up the chain of command until you do.)  She (eventually) brought her in.  The charge nurse was nice, and she tried to defend her nurse.  (I understand why she did this.)  I expressed, quietly and calmly, the concerns that we had over my mom’s care.  Tabatha, when she started giving her opinion, got very defensive and was being quite offensive.  The bad thing (for her) was that she was still being rude with her boss standing right there.

After explaining what was wrong, what we needed to be done, and what behavior I thought was inappropriate, I brought up that Tabatha said that she couldn’t keep up with the pain medicine for more than six patients at a time.  This brought out the fire in Tabatha’s personality.  All of a sudden, she was saying, “I never said that.  I wouldn’t say that.  I’ve been a nurse for a long time and I can be a good one.”  She did say it, though.  I repeated, verbatim, her excuse.  I then requested that the charge nurse take my mom off of her caseload, so that my mom could get proper care and so that Tabatha could better devote herself to the other six patients.  The charge nurse agreed and, for the next few hours, my mom was cared for by not one registered nurse but three.  She also had her (very sweet and thoughtful) tech Mea helping her out whenever she needed it.

Later, the charge nurse came in and told me that my mom couldn’t be given her Effexor at the full 300 milligrams because her doctor said it was too high for her kidneys to handle.  I didn’t dispute this, even though my mom’s nephrologist had told her before that Effexor is mainly broken down in the liver and doesn’t really hurt the kidneys much.  (Some people do get kidney damage from it, though.)  She did, finally, get her on the proper pain medicine.

After my mom’s pain medicine was fixed, my mom’s blood pressure went from 174/80 (yesterday afternoon) to 153/82 (last night) to 135/66 (this morning).  The whole time she was on the morphine, her blood pressure was sky high.  She also was having more trouble sleeping prior to getting the Talwin.  Afterward, she finally relaxed.

She also relaxed after my little outburst with the nurse.  She wasn’t feeling up to taking them on, and she was afraid of reprisals.  I knew that reprisals were still possible, even with a different set of nurses.  I also wasn’t feeling very trusting towards the staff at this point and I was still worried that she might get extremely depressed/self-destructive if left alone, so I asked my mom if it would be okay with her if I stayed overnight.  She was okay with it.  I also okayed it with my father.  He let me go grab some food from the cafeteria before he left, because we didn’t want to leave her alone.  I brought the food up and ate my meal while she was having hers.  I didn’t leave her at any time until the morning, when I went down and got my breakfast from the cafeteria.  I also brought that meal up and ate while she was eating.

While I was there, we brought up the Effexor thing with the UAB doctors.  They said that that was ridiculous.  Apparently, her Effexor dose had never been changed.  They had no intent to change it.

My mom got discharged today.  Of course, before she was discharged, she had to talk to an actual Madison County DHR social worker before they’d send her home.  (My dad also had to talk to the social worker.)  The social worker had my dad and I leave the room, and she asked my mom (in various ways) how many times my dad had hit her or beaten her or what forms of physical abuse or torture did she go through on a regular basis.  I could hear what was being said through the door, so it wasn’t a 100% confidential environment.  (By my ability to hear discussed, the social worker was breaking certain rules set up by the NASW.)  She spent around an hour trying to get my mom to say that she was assaulted.  She also told my mom that the bruises that occurred from the fall and from being on the floor were different ages, which was not true.  My mom kept telling her it wasn’t true.  She didn’t take into account that my mom had been having bleeding/clotting issues the whole time, including a blood test that had to be redone because it separated between it being taken and it getting to the lab.  (It did this within minutes.)

The social worker then took my dad down the hall and interrogated him.  She tried to get him to say that he had physically assaulted my mother.  She also, apparently, used a very accusatory tone toward him in many ways.   She told him that in her fifteen years as a social worker she had never seen something like this, which has got to be crap.  In social work classes, we got to hear about much worse cases of familial neglect and abuse.  So, if she hasn’t seen people who’ve gone through worse, then she clearly hasn’t been dealing with many cases.

At about 3:30, my mom was finally discharged. Then, of course, they had to find a wheelchair to take her downstairs in, which took a little while. But now my mom is definitely home.  And we will definitely take care of her, even if the hospital and DHR thinks that my dad is a major domestic violence case and that I’m not competent (or too afraid) enough to stand up to anyone who is wrong.  (After the nurse thing, I don’t understand how they thought this, but whatever.)

Comment » | Confessions, Family, Mental Health, Rants, Sickness and Health, So Damn Special

What Others Think Of Me

3
June

Haven’t you heard the phrase: what other people think about me is none of my business? Stop being so paranoid.

That was a tweet I received this morning from someone who had already said she wasn’t going to say anything else to me.  While I know that she has a point, I also think it’s too simplistic of a perspective.  I can’t just stop being so paranoid.  Believe me, if I could, I would.

Paranoia has been ingrained in me.  When I would be sick and staying home from school, I would be afraid to go outside (to go to the doctor or go with my mom to pick up my medicine) and I would be afraid to go by windows and doors.  I was always afraid that the truancy officer was out there waiting to cart me into court for missing school.   Part of why I had to quit going to high school was that when I would walk down the halls, I would hear other people talking about me and I would know they were judging me.  Even though they weren’t, I still felt that way.  The first time I explained it to a psychiatrist, they upped the antipsychotics.  That helped, but that’s not an option anymore.

Paranoia is something that I come by honestly.  My mother, too, has always been paranoid.  Hers manifests in the form of little men following her around and writing down everything that she does.   She didn’t tell me until I asked (as a teenager) if this feeling was normal.  She said yes.  My dad, who isn’t paranoid, said no.  We both had a reality check.

I know that my life isn’t the stuff that most people would look at and critique or anything.  On some level, I know that the paranoia is ridiculous.  It’s the same way that I know that my obsessions and compulsions aren’t realistic and that my hallucinations aren’t real.  But there’s that level of my mind that I can’t seem to conquer; the level that tells me that all of my thoughts about it being unrealistic aren’t true and that I have good reason to think people are judging me or are out to get me.

I don’t know how to fully get rid of the paranoia.  The only way that helps now is to sleep, but sometimes that doesn’t help.  I’ll end up having dreams that I’m being kidnapped, raped, or murdered.  I’ll wake up screaming, agitated, or crying because (by the end of the dream) I will have died or gotten so upset that I just feel so horrible.

I can’t go back on the anti-psychotics.  It isn’t an option.  The Geodon reaction (seizures + pseudoparkinsonism), the Abilify increasing my dreams instead of helping, and the Zyprexa sky-rocketing my weight.  I would have continued the Risperdal, but the more I took it, the more I like it was having the same effects that the Geodon had had.  I also realized, after I quit taking them, that I quit gaining weight when I went off of the pills.  I even began to lose it.  So, in order to be more physically healthy, I knew I had to stay off the pills.

I know I’m nuts.  I’ve been fairly open about that part of my life for a good long while.  This is why people who know me in real life don’t generally take my insults and stuff too seriously.  This is why they don’t chastise me.  They know that if I could keep it under control, I would.  They know that I have been trying since I was a kid to be normal.  They know that I’m more than just this angry paranoid girl.  Unfortunately, people on the internet don’t always realize that.

1 comment » | +acquaintances, +ex-internet friends, +internet friends, 10 Years of Madness, Facebook, Friends, Twitter

The Weighty Issues

22
March

We have all experienced some form of discrimination in our lives. I’ve learned, though, that people have this tendency to just accept certain forms as being okay, while they will be ready to “cut a bitch” on others. For example, in Jenn’s entry on weight discrimination, she had some fairly good points, but most people seized on the opportunity to tell her off because she made some generalizations. Oddly, in their comments, they generalized or, in so many words, accused some people of exaggerating what goes on in their lives.

For a little over 10 years now, I have been on a fairly constant stream of psychiatric medication. Now, while I was obese before taking the medicine, my weight skyrocketed on it. In the first year, I gained over 50 pounds. Later, I lost the weight after I had gastric bypass, only to start gaining again after certain medications were added into the mix. A combination of medication-induced hyperthyroidism, the removal of said medicine from my treatment, and the addition of a mood stabilizer [Depakote] at a dose that caused concern for everyone who saw it, except the psychiatrist, seemed to contribute to the regain. I kept telling the doctors that I was gaining weight because of medicine. No matter what doctor I saw, the doctor would say that the gain couldn’t possibly be related to the medicines. They would accuse me of being in denial of how much I was eating, much like this comment. Sometimes, I would doubt myself and think that they might just be right.

When I quit taking Risperdal a while back, I stopped gaining weight. A few times, I would lose the weight, except when I would be close to my period. In the past year, my weight has pretty much stabilized. I have taken 1 form of psychiatric medicine, Effexor, and I have stayed within a limited (20 pounds, which is my general weight gain amount prior to my periods) weight gain & loss range. My eating has stayed about the same, with me only eating more on very rare occasions. So, I would say that that would be fairly good evidence for the cause of the weight gain being related to my medicine and not me gorging on Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos. (I’ve never had either, btw.)
And, as I pointed out in my response to Angel‘s comment regarding any possible studies linking a difference in treatment with weight, there actually has been at least one.  A group of Johns Hopkins researchers actually did a study that was reported on in ScienceDaily.  The study reported that, “In a group of 238 patients, each 10-unit increase in BMI was associated with a 14 percent higher prevalence of low patient respect.”  Now, this might just be something that applies to doctors, but I have a feeling that it might also apply to some people who work in non-medical fields.

I know that when I was at a skinnier weight, my mom had a sales person almost refuse to let her buy a pair of size 12 jeans for me because they could tell that my mother wasn’t that small.  This wasn’t at some high fashion store.  It was at Walmart in a state with an extremely high rate of obesity.  You would think there would be less judgment in a Walmart.  Of course, I’ve written about disrespect at Walmart, when my mom was pretty much laughed at because she asked for assistance and refused to get a wheelchair cart/scooter for her.  (I know that a lot of people have a bit of a preconceived notion about obese people who use scooters, but my mother didn’t have the strength in her ankle to walk and [a month later] had broken the other ankle because of the lack of strength in her bones.)

And for those who say that the cause of the difference of treatment is related to self-esteem, I must say this.  I hate that kind of statement.  People claim that low self-esteem leads to people being more disrespectful, which I think is shit.  I have a poor body image, but my self-esteem probably borders on too high sometimes.  While a person might hate the way that they look, it doesn’t mean that that person is suffering from some great amount of self-hatred.  A lot of us grew up learning that we are more than our outward being.  My shell may be ugly, but that doesn’t mean that I think I’m unworthy of respect.  And saying that a lack of self-respect might warrant a lack of respect from folks who work in retail is utter crap.  If a customer walks into your store, it is your job to be nice to them.  Even if you think they are ugly, smell bad, have bad hair, talk funny, etc., you are supposed to service them in the same way that you would service someone who is more to your liking.  You don’t get to pick and choose who you’re nice to.  As an employee at a retail store, you become the face of the company and you really do not want to represent the company as being snobbish.  Why? Blog entries could be written, tweets could be made, but more importantly, the business might lose (potential) repeat customers and you might lose your job.

None of us will ever know what any other person goes through on a daily basis.   None of us would really want to know it either.  We can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and we shouldn’t judge them based on their circumstances either.

Comment » | +internet friends, General, Internet, Mental Health, Purchases, Rants, Sickness and Health

Essentially Shook Up

16
March

My mom went to the psychiatrist today. Normally, I don’t discuss her trips to the nutty place, but this one was kind of an interesting/important one. She thought she was reacting to one of her many psych meds, and she wanted to figure out which one the doctor thought it might be.

The psychiatrist, who also happens to be my psychiatrist, asked her if any family member had been diagnosed with an essential tremor.  My mom told her that I had been diagnosed with one at one point.  Well, the psychiatrist told my mom that she was meaning a parent or grandparent.  Basically, she wanted to know if it was something that my mom could have inherited from someone.  She said that there was typically a genetic reason for the tremor, and that it must not be there if no ancestor had been diagnosed with it.

Now, I don’t know if the psychiatrist was having a brain fart or thought that maybe I’m not the biological offspring of my parents, but I’m fairly certain that if I have it, then there still might be a genetic link.  I know my mom couldn’t get it from me, but I could’ve inherited it from her.

Since my mother couldn’t have possibly inherited it from me, and having a child with the condition isn’t a good reason to say that my mom might have it, the doctor settled on my mom’s Risperdal.  She then tried to figure out if she could give my mom a beta blocker.  She couldn’t, since my mom is already on one.  She looked for a calcium channel blocker, but my mom’s on one of those, too.  So, she told my mom that this side effect is to be expected for anyone who has been on Risperdal for over two years (my mom’s taken it for at least 10 years–it was one of the ones she OD’d on in 2001) and that she should come back if it got worse or if she ended up having some kind of seizure-like reaction.

 

2 comments » | Family, Mental Health

Such Great Lows

14
December

I’m depressed…really and truly depressed, which if you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you will clearly be saying, “It’s about damn time.” Normally, my depression comes in spurts, the longest lasting from mid-September to May. It didn’t show up until this weekend. It didn’t show up until sometime between reading that maybe I have a problem with certain things (i.e. being on upcoming too much for fanlistings), being told I’m “retired”, being asked what makes me happy (this always makes me cry), etc. I’m not blaming any of these people. It isn’t their fault. It’s no one’s fault. It is what it is. It’s a fact of life that every year, during what is ironically my favorite time of year, I go into a deep depression. The lesser my depression was in previous years, the deeper it is the next year. I was mildly depressed last year…I know, if you’ve read my entries, you’ll point to the times I wanted to kill myself and say something about this isn’t mild…for me it is.

I’m going to close my upcoming fanlistings. They’re subject I really would love to run fanlistings for, but I just can’t bring myself to work on them. I don’t want to do a half-ass job (which I’m sure some would argue that I do on other fanlistings), so I figure I better close them. So, if you’re interested in the following fanlistings, they’re about to be available:

Alicia Silverstone, Charlie Daniels: The Devil Went Down to Georgia, Computers: Dell XPS, Deborah Ann Woll, Gill (nothingbutsong.org), Harry Potter series: [+] Muggle-borns, Iron & Wine: Love Vigilantes, Iron & Wine: Resurrection Fern, Jenn (jenn.nu), Linda Cardellini, Robert Pattinson: Never Think, Sean Kingston: Fire Burning, Taylor Lautner/Robert Pattinson/Kristen Stewart, Tristan + Isolde: Tristan, Twilight series: [+] Witnesses, and Vampire Diaries: 1.01 – Pilot (which I almost have done…but I just can’t finish it now).

If anyone opens fanlistings for them (which you definitely should), please let me know and I will join. I’ll also try to make some codes or something for them.

I’m exhausted, even though I slept ALL day yesterday. I slept from 11 AM until 3 AM, and then again from 6 AM until 9 AM. I’m always tired lately. I’m always sick, I’m always in pain, and I’m always tired. And heaven forbid I complain, because then I get to hear about how shitty everyone else has it. I can’t eat anything anymore and enjoy it. Nothing tastes right and half the stuff I eat makes me sick. I can’t take any pills anymore without reacting. I’m even reacting to my Effexor, but I haven’t stopped taking it yet. That’s the only medicine I’m still taking. No Risperdal. I rarely take my nasal spray. I can’t take any kind of antibiotic to get rid of the wonderful sinus infection that has been plaguing me for a while. I’ve had a migraine since I quit taking migraine medicine. I can’t take anything for it.

1 comment » | General

Anger Issues?

6
May

I found out a gem of a comment that my (former) psychiatrist wrote in my chart after my first visit with him. Apparently, in that one session where he was supposed to do a quite long and intensive psychiatric evaluation, he spent 5 minutes with me and determined I had anger issues and severe anxiety. Given that I have a pretty good memory of the session, since this was before I was on Risperdal, all I can really recall is me giving a brief rundown of how bad my depressive symptoms were, telling him I needed a better anti-psychotic, and that I was wanting to come off of the Depakote since I had gained so much weight on it. He had put me on Effexor and Risperdal, then told me I could come off the Depakote because I was “on too much medicine”. (I was on the Depakote, Klonopin, Effexor, and Risperdal.) He then sent me on my way, only billing for a med check.

According to my therapist, in the next session he claimed to do a psych evaluation, which is crap because he never spends more than 5 minutes with me. He always tells me I’m on too much medicine. He ignores me when I tell him which symptoms are worse, and tries to get me to up my Klonopin, even though I’ve told him that I can no longer take it because it knocks me out. (Besides that, I don’t feel I need it because I haven’t had a full-blown panic attack in almost a year.)

He also said that I had the symptoms for Borderline Personality Disorder (which I had previously been diagnosed for, but I did not tell him I was experiencing any of the symptoms for it at the time of any of the appointments) and I guess this is his justification for not paying attention to my ACTUAL problems. Ugh. I didn’t really have any anger issues towards him until I found out about him going through my old parts of my chart to come up with his present diagnosis. Hasn’t he ever heard of actually doing the work himself? Yes, it takes a while to do a psych eval, but it was in his schedule and he would have been somewhat compensated for it.

2 comments » | Mental Health, Rants

     

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