Yet another psych-doc who doesn't take medication side effects seriously- or even know about them...

I just poured all this out on Facebook, which I'm not sure was the right place :( maybee I should keep things happy over there. I don't know. Only opened Facebook a/c a few weeks ago and I haven't got the hang of how to be myself is both place. To be the same, or different? That is the question! Well this is a follow up to what I thought had been good appointment with a psych-doc on Wednesday:

WHY DO I BOTHER??????????? SERIOUSLY WHY?

The new doc the other day recommended a drug that she thought would get rid of my worse bipolar symptoms PLUS help even out the ups and downs so maybe I could actually start to feel I am living and not pedalling fast to stay on one spot all the time. I specifically asked her, WILL THIS ONE CAUSE WEIGHT GAIN??? Her reply- "No, it isn't one that's noted for it." GREAT!!! I was so enthusiastic and excited to try it. So was K.

So I picked up the scrip. Opened the leaflet that comes with it. Scan down to side effects...... WEIGHT GAIN is there, and listed top as 'VERY COMMON'. WTF?????????????????

...

Look it up- SEROQUEL It interferes with your production of histamine and makes you ravenously hungry. Some people take it last thing at night and go straight to bed and hope to avoid the onset of the hunger, but some still wake up in the middle of the night starving.

It ALSO interferes with your blood sugar and tryglceride levels. There is even a class action in the USA against the makers of the drug, on behalf of hundreds of patients having got diabetes while on this drug.

If you google it you'll find hundreds of pages, hundreds of stories from users. One I read was from someone who had put on so much weight on another drug- cipramil (I was on that in my 20s and that's when I stopped being slim!!) that she had a gastric band fitted. Now on serequel, she is gaining weight- even though she can't physically overeat. This pretty much puts pay to the patronising advice from doc's that oh, just eat healthily and go for walks, you'll be fine. Yeah right. NO I WON'T.

I cannot put on another 20lb, let alone more, so I am not taking these pills. I am overweight, I have high cholesterol and my mum has vascular dementia from blood clots- in the leaflet it says not to take if there is is a history of blood clots in the family- the doc knew this!

ALSO, this drug interacts with LORAZEPAM, one I am on, and which the doc told me to keep taking!

I AM SO ANGRY THAT THE DOC WAS SEEMINGLY TOTALLY IGNORANT ABOUT THE SIDE EFFECTS OF THIS DRUG! What are we, just little guinea pigs, here take this, swallow and go away? FU*K!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Interesting links here-

This is about the manufacturer downplaying weight gain as a side effect- read here

Quote from wikipedia:

"Weight gain can be a problem for some patients. Quetiapine has been found to cause more weight gain than fluphenazine, haloperidol, loxapine, molindone, olanzapine, pimozide, risperidone, thioridazine, thiothixene, trifluoperazine, and ziprasidone " -and yet my doctor knew nothing about it.

Here's a health forum on which someone asked about gaining weight on the drug. There are over 200 replies... http://bipolar.about.com/b/2007/11/06/seroquel-and-weight-gain.htm


I repeat- I asked the doctor if this drug caused weight gain, and she replied, "No, it isn't noted for it." What if I had been too low to research it before taking it, like last year, when I took pregabalin blindly, and gained an extra stone?

I knew they weren't listening!

My Art Therapy came to an end this time last week, as my therapist is no longer going to travel in from Ipswich to work at the Colchester hospital. Blast. This is the one continual contact within the mental health system that I have had over the last 6 years.

The psychiatric service has been a joke. You get one half hour appointment every three months. You NEVER see your consultant, only one of his/her team of trainees and very rarely the same one twice. Most of the time they haven't had time to read your file, so much of the appointment id taken up with basic questions about your background and family situation. Then they'll say, so what can we do for you today? DUH.



But, useless as it mostly is, I need contact with this service as they are the ones who monitor my meds, change them, introduce new prescriptions, and, the thing I thought most important, note whether I am having the weird hallucinations that accompany the bipolar when I'm under any extra stress.

When my Art Therapy stopped last week, I asked my therapist if could enquire when my next p-doc appointment was, as I hadn't had one since the autumn. He did. He called me after I'd left and said, 'I'm very sorry, I had no idea, but they discharged you.' They hadn't even had the professional courtesy to tell him, let alone say anything to me.

Soon as I got home I rattled off an angry letter to the consultant about this, why was this done, why was it done so unprofessionally, and who was I to go to about meds and hallucinations if they had left me out here on my own?

Appointment with my GP this morning.
She didn't knew anything about it. Had a look back through my files. Oh yeah, she says, we got a letter in June saying they were going to discharge you because you hadn't attended a few appointments [for non attendance, read rebooked them, as they constantly gave me times I couldn't attend].

I then had one more appointment with them after this, during which they said to increase one med and come off another. Nothing was said to me about closing the file.

So here I am, with bi-polar II,
permanently on anti-depressants,
for the last 18 months on anti-anxiety pills,
and regulary taking anti-psychotics for the creepy, Hellish things I hear and experience when under stress,
the main carer of an elderly parent with vascular dementia,
no local support network, 
and my only regular help, art therapy has stopped,
and that's it, I'm discharged.

The GP showed me their letter about it. It even says I was suicidal in my last appointment. But hey, it notes that I dressed ok, was polite, made sense and seemed to have no personal hygiene problems, so I guess that means I'm ok. Maybe you need to be a smelly, drugged up alcoholic to get help.

REALLY glad I wrote that angry letter now.

No reply so far, which is no surprise. PALS is my next step, the Patient Advice & Liaison service. Big, big complaint coming their way.

Just as well I'm not suicidal any more, isn't it? Do you think, if my health problem was heart disease, I would have been discharged still with problems?