Antidepressants

It’s interesting because apparently there’s something called I can’t remember what the phrase is but it’s that thing that were you’re on a medication you have to take another mediation to counteract the effects of medication you have to take and there’s, there’s a phrase for it it’s not over medication, something like that and one of things that I discovered was that these two medications both had constipation as, as a side effect.
 
Is that, so you take one for the arthritis?
 
Arthritis.
 
Then something else to counteract that?
 
I take the Naproxen twice a day (for arthritis) and I take my citalopram once a day so I have three tablets a day and they both have as a small side effect a sluggish bowel.
 
Is that the same for the citalopram?
 
Yes.
 
So it’s another side effect?
 
So I’m now I’m really good at drinking a lot of water, you know roughage but there are times when I have to take another medication to get the old body working properly.
 
So is that something you discussed with the doctor?
 
Actually it just.
 
As a side effect is it just from on the side of the leaflet?
 
No I just noticed it physically thinking oh God I’m really, you know, this is, this is not good. You know?
 
But you can usually manage it through diet though, roughage and so on?
 
I can yes I think at the time I was I wasn’t, my diet, I was on a diet trying to lose weight for the wedding so my diet wasn’t as good as it could be I think that was a factor as well so yes so again it was a kind of angst about oh God now I’m constipated three lots of prescriptions.

How do you feel overall about the fact that you have to swallow all these tablets or have you just got used to it over the years?
 
I’ve just got used to it yes. I mean they’re for two different things I mean one is for psychiatric things and the others for bones.
 
Yes.
 
And so I can’t really muddle them up and say they’re all a nuisance because they’re for different, different things.
 
So do they make, is it different, do you feel differently taking the ones for the bones as opposed to the psychiatric ones, do they make you feel do you have different feelings about taking them?
 
I do actually yes I think I feel that the olanzapine and the lithium and the lofepramine are more important but in fact they’re not more important but they're more important because they’re meant to enhance me which they never do, they going to make life better whereas the calcet and the Vitamin A and D are just as important but I never really feel they are.

Fibromyalgia chronic pain, it’s actually a really, it’s what they class as a set of symptoms, it’s, it’s not a specific illness as such, it’s a set of symptoms where there’s chronic pain, widespread pain in the muscles and with it sleep disturbance, chronic fatigue is quite common, I experience chronic fatigue with that. I also experience Sjogren’s syndrome which is the dry mouth, dry eyes, dry skin and that’s quite common again to be with, to go with fibromyalgia. One thing maybe not quite so common is lymphedema in my left arm, swelling, they don’t really know if that’s really, if that’s related but they basically fibromyalgia chronic pain condition.
 
So would you say that part of the reason for carrying on with the Prozac now is to kind of alleviate the feelings that you have about that condition?
 
Yes, yes I would yes because the other thing is about that is I have attended the chronic pain services and ironically part of the process of, the services you use is psychological therapies which is CBT as well as physiotherapy and also I think many people who I’ve spoken to about fibromyalgia are also on antidepressants because they still think that the serotonin can be useful in fibromyalgia. Whether it, whether, I mean again it’s, it’s a, a difficulty whether you could say that having a long history of depression would ever have triggered off fibromyalgia because again there’s a thing about whether fibromyalgia, is it a psychological condition, is it a physical condition, is it both? There’s an ongoing.
 
And some of the symptoms are pretty similar too it sounds like from what you’ve just told me.
 
Yeah, yeah, so that, that can be, yeah that can be a bit of a difficulty but certainly my fear would be I would have a, I mean actually before I developed fibromyalgia I was already looking to coming off Prozac, so it wasn’t really as if there was a fear there at the time, I think the fear has come around from the fact that I have a physical condition to deal with while I’m working fulltime still, which is very, you know, it’s hard in itself a fulltime job and, you know. A lot of people with fibromyalgia aren’t fortunate enough to work at all, I am, so and I’m also now on a cocktail of pain medications so, you know I think the fear is valid I would say and kind of the Prozac thing and whether there’s a placebo thing or whatever I don’t know but, you know, for me it’s, it’s, I really don’t want to take that risk at the moment because I’m, I am working, I don’t want to disrupt that, what I have is still good and it would be a bit daft really to, to think about that just now.