Night and Day and Night

"Having a positive mental attitude is asking how something can be done rather than saying it can't be done."
Bo Bennett

Well, since my last post regarding my illness I had an amazing turn around in how I was feeling.

I had continued to do some research on what might be causing my nausea and how to heal myself. As I mentioned in a previous post I was seriously feeling depressed about my life. My physical struggles had taken a toll and I felt like I was struggling mentally as well. I ended up googling "depression and gastroparesis" and came across a single case study from 2006 which showed that a young woman was markedly relieved of her severe nausea and vomiting after she was given the anti-depressant Remeron.

Since I told my doctor that I was depressed and wanted to be put on an anti-depressant I suggested she prescribe the Remeron. I took the drug on a Sunday night and when I woke up the next morning I was amazed at how much better I felt. My nausea had dissipated almost completely until late in the evening. The next day the effect lasted even longer. And each progressive day I was feeling better and better. It wasn't until nearly two weeks after starting the drug that I had one of my "bad" days, where I was once again too sick to eat. I had a couple of days not feeling great and then another ten or so days of feeling good. But I felt like I was definitely on the right track and over the next seven weeks I gained twelve pounds.

It seemed pretty miraculous (especially considering if I had listened to that one doctor I would have undergone an extreme surgical procedure!) to have, after a year of feeling so sick, such a simple solution. But, as most things do, in hindsight it made sense.

It seems that the real culprit is serotonin, or, rather, a lack thereof, and my condition may actually be abdominal migraines. My doctor thinks that I am probably genetically pre-disposed to having low serotonin levels. She also thinks that my low levels got further depleted when I went through the year struggle I had with my mother's mental illness. I am also surmising that when I had the egg retrieval procedure done my hormones got out of whack and further caused my serotonin depletion.

The reason why I say in hindsight it makes sense is because I can see a correlation with the onset and the relief of the migraine headaches I previously experienced. The onset of the migraines occurred when I was given the generic form of the anti-depressant Paxil. The relief of the headaches only occurred when I was taken off the generic and given the brand-name Paxil. I had always been told that generic meds were the same as the "brand" name, but as I found out, after much pain and mental anguish, they're not - they can have as much as a ten percent difference in structure and that ten percent can be the difference in a positive outcome and a negative one.

Unfortunately after feeling so much better and thinking that I was cured I had a relapse in the past two weeks. I've felt bad again. It's as if the medicine's benefits have worn off. I feel like I'm back to square one. But my doctor feels that we are on the right track and it is just a matter of getting the right "cocktail" of medicine that will keep my serotonin levels elevated. I've tried a few different ones and so far I haven't been helped, but I think I'll get there. It's the first hopeful feelings I've had in a long time and that in itself is a blessing.