Cymbalta

Cymbalta is now tried on side of Lyrica which has been reduced and will be cut off completely.

Life with Cymbalta is not easy either. I was checking the list of side effects to see how many of my new oddities are explained by the known side effects of Cymbalta.

Not few. Or what do you think:

*Headache. (I have had that sort of almost incontinuous head ache which I have never had before. This feels very sharp, completely different from before.)

*Tiredness, problems sleeping, bad quaqlity of sleeping. I can sleep 2 - 3 hours per night.

*Added yawning. (Of course, because I don't sleep enough. I don't feel sleepy but even so, I have today been yawning my jaws off.)

*Feeling sick. Yep. 7 kg gone just like that. This side effect I could even keep since thanks to Lyrica, I have a lot to lose in weight.

*Tinnitus. I have it even from before, it is continuous and never stops for a second but now I hear it much louder than before.

*Eczem. It seems I have nothing in my stomach skin other than scarves from pregnancies and a very thin skin but i have been scratching it like a maniac since it feels so itchy - and now applying body lotions too.

*Cold fingers and toes. Yep. Definitely.

*Cold sweat.

*Shaky muscles. Today I felt my legs would not carry me. It went by pretty soon but anyway... not a nice feeling.

And all this I have now, when I am taking the minimum dose. What if it gets doubled, because it is not working at its fullest now? Will it add on the effect of the side effects too?

And what if there is no medication? What if there is pain and no medication?

Celecoxib has helped tame the overflow of pain when the basic medication has not been enough, but I stopped taking it when my asthma doctor told me it has caused heart attacks.

About asthma, my asthma doctor was satisfied that I had found the reason for the worsening symptoms and had been able to prove and eliminate them. Now I can move again, which has not been the case for long since I ahve been suffocating.

On Friday and Saturday I have been out, walking, gardening... I must go on with it, it is something I can do to my burn out symptoms, to prevent them.

I have a dream. I want to get rid of medication. Perhaps not overnight but anyway. I don't want to constantly worry about side effects and safety. During the past one year or so I have quitted three medicines that have been life-threatening - to me, or to someone else. Lyrica was life-threatening to me because of asthma. The two others have been drawn out of market.

But I should also remain able to work, live and love as normally as possible. And I am NOT willing to start trying all kinds of possible aids and healings the world and market is full of. It would be an endless trying and disappointing, like it has been with medication. But there is a jungle of all kinds of healers and products, aiming to profit from the need to make life tolerable.

I feel more than confused. But so far, I have a dream at least.

Breathing

I have been living serious times, health-wise. Like some of you know, I am a multi-conditioned one, having more than one life companions (I mean chronic diseases). I am all the time balancing between them. The one that has become a major cause of trouble and a cause of increasing worry has for the last months been asthma, steadily getting worse all the time. These last weeks I have been in a state where I have not known if I will wake up the next morning anymore or not. Several times I have been woken up from a state where I have not been breathing anymore. It has been frightening. I have not been able to climb up stairs without an asthma attack. I have not been able to do practically anything without an asthma attack. And the past few weeks, I have had an ever-increasing feeling thet the attack medication is not biting any more.

I found out Lyrica, which I have successfully taken for another chronic life companion, fibromyalgia, can cause broblems in breathing, and can actually seriously worsen asthma symptoms. Not for everyone, but for some. - If you don't know fibromyalgia, it is a nasty but not life-threatening disease which among other things keeps your muscles stiff, causing you sometimes even unable to move, and still worse, it keeps you in constant, serious, all-over pain. Lyrica helped me, like it helped many others. It did ruin my diet and cause a colossal weight gain but I thought it still did more help than damage. Many others have also been complaining of colossal weight gain when starting to take Lyrica.

There was a time, a few weeks back, when I was taking steroids - yet another time! - for asthma symptoms that had gone really bad. I was getting more and more - and more - swollen, and counghing my lugns out. I felt that steroids would soon kill me in that swollenness, that I would suffocate of it if then asthma would not make the same before that. I stopped taking steroids and started to feel a bit better but something was still seriously wrong. I could not walk, even slowly, and talk at the same time, for instance.

Then yesterday evening I had had enough of it all and I took only 150 mg Lyrica, instead of the full 300 mg dose. I did not sleep very well. This morning I took another 150 mg, instead of 300mg. And you guess it - I can breathe. I can climb stairs and I do cough but I dont get an asthma attack. I would not consider climbing up and down the stairs yet but perhaps I will do that too.

I have a devilish head-ache, my feet are burning and I have a tingling pain in every joint. After a major shock caused by my daughter who had a lamp fall on her and got her hands bleeding and then we had to treat her shock and pain first and the scars then - my legs deceived me and I had to drink sugar for shock symptoms myself, and go to bed. But otherwise the day has been a wonderful one because I have been able to breathe again.

All is well as long as you can take breathing for granted. I have not been able to do so for a very long time. I cannot tell how good it feels to be able to inhale and outhale without problems!