The Constant Guinea Pig

At the end of the two weeks, I woke up one morning and my tremors seemed to have resolved altogether. I still felt a little inwardly wobbly, but found unsuspected reserves of energy to catch up on all the things I’d been missing out on. I was on fire, and my husband commented that he’d never seen me so energetic. The only problem was, I couldn’t turn off at night. All night long, my mind would go non-stop with plans, fears, creative ideas, dreadful possibilities, inventions, stories, both good and bad memories, etc. At times, my mind would get going so fast that it was like there was a high-speed slideshow going on in my head. It was wonderful and terrible at the same time. I secretly feared another psychotic break. I said little to my husband, not wanting to rouse his fears. I avoided my children, which impacted them negatively, but not as negatively as I feared too much contact might. I became increasingly dependant on other people to take care of them. My husband’s family, my family, friends and neighbors all took their turns. It broke my heart. I loved them so much and felt so inadequate, but dared not risk their safety for the sake of my own pride or selfish needs.
I shared my concerns with Dr.‘s O and E. They were encouraged by the resolution of my tremors, but concerned about the nightly episodes. Together, they decided that perhaps I simply needed to get a good night’s rest in order to heal properly. Atavan, a "widely trusted" tranquilizer, was prescribed as a simple sleep aid. The hope was that whatever had been switched on by the Effexor would be switched off by the Atavan. Jason was dubious about how it would work, but I felt I had no other choice. I just wanted things to be normal again.
My parents had been in town and were planning on leaving the day after I tried the Atavan. The night before, I took it a half hour before bedtime, as indicated, and as the half-hour passed, I could feel tendrils of ice permeating my brain. I waited for the familiar feeling of oblivion associated with general anesthesia, a sensation I was familiar with from my ceasarean sections, but it never came. Instead, the Atavan seized my brain in a grip of anxiety as fierce as anything I’d yet experienced. My entire body again began to shake, a rushing sensation pulsed in my head and ears, and I felt as if I was being chased by a pack of murderous criminals. I tried to go within myself, again, like I’d learned to do while in labor, and had better success this time than I’d had with the Effexor. I managed to get through the night without waking myhusband. But I was a mess the next day. My parents were gone, and my husband was too fixated in righteous indignation about knowing that the Atavan wouldn’t work to be sympathetic. We fought all day, and at the end of it, I was back in the emergency room, shaking violently and having genuinely suicidal thoughts for the first time since I was a teenager.
A friend from church came to the hospital and took me to her house for a few days, with the kids. She was convinced that I just needed a break from the pressures of married life, and a little distance might provide perspective. Meanwhile, Dr.’s O and E were leaning towards a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, based on some traumas I’d had earlier in life, but were still trying to rule out physiological causes of my distress. Being prescribers of medicine by profession, however, they were unwilling at that point to consider that the Effexor may have actually caused permanent damage or a traumatic experience itself. After all, it was supposed to be a beneficial drug. They sent me to Dr. M, a neurologist, to rule out the possibility of some congenital defect or progressive degenerative disease. She analyzed my cat scan, an MRI, and had me perform a number of tasks and movements to analyze how my nerves were responding throughout my body. Like Dr.’s O and E, she came up blank. The good news, she told me, was that I didn’t appear to have Parkinson’s Disease, Essential Tremor, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, or a few other disorders she mentioned. I agreed this was good news, but it still left me with no answers.