Fun with Medications

I have a raging throat infection of some kind. Dr. says we nipped the strep that was there, but I'm still sick, haven't had a voice in 5 days, and there's green stuff. I'm sure that the "fun with antibiotics" session we went through last May probably created some super-resistant strain in my body that is now determined to take over. There are really only basically two antibiotics now that don't either make my heart go all wonky or make me break out in funny red spots. If the cephprozil doesn't kick this, I'm kinda in a tight spot. Also, that fact that I can't take decongestants or anything with codiene (like cough medicine) is problematic. I've been getting as creative as I dare with the herbals, Threat Coat tea, Echinacea, having a hard time swallowing the vitamin C or even sucking on the Zinc lozenges. I haven't had this much fun since.....
Well, a little about the Effexor calamity......

Once I get my other computer working right, I'll download some of the earlier chronicles. This is, for now, the short version.... or at least the lead up to it.

Following my daughter's birth, in 2000, post-partum depression got a firm grip on me. I was having a hard time getting out of bed to make her bottle and fix my son a sandwich. I did it, but it was just plain hard. I talked to my doctor at the time (Dr. A) and as so many other doctors then were doing, he prescribed for me an SSRI - specifically Zoloft.

It was lovely while it lasted, and I didn't want to ever stop taking it. After a while, the zappy sensations and lack of sex drive began to outweigh the benefits though, and in the meantime I had moved. My new doctor (Dr. O) began to play around with other options, since there was an increasingly complex smorgasbord to choose from. I tried going without anything here and there, but hated the return of the hollow feeling, that tiredness which never seemed to go away. He tried out Celexa, Paxil, Prozac, etc, etc. All of them either made me more sluggish, had no noticeable effect, or made me a little too hyper (I forget the name of the dopamine-related one that made me horny and sleepless, but it was, well interesting - Oh yeah, Wellbutrin). When some of them made me feel weird, I'd just top taking them, because sometimes I couldn't always reach my doctor to ask what to do. Sometimes I'd feel a little blue when I did this, but nothing major happened to portend what lay ahead.

What that turned out to be was Effexor. That was the fall of 2003, and Dr. O was excited about this "new" drug that was supposed to have positive effects on both seratonin and norepinephrine levels. I was excited too. Maybe this would be the breakthrough I needed. I can't tell you how wrong we both were. If you don't know what "Seratonin Syndrome" is yet, look it up. It's very relevant to my story.