In yet another effort to track down the source of my chronic pain, I decided it might be time to ween myself off of some of the meds I had been taking. A few doctors recommended I give this a try.
I was on a nice cocktail of things including Paxil, Seroquel, and Lamictal. Paxil for almost 7 years, maybe? The other two for about 4 years. I always hated the idea of taking medication, but when depression, anxiety and even suicidal ideations start to make day-to-day life impossible — you resort to whatever measures will work for you. And so I did. And it worked.
On Sept 25th, 2019, I met with my psychiatrist (love this guy) and we formed a plan to eliminate 2 out of the 3 meds, and then reassess at a later date to see if we could get rid of the last one (Lamictal).
I was excited. And felt good about having a plan that might get rid of the pain, and move to a cleaner brain.
However, in retrospect, the timing was not ideal. Not from an emotional standpoint, but because, little did I know, my cancer symptoms were getting worse and I was mistaking them for withdrawals.
It also does kind of suck to go through one of the biggest challenges in my without the “safety net” of my meds.
NOTE: If it wasn’t obvious, this post was written after my cancer diagnosis. I decided to go back and add these details to give myself and others a better idea of my medical history leading up to diagnosis.
