Yay, side effects and other fun stuff

[Cooper]

As far as I can tell, my doctor was fired, quit, or had a meltdown. I may never know. So I have a new one in a few days. I hope she can put up with my near-hypochondriac ways. (My anxiety likes to crop up most often with my health, so I'm usually like: Is this spot cancer? My anxiety says it's cancer, and I want to tell it to shut up.)

Nearly all of my pain medications have stopped working. (I have pain in my ankle and near-constant headaches.) At great reluctance I went gluten-free, and it helped with exhaustion. I'm finally sleeping regular hours, and sleeping through the night.

And I think my new medication is working. But it's having rather bizarre side-effects. I'm having vivid, surrealist dreams. Like there was something wrong with the cap on my water bottle I keep near my bed. I woke up (or dreamed I did) fixed it, and went back to bed. My face sculpture I keep by my bed (I'm making a photo manipulation of it) started rotating. I know my 'fixing' of that was a dream because if I woke up, even immediately after, I would freak out a lot more. XD

Some people might consider these nightmares, as they all seem to involve objects in or near my bed 'gone wrong' but I used to have 'scary' dreams for years: Like being chased, apocalyptic dreams, two zombie dreams, and one where I was getting texts from a stalker. In a giant car shaped like one of those shaded baby carriages.

Only thing that really seems to freak me out is skeletons. I even had a normal dream for the most part, going trick or treating. Turned around. There was a skeleton. I freaked out and woke up.

I had nausea for the first week after taking one of my new medications. Ibuprofen was causing stomach pain. (When taken at the doses needed to manage the pain in my leg, though it was pretty good with the headaches.) And Paxil made me yawn constantly. I remember making fun of it when I first saw that side-effect, but after yawning for two hours straight I didn't find it so funny anymore. >_<

So, what are your guys's weirdest side effects for medication?

[fireheart]

Mine with lorazepam was the sensation of "jumping" in the bed. The creepiest thing though was that I was aware of it. Trying to explain THAT to the nurse was FUN.....>.>

One of the more bizarre side-effects with the Implanon for me has been that I'll end up having a six-month episode of depression sometimes coupled with anxiety. No idea why.

[AccountingDrone]

Byetta. I never had the start up nausea which I thought was great.

Then I lost the ability to eat pigs in any form - no pork, no bacon, no sausage, no ham. It was bad enough that instead of taking a bite and becoming nauseous, all it took was the smelling of pork to get me nauseous. Then just the thought of taking a bite of pork could get me almost to vomiting.

Then it was beef. Then it was chicken.

Pretty soon I was down to being able to do eggs, tofu, bland white fish like cod or sole, and the legume/grain combinations.

I called my endocrinologist and told him that I *needed* to go off byetta before I was on IV nutrients. So we went to lantus, a timed release insulin.

I got back the ability to eat beef, chicken and pork however I can actually be eating a nice plate of something, and after half a dozen bites of it have it turn my stomach. Or like last night, Rob and Phlip had franks and beans for dinner, but the idea of eating a hot dog made my stomach churn, so I had a tossed salad with chick peas and quinoa as the protein source. This morning, they made bacon and eggs and I was fine, had my normal 3 pieces of bacon with my cheese omelet.

[MoonCat]

Pseudoephedrine used to give me really weird, scary dreams that I could never remember when I woke up. Doesn't anymore, though.

However...when I was a kid my mother used to give me castor oil or mineral oil. To this day, just thinking about it makes me want to vomit. If I ever HAD to vomit I could do it very easily by imagining that gross stuff in my mouth.

[jedimaster91]

Every time I take Nyquil or another sleep aid, I have the weirdest, most vivid dreams.

[Mishi]

Prednisone - a doctor put me on a high dose that decreased over time to "burn out the Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis that is in such early stages that is it not yet showing up on the tests"

Yeah, I didn't actually have it, although I did end up with a rather rare side effect: Period problems. Whited out for grossness: 3 weeks of heavy bleeding with large clots, 1 week of nothing. The bleeding and clots were worse than my postpartum loss.

It took a few cycles of this for my mother to finally take me to see a doctor (her reason for the wait belongs in fratching)...it took only one month of the Pill to fix it.

[Catwoman2965]

Every time I take Nyquil or another sleep aid, I have the weirdest, most vivid dreams.

Oh me too. benadryl I'm ok with, but I can recall one time in college, I had a bad ear/sinus infection, and they gave me some really strong decongestant/antihistimine. Made me twitchy (as Nyquil does), restless, and unable to sleep.

thankfully I don't get sick much, but did have another sinus infection last week. took some advil sinus which contains Pseudoephedrine - never again, at least not at night. I was twitchy, couldn't sleep and my brain was running a million mile a minute, plus bizarre dreams

[fireheart]

When my partner was in the hospital passed out drunk, the nurses gave him what I THINK was just fluids for rehydration. One bizarre side effect was that as he was given said fluids, he became somewhat aroused. I happened to be next to him, so he grabbed my hand and shoved it on his crotch just as the nurse walks in the room!

Luckily that's been the ONLY time he's had to go to the hospital for alcohol-related issues. This was due to him having too much, puking and being unable to keep anything down.
What HAD happened was that he'd been drinking nothing BUT alcohol, on an empty stomach. He's normally a sensible drinker.

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

I seem to get a grab bag of side effects whenever I'm on a new medication. 'Course, I'm a bit of a freak as it is. I've dealt with serious insomnia since I was a little kid, and when I was in high school and college I did a few projects with the med college. Nothing like being a paid guinea pig. Among the things discovered were; Ambien is an awesome hallucinogen for me and I'm amazingly drug-resistant. It takes about 5x the dosage of benzodiazepines to affect me versus a "normal" person and I can pass a driving simulator while on a dose of thorazine that would leave most people drooling wrecks.

[dawnfire]

phenergan has unusual effect on my eldest. It seems to amplify his mood at the time of taking. If he's upset it will make hyperactive , literally bouncing everywhere. If he's calm it just knocks him out.

[wagegoth]

Prescribed ibuprofen after an injury, 4x the over the counter level, and I started hearing a voice in my head telling me to kill myself. It would have been very easy to listen to it.

Quit using it and two days later the voice stopped.

[Rock Lobster]

Be careful if you take Nexium! Severe stomach pain, gall bladder pain, gas, upset stomach, sore tongue, restless leg syndrome, restless arm syndrome, constant nausea.

I switched to generic OTC Prevacid and have very few problems now.

[AccountingDrone]

I take a handful of pills every morning, and smaller batches of pills at 1 pm, 5 pm and 9 pm.

Of the 13 pills I take at 5 am, 3 of them are sometimes used as light sedatives instead of high blood pressure. I tend to fall back asleep after an hour. I take some of the same meds at 1 pm, I tend to fall asleep shortly thereafter. I don't mind the ones at 9 pm as I am getting ready to go to bed anyways ...

Nobody warned me that I was sedating myself, until I went to my doctors office after a few weeks of this ... I waited a couple of weeks in case it was some odd side effect of something

I suppose since I no longer work it really doesn't matter but it does make long road trips interesting - I deal with nap attacks by pulling into a rest area for a nap.

[Setsunaela]

When I went on Paxil at first, it was insane, the yawning. I sometimes could barely get a normal breath in, between epic, jaw-cracking yawns.

[BeeMused]

For me asperin is the 'I'm not going to take it' OTC pain killer. Normal anti headache dose = stomach pain. Taking 100mg daily for about 3/4 year = chronic gastritis.
So now I have a very sensitive stomach and need to take pantoprazol to keep the acid down. Some food is completely of the list <sigh>. So YAY side effects indeed!