The weeks that got away
Difficulty with memory, yes, that was on the list. Dry mouth? Yup. Tremor? Got that. Fatigue? Sure. Lack of appetite? Food, oh, I forgot about it.
I seem to have hit the side-effects jackpot with the neurologist's most recent medication substitution. How else explain, this fog in which I have been immersed and from which I am slowly emerging, now that I've stopped those little white pills at bedtime. After 20 years on one drug, we thought to give the latest, greatest migraine preventive a try.
Wrong move. The effects of this particular molecular combination didn't do anything for me, and seem to have done their share of things against me. It's hard to write when your brain is so slick with drugs, everything you know slides away. That's where the weeks went -- far, far away. I've been so far under the influence, I couldn't see over it.
Note to self: any drug that doesn't have a generic equivalent is overpriced and undertested. FDA approval equals better than a sugar pill, safer than arsenic. That's all. Nothing to do with actual success rate or whether drug works better than its predecessor, against which it will never compete side-by-side in a laboratory. The FDA's main conclusion seems to be, well, we don't think it will hurt you.
Help you? That's not on the FDA menu. Help you is a happy accident, completely unforeseen in any stage of clinical trials, at least where I am concerned. The last great leap forward in pharmaceuticals that are designed to fix what ails me came about 20 years ago, when Prozac rolled off the assembly line and into solid brown bottles by the 100. Penicillin was a wonder drug in its day, too.
How many years will I wait for the next one?
I seem to have hit the side-effects jackpot with the neurologist's most recent medication substitution. How else explain, this fog in which I have been immersed and from which I am slowly emerging, now that I've stopped those little white pills at bedtime. After 20 years on one drug, we thought to give the latest, greatest migraine preventive a try.
Wrong move. The effects of this particular molecular combination didn't do anything for me, and seem to have done their share of things against me. It's hard to write when your brain is so slick with drugs, everything you know slides away. That's where the weeks went -- far, far away. I've been so far under the influence, I couldn't see over it.
Note to self: any drug that doesn't have a generic equivalent is overpriced and undertested. FDA approval equals better than a sugar pill, safer than arsenic. That's all. Nothing to do with actual success rate or whether drug works better than its predecessor, against which it will never compete side-by-side in a laboratory. The FDA's main conclusion seems to be, well, we don't think it will hurt you.
Help you? That's not on the FDA menu. Help you is a happy accident, completely unforeseen in any stage of clinical trials, at least where I am concerned. The last great leap forward in pharmaceuticals that are designed to fix what ails me came about 20 years ago, when Prozac rolled off the assembly line and into solid brown bottles by the 100. Penicillin was a wonder drug in its day, too.
How many years will I wait for the next one?
Labels: meds, migraine, Under the influence
posted by alice, uptown at 6:20 PM
3 Comments:
I wonder if we have really come any further than leeches.
Ick. I wondered about your radio silence; it seems a while since you last posted. Changing meds is a trial I would wish only on corrupt heads of state. I hope you're able to resume your former regimen without issue.
As I've undoubtedly said before, I have a complicated relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. And I'm now exclusively on medications for which no generic equivalents exist, because I'm just that special. So blaming the FDA is definitely the way to go here.
Hey, in China they shoot food and drug ministers in the back of the head! Seems awfully violent to me. Why didn't they just make him take a cocktail of all the untested drugs he had approved while on the take?
Leeches might help. Really. The "folk" they know some things. Actually, leeches are better in preventing gangrene. Still.
Hope you feel better...
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