I had my second appointment today with Dr Fife as my first meds weren’t working and ended up giving me terrible headaches which I never had prior. Boy, now I sure know how all you peeps feel when you get a migraine. It is pure hell. I’m all ready living in hell, don’t need the headaches to go with the 24/7 crap.
Anyway, Dr Fife was very thorough as usual and based on some of the symptoms that are new since starting meds, he is now putting me on Effexor and in 10 days will add the verapamil. I know nothing about either two and wanted to see if anyone else is on this combo. What side affects shall I expect. I am scared of how I will react to drugs, but I’m willing to try anything to get my life back. I’m soo depressed as one would expect.
Also, he didn’t feel the need for me to taper off the imipramine since im switching it to another anti. Does anyone know anything about that. I feel nauseous with almost all drugs and it seems Effexor list that as a major side effect. I’m soo worried about that. I’m a single mom of a 4 year old boy. Lord help us all.
Hey there… I’ve been on Verapamil since December with no horrible side effects (just that my feet sometimes get red, hot, swollen if I’ve been on them a long time). Since it hasn’t kicked the rocking/visual issues, though, I added in Effexor this week. Side effects really vary person to person. I just posted about my experience on it - briefly - but I can assure you, that while I had horrible digestive issues when I tried Depakote, I didn’t have any at all with Effexor. I wasn’t taking a very high dosage of it, but for what it’s worth, you may not even get that side effect. Unfortunately, we never know till we bite the bullet and try… :?
Hi Erika,
Thanks for the response. I was looking for your post about the Effexor and didn’t see it. Are you having any bad side effects with fex yet? I took my first dose last night, and I’m a bit nauseous but nowhere near the nauseousness I felt the first night on imipramine. So I’m taking that as a positive sign. I didn’t sleep very well but I’m hoping I can counteract that with a light sleep aid. From what I understand, the fex is supposed to help with the vertigo symptoms and the verapamil helps with the headache pain. I just hope the nausea subsides. I am so tired of it all. As we all are.
Anyway, I’m praying we have great success with our combos. Do you think it’s safe to add a sleep aid? I get so scared to put all these drugs in my body?
HI. My post is this one: Side effects - Am I really just too paranoid for Effexor? I didn’t give all the little details, though. Just the overall. My neuro told me to take 25 mg once a day for about 4 days, then kick it up to twice a day. (It’s the generic.). Well, as paranoid as I am about side effects, I took 1/2 the first time, at bedtime. Made me jittery and I couldn’t sleep. In the morning I had this horrible feeling of anxiety/butterflies in the stomach kind of thing, which I took to be some sort of withdrawalish symptom, as the tablets are not XR. That night I took 1/4 tab and slept fine. Took 1/4 the next night and the next morning, and felt rather groggy that day, but figured that’d eventually go away, and was determined to tough it out. That evening (yesterday) after sweeping the front porch for 30 seconds, a blood vessel in my finger burst. Sheesh. Since the warnings mention talking to your doc “immediately” if you have any unusual bleeding or bruising, I didn’t take any Effexor last night. This time it felt like without it, my system ramped up, and again I couldn’t sleep. And this morning, the butterfly thing again. The doc said I could keep at it or not - whatever I was comfortable with. I decided to give it up. Being on such a low dosage, I can’t imagine the blood vessel issue getting better as I take higher doses. Could be wrong… And it also concerns me about the feelings I’m getting when I stop taking what little I am. That said, if I was sure it would cure me and had already tried and failed with Topamax, I’d be more inclined to keep going with it, regardless.
Hope that helps! (And, yes, I agree - sooo tired of feeling cruddy every day!)
Yeah I don’t blame you for being alarmed. I too am a little scared but I’m trying to read anything bad about it and giving it at least a couple weeks. What I noticed about the last anti depressant that I was on, is that most of the side affects went away after a week or two. I was so against drugs before MAV hit, but now I am forced to take them to hopefully have my life back. It seems that like most drugs, fex has worked really well for some and a total nightmare for others. It’s scary indeed but we have to keep on trying. I don’t know if it’s possible for a drug to have any effect right away, but I am much less dizzy today than yesterday. I’m hoping that’s a good sign of things to come.
Let us know how the topomax works. And let’s hope we both have better news to share in the coming weeks. This illness is absolutely debilitating. Ugh
Wow - that’d be nice if your lack of dizziness was a result of the Effexor working quickly. From reading some past posts, it looks like a couple of other folks did get speedy results. I agree about the meds - always very careful in the past, avoided taking any. Now, anything that’ll help would be good. (Though, obviously not enough lack-of-concern to not give up the Effexor after 3 days with the broken blood vessel incident…) If the Topamax doesn’t work, I’ll be sorely tempted to give the Effexor another try, though. Of course, everything I’m reading seems to indicate I need to give Topamax a REALLY long try to find out if it’ll help at all or not. (That’s a bit frustrating - I hate to waste time trying if it’s not going to work in the long-run.)
Anyhow, hang in there! Surely we’ll find something that’ll help at some point, right?
