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Heading off for the non-medical appointment at a much later hour than on Monday, the horizon was clear.
It was one of those stunningly lovely Fall days.
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In my book, they are unmatchable.
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Although this was not a medical appointment, it took place in the same clinic where I regularly get treatment for pain.
Theses treatments, which are various have been very successful for me and I was asked some months ago if I would be willing to write about my experience. Of course I would!
Nothing more was said but last week I got a call from one of the clinic administrators.
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It turned out that they wanted people to do an interview with someone from an Albany news station, was I still willing?
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Interviews bring me up in bumps, but this was not for a job and I have always believed in the importance of offering praise where it is due. Maybe someone might hear my words and find their way to this clinic.
So sure, no problem.
So that’s what I was doing yesterday.
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Having so readily agreed to be interviewed, I took a moment to have a talk with myself.
“You hate this kind of thing!”
“You’ll be a nervous wreck!”
There was a time not too long ago, when I would have spent the next few days worrying and feeling sick.
Instead, I dismissed it from my mind.
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Brain informed me that it was letting me off for now.
Perhaps it would keep me from sleep, the night before.
That would be usual. So I braced myself.
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Monday night, I slept just fine.
A few days ago I’d thought over what I wanted to say and it was really very simple. The only cause for nerves was that I am a very bad speaker.
But the nerves stayed calm.
The important part of this is that about three months ago I finally weaned myself off anti-anxiety medication that I had been on for decades.
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After retiring, a lot of stress went out of my life but there was enough, managing a small cat rescue.
When you are on benzodiazepine for any length of time, just like with oxycodone, your body becomes habituated. I don’t know how other people feel, but to me the benzo’s were the more powerful.
Fortunately, I had already started to scale back, voluntarily before my first experience with withdrawal.
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That memorable experience was due…to a cat.
One of the foster cats bit my right index finger, in the top knuckle and the finger became infected. A trip to the E/R got it cut open and poked.
Next day I saw my doctor who sent me straight away to a specialist who put me in hospital.
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It is embarrassing to be hospitalised over a finger, but there I was. The finger was sliced open again and the doctor would check on it the following day.
When you go into hospital they tell you not to bring your medications. Instead you give them a list of what you need.
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In due course I found out the flaw in this system, but not until I had suffered a couple more times.
My medications were not forthcoming and until that point I had never been deprived, so I did like a good patient and made no fuss.
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That was all very fine until withdrawal began to kick in, but having never experienced it before, I wasn’t aware immediately what was wrong.
The finger, still not cured as it turned out, was hurting like hell and hospital beds are their own form of torture. I was lucky to have a private room, so I walked around and tried to rid myself of the feeling that insects were crawling all over me and eating my brain.
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Over the next few hours, I was alternately angry and tearful which I thought was due to depression aggravated by pain.
Why did it take me so long to work out?
No doctor had ever actually warned me about the side-effects of benzodiazepine which makes me sound terribly naive, I suppose.
I knew they were addictive and that one should be careful to take them as prescribed, which I did.
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But if the awfulness of withdrawal had ever been explained to me, I would never have taken the drug.
It is a bad, bad medication.
In combination with opioids? Even worse.
Add in anti-depressants and you have a poison cocktail.
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Well, I may have been naive, but I am not totally stupid, so when finally the penny dropped that night, I went out into the corridor and seized the first nurse that came by.
The finger required further hacking about and poking. The surgeon came by regularly to tear off the bandage as if it was a challenge to see if he could make me scream. Finally, I said:
“I do hope you don’t have to do that again.”
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His recommendation was to have the finger amputated and by then I was so thoroughly fed-up, I would have agreed if Grant hadn’t been there to say no.
Instead, I had to go to an infectious diseases clinic and take some sort of fancy anti-biotic which, if it had been prescribed in the first place, could have saved so much angst!
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Twice more hospitals failed to provide the medications I needed, but I know now how to avoid having this happen if I ever again have the misfortune to be in their care.
In any case, this is how I became aware of the torment, physical and mental of benzo-withdrawal.
Bit by bit I reduced the amount I took, but I found that without it I could not get to sleep at night. I tried taking half the smallest dose and even managed without on alternate nights, but then we had all those losses last year and without that damn drug, the grief was too much.
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It didn’t help at all that I had a doctor who was insistent that I must get off the anxiety medication and basically bullied me about it.
Just as I can’t work with specialists who are cavalier and uncaring, I cannot work with a primary care physician with a bad attitude. I was lucky to find instead a young man who could not have been kinder and I credit him with my eventually being able to quit the wretched drug voluntarily.
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Last Spring, after we lost Patches, I began again extending the periods between pills. I went one night without and then another, expecting withdrawal symptoms to kick in, planning to take a fraction of a pill if I had to, but the symptoms did not come back.
I waited two days and then three. When it had been a week I wondered if I was clear. That was the beginning of June.
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For a month I waited, afraid to tell Grant I free of the drug. He was well aware of the anxiety I used to suffer over whether or not I would be issued a prescription in time to prevent withdrawal. It had become all-consuming at times.
Until now, he is the only person I have told, except for my doctor. I was still afraid a time would come when I needed help with anxiety.
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Tinkerbelle was swept away recently by a sudden illness.
In that same week I had the tonsillectomy.
Yesterday, I was interviewed.
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There have been other minor annoyances that once would have triggered my nerves.
But it has not happened, which leads me to believe that in large part it was the anti-anxiety medication itself that caused me to be nervous.
To say this was a revelation is putting it mildly.
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This is a boring story but I tell it in the hope that someone else may benefit from my experience and perhaps avoid getting into the clutches of medications that are touted to help but actually enslave us.
I do still take a mild dose of an anti-depressant because it is also helpful for pain. Now that I am benefiting so much from the pain management treatments, I expect to abandon that drug also.
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Already, I have cut back to a minimum dose with no sign of the depression that crushed me for so long. I had been convinced that I suffered from a chemical imbalance, but if that was the case I ought to be feeling the affects and I don’t.
A good doctor told me long ago that he believed I was unhappy, not depressed and it has become clear that he was right.
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What I needed was a different life but that was very hard to accomplish, so I took drugs for more than half my life.
You clutch on to what works and that is what the pharmaceutical companies count on.
They produce helpful medications too, of course. But in the modern world, in the USA at least, we have a situation where doctors endeavour to cure symptoms, but not the causes of illness. It isn’t just me who believes it.
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My pain management doctor has brought me a long way from being drug-dependent.
This morning he treated a cluneal nerve. A few months ago he injected it with steroid which was both to alleviate pain and to pinpoint the problem nerve.
That treatment cured 24/7 pins and needles that I had had in my right foot since the spinal fusion in 2007.
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From what I’ve read, 20-40% of spinal surgeries fail. I’ve been told mine did though I don’t really accept this, considering how disabled I had become before the fusion. I may not be one of the great success stories, but also not a total failure.
But the good thing is that there is life after such devastating surgeries, thanks to people like Doctor Gordon.
And hope for people with crippling arthritis and many other types of pain.
Thank you, Carolyn, for the wonderful photos of the autumn trees, fields, and sky!
Joanna
It must have been difficult to write about such a major disruption in your life. Well done Carolyn, and I do so hope that others will benefit from your interview. You are so right about modern medicine alleviating the symptoms but not curing the illness. Drug companies make far more money that way!
Thank you for sharing this information, and your story.
It will help others. 💜
Wow, Corolyn! You live in a dreamland!
Congratulations, Carolyn! I can’t even start to understand the pain you have gone through. A lot of medications only fix the symptoms not the problem. My hypo-thyroid meds made me lose so much weight, I looked like skeleton. So, I ditched it and I was inflating like a balloon. Then, I went on reduced work-hours and am faring beautifully. So my problem was stress and not thyroid.
You are lucky to have found Doctor Gordon who understands that…
This is a great story to share with others Carolyn … and hats off to Doctor Gordon! You touch on a very important point here towards the end, namely that some medications can enslave us – how true is that! If you walk into a doctor’s room and you have high blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar; shouldn’t the doctor’s first conclusion be to try and treat the cause with other options rather than medication – such as perhaps a healthy diet, exercise or looking at your work and home conditions? But unfortunately, most of them reach for a handful of pills first – in doing so, the patient keeps his/her condition under control but is never really cured. Yes, I’m very passionate about this … I’ve worked in a hospital far too long to see what it’s all about – money. Anyway, on a positive note: Beautiful shot of the bridge! And I’m happy you’re doing so well.
Well done and well told. Thank you.
I hope that more people in similar situations get to read this or hear about it from your interview. It sounds as if you are getting close to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Best wishes, Pete.