JoBlog

In response to my complete lack of posting recently (Had too much else to worry about) comes a round-up post to bring everything back up to date.
Firstly, I am no longer a student. After five years I am now the proud holder of a 3yr BSc in Biochemistry, 2:2. It’s not the greatest result ever, but considering that I only completed 1.75 of a total of 4 course units this year, it’s something close to a miracle! I think I mostly have Dr Fairweather to thank.
David and I have found a house in the Cherry Hinton area of cambridge, and we’re going through the final application process. We move in on August 7th.
I am applying for jobs in Cambridge, mostly looking for something to pay the rent, but hoping for a job at least partially involving events planning. No luck so far, but I have plenty of applications in.
And finally, no roundup would be complete without a report of my current depression situation. I have had my appointment with the Maudsley, which has been useful in a number of ways. Firstly it acts as a second opinion, confirming the diagnosis of treatment resistant clinical depression, and ruling out other problems, such as psychosis or manic depression. And second, they made suggestions about which drugs I should be trying, and at what doses.
We have dropped the Prozac, as it was giving me daily headaches, and had no appreciable benefits. The Maudsley have suggested that both the Trazodone and Lamotrigine should be at much higher levels. We are awaiting a blood level for lamotrigine, which takes forever, but have been increasing the trazodone fairly rapidly. Current side effects are confusion, irritability, extreme tiredness and food cravings. I am hoping that once we reach the final dose, some of these will reduce. On a more positive note, the combination does seem to be at least partially working, so a few side effects are worth living with.

Ok, so I never know what my boyfriend’s doing, and mostly he doesn’t either, but he does use these calandar applications, so I’m looking for one that I can use to put what I’m doing in, and be able to also see his. He uses iCal.

The problem is that I’m fussy. I have a lot of events in my schedule which do not have a fixed duration, and so I am looking for a program which will allow me to input events with no end time. Can anybody help me?

Apparantly, according to my consultant, we have exhausted the possibilities of 3 drugs at once, and have therefore moved onto 4. These being 1g Lithium, 75mg Lamotrigine, 20mg Clomipramine and 20mg Prozac (Fluoxetine).
Reducing the dose of Clomipramine has certainly helped a lot with the side effects. I can think a lot clearer and the constipation is much more managable. However, the addition of the Prozac has led to almost daily headaches. I expected them, as they happened last time, and I’m hoping they will diminish as my body gets used to the drug.
On a more positive note, I am being refered to the Affective Disorders Group at the Maudsley Hospital in London. They are world experts in treating treatment resitant depression, so I hope that they may be able to help me beat this illness.

Appologies for the lack of updates for the past few months. I’ve been having a fairly terrible time with the depression, and that kinda saps your enthusiasm for pretty much everything else.
So here’s a quick update on the medication situation.

• After coming off the olanzepine, we increased the dose of clomipramine to 60mg
• Since this didn’t help with my mood, we have since added Lamotrigine, which is an anti-convulsant mood stabiliser, which can have some augmentation effects when used with antidepressant treatment.
• I started on 25mg, increasing to 50mg and then 75mg over a period of a number of weeks – for safety reasons, you can’t increase the dose any quicker.

So, that’s where I’m at. I completed one module last term, but I had to drop the second module because I was not well enough to attend the lectures, let alone do the coursework. I can still theoretically graduate if I complete the remaining 2 modules, and a six week practical after Easter. This is obviously going to be difficult though.

Increasing the olanzepine caused an increase in side effects, with no noticeable improvement in my mood, so I’ve come off it cold turkey, as recommended by my consultant. So far I haven’t noticed a drop in my food cravings, but I do seem to have acquired a permanent and rather nasty headache. The plan is to increase the dose of the clomipramine as soon as I feel well enough.

My mood is up and down at the moment like the proverbial yo-yo, and as a result my consultant has asked me to increase my olanzepine dose to 5mg daily. We’re trying to prove that it won’t help so we can abandon it for good. Of course, it might help, so we’ll have to see.

On a more positive note, I attended Elly and Meri’s Wedding a couple of weeks ago. It was a lovely day, but the highlight for me has to be breakfast the next morning at Belle and Herbs. I had Blueberry Pancakes, and they were wonderful. I have had strong cravings for Blueberry pancakes ever since, so if anyone has a recipe for them, or knows where I can get some in London, Bishop’s Stortford or Cambridge, I would greatly appreciate it!

So the happiness lasted about 4 weeks, and now I’m back to the old familiar feeling of hating life, and struggling to cope. The current drug changes are to increase the dose of clomipramine, as much as my body will tollerate. I’m currently on 40 mg daily, and the main side effects are a hand tremor and dizziness on standing.
I’m now back at uni, starting my final year. Things seem to be going fine so far.