#medication cw

In October I stopped taking the latest allergy medication I was trying to manage my year-round allergies, because I was experiencing a side effect that was impacting other conditions I have. I developed pruritus (severe itching) and insomnia within just over a day. It was really scary. This is a rare side effect you can experience after stopping this medication, here is the drugs. com summary of the FDA alert.

https://www.drugs.com/fda/fda-safety-communication-fda-requires-warning-risk-pruritus-after-stopping-long-term-cetirizine-14744.html

You will see in here that there are just over 200 cases reported worldwide, and that there are no certainties reported about recovery. It has been very frightening. I told a couple of friends because it was too scary to keep a total secret, but I also didn’t feel like I could tell people generally because I was already very scared that this would not go away and I couldn’t handle other people’s emotions if they reacted in certain ways. I think I’m over the worst of it now, although I don’t feel back to my baseline totally. I didn’t do further research because honestly I felt that the reassurance seeking would have been more detrimental to anything I could glean given the number of people reported to be affected - I spoke to my Dr, and they gave me a plan to try.

It was like stinging nettle rash type of itch, like a pricking painful itch over my entire body (face, scalp, hands, everything), constant at first, and gradually becoming more sporadic and patchy. Under medical advice (this was so so bad that I could not imagine anyone not seeking urgent medical help. It was uncontrollable. And the insomnia.) I tapered off it over the course of like a month by cutting up the pills into smaller and smaller pieces with a pill cutter (after restarting it at full dose for a full month after my initial reaction under medical advice to try to stabilise my body). Every time I reduced the dose, any settling that had happened would revert again, and then my symptoms would gradually wane a little until it felt tolerable to reduce it again.

It was really scary. I’ve been trying to take it in my stride for the last two months because literally I could not see any alternative to this that works alongside, like, ‘living’, but last night it hit me that this is like. A big deal. It once again shattered the illusion of safety that I, not uniquely, struggle with a lot, on account of the whole ‘living with multiple variably-diagnosed and disabling chronic health conditions’ thing. It was/is another situation where something terrifying is happening to me, and I. Like. There did not feel like there was anyone I could turn to to feel safe. No-one could tell me what was going to happen, or truthfully tell me that it was going to be okay. It maybe doesn’t sound like a ‘big’ enough thing to be so terrifying? It was pretty bad, but I wasn’t scared for my life. I think I am realising from this experience how something doesn’t need to be life-threatening to really rock you, as I have heard a lot.

The pruritus and insomnia aren’t the only symptoms. (And I also ‘probably’ have a sleep disorder anyway. But I’m not eligible for medication for it because of my other conditions. And my sleep consultant isn’t going to run the tests to confirm the diagnosis. I assume the two are related.) I was even more scared to go to bed than I tend to be, in waves. I was scared to eat, as I periodically tend to be, in waves. I feel more ill than normal. It’s hard to sleep and eat. And it’s hard to think straight when you’re struggling with these things! It’s hard to do anything. On top of my regular level of disability. It’s been frightening and hard and it’s reminded me how vulnerable being a person, a body with systems and processes, is. Even though I’m living that all the time? (Again, non-uniquely.) My anxiety has been much worse, both ‘physically’ in terms of having these reactions at a much more intense level than my normal allergies for the past two months so I’m keyed up with processes occurring, and mentally, with a lot more very very upsetting thoughts springing to mind all the time than my usual level.

It’s really frightening to feel that something is ‘going wrong’ in your self, and to not feel like you have any security or certainty about getting help with this. It is so frightening. Like I said, I’ve been trying to take it in my stride because there doesn’t feel like there is anything I can do about it other than what I have been doing. I have spent this whole year in a sprint meeting various new specialists trying to nail down a bunch of other conditions that have been varying degrees of diagnosed (or misdiagnosed) that I have been living with for years. Disablingly. I continue to lose abilities. I don’t know how much I will regain, or, because I’m not entirely sure of the nature of all of the conditions yet, how best to try.

I have allergy testing booked for early next year. I do not feel like I can count on ‘getting to the bottom of this’ from that. I do not feel like I have a safety net. It’s not like any Dr could have prevented this, and it’s not like I got any bad advice (I followed what they recommended to do, and it happened to work out), but I do not feel like I know there is someone I can turn to who has the expertise to guarantee my safety to the level that anyone could expect safety to be guaranteed. I feel almost completely unmoored in my ‘illness’. I don’t know if the gaps I am experiencing between what I want to happen and what is happening are because I am the most informed about my conditions as is possible and there just isn’t medical knowledge to help further, because I am not being able to access the people who ARE informed and would be able to help me more fully, or because I am failing to communicate the nature of my conditions to the people who are the gateway to me meeting those people, if they even exist. It is hard to know what to do. I cannot afford to pursue pathways that I have agency over, so it is down to chance. Again, not unique to me.

But hey. I got a diagnosis. I got a diagnosis for anxiety, ADHD, and autism. So I guess I win? Lol.

❝ geez, do you know how to knock?! ❞ ryan snaps suddenly, surprised by the sudden click of his door opening, but he immediately feels guilty for it. he'd been hoping to keep this a secret from the other, but it seemed as though they had walked right into him injecting his sublocade. it didn't help that the drug's name was spelled down the pen, directly facing outward towards the other. now they knew exactly what he took, and god forbid they knew what it was and what it was for.