One
of the worst parts of starting treatment for any mental illness (including
ADHD) is the myriad of side effects that accompany the beneficial effects of
your medications, and the more medications you’re on, the worse it gets (I’m on
five). Now, if you’re like me, you learn
to just suck it up and ignore it, particularly when you are on a year long
venture of medication adjustments. The
problem with this is that your doctor can’t help you if they don’t know what
side effects you’re experiencing and you may end up ignoring a real physical
illness.
Last
week I had the stomach flu, it started with a couple days of having no energy
to do anything and then the next day progressed to nausea, lack of appetite,
and [the opposite of vomiting], all of which can be attributed to my
medications. However, that night I was
very cold when I went to bed and had trouble falling asleep, when I finally did
I woke up an hour later both boiling hot and freezing cold. Most people would have recognised this as a
fever and chills, but I lack self-awareness (something that’s common with both
ADHD and bipolar) and am so used to just ignoring every bad physical feeling I
get that I didn’t realise I was sick. The following day was the same but that night I was kept awake by
excruciating stomach pains and I finally realised that this wasn’t my meds, I
had the stomach flu. Unfortunately by
this time I only had a day of discomfort left so the minimalist diet and excess
of fluids hadn’t happened all week (probably why I was in so much pain) and I had
probably infected a bunch of people, all because I thought my symptoms were
side effects.
Now,
misdagnosing the stomach flu is not the end of the world (except that you
become the “outbreak monkey”), but what if it was something more serious? It leaves me to wonder how many psych
patients don’t receive prompt treatment for physical conditions because they
wrote off their symtpoms as side effects. However, on the other hand, you risk becoming a hypochondriac, attributing
even mild side effects to the plague (ok maybe not necessarily the plague but
you get the point). So how do you find a
balance between the two? How do you
determine exactly what symptoms are real and what are side effects? Beats me. Hopefully this won’t be a problem for me anymore because I think we
finally have my meds stabilised (which I’m very excited about, finally after a
long year I can try and get back to my life!) and side effects should be
minimal from here on out. For everyone
else, I would probably consider informing your doctor of all your side effects,
just to be safe, but try and refrain from storming into an ER claiming you have
the plague!
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