I am a 57-year-old white American male infected with Hepatitis C. I am involved in a controlled medical research study by Roche Pharmaceuticals of an experimental Polymerase Inhibitor (RO5024048 also known as RG7128) drug therapy for the virus. This document is the story of my illness and the experience of treatment. My lovely and pretty damn wonderful wife will be contributing her take on the experience as well.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Riding Out The Rush

Wow, I have not had this powerful an effect from a chemical compound since my experiments in reality hacking over 25 years ago.

I took my first dose of Paxil before going to sleep on Saturday. I woke up by 6:30 a.m. on Sunday (very early for me to awaken on weekend) and could not get back to sleep. I felt a bit restless so I did some yard work in the morning. In the afternoon my wife and I went for a walk and I noticed that I was becoming increasingly spacey and tired. Back at home, I napped for about an hour and woke up to a splitting headache. Ibuprofen handled that and being a bit tired, I went to bed just past 9:00 p.m.

I woke up at about 6:00 a.m. Monday and I was wired. I felt jittery and full of nervous energy. I would sit down for a bit, then get up and pace around the house. I could sit and read the paper, but as soon as I was done with a story, I would get up and pace. I realized my inability to concentrate for any period of time would make going to work useless, so I called in sick for the day. I called my various health professionals to ask if this was a normal reaction or extreme. Their reply was that it was at the upper edge of normal and if it continued for very long to let them know. The rest of the day was about the same and I took some of the Ativan at night to try to calm down the jitters.

Over the next few days the jittery nervous energy gradually moderated. I was able to go to work for a few hours a day until I got so physically restless and mentally scattered that I had to go home. I found myself compulsively doing little things around the house because I could only read for so long before I had to get up and move around and do something. I took small doses of Ativan during the day to steady myself out and returned to taking trazadone to sleep, which helped a great deal.

On the bright side, since starting on the Paxil, I have not felt nauseous at all. In fact all the muscular tension and nervous energy have actually made me hungry for the first time in weeks. Despite this, I have lost 5 pounds in 4 days since starting the drug.

This is definitely Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride going on in my body. Once again, I feel lucky I did a fair amount of reality hacking in my youth because I have clearly recognized that all the side effects I am going through are definitely drug-induced. I’m not going crazy or having anxiety attacks, I am just experiencing a drug reaction. But for the folks out there who haven’t had much experience with drugs that have a direct effect on their mind, this could be a scary experience.

Which leads me to a last comment. Doctor NB did not spend any time going over the commonly occurring side effects of Paxil or explain how much time they continue on average. This would have been a great help and, again, anyone without drug experience who was not prepped about the side effects could have real problems dealing with them.

So now we get to see how the rest of the ride goes. Stay jittery, steady out, maybe even achieve some chemical balance and generally calm down, stay tuned folks, it may stay bumpy…

No comments:

Post a Comment