Inflammation

[Chris]

Luc--Actually, I really appreciate that you don't want to be alarmist, but i already got a super scare when I had the stomach bleeding from Nsaids a few years back.

Sheila--about the cymbalta ad -- yes, it really got my blood boiling. The Pharma merry-go-round.
Since the RXs for opiates in the U.S. have skyrocketed in the past 10 years--epidemic of addiction-- you can just imagine the marketing wizards at Cymbalta thinking, "We can market this as a non -narcotic pain killer" (that's the prominent message of this ad). So, a crisis created by one drug is added to with another (and oh you poor suckers--doctors and patients who believe this malarky--who think Cymbalta is not "addictive" --some are in for quite a ride when they try to quit, and that special definition of "addiction" they use that so conveniently excludes ADs -- semantics won't be much help with the withdrawhell)

[Luc]

Luc--Actually, I really appreciate that you don't want to be alarmist, but i already got a super scare when I had the stomach bleeding from Nsaids a few years back.

I will go one better, Annie - about 14-15 years ago, in my pre-ADs life, I had been prescribed a handsome amount of NSAIDS. After 10 days, I started to experience pains and cramps in my stomach, which very fast got worse, eventually leading to stomach perforation - leading to emergency surgery (I was hanging by the thread). Miraculously saved by the very medicine... that led to the situation in the first place. Crazy stuff. Curiously enough, I had been prescribed those drugs for my back pain ("slipped disc"), which, at some point, turned out to be total misdiagnosis. It's since then that I realized what sham most of medicine is. But, what has really driven the point home was the truth about ADs. What total world of lies we live in...

[Sheila]

That's terrible about your iatrogenic experience, Luc! I'm so sorry you had to go through that. Ghastly!

I also want to say that there is a lot of information about paracetemol not being safe. I don't use it any more. I prefer aspirin, but, really, what I want to do is switch to willow bark. I just haven't gotten around to it yet, and, luckily, I am able to use less and less of any kind of OTC pain remedy.

I also had some blood in my urine from Ibuprofen in the past, so I had to stop using that, too!

[Chris]

Good news! I went to acupuncture for my knee and it helped.
Now I know that this knee problem is w/d related, but today is the first time i went to a doctor with something that was related to w/d and I realized before going how counterproductive it would be to get into trying to convince them of the "cause." In the past I've gotten very distracted at the doctor's office by "not being believed". So this time, i went in prepared for the question '"how did this happen, what did you do" ?. Keeping focused on the goal --pain relief--, rather than the cause, I said "I fell," and that allowed the focus of the visit to be on solving the immediate pain problem, rather than on the doctor's ignorance of SSRI w/d problems. And work it did!!!!!!!
There have been a lot of great comments here about descent, and coming through w/d as a rebirth.
I find that with my knee issue, I am relearning to walk. (literally) Peace.

[Sheila]

Brilliant, annie! That's great that you got relief! And that was very clever of you to translate the complaint into something that would get you what you needed, instead of struggling with someone else's prejudices. Very strategic!

And, yes, looking at this travail as a re-birth is a very productive was of re-framing it -- again turning it into something you can benefit from.

You're allowing yourself to strategize and get more of what you want!

[Luc]

Great news, Annie! Had you had any acupuncture before it?

[Chris]

yes, I've had quite a bit in the past, but the acupuncture I got for my knee was at a new clinic. I don't have insurance now, so I went to this new clinic because it is low cost and has students doing the needles (with dr. supervision).
Several years ago, I had gone to a very respected Chinese dr. and at one particular visit, had very good results for depression (it made me a believer in acupuncture); no doubt he is a highly skilled acupuncturist. But later, I came to find out this dr. is of the "no pain no gain" philosophy and the more the needle hurts the "better."
It is serendipity that I can't afford him right now because his approach is so aggressive and i think that is not the way to go in w/d.
Fortuitously, in going to the teaching clinic, the students are much more conservative and cautious not to cause pain.

[Sheila]

That's absolutely right, annie -- whatever treatment modality we try, we need to do a gentle, diluted form of it. Also, while I'm thinking of it, if you go back for acupuncture for other symptoms, people in w/d have found that they have to tell the acupuncturist to avoid any stimulating treatment, even if that is the formula that the practitioner normally uses. For us, acupuncture seems to work best if it's only calming treatments.

[Chris]

I actually did tell him that-- my concern about over- stimulating treatment, but he brought up the basic premise of acupuncture: that all pain is caused by blood or chi stagnation and that the very process of getting it moving is stimulating. I have limited understanding of this, but I think that Western concepts of stimulating and calming might not be literally translatable to TCM.

[Sheila]

Well, it's also the case that this is a new, man-made syndrome, and ancient TCM may have to learn something new in order to best help us.