The Year I Became A Zombie...Trick or Treat!

The next edition of the blog carnival will be posted on Monday, October 18. The theme: Trick or Treat! Halloween is coming soon and we started thinking, wow, medicine is like Editrix Jenni's favorite holiday. Sometimes you get treats, and sometimes you get tricks. We'd love to hear about the ups and downs of your experience. Show us the highs and lows, and the surprises!


Palms sweaty, heart racing, tremors, chest tightness, high blood pressure, nervousness, anxiety, agitation, urinary incontinence, goose bumps, rapid breathing, chills, restlessness, panic atticks, inability to sit still, nightmares, unusual dreaming, abnormal sleep pattern, insomnia! These could be the same effects before, during and after a scary movie or a haunted house. These are examples of side effects from different medications.  I figured this topic would be fitting with Halloween around the corner. When you have chronic illnesses, you have many different medications to take. With the many medications, you have many side effects. Because you have so many side effects, you have to sometimes take even more medications to counteract the awful effects. And sometimes, you can even make more side effects from the added medications to counteract those original side effects. It can become an endless cycle!

I was once misdiagnosed with depression when I went to the doctor with hip, knee and shoulder pain. I told the doctor I couldn't walk up the back steps. The doctor was thinking it was possible that I could be showing signs of multiple sclerosis. An MRI and CT scan were performed. They came back negative. The doctor told me that there were no lesions. He said that I most likely was having symptoms of depression because it can cause pain as well as the more common symptoms. I was sent to a psychiatrist and was indeed diagnosed with depression. By then, though, I do believe I was depressed that no one could figure out what was causing the disabling pain that was making me unable to put one foot in front of the other or reach above my head. I was put on an antidepressant, and at first it did nothing.  Then I was put on a different one, then another, and then another, etc., etc., etc. until I had tried every single SSRI out there. I was told that I probably needed to increase the dose. I was put on one of the many that I had tried only on a higher dose. I began to feel extremely energetic. My thoughts began to raise. My mind began to wander. My legs became restless. I felt like I was losing myself. I was getting racing thoughts. My psychologist told me that I must have been diagnosed too soon with depression. I must have bipolar disorder where I have both mania and depression. I was put on a cocktail of drugs for bipolar depression. I got all the manic symptoms under control, and basically the depression was under control too. I felt absolutely nothing! How can you feel nothing when you had been in so much pain before? I knew something was terribly wrong. I can tell you this. I hate being in pain, but I never ever want to feel "nothing" again. I got to a point---here comes another Halloween reference--where I was turned into a living Zombie. I WAS "night of the living dead." I sat and stared for hours. I could no longer drive a car. I lost my concentration so I could not even comprehend a 30 second commercial let alone a 30 minute T.V. show or a 2 hour movie. I couldn't hold a normal conversation because I didn't even feel like I was in the same room as the other person talking with me. I felt like I should have just walked around moaning "brains, brains..." My walk was more of a "cogwheel," and my tongue was stiff when I tried to talk. I even drooled slightly. What had happened to me? Would I ever get through this?

Well, I was misdiagnosed, number one. I never had depression. When I was given an antidepressant, my body had an adverse reaction to it. I had a manic episode caused by the antidepressant. I was never bipolar; the medication that was given to me for the wrong diagnosis caused a severe side effect that mimicked bipolar disorder. The medications for the bipolar disorder never helped the bipolar disorder, they only caused multiple side effects, therefore turning me into a living Zombie!

I moved away to another state. I had no medication left over. I woke up from a terrible curse! Someone cursed me and turned me into a Zombie. When the curse wore off (the meds ran out), I woke up as a whole person again. I had no depression, no mania. You know what I did have? I had a hell of a lot of pain; that's what!  Trick or Treat!