Lamictal: Lemon Flavoured Hell

Girl hates Lamictal

Two posts ago I shared about my slowly increasing Lamictal dose. I reached 200mg and started to feel a little better emotionally but dreading taking it every morning as the tablets are dissolvable and the second they touch your tongue you’re attacked by what I can best describe as out-of-date lemon sherbet (I don’t think sherbet goes off though). Two weeks ago the jump was made from 200-300mg and the same day I started feeling very nauseous, the next day I spent six hours in Emergency due to a Stephens Johnson scare. I had a few symptoms which I wasn’t worried by but because I was very uncomfortable I called Nurse on Call and she called a paramedic who called Poisons Hotline who then called back the paramedic and insisted I go into Emergency. It resulted in nothing but some painkillers and one tablet which had a very long name I can’t recall.

So that was last Sunday. I continued taking the 300mg dose and being able to eat next to nothing until last Wednesday when the taste got the better of me and I threw it up the moment I swallowed it. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist that day, he encouraged me to keep going with it and see if the nausea went away. Next day I threw up the tablet again and decided to give up on it. Even if my mood was better I couldn’t continue feeling constantly sick and I could no longer swallow the bloody things anyway. It took until this Monday for the nausea to go away and now I can eat a full meal. Dropped a bit of weight though.

I’m still off Seroquel and I can feel feelings, I think I like it but it’s scary. At the moment I’m not on an antidepressant and I feel okay, it’s the anxiety causing most of the problems. I am however on an antipsychotic and a mood stabiliser. I’m interested to see the direction things take in coming months. An interesting start point is that if a gun was immediately placed on the table I’m sitting at I don’t think I’d shoot myself, but only six to eight weeks ago I wouldn’t have hesitated. Progress my friends.