xfrsie: How will I ever heal from mirtazapine and sertraline?

[xfrsie]

Hello,

 

English is not my native, but with help from my children and google translate I hope it’s understandable.

 

I have read some of the success stories and searched among other stories trying to find some one with the same symptoms I have.

It is a comfort to read that it is possible to get a normal life again when I feel like I do.

 

I don´t know what to do anymore and need advice. I’m not certain that withdrawal alone is causing the symptoms I have but the doctors can’t find anything.

I have stayed on 50mg sertraline for 1,5 years and it feels like I’m getting worse every day.

The ”attacks” I had 1,5 year ago due to withdrawal are not as severe as they were back then.

But it feels now like I get physically weaker every day. My neck is weaker, I lack stability in my spine, my jaw is weak and feels ”overflexible”. I have ”tremors” (according to google translate) in my legs and I can’t feel my toes

 

I have a constant burning pain under my ribcage, that is the main reason I can´t sleep. I always wake up in the night when my sleeping pills looses strength. My feeling when it burns is that I slowly looses contact with my muscles.

In the evenings my stomach sort of tightens up, and start to burn. This burning sensation are also on the back and sides of my head, and it travels down the lumbar spine (goes round and round). Feels like I have a ”crown of thorns” around my head.

 

The sertraline are supposed to ease my anxiety but I have anxiety all day long due to my symptoms. I don’t know how to handle it.

I´m terrified that I will end up like a vegetable.

Should I try to taper sertraline out? How do I deal with my anxiety?

 

Here is the story of how we ended up here:

 

2009

It started 12 years ago when I got a nerve pinched in my neck so my face turned numb. Due to the anxiety it caused, my doctor prescribed sertraline. I got difficulties sleeping so she also prescribed mirtazapine. 

I felt bad immediately so I consulted a psychiatrist (after a week) that increased the dose of Setralin and advised to taper out mirtazapine. I tapered out mirtazapine in 45 days and after 3 months of dizziness I started to feel better again.

 

2010-2014

Slowly I tapered the dose of Setralin from 50mg to12,5mg which I stayed at for the coming 5 years. Felt very good at this dose.

 

March 2019

I wanted to get off sertraline so I tapered my 12,5mg over 3 months and felt ok during summer. In late autumn, I started to feel anxious and I sought care for a burning feeling in the chest. I got cortisone prescribed, and this is where hell begins.

 

December 2019

I got completely speeded up by the cortisone with a lot of anxiety, so my doctor prescribed mirtazapine again.  

After only 20 minutes on 15mg I suffered from severe dizziness ...

I think that here is where the alarm bells should have started ringing, because that is the medicine I couldn't stand 10 years earlier.

 

January 7th 2020

I had difficulties sitting still, became both sound and light sensitive, my brain burned and I had twitches in my body. This was completely normal was the doctor response and she increased mirtazapine to 30mg.

This only made me worse. 

I felt like I was walking in the air, I could not talk on the phone, watch TV, had cramps in my stomach, had barely 2 hours of sleep per night. 

I felt like I constantly wanted to fall forward and started to get hallucinations and nightmares.

The doctor said this was normal and dismissed the side effects as nonsense.

 

January 21st 2020

I told my doctor about my symptoms again and reminded her about the mirtazapine I took ten years earlier. She then lowered the mirtazapine to 15mg and reinstated 25mg sertraline.

I felt very weak and shaky with a huge pressure on my head, along with my other symptoms, I spent most of the time in bed.

 

January 28th 2020

One week later we increased the sertraline to 50mg.

I didn't get better but not much worse either.

 

February 19th 2020. 

Met a psychologist that advised me to check my medication again because I could barely talk. So I called the doctor again who said that we should decrease the sertraline to 25mg.

 

February 21st 2020

A new date with my doctor where we went through the list of side effects from mirtazapine. I had all of the worst symptoms you can have and more. This was the first time she really listened to how I felt. She looked terrified and wanted me to stop taking mirtazapine immediately. So in 4 days I tapered it out.

After this I couldn't stretch my arm, my eyes hurt, my intestines lived their own life. I could see them moving, my mouth was more to the side than to the middle. The pressure in my head increased, my neck was burning and it went down my shoulders, felt like I had 50kg weight on each shoulder, I could barely breath. I had a constant feeling of falling forward, my toes turned numb…..

 

March 19th - April 2nd 2020

Met with a psychiatrist that said I was suffering from akathisia and advised to stop taking sertraline. Akathisia would disappear and I would feel better soon if I just did that. So in three weeks I tapered out sertraline completely so now I was out of SSRI. I also got sedative pills prescribed (oxascand) which I took 3 times a day.

But nothing got better….

At this point, I could just wander around the apartment all day, or sit in front of an open window, feeling like I´m burning up from inside.

There were many trips at this time to the emergency that of course couldn't help me, and I was not ill enough for psychiatric care etc.

 

April 14th 2020

A psychiatrist thought I should test a 3rd variant, escitalopram. But I only took one pill of those, the only thing that happened was that the collapse continued.

 

May 13th 2020

Now I had been off SSRIs for 4 weeks. With tingling in the head spinning around, brain fog, the head felt like a bowling ball with a huge pressure spreading out over the forehead and eyes. 

The feeling was that the whole nervous system were broken, the asphalt went in waves when I was out walking, huge auras around lamps.

We went to the ”emergency psychiatric care” every second day that sent me home immediately.

The emergency at the hospital could of course not find anything and sent me back home immediately, no one could relieve or help.

 

Now I couldn´t stand it any longer, and in consultation with another doctor, sertraline 25mg was prescribed again, with an increase to 50mg in 7 days.

Nothing got better, the pressure increased on my head and shoulders, I got nausea and felt like a washing machine was spinning around in my head (plus the other symptoms I already had).

 

Summer 2020 - Autumn 2021

The worst attacks I had got slowly better but the burning sensations I still have were the same. Here is where I started to feel like slowly loosing contact with the muscles.

 

February 2020

All hope was gone for me, the doctors said that there was nothing left to do. They had excluded MS, ALS, borrelia, thyroid gland and other diseases. All my blodtests were/are great, MR on my brain and spine didn’t give any clues.

Electroneurography test didn´t show anything…

So one night when I couldn´t sleep, I wrote a farewell letter to my husband and took all the sedatives I had, along with my sleeping pills.

A dose that probably would kill an elephant but I survived somehow. This is why my doctor stopped prescribing oxascand.

 

I have tried to end it all a couple of times after that, but something is holding me back. I try to look at all good things I have in life, a good supporting husband, wonderful children, grandchildren, caring friends.

But I’m a prisoner in my own body.

I’m absolutely terrified every day and I can’t think of anything else but my symptoms, that I will end up paralyzed in bed slowly fading away. How will I ever come through this. Where do I start, again?

 

The above is just a selection of what has happened since December 2019 with all trips between different doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, emergency rooms, acupuncture, massage and a lot more.

 

Thank you in advance from my deep heart for your time and advice.

 

[Altostrata]

Welcome, @xfrsie

 

What times o'clock do you take your drugs, with their dosages? Are your symptoms worse at any particular times of day?

[xfrsie]

Hi and thank you,

I take my sertraline in the morning, the entire dose (50mg) approximately around 11:00.

And my symptoms gets worse in the afternoon around 14:00-15:00 and continues getting worse rest of the day/evening until i go to sleep.
 

BR xfrsie

[Altostrata]

Do you feel better in the morning before you take 50mg sertraline? How often do you take Imovane?

[xfrsie]

I feel a little better in the morning before I get out of bed and a couple of hours after.
I take Imovane every night, that is the only way I can get some sleep because of the stinging sensation on the sides of my head.

I feel a little better when I lay down in the evening before I go to sleep, but i often wake up in the middle of the night with a burning sensation under my ribs and sometimes all over my body.

[Altostrata]

Imovane is zopiclone, a sleep drug. Please refer to it as zopiclone, so we know what drug it is.

 

You have been taking 7.5mg zopiclone every night sine February 19, 2020?

 

Please keep daily notes of times o’clock you take your drugs, their dosages, and your symptoms throughout the day. We need to know how you feel before and after taking each drug, and your symptoms in between. Post 24 hours of notes at a time in this topic, in a simple list format with time o’clock on the left and notation (symptom or drug and dosage) on the right. This can show if your symptoms are adverse effects from one of your drugs.

[xfrsie]

Hi,

Ok I will use Zopiclone instead.

Yes I have been taking 7,5mg every night since 19 February 2020.

 

I will keep daily notes in the format you describe and post starting tomorrow.

Thank you!