Hallucinations

January 24, 2014

Well isn't this grand.  Den is now hallucinating.  He dropped to 80 mg. a day on the first of January, but the past few days he has been hallucinating.   I am not sure what to do but I feel like this is too much for either of us.  We are not sure if this is even caused  by Cymbalta, but I did look it up and yep Cymbalta  can cause hallucinations, and since this is so overwhelming I don't even want to look for more evidence of this drug causing hallucinations.

Crazy town, I fear that they will take it off the market and he will just lose his mind and die.  I mean they should take it off, and I have not seen it advertised in a while.  So who knows.  What millions of people will lose their mind permanently  because they cannot "gradually" reduce Cymbalta.

Oh yes, his blood pressure is higher than it has ever been, so he is taking my blood pressure pills.  Yes, we have another doctor's appointment in a couple weeks, after he has all his upper teeth removed, and he sees a doctor about his torn rotator cuff.

208/172   pulse
230/190  pulse 60

I do not want to call my doctor daughter because I am afraid she will tell me to take Den to the hospital  and I cannot bear to do it.  Should I give him some more Cymbalta?  Is that what this is?  I have no idea.

Starting to reduce again, surprise!

So today is January 6, 2014.  Dennis and I had talked about his reducing Cymbalta by 10mg. after the holidays.  Well, I figured since he has to have a colonoscopy and have all of his upper teeth removed in January, that we would give him a months  pass. Stupidly, I never talked to him about my idea.  So, without mentioning it, he faithfully reduced his dosage by 10mg. on January 1st.  It takes almost a week for the reduction to really kick into his brain, which it did today! I couldn't believe what he was saying.  We have had a rough few weeks but today he found out that his other medication costs have doubled and he got very upset.  Very upset. I wondered why Dennis was suddenly faithless and seemingly unrealistically angry. I was thoroughly surprised until he started putting pills back into his pill holders. He was putting Cymbalta back, because, because he was losing it.

Well duh.  The dog is vomiting on every rug in the house, (the dog is almost 16 years old, very loved, and there is nothing the doctors can do), prices on drugs doubled, loved ones in the hospital, well everyone knows about difficult circumstances..  But I am just writing this to say that I HATE Cymbalta.   He could handle all of lifes problems with faith until he reduced his Cymbalta by 10mg.  We will still handle this with faith in our savior, Jesus.  I told him I was so proud of him and that he is doing wonderfully!

Cymbalta Withdrawal Continues

September 23, 2013 Dennis began another 8% reduction of Cymbalta.  He has now begun taking 66 pellets out of one 60mg capsule.The other 60mg capsule remains the same.  This means that he is currently taking 100mg a day.

The first three days he has been fine.  But at each reduction the fourth day “Something changes in my mind”, is what he says.

By October 4, after two weeks his anger is reducing but he just feels depressed because he has been so  horribly mad. Sometimes at himself and sometimes at me.   Neither of us can imagine living like this for months, without an let up.  

finds the numbness terrifying as well, because it makes no sense. He thought that it might be a precursor to some other serious illness, but was happy to hear that others have similar symptoms.  Some days he just fears that he is crazy and he will never be any better.  Others he is optimistic that he is improving.

What I find almost unbearable is his anger, especially during the first two weeks of reduction of Cymbalta.  He is just plain mean and I am forced to “bite my tongue” and not respond.  Ultimately, of course, of reply in anger, to something he does, and  he becomes furious.  He has told me that he feels like I am trying to purposefully be mean. There is no talking him “down”.  I just have to hold on until his “storm” passes in a day or two.  By that time I just feel like I can’t take his meanness anymore.  This is so hard.

Right now Dennis is sobbing because he is acting so mean.  I suggested that he try to remember I am not the enemy when he is feeling so horrible, but he said, “It just doesn’t do any good”.  In other words he cannot think.  He is again thinking of suicide.

Bigger Than Life/#getoffcymbalta

My father, Cyril Hume, co-wrote the screenplay of the movie, Bigger Than Life. It is a story about a school teacher who takes a new drug called cortisone, which saves his life, but ultimately, almost destroys him. My father wrote other more famous screenplays including Forbidden Planet, and Ransom.  Is it ironic that I am a school teacher whose husband took a new drug called Cymbalta which threatens to destroy our lives? Perhaps.

Last year, Dennis was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, with pneumonia.  He was hooked up to a breathing machine and medicated so that he would sleep while his lungs cleared and healed. Instead of sleeping he had to be tied down, moaning, yelling,and writhing for over a week, with no clear explanation as to why none of the hospital drugs could calm him down.  A nursing home was mentioned but thankfully he recovered his faculties enough to go home, improved.  During his 10 day stay at the hospital he was not given any Cymbalta. We restarted the medication as soon as he got home in March 2012.

June 2012, God miraculously healed him after 21 years of agonizing  back pain. He immediately stopped taking 240 mg of morphine a day, which he had been taking for years, with no withdrawals, which we also knew was a miracle.

January 2013, he felt he no longer needed an antidepressant/pain reliever. Wonderfully, he was no longer depressed by constant and debilitating back pain.  

January 8, Dennis decided to stop taking Cymbalta, never imagining that this would be the roller coaster ride of our lives..  I mean, hadn’t God delivered him from morphine and back pain?

This blog will be a record of our journey to “get off” Cymbalta.  Dennis, has taken it for over 7 years at a 120 mg dose a day.   

Within 8 days of taking his last Cymbalta dose, he believed that he was losing his mind.  He heard noises in his head, felt like his brain was on fire, saw flashes of his brain zinging, suffered panic attacks,could not sleep, felt numbness in his face and feet, could not concentrate on any thoughts at all, could not think but felt like he was being blasted with numberless thoughts all at once, and flew into a continual rage. He says it felt like his mind was being hit with a shotgun and the noises were about as loud. As the days progressed, he became cruel, crazy, sleepless, and unable to speak coherently.  I finally found him sitting in our car, in our closed garage, with the gas running, talking about suicide.

January 17th he began taking Cymbalta again, hoping this would “fix” his problems. It did help, but he has never been the same since.

After two months he tried reducing his dosage by 25% (90 mg a day for a month), at his doctor’s recommendation. The rage, sleeplessness, depression and other symptoms reappeared, but in a reduced amount.  

It had also become important to #getoffcymbalta because we had turned 65 and our $90.00 co-pay was no longer in effect. I had retired, and insurance was no longer covering the $311.00 monthly Cymbalta  price tag. $311.00 is ⅓ of my total social security retirement payment.

April 20th he began reducing his dosage again, another 25%, to 60 mg a day. The symptoms increased and then seemed to back off a bit in May.  He was trying to control the agony by sheer will power.

May 20th  he reduced his dosage to 4 - 60 mg tablets a week. Within 10 days he was not only back to January symptoms but even worse than before.  He feared that he would never be right again, and would never #getoffcymbalta, and that he had permanently lost his mind. He could not believe that Cymbalta was the cause of his problems. He just kept blaming himself, not the drug. He thought he was going crazy. Again, suicide seemed like the only way out.

By May he went back to full strength at 120 mg a day, but  felt his mind had been destroyed, and that he would never be “right” again.  

So, one desperate day, I Googled Cymbalta +depression + brain zaps, never seriously considering that this could be the reason our lives were being torn apart. But, to my absolute horror, I found that  thousands of people were having similar problems with Cymbalta.  Other people were suffering horrible withdrawal problems. Lawsuits were being filed. I waited a week to tell Dennis, because I feared this news could send him into further depression and rage.  To be addicted to a drug that leaves you screaming and out of control when you try to stop taking it, especially after being healed of morphline and back pain, was more than I felt he could bear.

In embarrassment, we contacted our daughter, who is a medical doctor and hospitalist.  She was shocked to hear what we had to say.  So she researched Cymbalta and emailed us information. For the most part, doctors are just finding out about Cymbalta’s side effects. Our primary physician did not know about it either.  

But this is not a story of despair.  We have been on a journey of reducing Cymbalta for two months now, and there does seem to be hope for deliverance. We were afraid to try to stop taking it, but we knew we have no choice.We have to #getoffcymbalta.

August 22, 2013 Dennis reduced his dosage by 8%.  Cymbalta  comes in little pellets, within a gelatin capsule, containing 200 (plus or minus 2) pellets per 30 mg capsule. He had to painstakingly count and remove 32 little pellets from one of every two capsules.  By removing 32 little pellets out from one of the two capsules he takes daily, he reduced his Cymbalta dosage by 8%.   

For the first week the anger, numbness in his lips and feet, ringing in his brain, panic attacks, and sleeplessness began again.

August 31, through the 20th of September symptoms gradually reduced.  Mornings, the ringing was more severe but tapered off in the afternoons. His anger reduced but he was very frustrated that his short term memory was still so poor.

Our next blogs will be much shorter. It has been difficult to honestly tell this tale.