Cymbalta - Getting it Right
One of the things I have been playing around with trying to combat the fatigue and being tired all the time is when and how much Gabapentin I take. I’m prescribed 600mg in the morning and 600mg in the evening. The problem with taking it at those dosages is that it really increased the fatigue and drowsiness. So I take 300mg every 4 hours and one before I go to help. Usually, that works, with the rare exception of nights I wake up in pain and for those nights I keep a bottle of water and a bottle of Gabapentin in my nightstand.
I’m told by my neurologist that I can play with is to see what works best, but not to exceed 1800mg a day, which I never do. When I was on the 60mg of Cymbalta a day, I noticed that if I cut back on the Gabapentin, that I’m not a tired all day, but some of my other symptoms start to show up. Now if you have had pain for years and suddenly that pain is gone for weeks and months, you actually tend to forget how annoying and well dare I say it, how painful, it was. So when I stopped taking my Gabapentin entirely (again I have permission from my Neurologist to stop the Gabapentin, when I feel that the Cymbalta is working) for a few days to see if the Cymbalta was working for the pain. It worked about 75% compared to the 90-95% I’m getting from the Gabapentin. But I as I stated earlier, I noticed that some of my other symptoms appeared that I had actually pretty much forgotten about. I had discovered that the muscle spasms reappeared, first one was on my left side under my rib cage, then on my thigh, my arm, my calf, and my hands. I also noticed that my recall for words and my stumbling for words came back as did my anxiety. So back on Gabapentin, I went.
The one thing that I haven’t checked recently and I really need to is my heart rate and blood pressure. I’m curious to see where they are on the spectrum.
