Besides the chronic pain, the spastic muscles, and the uncertainty of what’s going to happen next, I’d have to say for me the worst side effect would have to be the emotions. I was raised in a family where my father (or at least the person who provided the sperm, because he was not much of a father) always believed that were to be seen and not heard. And actually not seen unless he needed us for something. My father was a firm believer that children were to be his servants and do his bidding. One thing that was not well tolerated in that house was crying, especially for boys. My brother and I were chastised, to say the least for showing emotion, and crying was not allowed. I can count the number of times before I got sick that I cried growing up. I got away with crying at my grandfather’s and grandmother’s funerals, when my two children were born, and when I got married to the woman that I have shared the past 30 years of my adult life with.

Since I have been sick I have cried at just about everything and it happens at a drop of a hat. It’s not just the waterworks that have changed, but I now know what women going through PMS feel like at least from the emotional side of things. My moods will swing to the far left to the far right in a second. The smallest things will set me off or make me laugh. They are not violent moods, not even angry moods, but mood swings nonetheless. I can be at a party with family and friends and laugh and have a great time and then something will happen that would not have an effect on a normal person that will cause me to get short. It lasts for a few minutes in most cases and then it’s back to the mood before. My wife would joke at times that it was like PMS including the cravings for yep, you guessed it, chocolate.

Being on Gabapentin does seem to help with that somewhat, but I still find that the waterworks seem to exist sometimes. When I was on Cymbalta it was 10 times worse, I would just cry too well basically cry.

Now let me qualify something, I am a U.S. Marine veteran, so I was not only taught how to control my emotions, but revealing my emotions was very much frowned upon by the Corps, so for me to show emotions at all is odd, but crying is just way out of my comfort zone, but it seems that in the current state of my illness, I’m just along for the ride.

Go figure