Side Effects

One of the inevitabilities of anti-depressants and other psycho-tropic drugs is side effects.  They all have them, and I don't know of anyone who hasn't escaped them.  I've suffered many of them, from the more mundane, like headaches and terrible insomnia, to the more unusual, like tingling of hands, feet and mouth.   One of the many reasons that depression stinks. Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease.  At the very least, it doesn't make experiencing the disease any easier, particularly when the drugs aren't working and there is only down side.

On my current mix I'm experiencing headaches, dizziness, a drop in blood pressure when I stand up (you know that feeling - like you are going to black out), abdominal pains, dry mouth, vivid dreams, sometimes nightmares and when I let my lithium level get too high because I don't drink enough water, diarrhea.  Generally, an OK mix, if not a bit unpleasant.

Last night, I experienced a new side effect of one of my new drugs, Seroquel (a new class for me - atypical antipsychotics.  I just get to try new things all the time.)  

Sleep.

No joke.  I haven't really slept since my world starting turning upside down a year ago.  I can count on one hand the number of times that I've slept through the night.  My average over the year has been 6 hours a night.  When I was stable (before the crash) I was a 7-8 hour kind of gal.

Last night I slept 10 hours.  I don't think I've done that since college.  I woke up once to relieve myself (side effect), but other than that slept and slept and slept.  I had read that Seroquel made people sleep 10-12 hours a night, but I didn't think that would apply to me.

And I dreamed mostly lovely dreams.  Heartbreaking to wake up dreams.  I played with my niece on the floor for hours, I took my daughter to Disneyland, and my husband sang a heart-breakingly beautiful song to me (and he looked surprisingly like Richard Gere).

This is a side effect I can live with.

I remember a tv show, I think Ally McBeal, where there was a terminally ill woman who wanted to be put to sleep (and not in the way animals are) because her dreams were better than her reality.  

I get it.