Human guinea pig

Forgot to ask the pdoc today if 296.34 is his professional clinical diagnosis or just a working diagnosis in order to get insurance to cover the medication and weekly blood draws. I felt so sick from the Clozaril, I wouldn't have even remember to ask if I'd been holding a huge billboard with that question on it. Didn't help that I was having a massive panic attack too and felt like I was going to vomit and pass out in his office.

He actually wanted me to go from 25 mgs to 50 mgs of the stuff, even after I mentioned how awful I've been feeling. How incapacitated by the med I've become. I told him I'd keep taking the 25 mgs for another week and if I don't start feeling better soon, I'm probably just going to stop taking it. I'm certainly not going to up the dose and risk feeling worse.

One recommendation he offered was TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation). Supposedly Medicare now covers it, but if Medicaid isn't going to pick up the difference, I definitely won't be doing that. I'm not even sure how I feel about playing the human guinea pig again. TMS hasn't been around long enough to prove its efficacy or long term safety. I have vague memories of a lecture I attended at the 2009 NAMI Illinois Conference given by Dr. Philip Janicak who is a Professor of Psychiatry at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and has been involved with the study of TMS since the beginning of the clinical trials in the U.S. I'd have to dig out the PowerPoint print-out he gave me, but I seem to recall not being impressed by the clinical trial data. From a statistical standpoint, I believe it wasn't much better than the placebo, even though Dr. Janicak raved about the results as being quite promising.

I don't like all the unknowns, especially not after playing guinea pig to the worthless piece of metal in my chest known as the VNS implant. That has proven to be a HUGE waste of taxpayer money since it hasn't done diddly except make me angry that I agreed to have it implanted.

For now he added 100 mgs of Wellbutrin back into the mix and as he was writing the script he says that if I start feeling suicidal again, I may need another short hospital stay as I adjust to the med. I told him another hospital stay right now is completely out of the question. The next two weeks are booked solid and since no one in my family is talking to me, I need to be here to get everything done cuz no one else will do it for me. Don't recall ever getting any more suicidal than I typically am the previous times I've been on Wellbutrin, so I'm not expecting that to happen this time around.