Monday, November 12, 2007

Nothing special to report (but doing it anyway)

Still doing alright, but also still looking for further improvement. As a result of my sleep study I got a prescription for melatonin. It did knock me out (the med, not the prescription), but kept me awake at night. I tried adding inositol to the regime, and surprisingly it did work just as I was hoping for, keeping me asleep. So now I've all but solved 18 years of poor sleep (I still have nocturia, nightmares and stuff) with a very inexpensive combo that has no side effects. Sadly, it did not make much of a difference in how I feel or my functionality.

I had a kind of a burnout about 1.5 months(?) ago, a mild adrenal crisis. So I do have adrenal fatigue, something I've tried to deny for a long time. I treated it with licorice and was expecting to get a Rx for low dose hydrocortisone from my doctor, but instead he wanted to try his circulatory hypothesis and prescribed me etilefrine, a med which works pretty much the opposite from tamsulosine which I tried in the summer. He theorizes my hypocortisolism may be secondary to poor circulation. Sadly I haven't noticed anything from the med. Save for some supine tachycardia episodes I could as well be taking sugar pills.

I'm going to the infection clinic soon, after not being there since August last year. No, I'm not going voluntarily! They're useless, but I have to hang around the clueless public sector folks if I want to ever get on disability, though maybe I'm just in denial, because unless I sue the public insurer it will most likely never happen. It's interesting to see what happens there, at least they'll probably frown upon my medication. The chap who leads the unit thinks LDN is "a hoax or something that makes CFS worse", based on having never heard of it prior to getting asked about it.

I _might_ be offered IVIG which I haven't been given before. I really don't know if I should take it. Just a year ago I would have jumped at the opportunity, but now the idea of an expensive IV treatment that would require me to spend me an entire day in the hospital every three weeks, carries small but life-thratening risks and may well offer no benefit since I'm already on LDN does not seem necessarily worth it, unlike when I was really really sick and the chance of getting any medical treatment seemed hopeless.

Now I'm not sure if I can even benefit from further treatment, with the exception for hydrocortisone and perhaps pyridostigmine. Perhaps there's nothing more that can be done unless I get treated for the chronic viral infection I most likely have, and that won't be happening since it would cost like 5,000 euros a month.

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