Discouraging Medication Updates

Odds-and-ends reports on the medications:

The temazepam (prescribed to try to get rid of the bad dreams I've been having from the Prozac) was 15 mg capsules, take 1-2. I tried 15 mg the first night, and 30 mg for each of the next two nights. No effect on dreams; made me disoriented in the night; and I was groggy in the morning. Fail. So I called my doctor's "med line" and left a message asking to try something else. I called on Friday the 9th, and the med line takes 2-3 business days, so I was hoping to have something new to try by mid-week the next week.

I tried taking an Ambien on the fourth night, to see what that would be like---but although it knocked me out very pleasantly (I hate the "trying to fall asleep" part, and Ambien eliminates it), I still dreamed that I'd been given a position of political power in India, and that this position came with a house, and so I toured the house and I saw every linoleum/carpet pattern and every knick-knack, and then a couple of the little kids got into the cat litter box and I had to clean them up while all my advisors/committee peeps waited for me in the parlor, and I saw myself in the mirror and my hair was dark brown (this was before I'd colored it). So Ambien fails too.

Meanwhile, I've been sleepy a lot during the day, maybe because of the dreams, but maybe because of the Prozac timing: the psychiatrist suggested taking it in the morning with breakfast. So I started taking it at bedtime instead of at breakfast, to see if that changes anything.

On Friday the 16th, I realized it had been a week and no action from the doctor, so I called again. This time a nurse called me back and said that temazepam takes 1-2 weeks to work. This seemed unlikely to me for an -azepam drug, which I think of as being as-needed and also as losing effectiveness as the person gets more accustomed to them, but she is the one who works as a psychiatric nurse and I am the one taking psychiatric meds, so I think she has better creds than I do.

That night I took a temazepam, 15 mg dose. In the middle of the night, one of the kids cried, and I launched out of bed as usual---and the world spun and the hope chest smacked me in the hip as the floor came up to smack me in the face. Mike got up to deal with the crying child while I sat there wondering who'd shoved the world, and then I moved my head and everything spun again. In the morning I was still so dizzy I couldn't walk without holding onto things and keeping my head steady and low. It wore off mostly by the time I was eating breakfast, and I had just slight dizziness periodically for the next few hours.

My theories:
1. Not a good idea to swallow the Prozac WITH the temazepam, both at the same time.
2. Temazepam may not be a good choice for me.

Furthermore, I still had awful dreams. I dreamed that people were tripping and falling, and that if they fell on a certain strip of sidewalk they would smash and die. There was a body on the sidewalk, all smashed. I was walking very carefully.

I also dreamed that I was looking for a bathroom, but all the bathrooms were unusable. I thought to myself, "Oh, hey! That means I'm dreaming, and that I need to pee! I'll wake myself up!" And I tried a bunch of stuff and nothing worked, and I felt panicked and trapped in the dream.

I also dreamed that we moved into a new house, and that a few days later plants started poking through all over the walls and ceilings. I dreamed that I went to stay in a motel when the plants started lunging for me, and our motel was attacked by a gang with guns who took all our valuable things including my medication, and that I was fretting because the psychiatrist was NEVER going to believe this and she'd think I was a total drug-seeker.

I didn't take the temazepam last night, and I didn't take the Prozac either. I'm going to switch my Prozac back to morning, and then after a few days I'll give the temazepam another shot. If it still makes me FALL DOWN, I'm calling it a FAIL.

I'm about to stop taking the Prozac entirely (I mean, under the supervision of the doctor---I know not to just quit it) if the dreams keep up. It's like seeing a double-feature scary movie every night, and I HATE scary movies.