TannieSpace

geekery, drawing and then some

Posts about plaquenil

Away with the nausea.

When I woke up from surgery, about half an hour after they sewed me up again, I felt nauseous. They gave me an injection of something which helped a little, though I did stay nauseous all the time in the hospital.

I have an anecdote there: I got this medication that didn't help so much, so one of the nurses (bless her) switched me to something else, and that worked great. This after exclaiming:

But this stuff relaxes your stomach! You don't have that anymore, I will give you something else.

The stuff I got after that worked great. The next time they wanted to give me that other stuff again, but I protested heavily and I got the other stuff again. They also turned down the epidural (took away one of the opiates) to help with the nausea.

It never went away completely.

Now that I've removed certain foods from my diet (wheat-products and milk) and have stopped taking the Plaquenil I have a lot less nausea. It hasn't gone away completely (yet), however, it has gone away a lot. Instead of mostly nauseous with some nausea-free hours, the reverse happens most of the time. I only have the last week or two to look at, so I won't yet do a little victory dance. It looks good, though, and that makes me happy.


The medication rollercoaster

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My new rheumy -- so far, very pleased -- agreed that nausea caused by Plaquenil doesn't help me. I didn't even have to explain it, he told me to stop taking them right away and to increase my MTX. This means I need to get new pre-pared syringes.

This makes the MTX basically the only 'real' medication I still take, apart from the occasional naproxen or paracetamol (Tylenol).

I do take a decent load of vitamins in a medicinal way, not taking them causes plenty of issues, and they may interact with each-other / other meds so I always count them as medication.

My last blood-test showed a deficiency of vitamin D, ferritine, low B12. Still waiting for the vitamin B1.

Currently I take:

MTX once per week, as injection, for the RA folic acid once per week, to counteract the side-effects of MTX vitamin B12 once per month injection due to inability to absorb vitamin D as cod liver oil, twice per day, also comes with vitamin A, and as tiny tablets, four per day, for 'senior citizens' which just have D in them multi-vitamins also for 'senior citizens' which has extra vitamin B1, iron and zinc, twice per day calcium twice per day, with extra vitamin K and D

Mixing and matching turns into another juggling game because too many of certain vitamins (A) and minerals (iron and zinc) poison my liver, and my liver has a hard time dealing with all the other poison already, so I don't want to push that ;)

My body needs lots of fine-tuning. *[MTX]: Methothrexate