My doctor prescribed diuretic pills to go along with my eye drops to try to control the pressure in my eyes. She said side effects included drowsiness, and frequent urination. She also said to take them with food or they could upset my stomach. I made sure they wouldn't make me gain wait, break out, or lose hair.
My friend, Artie told me to start taking a potassium supplement because the diuretic leaches potassium from the body. I picked up the prescription when I got back from the wedding. I spent the rest of that week eating a banana a day since I forgot to buy potassium tablets.
I started out bright and early Monday morning taking the pills. To me drowsy means a bit sleepy, like when you stay up later than usual. I was not drowsy I was verging on narcolepsy. One minute I'm sitting at the computer watching something on Hulu and the next thing I know, where my forehead meets my hair line is resting on the monitor's screen. I sit back but am oh so sleepy. I guess I dose off again because this time my eyes are closed but I don't know where I am. I decide to take a nap. I wake up with a headache. I think I went to bed around 7:00 p.m.
I woke up the next morning feeling exausted. My body was stiff and achy and that pesky headache was back. I slept on and off at the computer until I decided to give up and take a nap. My friend, Lee, calls and I thought I was talking to her for a while until she said she would let me go because my medicine had me sounding groggy or funny. I don't remember her exact words. Here I was think I sounded fine after my nap and all. My plan was to go downstairs but I found myself sitting in the bed several minutes later. When I do make it downstairs I decide I'm to tired to stay up. I tell Andrea I'm going to bed. She informs me that it is only 5:00 o'clock.
"I can't live like this." I think to myself. "Give it a week; you'll adjust and things will get back to normal. You want to preserve the little sight you've got in your left eye. It's already useless." I debate with myself most of the morning. I take my pill vowing to give it a week. I'm getting wiped out sleepy again. "I can't live like this."
I pick up the phone and call the doctor. Lo and behold I got to speak with her! I explain the overwhelming sleepiness and headache. I even explain how I had no diuretic effect. She said to stop taking them and she'd call in a prescription with half the dosage. I can't half the pills I've got because they're time released capsules. The Grady pharmacy takes a few days to fill called in prescriptions so I'll pick it up Monday or Tuesday. I hope I don't have those side effects on the lesser dose. I'm feeling better as the medication leaves my system. Last night I stayed up until 8:30. It is already after 8:00 and I'm not sleepy.
For some reason my experience caused me to think about people in nursing homes. There you see people who are just plain out of it and others who don't want to take their medicine. If I had been in a nursing home could I have convinced a nurse to call my doctor? When a person in a nursing home doesn't want to take his/her medicine is it because they want to avoid unpleasant side effects they've been unable to communicate to someone who can do something about it? And the ones who are out of it, just sitting there not tuned it; are they ever alert enough to tell their doctor it's a medication that's causing that state?
I'm so glad I decided to go ahead and call my doctor. Hopefully changing the dosage will do the trick. I guess it all comes down to what you can live with. When I first started using the eye drops I'd feel dizzy for about ten seconds after I put them in. Then I was fine until the next time. After about a week the dizziness lessened in duration and happens infrequently. I could live with that; it didn't impair my ability to function.
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