The Jumbled Boxed Car Line-Up

Last night I went to the store in my pajamas. No, I wasn't delirious, nor did I have a fever of 104 and was going out for an important script. I was getting some hot-oil treatment for my hair. For at least a week, I hadn't been able to brush my hair - at all. I'd just been putting it up in a pony tail when it was wet, because it was matted like dreadlocks but in balls. When I could brush it, it would fall out it great fistfulls. (In fact, it still does!) I used the oil on my hair, and lo and behold, I could brush my hair, and although it still fell out, it felt so much better.

The first psych drug I went on for bipolar was a pill called Depakote. It had a side effect of weight gain. I remember sitting there- the thin me- looking at the bottle as I took out my first pill and swallowed it, thinking about how my doctor had told me about this side effect. After a year or so, I switched to Lithium because of the weight I'd gained. I thought it was an even trade off. And of the most part, it has been. However, there have been other negative side effects to lithium.

A few days ago, I had been to my primary care doctor for a check up. She had done blood work that said my thyroid was low. That's not new news, but its just a lot lower than it had been. Why is my thyroid level low? Lithium! So I take the Lithium for my bipolar, and my thyroid gets low. What else does low thyroid do to you besides dry falling-out hair? It lowers your metabolism and raises your cholesterol! Guess what else my doctor said I need to do? Exercise! Well guess what doc, I'm ahead of you on that one, though now I'm wondering if I'm actually going to lose weight doing it. So THEN, she tells me, of course, that my triglycerides are too high. Yes, low thyroid does that, but guess what else is famous for doing that? Zyprexa! Zyprexa also changes your metabolism so that its very easy to save fat and very difficult to lose it. My doctor then suggested that I might have diabetes- because I'm so fat, of course. The test came back negative, though. It just feels like I'm falling apart.

So here we are with a line-up of box cars on a train. One drug has side effects and into another and so does another until you find yourself on a train that's speeding along where the cars are crashing into each other and threatening to fall off the tracks. Why not just stop the train and remove the engine?