One mystery solved

Last Wednesday, I started feeling really crappy: achy, tired, and a little dizzy. It was a familiar feeling. I'd last felt it the day a few years ago when I'd mistakenly taken my bedtime pills in the morning. This time, though, I was certain that I'd taken my AM pills (after the last med mix-up, I bought a pill case of an entirely different color and design for my AM pills). The only thing I could think of was that I had probably missed a couple days of amitriptyline after forgetting to pick it up at Walgreen's.

Well, Friday morning, I figured it out: yes, I had correctly taken the pills from the AM pill case, but I had mistakenly portioned out the elongated, white nefazodone tablets, instead of the elongated, white Provigil tablets. So I wasn't getting the Provigil boost, and was instead giving myself more than double the correct dose of nefazodone and getting most of it in the morning. So I sorted out the right pills, and started feeling better almost immediately, although I woke up with really sore hips on Saturday.

It sure would be helpful if the makers of ordinary-looking white pills would give them some kind of obvious distinguishing mark, like a wacky shape or some kind of color. Flomax is good: orange/green capsule; Cymbalta is good, too: blue/green capsule. But Provigil kinda looks like nefazodone, which kinda looks like Tylenol. Baclofen and amitriptyline are both ordinary-looking round pills. I guess I can understand why the generics might forgo fancy shapes and colors, but Provigil? That stuff is expensive. My HMO pays good money for the stuff. You'd think a Schedule IV drug would have some flashy color or something. Oh well.

By the by, you've probably seen the articles about the discovery of three genes that are linked to MS. See the WaPo article here. According to the Post, these findings give you and me "new hope." I think that's hyperbole, of course, because this kind of study seems more to suggest how much we don't know about MS. After all, the Post article quotes one of the investigators as saying, "We suspect there will be dozens, perhaps hundreds of gene variations associated with MS."

Speaking of new hope, I have officially concluded that I received no benefit from the Botox procedure. No change in urgency, emptying, bedwetting, dribbling, or any of the bladder-related indignities. Too bad. On the other hand, I got to see what the inside of my urethra looks like, so it's not a total loss.