Thursday, March 01, 2007

drug madness

I went to the doctor on Wednesday because of terrible head congestion that was causing migraine headaches. I ended up with prescriptions for antibiotics, decongestant/expectorant, and steroids.

When I went to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions, I couldn't get the decongestant because the doctor's prescription was wrong (they don't make that decongestant in the strength she prescribed). Ugh!

So I asked the pharmacist what Robitussin he would recommend. I had been taking Robitussin but it just wasn't strong enough. I told him I have to have something to get rid of this so I can get rid of the migraines! He recommended Mucinex-D. I had to fill out a Drug Enforcement Agency form and show my driver's license. They keep this medicine behind the counter and you have to sign for it because people use it to make Methanphetamine.

I took the two pills of the decongestant as prescribed at 4 pm, and at 8 pm, I took 2 more pills. Later on, I felt jumpy so I re-read the box...and it wasn't to take 2 every 4 hours, it was to take 2 every 12 hours! I am so used to taking sinus medications, and they're usually every 4 hours, I did it like a dunce without thinking about it. Even though I had read the box at the time of the first dose, I guess the congestion and headaches had made my thinking cloudy and I was a space-case.

No wonder I slept only about 15 minutes out of each hour that night...I was all hepped up on drugs! I finally gave up on trying to sleep at about 3:30 am. I cleaned the kitchen and did laundry, and I think I could have re-roofed the house and repaved the driveway. LOL. I thought about working on some portraits, but I felt just too edgy to do that.

I kept drinking a lot of water to get it the meds out of my system. Later in the day I talked to the pharmacist and asked him about it. He told me it's okay if I did that once, but it's when people do it over and over that it harms them. He said, "Now you know what it would be like if you took Crystal Meth." He said that people who take Meth like it for how it gives them extra energy and that they feel that it heightens their awareness.

I guess I can see that, but I definitely don't want to feel like that again. It taught me a good lesson to read and then re-read all medication instructions before taking, especially when I'm sick.

1 comment:

Cindy said...

I think everyone is sick. It must be going around the country or something.

I'd probably just assume that it was 2 every 4 hours as well. Sometimes drugs don't do what they are supposed to with me. I took Ambien when I was sick last week, and all it did was, oh, nothing. I was awake half the night.

 

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