Well, I “slept” without the Clonazepam last night. It wasn’t good sleep, by any means, as I have no idea how many times I woke up and waited to go back to sleep for a bit – but I made it through.
Of course, because of the long half-life of this benzo, I still have some of that last .25mg pill from Thursday night in my system. It will take the rest of the weekend before I dare try going back to my old meds – Methacarbamol and Neurontin. I have called for a Neuro appointment, but no telling how long it will be before I can actually see him.
Maybe this couple of months off my usual meds will make them work better for me again. I had been gradually increasing the doses to the maximum, because they were no longer helping with the muscle spasms and pain. And the high doses were making the brain fog worse. That’s why I had asked for a med change, and how I came to be back trying Clonazepam.
I decided to look back through all my blog posts for every mention of Clonazepam, as I had been on it once before, back near the beginning of this saga. At that time I was on Parkinson’s meds, and the extreme muscle weakness I experienced was attributed to the combination of meds. Now I know that’s probably not the case. The wet noodle muscle weakness I described back then is exactly how I’m feeling now.
Asking for Help Doesn’t Come Easy
DH has done his best to take up the slack here at home, helping with things I would normally do quite easily. I had gotten very frustrated with him, because he wasn’t helping. But he’s not a mind reader, and I hadn’t actually asked him for help. So we had a “come to meetin’ talk” the other night. Now the air has been cleared, and I’m getting more help. I still have to remind him, as he had gotten in the habit of letting me do a lot of stuff he once would have done automatically. His paralyzed leg and slow recovery from his heart attack changed both our roles considerably. But for now, I’m more in need of help than he is. And I’m getting it, sometimes after asking, sometimes without asking.
I did ask DH to bring the walker back upstairs, but I’m resisting using it, just as I did years ago. My DD fussed at me yesterday when she saw how slow and shuffling my gait has gotten, saying I needed to get over my pride and go back to using it. I know she’s right, but it’s a hard change to make. It feels like defeat. And in my mind it’s so much more VISIBLE than my gait – it makes me conspicuous, and that’s something I am NOT comfortable with.
This whole process of slowly going off one set of meds, then slowly going on another med, slowly increasing the dosage, then slowly cutting the dosage back to nothing has taken a couple of months. It’s the only safe way to transition from such powerful chemicals, and it’s the only way to find out if something different will help any more than what I was already on.
So I continue being a clinical trial of one, basically using myself as a guinea pig, praying each time that something will work to improve my quality of life.