Talking to my dr tomorrow - any suggestions?

[musiclover]

Hi, I'm looking to see if anyone has any suggestions. I just emailed my doctor, so he will probably call me in a day or two. I have found that if I have more info and ideas to share, I get more out of our conversations.

Here is my dilemma. I need a medicine to calm this peripheral nerve irritation and pain. I have tried Elavil, but it made my PFD worse, with muscle spasms that turned into very tight and painful muscles.

Now I'm on Neurontin. I'm not sure I'm feeling any benefit at all after three or four weeks. I am on 600mg/day, and maybe it's that I need to increase the dosage to feel a benefit, but I feel drunk 24/7. I can barely do my job, I get lost very easily and forget basic words all the time, which is embarrassing at work.

So my question is this, can anybody recommend any other medications in this case? I have heard of Lyrica. What are the other ones? Can anybody make a recommendation so I can discuss the options with my doc?

Thank you!

[scrambles]

I also didn't benefit from neurontin. Lyrica ( which is similar to neurontin)/Cymblalta combo has worked the best for me when it came to my PFD. Elavil can cause urine retention so it aggravated my PFD.

[musiclover]

Thanks for responding. I think I remember reading some other posts on here about Lyrica and Cymbalta together. I will ask my doc about that. Thanks!

[ICNDonna]

What dosage of elavil did you try? It comes as low as 5 mg.

Donna

[musiclover]

I think I was on 10mg of Elavil. After about 4 days, it made me have a lot of problems with spasming and tight muscles and it was too painful, I had to stop. I had the same reaction with Nortriptyline.

My doctor emailed me today and said he was working in surgery so he didn't have time to call me but suggested I increase the Neurontin to 400mg 3 times a day and maybe the dizziness would go away. I don't know how I'm supposed to get up to twice as much as I'm taking now when I'm already so dizzy on 200mg 3x/day! Sounds strange to me. He is supposed to be the specialist for IC for Kaiser in Nor Cal, anywhere north of San Francisco are his patients so I would assume he must know something. But that just doesn't sound right.