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Gabapentin side effects?
I am a regular on the Mayo Board! I don't know what I would do without it! Our doctors don't want to discuss openly the things about illnesses and side effets of drugs and other things. Anyway, my question to all of you is Gabapentin and it's side effects. I have been on it now for 6 months. My doctor raised me from 100mg. to now I am on 400mg. three times a day.
The problem is my tiredness! I happen to be in a friends office yesterday and she was taking some medicine. She said she was taking Gabapentin. I asked why and she said she had, had shingles back when and it still helped with the pain. I know the drug is percribed for many things that is why I take it for my issues.
I told her I had been taking it for about 6 months. She asked if I had been tired all the time, just out of the Blue. OF COURSE I SAID YES! She said it took her a year before she got out of the tiredness.
Let me know if any of you have experienced the same thing. Also let me know at what dosage you may be on? I know this is all confidential!
Again Thanks to The Mayo Clinic and Everyone who is kind enough to be open with their lives!
Sundance!
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Get Gene Sight testing done and find out which meds will work for you. Then look into the Pain Pump. Search these chats for wsh66 and read about my experience, I answer your questions if you do.
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2 ReactionsI, too, had a bad reaction to this drug. It made me dizzy & I was disoriented. My doctor seemed angry that I would not take this any more.
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1 Reactiontell him to take it. See if he likes the side effects and the dizziness and the depression. The worst part about it it doesn't work! Wish you all the best. Dry marijuana or CBD
What drug.
One thing that should be obvious from this thread is that different people react differently to this drug as they do so many others. The general consensus seems to be that for most, it as useless as the teats on a boar pig, for many it has bad side effects, I do recall two respondents saying it, (gabapentin), worked well for them.
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1 ReactionYour doctors reaction showed that like many supposed professionals, he is assuming your faking the side effects so you can get opiods. I engendered that response myself.
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1 ReactionI am taking GABAPENTIN and all I get is dry mouth, and most of the pain is still there. I did find out that you can take Tylenol, Advil, Aleve or Aspirin an hour after taking the GABAPENTIN ....will try for the NEURO left leg and foot...
@wsh66 Stephen, you can add me to the "Works" column, I take 600 MG 2x a day. Does it work as well as opiods, no but in this messed up world where MD's fear punishment in prescribing , I'll take it.
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1 ReactionIt takes a few days for the GABAPENTIN to work, in the meantime there is considerable pain until it catches. Talk to your NEUROLOGIST before you do anything else. I take GABA 2 times a day and one @ Night..Tramadol did NOT WORK FOR ME...EVERYBODY IS DIFFERENT...FIND A NEUROLOGIST WHO KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT...Margaretob
This is my first post in Chronic Pain. I am posting for my husband who just had a terrible reaction with gabapentin last week. He was on a very small dose for two years (100mg a day). It wasn't doing anything for his pain so they had me move it up gradually over a few weeks. When we hit 900mg he became very aggressive and we pulled it back to 600mg and then he became someone he 'wasn't', very aggressive, violent, wanted to commit suicide, etc.....all the horrible things you can imagine. My husband has peripheral nerve damage pain (I guess) in his feet from an accident 50 years ago. He also has cancer and COPD. Generally he feels awful but he doesn't have nerve damage from cancer because they can't identify his cancer type (he has cancer of unknown primary). His cancer is not being treated and is not growing. It's a very difficult and frustrating situation because it's been almost impossible to treat.
I thought that his decline in health might be improved if the doctors could help him with the pain. We have the COPD in pretty good shape and we monitor the cancer activity on a regular basis, waiting for answers. Well..........gabapentin was a horror. Now they want him to use Cymbalta instead of the Celexa he's been using for anxiety and depression for many years without incident. And what about this Ketamine? Does anyone have any insight on that? I don't want to put my husband or our family through another 'gabapentin' incident and risk my husband taking his life. The doctors won't prescribe narcotics due to the COPD and keep offering these drugs that alter brain chemistry. That seems sketchy to me at best but????? If anyone can offer some support, I'd appreciate it. I am going back to the doctors today and hope to get some clarification but they aren't even taking responsibility for the gabapentin being a bad idea, so........I'm losing hope they can or will help. (p.s. I am unfortunately pretty saavy with medical nonsense as I've had breast cancer twice, my husband has been seriously ill for several years and I just had a horrible experience of sepsis this last fall.........but it's still hard to get any respect or support from our doctors. We're with Kaiser so our choices are limited with doctors, sigh).