I saw my PDoc today I get my meds from and told her about the bad EKG and the prolonged QT interval. She wants me to cold turkey Geodon until I see a cardiologist. I take 80 mg twice a day. She upped my Latuda from 40 to 60 and gave me some 80s too. I asked her about tapering down and she said she would rather I have symptoms than be dead.
This is not going to go well. My wife thinks I am going to hospitalize myself. I can’t get in to see a VA doctor about my heart until the 24th and my wife doesn’t want me to wait that long so I put in a call to my other doctor. We will see.
Prolonged QT intervals are caused by electrolyte imbalances, particularly low calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Worth supplementing them to RDA levels to see if the long QT is helped.
I would be nervous too about stopping cold turkey from that high of a dose. I hope the increase in Latuda helps negate any bad side effects you get. Personally, I think your pdoc should be tapering you while increasing the Latuda, but that’s just personal experience talking. I had a pdoc who subscribed to the theory that as long as you’re staying in the same class of drug, you can just interchange them at will. I suffered when changing anti-depressants that way.
Oh goooood I hope you have an easier time than I did. I was not physically capable of cold turkey dropping Geodon. The withdrawal was h e l l. I dropped cold turkey from 80 mg and it came with severe anxiety, literally was a nervous wreck, and I was not able to eat. I was starving, but first eating made me nauseous, and as the days of withdrawal went on even the SMELL of food made me horribly nauseous. Anything I ate I threw up almost immediately. Anything I ate had to be very plain, and took me ages. Took me 2 hours to eat a single chicken strip, and I had to be sitting in a hot shower during. Pick off a piece, eat, wait for stomach to stop churning, pick off another small piece. After 3 days of having literally 1 chicken strip and a small bowl of plain oatmeal as my total food ingested I went back on because I was terrified of starving myself. Best I can describe it is like it’s a medically induced eating disorder.
Tapering made the experience easier but it was still very unpleasant. Benzos are key!! Use benzos!! I don’t think I would’ve made it through without them.
I cold turkeyed Geodon once before but I was only taking 20 mg once a day and I got hospitalized in 5 days. Don’t think I had withdrawals but I definitely was psychotic. I wasn’t taking Latuda then though. Now I take 160 mg a day so it might be different
The doc told me I could take extra Xanax to help with the transition. She wanted to up my dose and give me more per day but I told her not to worry about it now.
She said I can come back tomorrow and get Abilify or Zyprexa if I need it and I will see her on Thursday for sure. I tried Zyprexa before and that didn’t work for me. My wife has an appointment on Thursday and she wants me to stop in.
I think the anxiety is what caused the being unable to eat because once when I took a benzo I was able to eat a shaved ice no problem.
Geodon had a very powerful effect on me, so that may be why my withdrawal was so severe. I had to taper sooo slowly like I couldn’t even drop from the smallest dose I had to split that pill too.
It was the first time I ever had actual withdrawal symptoms from a medication. I only ever got rebound symptoms before. Awful. I’ve been on more meds since then and it’s still the only one that’s ever given me withdrawal. Wonder why.