New Mix of Medications

I was diagnosed with OCD sometime back>knew I had it for sometime. Now I am 25 pounds heavier that when I started on anafranil and risperdal and another tranquilizer. The mix is for the high level of anxiety that I am currently suffering. The risperdal will make women lactate. and the doctor  is taking me off of the drug and has put me on wellbutrin. So now I am at 125 mg anafranil and wellbutrin, at 150mg 12H.
The anafranil was causing drowsiness and I have been hitting the energy drinks hard and the chocolate for the  craving for sweets that the anafranil is giving me.
But the allergy shots for the pollen, dust, dust mites, rag weed are working somewhat. I am at the top level and when I got my first shot the other day the welt was a big a a silver dollar, then later that day as big as two silver dollars, almost 6 inches long, and 3 wide. I was told to take another antihistamine and by the next morning the crisis was under control.

"The Trumpet" on Depression

I was reading an article from the The Philadelphia Trumpet magazine entitled Defeat Depression-Master your Mind published in December 2011 the article written by Dennis Leap, and he works out an outline on how to operate your mind. He does so by quoting the Bible and digging into scripture.
He states that twisted and distorted thinking is the major cause of suffering for people flattened by depression. The twisted thinking is illogical, but it seems so real that you have convinced yourself that your depression will go on forever. This was shown to me in a most dramatic way.
I was suffering from allergies big time, so sensitive that even being outside a small amount of time would send me running inside to clear anything out of my lungs by breathing the filtered air from the air conditioning system. I would do slow breathing through a cloth and in about twenty minutes I would calm down. I would have an air purifier in my bedroom and a dehumidifier in there as well. I could not sleep because of the noise. The air, being drier, stopped the dust mites but being drier gave me trouble as well. These things played on my mind. Did life have to be this way? I was already on a restricted diet because of allergies, now even my work outside in the pollen and dust filled air and house full of dust mites were against me. I had been involved in a car accident in May of 2011, and so the body was in shock as well. I had, in essence, a nervous breakdown and ended up in a mental hospital, twice in a six week period for depression and anxiety.
Now I want to illustrate how this mind of mine works and relate that back to the Trumpet article. My allergy symptoms were greatly exaggerated  and multiplied and when the time came to get an allergy shot I let them know about how the allergies were affecting me. The doctor came in and told me that he could handle the allergies, what ever else I had was something else (ie in my mind). I came home and the room that I was in was not as clean as I wanted it to be, and for me a source of some of the allergies. But as my mind grasped what the doctor had told me, the allergies symptoms abated immediately. My mind had made the hell that I was experiencing. I began to relate this experience to the depression and my brain began to unlock, to wake up from the depression. I began to trace my thoughts just as I have been tracing food, and environmental and chemical allergic problems.
The article in the Trumpet quotes David Burns, author of Feeling Good: "Every bad feeling you have is the result of your distorted negative thinking. Illogical, pessimistic attitudes play the central role in the development and continuation of all your symptoms."Dennis Leap in his article states "To recover from depression, people must learn that every depressed feeling has its corresponding distorted or illogical thought. That negative thought came before and created the depressed feeling. If you are depressed, you must isolate, examine and replace all your illogical thinking with thought that is based on true facts. 
This stunned me each time I thought about it. I had been told of this time and again, but until I suffered it blatantly in my experience with the allergies, I did not believe it. Preferring to blame it on outside sources I have wallowed in depression for most of my life. Perhaps I am working toward a real release here.

Allergies, Drug Interactions, rTMS

In an email from Herb (in black, my response in red):

In my wife's case we were treating coughing, congestion and a prolific amount of phlegm for sometime thinking it was a cold or flu like symptoms.  After numerous testing and chest x-ray my wife was finally diagnosed with what turned out to be Asthma. For me, it was dust, dust mites, grass, pollen, ragweed. For the Asthma she utilizes a nebulizer twice a day containing two drugs; Brovana and Budesonide.  While most drugs list potential side-effects from soup to nuts, I carefully monitor, observe and maintain empirical records on her reactions to all her medications and treatments.  My wife also uses Benedryl for two purposes at bedtime.   One it helps with the congestion and it aids with sleep.I use it to help with sleep as well  So far, no problems with these meds.

I'm not a doctor but through my training as a former Board Member, President and facilitator of a local chapter of DBSA (Herb, I don't(know what DBSA is) I don't give anyone advice but rather share our experiences, my research, knowledge and collaboration with mental health professionals around the world.  I advocate for patient and support person education while encouraging hope and persistence. That is why I  blog.

With that said I really wouldn't have anything to suggest for allergies other than to carefully read all drug literature and while some drugs list the potential for depression and/or other serious side-effects one has to also address the immediate medical problem first. I have a tendency to ruminate on what the negative aspects of  what the drug could do to me, and thus increase the fear factor in the issue. I monitor my body and the reactions it may have, then look the drug up to see if it matches what is going on with me. I would then suggest careful record keeping to see if in fact a particular med negatively effects one's mood state.  As many of us already know each individual is unique and so too one's responses to all treatment options.  Therefore you might utilize a med effectively while the same drug may negatively impact my wife.  I coined a phrase some 5 decades ago as it relates to her therapies, "The Trail and Error Approach to Wellness" as it applies to her mental well being. Bingo!!  

From our experiences I would avoid adding or combining too many drugs at once as one can't determine what drug is doing what or negatively impacting the individual.  One treatment option people often over look is slowly withdrawing from all medications and then starting from square one. This I have done as well, and am in the process of going the way of drugs again, in an attempt to stabilize myself in order to return to work.  Too often treating physicians tend to have tunnel vision and only look at their specialty while the patient ends up heavily medicated and the situation worsens.

I also read that you were talking about rTMS.  I can share with you from my discussions with Dr. John O'Reardon of University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Mark George of the Medical School of South Carolina that rTMS can be performed safely on VNS patients by knowledgeable physicians.  One individual with whom I collaborate was not achieving significant benefit from VNS.  So he went on to try rTMS which did the trick for him.  The problem is no one can guarantee what will or will not work for any given patient.  We simply have to keep trying until we find a treatment or combination of treatments that produce some efficacy.

Anderson Allergy-Sarah Vaviso

Oct 26
I saw nurse practitioner Sarah V.  at the allergy practice today. My testing showed no mold problems, but huge dust and dust mite problems.  But that does not change the symptoms that I have been having.
Good news:  they have shots that will help control that. The pill that would help would be Singular. So on to tomorrow. They will continue testing for food problems.

The testing only tells if I am allergic to it. The test does not tell them the intensity of the reactions. What I feel inside. They said that the ear problem could be unrelated. I will see. The ear popping happens in the morning after I have slept all night on an unprotected mattress- no allergenic protector. Balance problems all day.

CT scan of sinuses came back OK.  I would think that that would show up if the problem was a permanent one, not allergic in nature.
I want to email Doris Rapp people. And find someone here in Orlando that I can go to. Trained by her, or her people.

Dust Mite Battle beginning

In a email to my friend Mary after she came to visit, before the first allergy testing:

Thanks to you, I know what a true friend can be.

So it was dust mites, grass at the allergist.

I went out and got hypo-allergenic things for the bed. I woke up happy! I dreamed many dreams. I only dream when I can sleep deep enough. Haven't been able to do that in years. 

I was praising God, Mary. I wanted to rip up every carpet in the house and toss it out. For that is where, besides the bed and pillows, the mites land and stay. At 4:00 in the morning I wanted to run and wake Dave up and then rip the carpet up in the computer room.

When I came into the rest of the house to start the day, within about 20 minutes I began to feel anxious and irritated. So the rest of the house, bit by bit, must be cleared of carpets and kept much cleaner. I am not a dirty person, just not cleaning up to standards of an allergic patient. I will now so it the best  that I can. The depression must stop. That has been the drive for all my adult life.

More food testing today and then they will give me something for the dust mite allergy.