Pills, Pills, Pills!

Let’s go over my med list for pure ^&*ts and giggles!! It’s a colorful array of pills, capsules, inhalers, sprays… lots of fun!! Let’s get started!

Alfuzosin: this lovely pill is so I can urinate more easily, without it I sit on the toilet and start humming muzak to kill time and entertain any individual in the bathroom with me if I’m out and about in the world. I do hum well.

Dexilant: this bright-blue capsule helps reduce the risk of pneumonia from stomach acid zipping up my esophagus.

Reglan: four times a day I swallow this white, chalky pill so that I can actually swallow and move food down and out my stomach, all the while keeping it in. You see I have what appears to be progressive paralysis of my esophagus and stomach.

Linzess: every morning this delicate, white capsule stickily slips down my throat to help my intestines cope with their growing paralysis.

Metformin: this is a hellacious, monster tablet I was put on after the scales of corticosteroid use tipped against my favor and started to cause blood sugar problems.

Aquoral: With sjogrens drying out my body from the inside out, I’ve recently needed a prescription spray for my mouth so that I have saliva.

Pilocarpine: Four times a day this tiny pill causes me to sweat like a little piggy in the hot, summer sun (if in fact pigs sweat) just so I can have saliva in my mouth.

Cimzia: the ouch medication. This is a shot I give myself every two weeks in my belly. And it hurts, all so that my spine can stop fusing together

Methotrexate: this is my weekly injection of low-dose chemotherapy designed to help not only keep my Ankylosing Spondylitis, but my Lupus under control. So far I haven’t lost too much hair, but I’ve learned I can’t color my hair. But that’s okay, I always wanted to see how my hair would eventually look gray!

Plaquenil: The staple of all rheumatological medications for Lupus and the wonderful array of other diseases.

Vicodin: This year saw my pain become intolerable. It was a bad year; a very bad year for me from strokes, heart attack, to a dissected artery, pain because more extreme than what I was used too. But so far not a medication I have to take on a daily basis.

Coumadin: discovered as an effective rat poison, this is the wonderful three and a half, purple pills I take every day in the hopes I don’t have an infarction in yet another organ. So far I’m making progress checking off each organ: brain (12 TIAs, 3 strokes), Large Intestine, Kidney, Lung, a small heart attack, and likely my left vertebral artery that clotted and tore.

Lovenox: another shot for when my Coumadin doesn’t work effectively enough.

Cymbalta: As most individuals with severe chronic illness, I suffer from depression, this wonderful med has the dual purpose of being a good antidepressant and an even better medication for nerve pain!

Ativan: Anxiety is a major problem that needs to be nipped in the bud as quickly as possible precisely because anxiety and depression together can wreak havoc with the body, increasing pain perception and placing you at risk for worsening diseases due to stress and biochemical changes.

Nudexta: I have a rare disorder known as pseudobulbar. It’s where your brain responds to social situations with the incorrect or opposite emotional responses. It makes it confusing to those you are engaging with when it’s not managed and managing it generally requires medication as it’s precisely due to brain damage.

Silenor: I can’t sleep some days.

Gabapentin: Strokes cause a challenge of lifelong problems when you survive them. There is always damage. Even when the person doesn’t look like they suffered damage, they have, you just have to dig deeper. For me, one source of damage is epilepsy, so I take five of these capsules a day.

Lamictal: four pills a day, I take this med to further help with the progressive form of epilepsy I was diagnosed with.

Oxcarbazepine: this orange pill is also for epilepsy.

For allergies, allergies, allergies Oh My! I take: Zyrtec, sniff Flonase, inhale Advair HFA and on bad days, Ventolin, and Duo-Neb

I’ve suffered from high blood pressure since I was 18, but after my heart attack this past year, my heart has gone into AFib and looks “sluggish” on heart monitoris. As such, they added Metoprolol to my Lisinopril. So these pink pills help the heart beat fine.