Monday, October 24, 2005

Uh Oh!

I take Wellbutrin. I am supposed to take 150mg twice a day. Once in the morning and once in the late afternoon. I kept forgetting to take the one in the afternoon and it would keep me up at night so I start taking both doses together in the morning. It seemed to work well.

About a month ago, I took my son to the Dr for his annual follow up on his ADD meds. While we were there, the Dr. found an irregular heartbeat and a clicking noise in his heart. He did an EKG, took one look at it and referred us to a pediatric cardiologist. Of course, this panicked me. I went thru 2 weeks of misery worrying about my son. I would listen to his chest while he was sleeping to see if I could hear the irregularity and I could and that just make me more worried and paranoic. I started researching what could be causing this because 2 years ago when he had surgery on his arm he was fine. The only thing that had really changed was the additon of the ADD medicine. So, I read the Patient info and it said it could cause the irregular heartbeat. I called the Dr. and we agreed to stop the ADD meds until we saw the cardiologist. We get to the cardiologist and of course the EKG is normal. (Thank God!) The cardiologist does find a congential heart defect but it isn't serious at least right now. But, having gone thru that with my son, I started being more sensitive to my own heartbeat. I noticed that my own heart had been skipping beats and I felt a mild tightness in my chest.

Well, what does this have to do with me taking the Wellbutrin? It seems that you are supposed to take only 150mg at a time or it can cause seisures or irregular heartbeat.

I am sitting here right now kinda feeling like I am on speed or something (or at least what I think speed feels like because I don't really know) Needless to say. I am not taking both at the same time anymore. Boy am I DUMB.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My name is Tricia Hurley and i would like to show you my personal experience with Wellbutrin.

I am 54 years old. Have been on Wellbutrin for 1 year now. Helps with depression. No weight gain like with Zoloft or decreased libido like with Prozac. I do think Prozac worked better and the only reason I went off it was my husband complained about that libido thing.

I have experienced some of these side effects -
Involuntary jerks of hands and legs. Feels like when you're about to fall asleep and suddenly jerk awake, but this is in the daytime. Often feel like adrenaline is flooding my stomach.

I hope this information will be useful to others,
Tricia Hurley