Highway to the Danger Zone

     Do you always follow your doctor's advice?

I do not.  I am a little bit of a renegade when it comes to my medication.  On more than one occasion I have upped my meds, or changed them completely, without checking with my doctor, or even really letting her know.  So far it has worked out.  Maybe I am just lucky, or maybe I am like Maverick from Top Gun- except that instead of jets, I am use mood altering drugs.  Totally bad ass.


     And the analogy totally works because my doctor is pretty much Stinger.
     Seriously, she is.  She scares me a little.

     I am not saying that I endorse my behavior for any one other than myself, but sometimes, my doctor wants me to do something: try a new medication. lower a medication, add a medication, and I just don't agree.
     I actually really like my doctor, (everybody likes Stinger; he's doing what is best for his men.) but you don't really argue with her, or even really discuss things with her.  When I started to slip into a depression after the baby, I wanted to increase my Cymbalta from 60 to 90, but she thought it would make me too manic, so at first she just insisted I get more sleep.  Don't you hate that?  I mean- I had a six month old baby who had GERD and hadn't slept fore than an hour-and half-consecutively in two months.
     "You just have to.  You have to get more sleep.  Your ego is writing checks you body can't cash."  Blah, blah, blah.  Easy for her to say.
     Three weeks later I am back in her office, spiraling into despair.  She wants to put me on Seroquel, which I have been on before, and I hate.  But there's not debating it. Back in her office again within six weeks and she wants to up the Risperdone and lower the Cymbalta.  She wants to do this and that, and each thing takes at least three weeks to work through.  Every time I go in there I ask her to please just raise the Cymbalta and she looks at me like a disappointed grade school principal: "We could raise it up to 90mg, but I really think that it may make you manic, so I'd like you to try...".
     Ugh.  "Negative Ghost rider, the pattern is full."
      I even brought Erik with me once to try and convince her, and she didn't listen.
     So, I took matters into my own hands and went ahead and just started taking three of my 30 mg pills instead of 2.  I felt so much better.  I didn't even tell her until I run out of meds a few months later.  (Do not ask me how I managed to collect so many extra 30's.  I have no idea; I'm Maverick!)
     Now that we are going to have another kid, she wants me to taper down again. I was fine with tapering down to 60 mg, but she wants me to go all the way down to 40mg, and I don't know if I see that happening.  I understand why she wants to do it, but frankly, it's not her life we're playing with here.  What can I say?  "I'm dangerous."