One & Two

I'm taking two drugs for a medical condition, and fortunately the prescription has some latitude for the number of pills I take every day up to the maximum recommended by my physician. Because of the side effects of both drugs, I've had to moderate the daily dosage (number of pills) based on how I feel physically and mentally.

One drug has the side effect of crashing my metabolism, making me physically tired all the time where I become a couch potato. The other one exacerbates my Dysthymia into depression and makes me mentally fuzzy where I'm so slow in thinking I forget.

The second drug was reported this year as exacerbating intestinal problems, such as a bleeding small intestine and constipation. This caused me to take myself off it for months after just a 1-2 weeks at the lowest dosage.

I also took myself off cholesterol drugs because they all had a similar effect on the body, crashing it completely after a few weeks. With my cardiologist's advice we lowered my cholesterol level from over 250 to just under 200 in 6 months with diet and exercise, and it's likely even lower now.

Then after the Siatic nerver this last July and the recent bladder infection along with the walking I was able to return to the full dosage of one but just the half dosage of the second. After two weeks on the full dosage of the second, I was so mentally fuzzy I could barely think.

And both recent medical problems changed my digestive system where it's not reacting the same to foods which has caused me to go through the food list again and add or remove foods which now have problems, by themselves or exacerbating intestinal problems.

This is when the gastroenterologist added avoiding FODMAPS to the list and review and test the other foods. Suffice to say the list of acceptable foods has grown shorter, but at least I like all of them. They don't keep the taste buds happy but it does keep the rest of the body happy.

So, I'm getting better with the walking but it's coming at a price of my body fighting the side effects. Ain't that the world we live in, the drugs to cure us hurts us differently and often worse. So the idea now with the drugs, "One is ok, two is too much."