Posted by baseball55 on October 8, 2015, at 20:02:00
In reply to Lithium levels: Really need advice please...., posted by PeterMartin on October 7, 2015, at 19:20:06
Let me get this straight. You cut back from 900 to 300mg of lithium and have been lying to your doctor about this. S/he wants to check blood levels and you're asking how you can play with the dosage to get your levels up so as to continue to deceive your doctor. Is that about it? Why not just tell your doctor that you had abdominal pain you believed was due to lithium and cut back the lithium and were fine.
There are doctors who would tell you to take a hike because they don't want to deal with patients who lie to them. But many are understanding and may get annoyed but will continue to try to work with you. I truly don't understand lying to your doctor. Why not tell him/her about the side effects? If you feel so uncomfortable with the doctor that you can't share this information, you should find another doctor with whom you are comfortable.
> My doctor has sent me to get bloodwork for lithium levels. I was put on Lithium about 10months ago when I was in the hospital for a manic episode. When I came out of the hospital I was on 900mg w/ a level of .05 which my doctor and I decided to stay w/ at the time.
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> After adding a few other meds for my depression (Marplan/Lamictal) I began to get really bad abdominal pain. In order to cope w/ that I reduced the lithium to only 300 which is really all I'd like to take anyway (small dose for neuroprotective probs). All has been well for 8months or so.
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> But now my pdoc has asked to get another Li level. I haven't told him about the reduction in Li as I'm concerned he may remove/alter the meds I care about that handle my depression vs. having no prob w/ the Li reduction.
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> My question:
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> If I was taking 900mg for a month and my blood level was .05 but I've only been taking 300mg for the past while if I just take 900mg the day before a blood test will the levels come back _around_ .05? Or would tend to be higher or lower? I'm sure the blood levels of Li even out over time but do they spike at first and then get lower or do they start low and get higher maybe?
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> Basically what would be the best way to kinda fake it to make it seem I've been taking around 900mg and not 1/3 of that dose. I'm dreading taking any more than 300mg cause it really causes upper right quadrant abdominal pain. I wish I could do 600mg Li but I've tried and it's intolerable (physically).
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> Thanks for any suggestions on what to take for how many days prior to make it seem like I've been on 900mg w/o getting levels that are way out of wack.
poster:baseball55
thread:1083314
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150929/msgs/1083325.html