Tag: psyche

Alert: psyche and blood pressure meds and chronic kidney disease

I have found out in the past year that I have chronic kidney disease. My levels have been pretty much constant since 2003. The nephrologist has told me that years of lithium use may explain the CKD that I now have. The good news is that creatinine levels and eGFR levels have not progressed that dramatically since 2003. I have been on clozapine since 2008.

I have also found out yesterday from the nephrologist that low blood pressure can be as damaging to the kidneys as high blood pressure. My PCP never mentioned that and never caught it that my levels were too low when I brought in a journal of my blood pressure levels from the last year plus earlier in March 2023.

This serves as an alert to all my friends taking psyche meds and other meds out there. Please double check with your psyche doctor and your PCP about your psyche med impacts and their side effects and other meds (like high blood pressure meds) and their side effects. I would hope this information would be taken into account when we are prescribed certain meds we need for mental and other health stability. Does not make sense that we would have to take a hit on our physical health just to get the right psyche meds.

The more information we can gather the more we can make an informed choice about our whole health. It appears that whole health requires we look at all meds we are taking and be sure side effects are kept to a minimum.

Please keep informed! Please keep well!

How long do you go between sessions?

When I first exited the hospital in 2008 after starting on clozapine, I was seeing my therapist once to twice per week. Eventually this developed into a meeting every two weeks and then every month. Now I am on a frequency of every 6 to 8 weeks for seeing my therapist. During this time post 2008 I saw my psyche doctor every month or every two months. Now I see him every 3 months for meds management.

It is important to note that these elongated timeframes happened for me after years of work with my therapist and with my meds. It feels good to move to longer timeframes between visits, but it is true that pre-2008 I used to “play mind games” with myself regarding my psyche visits. I would deliberately schedule doctor’s visits every three months out to tell myself I was doing “fine” when in retrospect this should have been monthly. I was not doing fine and I was on a drug that wasn’t working. In part, this was because I was not maintaining the proper dosage of the meds.

I feel like today I am honest with my therapist and my psyche doc about how frequently I need appointments. I used to have to have a therapy appointment lined up for the next time when I completed a session so as to be able to “see” what was upcoming on the horizon. Now I basically see how I am progressing and schedule a session every 6 to 8 weeks or so as needed.

Any thoughts on your session frequency with the therapist or the MD?