The quest for the Holy Grail

Well, my doctor and I are trying to find a lesser dosage of medication that still helps but decreases the side effects. We're going to start by lowering my Depakote dosage. If that doesn't work, then we'll try lowering my Lithium dosage, but he wants me to switch to another antipsychotic medication (instead of Risperdal) at the same time (to cover increased symptoms from the lower Lithium dosage).

I suspect that we'll need to lower the Lithium dosage. When I ran low on Lithium when my doctor was on vacation, I lowered my dose, and felt a lot better. I had more energy and felt less weak, I found it a lot easier to multitask, and so forth. My doctor commented that Lithium slows down thinking, and that's the exact problem that I have when I'm trying to follow a conversation. I want to ask people to slow down so that I can catch up (very annoying). However, I wouldn't want to switch antipsychotic meds until after I finish my current project and take my trip to Austin. The new med is likely to make me sleepy, which kind of defeats the purpose, but we'll see.

Unfortunately, the pharmacy near me doesn't carry the right kind of Depakote. I need to go back up to Santa Clara (where the appointment was today) to fill the prescription. Arrgh.

On the bright side, my joint pain is going away. I'm not sure what that was about.