Experience with Seroquel
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Experience with Seroquel
| Mon, 07-11-2005 - 5:42pm |
I have admitted myself into a partial hospitalization program with a mental health facility, which means I'm outpatient, but I have to attend a program every day and see a psychiatrist once a week. Last Tuesday was my first day, and the doc put me on Seroquel (25mg) every night for sleep and anxiety. I am already taking effexor xr 150 mg. and am still having problems that he diagnosed as Major Depressive Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, and ADHD. First of all, the seroquel didn't make me sleepy; in fact, it made my heart race and made my kidneys hurt. So I wanted to talk to the doctor about switching meds cause I just didn't feel right with this one. The nurse told me that I was just having anxiety attacks and my therapist there told me I was "just feeling sorry for myself" because I was crying from all the pain and mental discomfort. And the nurse told the psych. that I was having "mood swings", so he TRIPLED the seroquel dose. I couldn't believe this, So I went to the hospital last friday night, and my bp was 145/88 (usually it's low, like 90/60), and my pulse was 145! They were concerned about me having a heart attack, so they gave me IV meds to calm me down and told me to discontinue the med immediately. I haven't gone back yet, cause now I have an upper respiratory infection and went to my regular doc today, but now that the seroquel is out of my system, everything is pretty much back to normal, but I've found out that Effexor and Seroquel together can cause problems with your heart. Is this doc really that careless, or what? I hope they're not mad at me for being "non-compliant" with meds, because I could have gone into cardiac arrest on account of them. How should I handle this without getting kicked out of the program? I still want to get help, just not the kind of help that ends up in renal failure or a heart attack.

That was a scary experience. I can't understand how it all happened. As Heather suggested, why didn't the pharmacy see this error? I will say that I was on both effexor & seroquel a few years ago & nothing happened. But, each individual is different. Meds in combination is always a bit tricky.
I guess you know what's best for you. My concern here is why you want to continue in a program that the nurse clearly didn't try to