The medication rollercoaster

My new rheumy — so far, very pleased — agreed that nausea caused by Plaquenil doesn’t help me. I didn’t even have to explain it, he told me to stop taking them right away and to increase my MTX. This means I need to get new pre-pared syringes.

This makes the MTX basically the only ‘real’ medication I still take, apart from the occasional naproxen or paracetamol (Tylenol).

I do take a decent load of vitamins in a medicinal way, not taking them causes plenty of issues, and they may interact with each-other / other meds so I always count them as medication.

My last blood-test showed a deficiency of vitamin D, ferritine, low B12. Still waiting for the vitamin B1.

Currently I take:

MTX

once per week, as injection, for the RA

folic acid

once per week, to counteract the side-effects of MTX

vitamin B12

once per month injection due to inability to absorb

vitamin D

as cod liver oil, twice per day, also comes with vitamin A, and as tiny tablets, four per day, for ‘senior citizens’ which just have D in them

multi-vitamins

also for ‘senior citizens’ which has extra vitamin B1, iron and zinc, twice per day

calcium

twice per day, with extra vitamin K and D

Mixing and matching turns into another juggling game because too many of certain vitamins (A) and minerals (iron and zinc) poison my liver, and my liver has a hard time dealing with all the other poison already, so I don’t want to push that ;)

My body needs lots of fine-tuning.