Emotions After Taking Meds for the First Time

The first time you take your medication, you may feel like the stereotype you mocked, realize the smell overtakes the size of the pill, or want to puke before it touches your mouth.

You have to create a mental reminder to take your medication. I know I'm guilty of leaving the house without taking my medication.

Fear of forgetting medication

It’s frightening when you start tasting metal as you are close to your destination and realize you’ve forgotten your water bottle. Please pull over and call someone to pick you up. This needs to be drilled into your daily routine because missing one dose changes the course of your life.

It is rare that you will continue to do this, especially realizing this reality when you're halfway to your destination. You can either feel embarrassed and tell the truth or feel ashamed and make a realistic excuse.

It brings you back to the realization of knowing you'll be tied down to a condition that makes you dependent on a pill that can alter your day. It is worse, I feel, if you're older because you have to adapt to a new norm, usually after being thrown into the chaos of blindsides and adjusting a simple life into one with tiny puzzle pieces.

Always a new medication or a new dose

Of course, you'll be lucky if your first med(s) work efficiently. In reality, it usually only works for 5-14 days before you're calling the doctor to see what to do next. Usually, you either have to increase the dose or change the brand of meds overall.

After taking medications for multiple years, and after your sixth medication or dose change, you become numb to all of it. The neurologist admits to being unable to control the seizures but was never informed of how much of a failure that statement really is.

Seizures hit hard when meds stop working

Yeah, I'll admit my seizures did increase. It's because the meds can be stable for many years, then, the next thing, you're on the ground with a heavy migraine, questioning how you got there, as the familiarity clashes with what you thought would be a normal life.

I wish someone had told me …

A truth that I wish someone had informed me of is that no matter how normal life feels, reality will eventually come crawling back.