I don't have a question but I wanted to put this out there in hopes that it may help others. I thought I had posted this before but I couldn't find it. I live with severe nerve pain from a botched root canal where formaldehyde was used. The material was squirted out the bottom of my bottom back molar into the nerve canal. Formaldehyde does on the living, just exactly what it does on the dead....mummifies. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough that it completely destroyed the nerve and left me numb, it left me numb and in horrific chronic pain.
I, like many of you, take handfuls of drugs just to live thru the day and suffer side effects from the drugs is just as debilitating as the pain. My doctor allowed me to try Namenda, which is a alzheimer drug that works by calming overactive neurons in the brain. There has been studies to see if it helped chronic pain and most of them showed it did not. I wanted to try it for myself and she allowed me too. My shrink also thought it was a good idea to try.
It did not help my nerve pain but it did help my energy level and the overwhelming "weight" of it all. For 4 years I have done nearly nothing other than sit on the couch, watch tv, sleep, and surf the internet and for some of that time, attempt to work. Cooking and cleaning were just not ever done. Since taking the namenda, I have been more active - cook and clean some, have left the house more often but still only to grocery shop and get meds refilled. I have done some Xmas shopping this year, last couple of years I did none. I'm about to run out of the samples that the doctor gave me and if my insurance will cover it, I want to stay on it. If they don't cover it, I will have to see how much it costs to see if I can pay for it out of pocket. Maybe it is a coincidence that I "feel better" (and I use that term lightly) when I started taking it but I don't think so.
So, I post this so that anyone out there who is emotionally weighed down by this pain may find some help with this drug. It is not a miracle drug and it doesn't come close to fixing me but its a little step in the right direction and I'll take whatever I can get.