[whenwillitend]

The week before last I was in the hospital after a sui attempt. They said my Lithium levels were low and doubled it from 300mg to600mg. By the time I left a week later, I was feeling kinda foggy, detached, unreal. It kept getting worse, two days after coming home I saw my T, told her about it, she wanted to send me back ip, I locked myself in the bathroom and hurt myself, bad. At the ER, the fog was suddenly gone. My first reaction was "what just happened?", and I was feeling fine, and have been since. I told the pdoc at the hospital not to give me the higher dose anymore. The fog has not returned.

My husband and I are convinced it was the higher dose of Lithium, my T thinks I was dissociating because of childhood trauma, the hospital pdoc has no clue what happened and says the Lithium theory makes no sense to him.

What do you think? Is it possible that it was the Lithium? I have never had anything like that happen before.

I'm not sure I understand the sequence of events. How long were you off the higher dose of lithium when the fog lifted? If you were still on the higher dose, I'd say the fog clearing is probably the higher dose of lithium actually kicking in. The fog could have been depression, etc. and the lithium just hadn't had a chance to kick in yet. It takes some time for it to build in your system, and 600mg is still a relatively low dose.

[whenwillitend]

The fog started after they doubled my dose. It went away roughly 24 hours after the last high dose.
The pdoc in the hospital said that even on the higher dose my Lithium levels were very low, too low to really be doing anything one way or another.

I just don't know how else to make sense of what happened. I don't know what else could have caused this. But I definitely don't ever want to feel like that again. My last high dose of Lithium was Monday, almost a full week ago, and I've been feeling fine again, back on the lower dose.

It really just sounds like you were still in a bad spot psychologically and the lithium probably had little to do with it. I kind of agree with your T. I have never felt anything like that when they've increased my lithium dosages, and I was on much higher doses than 600mg. I do know that even when I technically hit the therapeudic dose by blood level, the improvement in my mood lags behind, sometimes by a few weeks even.

[LiveThroughThis]

I've been on Lithium a couple of years now, and have never had such an effect. It may be as your T said, just everything else going on (suicide attempt, hospitalization, etc., is really heavy stuff; I imagine I would be foggy as well, though I have a lot of anxiety issues).

But, people can react so differently to meds----I had physical withdrawal from a Benzo my P-doc took me off of, WHILE I was on a new Benzo he prescribed. He was baffled; he said he had never seen that before. So who knows....

Lithium is one of those that has to be monitored at least yearly, sometimes more. Hopefully your regular P-doc can monitor your levels along with your symptoms and find a pattern....

So sorry all of this is happening; I can't begin to imagine how confused and freaked out you are.

[whenwillitend]

Hm, that is so weird. But if my T was right, isn't dissociating when you lose time and can't remember a thing? I have never had that happen. I have never had that fogginess before either.

All this is so confusing. I can't wait to see my pdoc again on the 15th and see if she can make some sense of this. And see what the new T says on Wednesday.

I just really want to keep this from happening again.