Good morning. It’s a beautiful sunny morning here, the calm before the storm. The snow is coming tomorrow afternoon through Thursday morning. I have no where to be so I’m all good. Looking forward to watching the first snow fall of the year even though the majority will fall overnight.

I have been wanting to discuss medications for the longest time. I take a lot of pills each day due to my multiple sclerosis and because of my migraines, which I believe came on from my MS. I have edema and incontinence which are also all due to MS. It’s been almost 23 years since my diagnosis and I take 9 different prescriptions pills daily. That’s a lot of meds. However that isn’t even the issue, it’s the side effects that make me crazy.

Let’s start with Toviaz for incontinence. It’s for incontinence yet it gives you dry mouth. What happens when your mouth is dry, you drink more. When you drink more, you go to the bathroom more. When you go to the bathroom more the incontinence becomes more of an issue. This drives me crazy. i’ve been on so many different pills for incontinence and truthfully Toviaz works the best, for me. However there are days my mouth is so dry it’s terrible. It’s so dry it’s all the way down into my throat. Since this is also an extended release it goes all day. I have to have water next to me 24 hours a day. It is the most frustrating drug for me but i feel like I’m trapped because if I don’t take it, I’d be having accidents all day. I haven’t figured out a balance and I’ve been taking this for years.

Another one of my pills is a water pill for the edema. I’m sure that the irony here is obvious based on the last paragraph about my incontinence. This pill that supposed to be taken every day, I absolutely refuse. There is no way I could do this every day. I do it four times a week. This pill puts me in the bathroom every hour. I can’t even understand why because it’s not an extended release but it works all night as well. So when I take the pill it’s like a 24 hour thing. It’s half the reason why I don’t sleep. So on top of having incontinence problems, I am now taking a pill that both stops me for going to the bathroom frequently and one that makes me go to the bathroom. It’s extremely counterproductive and I don’t know what else we can do because if I don’t take the water pills my feet swell up. I know it’s absolutely crazy.

Mostly all the rest of my pills are for spasticity, twitching or migraines. It is the Toviaz and Triamterene (water pill) that cause me hourly issues that really can be extremely frustrating to deal with however both still needed. That’s what I hate needing to deal with the side effects of the drugs we take to treat the symptoms.