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Lithium levels and hydration — my team watched closely

Started 25 August 2024 · 17 replies · 205 hearts · read 1.7k times

AikoOsaka, JP · 25 August 2024
1.9 years ago

Lithium levels and hydration — my team watched closely Writing it down partly to work out what I actually think.

This is a difficult one to write and I have deleted it twice.

I am aware some of this may be nothing. I would still like to know whether other people have had it, because I have spent a fortnight assuming I am the only one.

What I would find most useful is not advice. It is somebody describing what their version of this was, and how long it went on for.

Thanks all. Genuinely.

68

BryherIsles of Scilly, UK
#1

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.

9

FitzLimerick, IE
#2

What the opening post described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I asked my nurse the same question and she said something I have repeated ever since: that the aim is to keep you on treatment, not to get you up the schedule.

10

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#3

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

Two things, both boring. First, none of us can tell you what to take. Second, the conversation you want to have is with your prescriber, and we can help you write it down.

21

HeddaCopenhagen, DK
#4

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

14

BronteHaworth, UK
#5

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

9

KaiVancouver, CA
#6

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.

11me too 8

NazneenDhaka, BD
#7

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

10

LeifTrondheim, NO
#8

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

13

CormacWaterford, IE
#9

Gently disagreeing with the reply above, or rather adding the other half of it.

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

14me too 6

IlyaAlmaty, KZ
#10

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

9

JunoBrighton, UK
#11

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

6

MargueriteQuebec City, CA
#12

Yes. All of this. I had the same in my third month and I remember thinking there was something specifically wrong with me, which there was not.

11

TamzinPoole, UK
#13

Building on what the reply above wrote rather than answering the original question.

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

7

BessLouth, UK
#14

It got worse before it got better for me, which I wish someone had said. About ten days of worse.

12

MintaColchester, UK
#15

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

12me too 6

JonahFacilitatorCork, Ireland
#16

the reply above — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I want to slow this down a little. There are four different answers flying about and they are all somebody's real experience, which makes them true and not necessarily relevant to the person who asked.

21

IzzyWatford, UK
#17

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

16