Category: Psychology

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Update: The Tiny Dog Fails Prozac Trial

Dear world,

Today I am writing this (or started writing this) while on hold/talking to one of the leading medicaid providers in my state about how they will not provide mental health services for one of my patients. It is not going well.

(See also: extreme irony, crushing disillusionment, American healthcare crisis, etc, etc).

In the meantime, did anyone know that the following are possible side effects of fluoxetine use in dogs??

  • Anxiety. (Read: unrelenting panic.)
  • Irritability.
  • Insomnia.
  • Loss of appetite.
  • Gastrointestinal distress.
  • Excessive panting.

No?? Me neither. Guess what??

Tiny dog experienced all of these. Here is the picture on the internet of a dog on Prozac:

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Here is a picture of the Tiny Dog on Prozac:

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It was a good try. And everyone was very optimistic that it would work. Unfortunately, Tiny Dog is one of the very few dogs for whom Prozac had a paradoxical effect and he had exactly the OPPOSITE response as what the drug was actually supposed to do.

Right around day 4 or 5 of giving the pill, Tiny Dog started to seriously distrust us. He was very suspicious of his nightly cheese snack. He probably bugged our phones. He also took to crying ALL. NIGHT. LONG. One night, when he was in our bed, there was a gust of wind outside. That was it for Bed. Bed can never be forgiven. Tiny Dog will no longer enter the bedroom. Instead, he paced and cried and barked all night long for 4 days.

Initially, Wife was like, “I told you so.” and I was like, “This is normal. It will get better.”

By day 10 of the pill, no one had slept in days, Tiny Dog had entirely stopped eating, and I was home with him by myself trying to do work. It was impossible. Not only did Tiny Dog want to spend his entire day and night in the dirty clothes hamper in the bathroom closet, he also wanted everyone else to do so as well.

The vet cautiously suggested that, maybe, just maybe, Tiny Dog was having an adverse reaction to THE VERY THING THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HELP HIM.

10:45 AM: It will get better, they said. Give it a few days, they said.

12 PM: Cue Tiny Dog, strapped to my body in a tiny sling, shivering, gags and vomits.

12:45 PM: (at vet’s office.) Maybe we should take him off the prozac.

Moral of the story: perhaps we should all just love each other for who we are. HA- just kidding. You better believe we’re (read: I’M) trying a new anxiety medication as soon as he gets detoxed from this one.

…or maybe we’re just happy to have Tiny Dog back, for now…

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Love,

Emily

P.S. Managed Care Organizations can SUCK IT.

Posted on

2018: Choose Your Own Adventure.

Happy 2018. I realize blogs aren’t a thing anymore.

Don’t even get me started about how everyone and their brother is doing a podcast or a video blog these days, and the only remaining “real” blogs are bankrolled by cooperate sponsors. Even if I had audio equipment, it would most likely be water damaged within a week. I have a brand new laptop I bought 8 months ago which I still have not even set up because I cannot figure out the quick start guide. Not to mention the power plug has 3 prongs, and all of the outlets in our house only have space for 2. I’ve always been a writer (mediocre at best), so this is the medium you get.

(Remember when the word “blog” didn’t even exist because we still used “web log”? Or when everyone had one to deposit their solipsistic ramblings alongside their MySpace Top 8? Or then they became completely obsolete like 3D doritos or fruit-shaped trix? Yeah, me neither. Asking for a friend.)

It’s not clear to me yet whether this will be a blog about a) two lesbians trying to make a baby, b) autoimmune disorder food allergy hell , c) the ironic attempts of behaviorist trying to train and raise a tiny, terrible Chihuahua, or d) the misadventures of a hapless-but-still-sometimes-useful child psychologist.

But, YOU, my four readers, will get a chance to find out. Let’s run down the options:

A) My wife and I want to have a baby. But we are both women. Apparently this makes us “functionally infertile”. Who knew? After a year of trying without success, we decided we should seek medical intervention. Note: we are not responsible adults. Coming into this marriage, we both had best friends who doubled as life coaches, whose entire job it was to prevent us from doing things such as, for example, purchasing a pig as a pet and digging a mud wallow in the backyard. Or to answer questions such as “Are cuddle duds a real thing?” (answer: They are.) or “We are stranded on a mountain in a blizzard in a Pruis with no preparations even though this is a totally predictable situation for a normal person; what do we do now?” (These are all real, non-ironic examples.)

B) After about 12 months of experiencing idiopathic nausea and vomiting, followed by severe upper abdominal pain, and then about upteen million medical procedures which were only slightly less unpleasant than the actual symptoms, I got diagnosed with Eosinophilic Esophagitis. Which, in case you didn’t know, is a highly unpleasant but mostly harmless autoimmune disease of the esophagus, usually triggered by food allergies. Generally, it’s no big deal, but it turns out I’m having a teeny tiny midlife crisis about this, because I’m tired of being sick all the time and it’s starting to make me feel like a failure. Also, I have to stop eating all of my favorite foods and basically any foods that would be considered “favorite foods” by anyone ever.

C) The adventures of Tiny Dog. He’s adorable, and awful, and as a behavioral psychologist it is a constant ego-check that I’m pretty terrible at training him.

D) In my spare time when I’m not at the aforementioned medical appointments (and it really is starting to feel like the minority of my time at this point…), I work at a children’s hospital as a psychologist with children with various disabilities and behavior challenges. This is an always fascinating, sometimes terrifying, hilarious, exhilarating, exhausting job. There are many moments each week when I think, “well, you just can’t make this shit up.” Obviously I can’t really write about it that much, because of confidentiality and respect for patients (Like I think, “if it were my kid doing something hilarious, would I want someone talking/writing about? Answer: ABSOLUTELY. But I’m clearly not the best judge of character.) But it’s not every day you discover a bat living in the sleep center of your office building (which I find highly ironic), or you are helpfully reminded of the wide array of things it is possible for children to swallow with no adverse effects whatsoever.

Anyway, choose your own adventure. Sally forth, 2018. You shall not defeat me.