Wednesday, July 20, 2011
I need a pill for the pill for the pill for the pill......
Shift Work (Sleep) Disorder or SWSD, from Wiki: "SWSD is a circadian rhythm sleep disorder characterized by insomnia and excessive sleepiness affecting people whose work hours are scheduled during the typical sleep period. There are numerous shift work schedules and they may be permanent, intermittent or rotating; consequently the manifestations of SWSD are quite variable." BUT there's good news, there's NUVIGIL!!! Nuvigil may cause side effects like, oh I don't know a serious rash or a serious allergic reaction that may affect parts of your body such as your liver or blood cells which may result in hospitalization and be life-threatening. A skin rash, hives, sores in the mouth, blisters, swelling, peeling or yellowing of the skin or eyes, trouble swallowing or breathing, dark urine or fever. Then there are the serious sides: mental (psychiatric) symptoms such as depression, anxiety, sensing things that are not really there, mania, suicidal thoughts, aggression or other mental problems. Symptoms of a heart problem including chest pain, abnormal heartbeat and trouble breathing. Some of the more common sides include headache, nausea, dizziness and trouble sleeping, you know the usual. Why not deal with the Original Problem instead of twenty myriad other ones?
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Ran the numbers-
ReplyDelete30 nuvagil pills for $250
each pill can cause up to 28 symptoms for ya. Lessee here,
@ $8.33 per pill you pay for only
3.37 symptoms per buck.
What a deal....
(free market-wise, Cephalon, the maker, will loose sales $$ next year when it goes generic. So they plan to reintroduce it as a
treatment for schizophrenia)
BTW, a number of studies indicate
that shiftwork reduces life expectancy by 5 years. So, luckily, ya doesn't have ta buy the crap as long....
Okay.. let me pitch in here by saying that first of all, having your sleep screwed up can cause hallucinations and psychosis. Trust me on that one.
ReplyDeleteSecond, every single medication out there can cause any number of side effects. The part you don't get to know is that even if ONE person reports a side effect and even if there's no PROOF that the medication caused it, they still have to list it.
So basically it comes down to the risk/benefit ratio. It all depends on how bad your condition is and whether you're willing to try the medication to see if it works. This is something that you talk to your doctor about. About 15 years ago I got Stevens-Johnson Syndrome from a medication I was taking to treat a nerve injury. SJS is potentially fatal and mine was in my eyes, which can cause corneal scarring and blindness. I was very lucky and we caught it before it did any real damage. Anyway, about 4 years ago my doctor wanted to put me on a medication that has a serious known risk of causing SJS. We talked about it at long long length and decided that we would ramp it up VERY slowly (it took several months to get me at the right dose), watch it like a hawk and stop it at the first sign of anything that didn't look kosher. SJS is generally medication-related and if you stop the med fast enough and you're lucky you can stop the SJS from progressing. Anyway what I (and my husband) had to decide was whether it was worth taking the risk. We decided it was and I started the medication and now I've been on it for several years and it's been effective for me.
The point is that people just need to make informed decisions and decide for themselves whether their condition is serious enough to them that they're willing to try the medication. It's just how it is.
I've gone through many dept. managers at work and most gave me stable daytime shifts. You have biorhythms, there's a word you don't hear much of anymore and so anyway this lady boss we have now gives so many different shifts to everyone (except the favored ones of course, the pets) that just speaking for myself sometimes you don't feel right. When I work the night shift I frequently feel out of sorts, the dayshift is when I do my best work. Discussed some of these issues with her but she's the uneducated type, looks at you clueless and point I'm making is it's very trendy to say you're Health is important. EVERYBODY says this but do they really care in the workplace?......no.
ReplyDeleteNo, they don't care. But if they were smart they would care, because they'd get better production out of their employees.
ReplyDeleteShift work is hard as hell. Most of my career I worked 11-7 and then when we went to 12s I worked 7-7 nights.
There's a thing called Social Rhythm Therapy that my doctor gets all hot and bothered about, it's like his pet project, and he's so adamant about me doing it that it cost me a job. (Now I work straight days 630-3 and he's ecstatic over it.) Anyway it does work and it can make a huge difference in your quality of life.
But you're absolutely right; employers don't care. Studies came out recently that nurses who work 12s have a substantially higher percentage of med errors. It seems totally obvious, but I haven't heard of any hospitals rearranging their schedules because of it.
I think in the end we have to look out for ourselves and do what's best for us and our health on a personal level. For me it meant leaving a job (and it wasn't a pretty goodbye either). Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have the luxuries I do when it comes to jobs, and so they have to suffer through. But if they can make some changes to improve their health, I hope they do.
It's funny because in these heavily unionized jobs they do send a big medical van around towards the end of the year and the workers can go inside and get their blood pressure checked, sugar levels, blow into a straw and get their balls fondled all to show WE CARE but they really don't. If they really cared they'd get rid of certain managers for starters but basically the van is there to prevent lawsuits. If a worker decides to sue the company later because of health issues they can always say look we sent the medical truck around.
ReplyDeleteAt this point I think people just need to be really grateful if they have health insurance.
ReplyDeleteIt's ridiculously hard to sue a company over health stuff and even trying to get accomodations for a disability is like throwing yourself on a barbed wire electrical fence. Even if you get what you need you're marked forever as a troublemaker or whatever and then of course unless your disability is something really visible like being a double amputee, people will just sit around and speculate on what's wrong with you (or more likely whisper what really is wrong with you because HIPAA goes out the window with this stuff like it or not).
So I've come to the conclusion that I'm just glad that we can afford the copays.
Then there's the OSHA rule you see posted in the Breakroom that you have the right to a safe and healthy workplace. LOL just like that 800 # some workplaces have if you'd like to report unethical and illegal conduct. A company or any entity cannot logically objectively investigate itself, all they want to do is keep it in-house.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't it depend on whose definition of 'safe and healthy' it is?
ReplyDeleteI just LMAO when I read this stuff in the breakroom.
ReplyDelete