Anyone have a mood disorder before diagnosis?

I heard that...kool thread...someone just told me on(cig replacement) to try blowing bubbles...i guess it could help with physical addiction..the exhaling...blowing out could help..will try it soon...jules

Hi ladies I'm tring to bump this thread up-for some reason it's way down on my computer even though there a recent posts. Oh the world of cyberspace!!



Hi Cleo-how are you doing with the caffiene? Hope you are tapering off some, not good for anxiety, unless you want more and lack of sleep to boot!!! The smokes are another issue, I know you need to quit, but this might not be the ideal time. At the risk of sounding like an enabler, you need to taper off slowly, Have you tried nicotine gum or patch? My mom's pulmonologist said that it isn't the nicotine that's the problem , so much as the other crap in the smoke that damages your lungs. Ideally it be good to loose it all-but nicotine addiction is very real, and I don't think cold turkey is the way to go for you right now. Okay I'll step down now!! LOL



Elizabeth-when I read your tag line I laughed-my philosophy exactly, Although it dosn't help in the waist line dept LOL!!! When I'm reading Evanovich I picture Estelle Getty (from The Golden Girls) as the granny and Hawk (from Spencer For Hire) as Ranger. Especially when he says,"BABE...)LOL!!

I love those books, I wish she'd write faster. {{{HUGS to all}}}} Lynne

Oh, girls, sometimes I just think that having breast cancer IS a mood disorder!

Hugs to all.

I like that too.  BC is definitely an anxiety and depression invoking mood disorder.  We can fight it but, it's easier to fight if every now and then we turn around and face our demon and say "yeah, I'm scared and I'm sad.  Then we turn around and move on.

The moving on Part...seems to take the most work!!! I can screem and yell and cry all day...but when its over...I do have to move on....for myself and my family.....jules

Hi cleomoon,

I stopped tamoxifen in December, after taking it down to ten milligrams.  I regret to say that my moods have become dramatic.  I recently suffered the loss of my 18 year old nephew, remarried while undergoing treatment, and selling my house and moving.  I thought the death of my nephew had thrown me over the edge, but it's everything!!!  Just two weeks ago, I finally decided to see a psychiatrist thinking I was losing my mind.  She instantly said it was hormones.  She wouldn't presume to say if it was the tamoxifen or something else.  Just a horrible endocrine problem which happens sometimes.  I am taking wellbutrin and now 2 mgs. of abilify.  I was terrified to take abilify, but it has been a godsend.  This is who I used to be!  I'm sure my onc will want me back to tamox, but for now I would rather live happily! 

Hey, girls.   I've been taking Effexor with the tamox all along.   I took zoloft for years, but basically all the SSRI's and some of the SNRI's interfere with tamox absorption, and Effexor doesn't.  It took a while to get it to work right, though.  I took a generic at first and had stomach problems no matter when I took it, how or with what.  I had some weeks there when my mood would just dive to the dungeon.  It was awful!!!   Finally, I thought to ask for the brand name extended-release version which solved all the problems -- the stomach, the mood, the hot flashes, everything.  I finally am starting to feel like myself again.

But you know, Susan Love was one of the first ones to point out that going through all this leaves every one of us with some degree of post-traumatic stress disorder.  Our adrenals are pumping so hard for so long just to get us through all the slash/burn/poison treatment protocols and the recurrence risk hanging over our heads like a stalker, it's a wonder we don't all end up in a rubber room.  Honestly!!   

Hugs to you all.

Oh Cleo -- what a terrible time.  I remember switching meds and when I was going off one I was sure my head was going to spin and spit pea soup!  It's awful. 

Yeah, I couldn't get through the day without my effexor XR -- I'm a basketcase now, I shudder to think how I'd be without it.

I hope Tuesday comes fast for you Cleo -- hang on!

I was always down in the dumps a few days before getting my period, really down though, with a hopeless attitude and feeling like life just sucked, and nothing could ever change.  I just lived with it for years, thinking OK it's PMS, a sign that my period is coming.  Tried Prozac once and didn't like the sexual side effects.  Now I'm perimenopausal and never know month to month if I will get a period or not, but still seem to go through cycles of depression, and have recently in the last few months had a lot of crying spells where I just couldn't stop.  That might have been the tamoxifen, I don't really know.

Recently was prescribed wellbutrin for libido and sexual problems related to perimenopausal symptoms and made worse by the tamoxifen.  It actually helped with increasing the physical sensations of sex but didn't really improve the libido or drive to want to have sex.  But I was happy with was it was doing and hoping that it would also kick in and start helping with my moods.  However, it also started giving me palpitations and this anxious, speedy feeling, so now I've come off of it in the past week.  The past several days, my mood has been pretty good, no hopeless thoughts or feeling like crying nonstop and I'm feeling more confident around groups of people.   Don't know if it's the wellbutrin that had finally kicked in for the mood after about 5 wks of being on it or if I'm just going through an up phase and the bad mood is due to come any day now.  

But I'm thinking if my mood really gets into the pits again for awhile, that maybe I should try another antidepressant.  However, I don't want one that messes with ability to have an orgasm as this is one of the few pleasures in life to look forward to and it would depress me if it had that effect.  So, I'm wondering about side effects of Effexor {I also have a lot of hot flashes} and other antidepressants.  I'd love to hear about everybody's experiences in this area.

I had well controlled depression for many, many years before being diagnosed with bc  During all the waiting (4 weeks from mammogram to getting the results from my doc, 3 months before seeing a surgeon, and that was just the beginning) I developed serious anxiety problems.  During radiation the depression became a huge problem for me (I cried throughout every treatment) but no one picked up that I needed help.  When I was hospitalized last summer with abscesses and severe pain I also stopped eating and drinking, and the doc increased my prozac some.  It wasn't until I became suicidal duirng the hyperbaric treatments while waiting to have a mastectomy, and I started seeing a new primary provider ( a nurse practitioner) that either the pain or the depression was addressed.  It took doubling my dose of prozac, adding pain medication and short term therapy to get me through the last few weeks until the mastectomy.  I'm still on the higher dose of prozac, still have flashbacks to the excruciatingly painful needle placement for biopsy, excruciatingly painful injections for the SNB, excruciatingly painful needles to drain the abscesses, and I live in fear of the pain from the lymphedema from the radiation coming back.  Not to mention flashbacks to the radiation torture treatments and the nightmares about being back in the radiation torture room.  My anxiety gets so bad starting about 4 weeks before every doctor's appontment now that I wouldn't sleep at all without xanax.  The thing that freaks me out the most is that I can be having a perfectly good, even wonderful day, and out of the blue a memory of one of the needles or waiting and waiting for a result or call from a doc's office or getting stuck over and over again to get an IV started and all of a sudden I am crying or shaking or both and it can take hours to settle down again. 

I've got to admit it helps to hear that I'm not the only one whose mood disorder got worse after diagnosis and treatment, and that some of you are getting better.  Maybe with a little more time these crazy little episodes will start fading out, or at least become less frequent. 

I have had depression and anxiety since I was 19 (the late 1970s) all due to a chemical imbalance, and have been on and off antidepressants 3x over the last 30 years. Boy are they better than they use to be! I am now on Pristiq which I stated after being dx with BC in Sept 08. No SEs and I hope it will work well with Tamoxifen which I believe I start next week. I am having more anxiety since finishing chemo and rads, hard time getting my mind to shut down and seem to wake up early with my heart racing, feeling panicked. I HATE the anxiety! Ativan in low does helps me and so does Bach flower essences (a holistic remedy). It just helps to know there are others out there. Thanks to all you caring people.