Life With Chronic Pain

One of the key symptoms of my illness is that I am nauseated all of the time.  When the nausea first started I tried simple over the counter antiemetics such as Tums and Dramamine.

Tums seemed to help a little at first, but quickly became ineffective. So I switched to the bigger guns, Dramamine.  Dramamine is an antihistamine and can be very effective for controlling nausea, but it can also be very sedating.

The first time I took it I was unaware of how sedated it would make me.  I was running errands with a friend of mine when the nausea started to hit me.  I needed gas so I pulled into a gas station.  After fueling up I went inside to see what kind of over the counter meds they had.  They had Benadryl and Dramamine.  I had unsuccessfully used Benadryl in the past so I went for the Dramamine.  I popped two pills and started driving to my friend’s house.  This was at about 4:30 in the afternoon.  As I reached my friend’s house I started to feel a little better, but I was getting very tired.

His house is about twenty minutes from mine and I didn’t think I would have any problems getting home.  Boy was I wrong…  About 10 minutes after I left his house I could barely keep my eyes open.  When I finally got home I was so disoriented that I couldn’t find my bedroom.   It was very scary. When I finally laid down I slept for the rest of the afternoon and all of the night.  I woke up at 9:00am the next morning and realized that I was late for work, as I had not set my alarm.

This taught me that you should always try new medications in a safe environment even if they are over the counter.  It is hard to judge how different meds will affect different people.