Requip Withdrawals

I have to talk a little bit about coming off my medicine only because what I thought would be a somewhat simple process was anything but. In a previous post I talked a little bit about how I had to step up my dosage of Requip to reach the level that was right for me. To come off of Requip, I couldn’t just stop taking the medicine. I had to step down the dosage.

IT WAS AWFUL.

After the first week at a lower dosage, I started hurting. I was expecting my symptoms to come back. I wasn’t expecting to have withdrawals. It’s not like I was taking narcotics or pain meds.

The second week was even worse. I ached all over. My legs felt like they needed to be cut off. A friend who is a nurse told us that coming off of Parkinsons’s medication is often compared to the withdrawals a cocaine user goes through when he is trying to get clean. It’s really no wonder that once people start taking drugs, they keep taking them. I completely understood the need for relief from the pain.

Sitting on the couch or laying in bed wishing for relief from the pain, I often felt like if I could get relief from just taking another Requip, I would. Two things kept me going. The first is obviously that I really wanted to get pregnant and knew I had to be off the medicine to be able to do that. The second is that I knew that even if I went into the kitchen and took a Requip, the pain would not go away or let up. I would have to take it for several days for it to build back up in my system before I would get any relief.

Thankfully, it only took a few weeks to step down off of the Requip. I finished my other medications around the same time. That was at the beginning of April. It was now time to try to get pregnant!