Weird breakfast + side effects= an ambulance ride

Well, now it's a few days after the fact, but still, it happened.

I've been having all sorts of problems with side effects from the Effexor lately, and so I decided to stop taking it until I see the doctor, just to be sure that the symptoms were caused by the medication and not something else.

Big mistake. I've never had any problems before if I missed a couple of days, or when, in the spring, I went off them entirely for a few months. No bothersome cold turkey effects then. Not so this time. Turns out that the side effects when you stop can be worse than the side effects while you're taking it. Yay. My first thought was that I overdid it on dairy products and upset my stomach and guts that way. But by the time that nausea and dizziness kicked in, too, I thought I had picked up a bug of some sort.

By that point, I had consumed a breakfast of leftover garlic bread and root beer. Yeah, I know-weird. But not for me. I'm not a breakfast person so I often grab whatever's fast just to eat something. I would have been better skipping breakfast.

I ended up feeling really dizzy and light-headed, and then my knees buckled and down I went. I have no idea exactly how long I was on the floor, but my husband got up and found me on the floor. I got up and went down again almost as soon as I got to my feet, so he called an ambulance. I didn't really get scared until I saw my blood pressure when the paramedics got there-166/144!!! That alarmed me to no end.

So off to the hospital for me. Blood tests and a few hours later, my bp was down to 106/68, the blood tests were fine and the doctor decided that it was a combination of the side effects and the odd breakfast. There's a nerve-the vagus nerve-that runs down from your head, next to your stomach and behind your heart that can become overstimulated from excess pressure-like from a distended stomach. It sends signals back up to your brain that can cause dizziness and fainting.

So, I ended up passing out from a really bad case of indigestion. How embarrassing!