After 40 minutes of walking around Wal-Mart, with half or more of that time spent looking at things in aisles without walking much, this is how I looked as soon as I came home.
Sweat was raining off of me if I tilted forward a little. But only my head and neck were sweating.
This has been the case ever since I started Effexor some years ago, and it hasn't stopped though the Effexor was halted in February of '09. Recently I read that excessive sweating can be a symptom of serotonin syndrome, but there's other symptoms as well; I don't think I have that because of one symptom. I did take Cymbalta throughout much of the rest of '09; then, in '10, I was tried on a few different antidepressants but none after the summer.
This symptom or whatever it is, is extremely embarrassing to me, and highly inconvenient; it's already hard enough for me to go to the store and walk around, with my knees/legs hurting, and often a limp, so my motivation to go out is already low, but this sweating causes me to not want to go out anywhere if much walking is needed.
I suppose I could wear one of those around the neck fans, into the store; we've got one, although it eats batteries . . . but I'm afraid people will think I'm wierd, especially if I do it in the winter. My therapist says, "Nobody's looking at you, they're not thinking about you." I think he may be right, partially, but the fan makes a noticeable though not loud noise, enough to catch someone's attention, so . . . and even with the fan, I sweat too much, but it helps slow the rain a little.
For years, I've thought of this as a small, permanent side effect of that medication. Now, I'm thinking maybe it's not so small, since it's interfering with my life. Granted, part of what's interfering with my life is my anxiety about this side effect . . .
I remember way back when, mentioning this side effect to my first psychiatrist; the thing is, this may have been while he was temporarily suspended, and so the substitute heard it. He may have gone over her notes before seeing me again but maybe it didn't jump out, if she wrote it down. I might have brought it up with him later but I really can't remember. Nothing much was made of it if I did, and I wish, if I did bring it up with him, that he had asked me more about it.
Maybe I feel that if he had he could have done something to make it go away, but if it's permanent now then maybe it was permanent as soon as the side effect first showed up . . . but that doesn't mean the psychiatrist shouldn't care about it, right? I'm just feeling really let down by those who one trusts to take the best medical care of them . . . it's just that this is a pretty big thing, for someone who tends to have hermit tendencies, this kind of clinches it . . . and that fills me with sorrow, though I don't know why.
So, for a long time, I didn't "sweat" what I thought was a small thing. Now, I no longer think it's a small thing. Maybe I'd be better off if I didn't care, because that would be one less thing to be depressed about; ie, being depressed about something you can't change probably isn't the best thing in the world.
