8 weeks post treatment and things are generally very good. Dry mouth, gunk in the morning. Throat healing ok, can manage most foods. Cut right back on the pain relief in accordance with the doctor's instructions. Energy levels are pretty ordinary, but eating, drinking toileting are all ok. A couple of weeks ago a blood test identified me as anaemic, probably not enough meat in the diet. Iron supplment and focus on proteins and the muscle cramps from the anaemia have gone.

My problem is oversleeping. The doctor has me on two types of antidepressant, Avanza and Lovan. I've varied when I take the meds, I vary when I get to bed, it doesn't seem to make any difference. I sleep for 12 hours and have no energy when I get up. I can function, shower, walk the dog etc but it takes a n effort to get out of bed. The doctor thinks its depression, like post traumatic stress. She has referred me to a psychiatrist, and I see her on Monday. I'm uncomfortable with this whole mental aspect of the recovery, although I can understand with a physical trauma like I've been through there must be some impact mentally.

The mental side doesn't seem to be a topic mentioned often here, but I can't be the only one. Has anyone had problems with depression and oversleeping?

I've said ever since I joined this site that I think the mental aspect of our cancer and it's related treatment is probably 50% of the "battle" we face. I've told Moffitt from the getgo that more attention needs to be focused on the mental state and patients should meet with a psych familiar with what we will go thru early on to prepare us. We try to do this on this site but IMO face to face discussions would be much more effective.

We are all different when it comes to virtually all aspects of our journey thru this cancer and even though I often only worried about my treatment vs my cancer my mind never took me to the dark side requiring medical assistance but I have seen many on this site that were. I pray you will return to your normal mental state soon.

Have they checked the thyroid, testosterone, glucose, and other blood levels too. Sometimes defeciencies can have an effect, like the anemia being mentioned. I guess the doctors said that's due to low iron levels? Sometimes it's not, and there are many types of anemia, mine isn't due to low iron, and have chronically low hemaglobin, never above 11, and is partially due to the bone marrow suppression, so the protein may help that. I also take folic acid, as advised.

Oversleeping can be a sign of depression. The narcotics can have an effect. I have to take some meds for neuropathy, basically anti-depressant or anti seizure meds, and may take a while to build up a tolerance. I don't take what I'm prescribed since I don't like the feeling. These and other antidepressants can worsen thoughts, and make one even more depressed, and believe they come with that warning, but some do need them.

I was in the hospital, crital care nursing fascility, basically hospice, for 6 months, and they just loved putting you on all sorts of medications to drug you up, some without knowing. I had to ask them to give me a list of all the medications, and cut back own ones not used for life support. I felt much better, had clearer thoughts, slept less, and went home against medical advise. Of course they wanted to keep me drugged up, in their system.

I see no mention of exercise, and may do a world if good, even if it's just light walking.

Good luck.

Mental aspects are seldom mentioned here which surprises me. Its a confronting subject, and perhaps less tangible a symptom to manage like nausea or constipation. We do have a delicious recipe for pureed lasagne though!

I'll make a point of publishing whatever the psych tells me on Monday. Perhaps if I show some courage on the subject it may help others.

There are hundreds of threads discussing the mental issues both OC patients and their caregivers go thru. You will find many of them under the Coping/Anger and Fear section and also many are in the caregiver section. The rest are scattered in the rest of the forum. Try using the search feature in the upper right corner with a few key words and you should easily come up with lots of reading material. There are articles in the news section and even another whole section devoted to emotional issues on the main OCF pages.

Main OCF pages--- Emotional Issues

Hi Dave. Glad you are getting better physically, understand completely that the mental/emotional side is just as hard. Funnily enough a member of the support group I attended at Auckland Hospital said that Australia deals better with that side of things than we do here in NZ. He thought that everyone who suffers from these big treatments should be given emotional support via drugs and/or counselling right from the start.

I take two Citalopram (like Prozac - doesn't cause sleepiness) in the mornings and one Zopiclone at night. I manage about 6 - 8 hours sleep on that. I do know that one of your drugs can cause drowsiness while the other is like Citalopram, a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor (phew!). The latter are "cleaner" drugs I think in that they cause fewer side-effects.

I'm about 9 weeks out and thought I had my energy back until I caught a heavy cold which really set me back. I felt quite fatigued with it which shows that I'm not out of the woods yet and confirms that we are still in the early stages of recovery even though things seem pretty good on the surface:)

I wish you well for your appointment with the psychiatrist. It really helps when someone knowledgeable can tease out the tangled knot of emotions that accompany cancer diagnoses and treatment.

Christine its not easy to go through hundreds of threads. Searching on words like "depression" "psychiatrist" "oversleeping" I find there are usually oblique references to them, or they are suggestions from others. I guess every conversation has a value of its own, so this is mine and my story.

Alpaca I was on Citalopram (called Cipramil here) some years ago after a bad relationship breakdown. I was only on them a few weeks. They have a major impact on sexual function, which scared me silly back then! Wasn't all that conducive to dating. Well Lovan (Prozac) seems to have the same impact in the bedroom, but in the scheme of things I know its temporary and part of the recovery.

Dave, the link I posted above may be helpful. It has tons of info about what the stress of OC, treatments, and emotional issues etc.

Have you had your thyroid and testosterone levels checked? For men, its very common for these things to change after having rads.

I did follow the link Christine thanks, there is a lot of information there. I didn't ask what the doctor checked with my blood test, I'll ask about testosterone and thyroid when I see her next.

Yes, it's horrible that good anti-depressants can cause sexual dysfunction but nothing is worse than deep, dark depressions:)

Good luck with your search for an answer to the oversleeping.