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.

I think it is particularly hard to manage the emotional aspects of illness nowadays when everyone is so keen on the power of positive thinking. It ends up making you feel guilty (or at least me) when you have moments, days or weeks of not so positive thinking.

Don't get hung up on 'oversleeping'. First, your body is fatigued and was just attacked - first by cancer, then by the treatment. And, you are now coping with the fallout of all of that. Give your mind and body some space and time.

Before the Big C, I had a period of depression related to the death of my mother and was diagnosed with PTSD. At the time, I was sleeping 16 hours a day, had to take 6 weeks off of work and was not much use to the world. I felt quite guilty that I wasn't functioning and was sleeping so much, but my counsellor explained that sleep is one of the ways that our minds use to process events that we are struggling with.

Treating yourself kindly and compassionately is the key - and do things that you want to do, rather than worrying as much about what you should do. We all should ourselves to death. I should be better by now. I should be able to (fill in the blank).

I'm glad you posted on this subject, and I know it was about specific medications, but medications just take the edge off. The work, or the processing has to be done by the person. Coming to terms with loss or grief or trauma of cancer can be an uphill battle and it isn't a sign of personal weakness or lack of positivity.

But on the medication subject, in case they end up wanting to switch out your meds, wellbutrin is an adjunctive type anti-depressant that can stimulate the sex drive. Just an fyi!

I hope you have a good appointment and was thrilled to hear that you ate a taco. You inspired me. Tonight I was going to make myself yet another protein shake and my girls were making poutine (something very Canadian! french fries, gravy and cheese curds! Yumm -heart attack in a bowl!) and I had a bit of poutine instead. Was a bit hard to get down, but yumm.

Take care...

The psychiatrist did a profile, looking for underlying problems. She thinks I am suffering from a depressive episode resulting from the trauma of the treatment.

She believes the level of sleep I'm experiencing is not depression, but is a direct requirement of the healing process. She does think the Avanza may be making me sleep longer and I should drop that, but she wants to up my Lovan dose first, and she only wants to change one med at a time. The change is consistent with the medication plan the GP had drawn up a few weeks ago.

On the sexual function side LWP, interesting you mention wellbutrin. Its related to Champix, a quit smoking drug, and I didn't tolerate it well so she mentioned it but didn't recommend it.

My expectations are my enemy. The only person expecting me to be over all this by now is me. I'm not crazy, I'm not addicted to drugs, I'm not just lazy. The recovery is going very well, and within expected norms. Part of that recovery sometimes includes anti-depressants and I just need to accept that and stop worrying about it.

Good job with the tacos LWP! I had a chicken and lamb kebab today

Ah those heavenly poutines! It took me a year of prodding from friends while living in Quebec before I tried them. I'm sure this super tasty dish would go a long way towards alleviating depression for survivors and caregivers here, n you can make them as mushy as you like. Start with French fries, sprinkle white cheddar cheese curds on top and cover with brown gravy. The smaller the curds the quicker they melt. My son mixes a package of brown gravy with a package of chicken gravy to approximate the brown gravy in Quebec. If you can't find the real white cheddar cheese curds you can experiment with some other quick melting white cheese. If you put chicken or a chopped steak patty under the poutine it becomes a chicken poutine or a steak poutine. You can dip everything in the gravy. Yum!

Poutines. You learn something new every day here. I'm just starting to try some sloppy solid foods and that sounds doable.

Glad you have some answers, Dave.

Yes Poutines a new one on me. We do the chips and gravy, the cheese curds are new. I'll give anything a shot, sounds deliciously high calories. Some days it feels like I still have a mountain to climb. Other days I realise how far I've come from boiled rice and milk.

Thanks for the support guys.

If u can't find the white cheddar curds, Monterrey Jack (without peppers) is a good substitute.