u/ChamomilePeppermint

Background: I’m currently 29 and I’ve been taking Citalopram for the vast majority of my adult life. I was initially prescribed it during university as I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed and I was scraping through my degree.

Fast forward to now, every year of my life has been hell because of a combination of chronic depression and extremely bad luck. I also suffer from depersonalisation, so I’ve been too terrified of either upping my dose or changing to another medication in case it makes me dissociate.

Basically, I think I’ve reached the end of my rope. Life continues to be really horrific for me, and I’m now at the point where I can’t stop thinking about running away, hurting myself or worse.

I’m going to call my Dr tomorrow for an appointment, and I’m thinking the first step should be upping my dose to 40mg.

Honestly though I don’t even know if Citalopram has ever done anything for me, besides making me put on weight, lose my sex drive and be repulsed by alcohol (something which I think is a good thing as there’s a lot of alcoholism in my family). So I’m wondering if all it’s going to do is exacerbate these side effects.

I was wondering if anyone here has had experience of being on 30mg or less for a long time, and then upping it to 40mg? I’d love to hear how it went for you. Thank you in advance.

Background: I’m currently 29 and I’ve been taking Citalopram for the vast majority of my adult life. I was initially prescribed it during university as I was so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed and I was scraping through my degree.

Fast forward to now, every year of my life has been hell because of a combination of chronic depression and extremely bad luck. I also suffer from depersonalisation, so I’ve been too terrified of either upping my dose or changing to another medication in case it makes me dissociate.

Basically, I think I’ve reached the end of my rope. Life continues to be really horrific for me, and I’m now at the point where I can’t stop thinking about running away, hurting myself or worse.

I’m going to call my Dr tomorrow for an appointment, and I’m thinking the first step should be upping my dose to 40mg.

Honestly though I don’t even know if Citalopram has ever done anything for me, besides making me put on weight, lose my sex drive and be repulsed by alcohol (something which I think is a good thing as there’s a lot of alcoholism in my family). So I’m wondering if all it’s going to do is exacerbate these side effects.

I was wondering if anyone here has had experience of being on 30mg or less for a long time, and then upping it to 40mg? I’d love to hear how it went for you. Thank you in advance.

My beautiful boy was placed on palliative care this week due to the sudden discover of a mass affecting all of his liver lobes.

He is ten years old, and they said the mass is inoperable, recommending against a needle test to see what the mass is, as it could cause a bleed and the results wouldn’t be likely to lead to any meaningful improvement in the situation.

He is on the following medications:

Mirataz (Mirtazapine) transdermal ointment 20mg/g, 3g once daily for appetite stimulation

Cerenia 24mg, one quarter tablet once daily if required for nausea

Buprenorphine 0.2mg/ml sublingual 0.25ml three times daily for pain relief

Prednisolone 10mg/ml to reduce inflammation, 0.3ml orally once daily

We have been told to look out for deterioration in his quality of life and consider euthanasia if that is the case. They said we’ll likely have weeks left with him.

He has been home for just under two days now, and he is acting pretty much fine - he’s playing, purring, jumping up on me, following me around the house when it’s food time; the things he usually does.

He is very clearly hungry and not nauseous. However, when we give him the food, he is acting strangely around it.

Yesterday morning/early afternoon I managed to feed him 9g of his usual 16g of dry food that he’d have for breakfast, but I had to throw him each piece one by one or he wouldn’t eat it. He also ate around 20 catnip/cheddar treats this way, and also managed a small plate of tuna and a bit of sardine, but he wouldn’t eat these off the plate - there had to be small pieces individually splatted onto the floor, or he wouldn’t eat them. Even then, he’d eat the highest bit in the pile of fish and leave the rest.

After the early afternoon he didn’t have anything else. Me and my partner couldn’t get him to eat any dinner, despite trying tuna, sardines, wet food, dry food, lick-e-lix, cheese. The vet advised warming the food up and that only helped with the tuna/sardine earlier in the day, since then it’s not really made a difference.

This morning, again, he is very obviously hungry. We got up to feed them and he came running into the kitchen, waiting for food. Then we went to the living room with his usual dry food, I tried feeding him piece by piece, but he wasn’t interested. I tried the treats, not interested.

So we tried the sardine (cut up into fine pieces) and also some soupy wet food. He wasn’t really interested in the sardine, but I would pick bits of the soupy food up with the spoon I was using, and he’d take some tiny licks, but he’d mainly just rub the spoon. He is SO hungry I can see it. But this morning as soon as he gets anything solid in his mouth, e.g. the little bits of chicken in the soup, he kind of opens his mouth and sticks his tongue out a little as if to say this tastes gross, or my mouth hurts.

I just don’t know what to do. If anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated because he is so clearly hungry and this is breaking my heart.

Poster age: 29
Country: UK
Vet info: vets accessible - have already been to local vet and veterinary hospital
Main issue: liver cancer
Cat age: 10ish
Cat male neutered
Financial: can afford vet care, have already spent £3,200+

On Sunday morning, my best friend in the world, my cat Ed, was absolutely fine. He was calling out for his breakfast and was acting exactly like himself. He ate his breakfast fine.

When it got to lunchtime he was barely interested in food, dinner the same, so on Monday morning we took him to our local vets. Ed has FIV and regular bouts of cat flu (he also has permanent congestion/snot/sneezing issues) which we have treated him for with antibiotics several times in the past, so we just assumed it was that.

Our vets noticed that he was very dehydrated (he’d been drinking a lot overnight too) and also he’d lost weight since his last checkup, so they put him on fluids.

They did a blood test and told us his liver enzymes were off and that his red blood cell percentage was concerningly low. We then rushed to a vet hospital a 50 minute drive away for a blood transfusion and investigations.

On presentation they also discovered a palpable mass in his abdomen. They scanned him and did more bloods. His red blood cells are sitting around 20% so he’s extremely anaemic (they think the percentage might even be lower than this because he’s so dehydrated).

But they told me the ultrasound showed a liver tumour that’s in all of the lobes - meaning it’s inoperable. My world came crashing down. They wouldn’t do the transfusion for him either because they said they only do that when the prognosis is good - and in his case we’re looking at days to weeks.

He stayed there overnight on fluids and various meds. We’ve brought him home today and they’ve put him on palliative care. We’ve got steroids, appetite stimulants and painkillers.

I am in absolute agony. I can’t even explain how much I adore this cat. The pain is indescribable.

Naturally my brain is wondering if there is anything at all we can do. Can’t cats get a liver donation? Can’t they have chemotherapy? Is there something they’ve missed out, some avenue we could try?

The hospital asked if we wanted a needle inserting into the liver to try to find out what the tumour is to see if we can give a bit more specific palliative medication. But the vet said that won’t make him live longer than what we’re already doing. They also offered a lung scan to see if it’s spread there, again they didn’t recommend it because they said it won’t change anything.

Are they right? Have we done everything possible? I feel completely lost and I’m absolutely distraught.

I've never bought one before so would really appreciate any information on when it might be released online. I'm assuming it's not as simple as it appearing at 12am?

Thank you in advance!