Last night, I had a call from the doctor. If you recall, recently I had my annual physical. I called back this morning. The good news is that my blood-work results were normal.
This was good, in that it meant that what’s been making me tired isn’t showing up in the blood (I did have some slight worries, as there are things that can cause fatigue). So, the subject of medicine has been on my mind. I’ve also been participating in some discussions with bdot about the effects of omeprazole. If you recall, a while back I did an experiment where I went off Omeprazole for a few weeks to see if it reduced the headaches. It did, but I couldn’t control the acid. I’m now back on the Omeprazole, every other day, in the mornings.
Anyway, the discussion this morning alerted me to some additional side effects of Omeprazole: weight gain (which I’ve had), as well as fatigue, malaise,elevated blood pressure, insomnia, apathy, and somnolence. I checked one of my favorite side-effect sites, Ask-a-Patient and this confirmed it: headaches are quite common… as is weight gain and loss of energy… and increased blood pressure. In other words, this seems to explain why my doctor wasn’t worried about the borderline blood pressure or my comments about being tired. I’ll see if the moving to every-other-day gives me more energy.
Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve been driving the vanpool both ways all week. I normally get to sleep on the ride in, but Phil’s been a bum on travel all week.
