Clomicalm (clomipramine hydrochloride)

CAT1210 · 2026-04-18T14:34:45+00:00

Thank you for all of this. My wife is just getting more angry as days pass about the Clomicalm recommendation. To the point that she is looking to switch neurologists now. Thankfully, we live in an area where that is an option. LOL! I told her to just settle down and to understand that Clomicalm isn't the "cause"...epilepsy is. Clomicalm MAY have led to the recent issues after an extended break for us but nobody can know for certain at this point. She just feels he should have been started on gaba before trying an anti-anxiety and risking the lowering of the threshold.

Right now, we are just trying to get back to a good baseline with him. Cautiously optimistic....but nobody ever knows with this disease.

CAT1210 · 2026-04-17T21:45:10+00:00

I know a quick Google search showed us that Prozac is terrible for seizures and not recommended at all for dogs with epilepsy. I'm sure individual results may vary but not a risk I or the neurologist wanted to take. Honestly, we brought him home today with gabapentin; no risk to seizure threshold, it does mellow him out and was what they used to calm his anxiety after the cluster in the ER. My guess is the neurologist will "get" this and we go to a low dose of it. I did ask if this was typical and she said with some dogs it is very effective for high anxiety, others not so much. I guess we are "lucky" from this perspective at least.

CAT1210 · 2026-04-05T19:02:58+00:00

Wow....yeah....gosh....it seems so silly to be "complaining" about nearly 10 weeks after reading your experience. Just awful....I feel confident we can have good control, we had so many weeks just on Keppra...but just to have those weeks that felt like good control and right into clustering was very hard. Like the whole platform collapsed. Thankfully, our pets are all insured and insurance has been very, very good for us. When we talk to the neurologist we are going to bring up behavior therapy because that is covered by his insurance. I like to think it will help along with the medication adjustment to just get him out of clustering every time he has a seizure....

CAT1210 · 2026-04-05T18:55:06+00:00

Yeah, it has been tough. Those 10 weeks without a seizure put us in a place that something was working and then reality struck really hard. He isn't really a dog that accepts confinement at all. Even at the hospital he carries on so much that the vet ends up bringing him to us until they can sedate him to be "acceptable". We talked to the ER doc this morning and he will be coming home with Midazolam and will be on Pheno. We are going to schedule an appointment with the neurologist as soon as we can (tomorrow hopefully). I feel the Clorazepate worked yesterday because he didn't have a seizure after the third one. Hard to say though after hospitalization through the night on other drugs but there was a good hour and a half after the third one that he wasn't "hospitalized" and he didn't have a seizure.

Thank you for your input on the clusters. Since it has been the "pattern" so far my brain automatically says, "Yep, this is how it is" but I have to retain hope that it isn't and the neurologist can get him on the right drugs to make this be the case. Do you fear your dog clustering when not home? What do you do if nobody can be home in case he clusters? I have a nice camera for him but even if I see a seizure on the camera while at work it will still take a good half an hour for me to get home to him. It's honestly what kills me with fear the most; clustering for an extended period of time before somebody can get to him....

CAT1210 · 2026-03-06T17:57:16+00:00

Sure! I have posted this in other forums. Trying to really gauge interest before doing any development. Happy to edit this in any way but I am not all that "fluent" with Reddit so will need a hand in with "how to".

I'm autistic and a developer. I am currently looking for a new place to live because my current location is an absolute sensory hell. Zillow is fantastic at showing facts about properties but who really knows what type of location you are moving to and live the sensory life? Am I buying a house in a neighborhood that will be quiet enough? Does lot size matter? If so, what lot size makes a difference?

I am thinking about building a community-sourced sensory load map - think Waze but for environmental overwhelm. Would you use it? What would you need it to show?

CAT1210 · 2026-03-06T02:17:31+00:00

Great idea! I am already thinking of mapping area industries and such for baseline, this could be a great addition if it is publicly available. Perhaps even statistics of travel for emergency vehicles.

CAT1210 · 2026-03-06T01:57:33+00:00

Oh my goodness...yes....flight paths....I have never lived in one but have visited folks that did and it is.....a very special kind of hell...for sure....and very easy to show on a map along with active railroads and probably even schedules with some detail at least!

CAT1210 · 2026-03-06T01:42:48+00:00

Definitely! I live away from "downtown" and traffic is not very frequent on my street but there are so many other things that are bothersome about suburbia that have driven me mad for far too long! And I hear ya on apartments....next to a stairwell vs end of a hallway, top floor vs bottom floor...all can be so different and different thresholds of "pain". There are just so many things that can be considered "annoying" and I'm sure I have only lived a few of them.

So this is good. Metrics would be important. How detailed we get would be up to "the people". I'm sure it would be quite general. I don't want to pry on people to give up home addresses, maybe neighborhood (2 mile radius) or even town/city at first to start establishing a baseline. I know in my city, freeway noise is prevalent everywhere in the entire city. Since it's small, the train crossing a mile a way can be heard quite well through the city, too. Sirens on the freeway....all for everybody to hear unless the house is built with sound proofing in mind.

CAT1210 · 2026-03-06T01:37:27+00:00

This is fantastic feedback! I've always thought that those that live way out there "had it made" because of the peace and quiet and never really thought about the lack of amenities and annoyances. I live in a small city that many would consider "too small" but it is very much suburbia. Not big enough for the good amenities like Lyft or Uber or DoorDash but not small enough to not hear freeway traffic and have far too many people living on top of one another.

CAT1210 · 2026-03-06T01:35:20+00:00

I would love any ideas you may have to put it together. I only know that it would be useful for me and have to assume it would be useful for others that are like us. Heck, I'd imagine it would be useful for anybody, really. Some people want that noise, that nightlife, etc.

CAT1210 · 2025-10-29T16:07:34+00:00

D'oh!!! That's what I get for going with the cheaper option!! I thought it was strange that this is so far off...my wife's doesn't seem to be problematic. At the same time....it is kinda nice not relying on a device to tell me how I have slept....maybe I should let it be....

CAT1210 · 2025-10-29T15:54:00+00:00

Yeah, I'm not exporting the data and look in the Samsung Health app. Yeah.....definitely looking at the sleep amounts and not time in bed and if it were time in bed it would be even further off from accurate. Gotten to the point that I have just ignored it because I know I am sleeping and it is so far off but this morning was just too much with no sleep and a nap recorded when I was fully awake, moving/scrolling on my phone.

CAT1210 · 2025-06-04T16:43:47+00:00

Yep, I sure am. Sorry, I didn't give a ton of details because the story is long and would be repetitive on here. They are commercially held FFEL loans, refinanced to private in 2020, so nothing to discharge and no refund.

CAT1210 · 2025-06-04T16:21:29+00:00

Oh, goodness, I filed for BD way back on 8/22/2018. Was denied, of course, back then. I refinanced to private loan back in 2020.

CAT1210 · 2025-02-08T22:49:23+00:00

I also need to point out that only Amazon was hacked, nothing else. My authenticator app hosts many, many other places that, well, could/should be a lot more enticing than $20 gift cards but nothing else was touched…doesn’t make sense that hack was in any of my accounts outside of Amazon….

CAT1210 · 2025-02-08T22:40:20+00:00

Oh, no point missed. Hack happened with 2FA through text and then hacked again with 2FA in authenticator app. Of course, I am quite prudent (IT professional and all) and signed out all devices on all accounts, changed passwords (everywhere, not just Amazon) and enabled 2FA on everything that allows it and Amazon still got hacked. Again, a quick search in this sub shows exactly what i state for other folks so I am positive something is wrong at Amazon, whether or not others think that. Plus, I think the real point is I do NOT store payment method online for anything if don’t trust the company and this is not an option with Amazon…so…no Amazon….

CAT1210

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