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When will I recover my taste buds?

Let's do some arithmetic. On October 3rd I received an 80 gram dose of Talvey. It has a half life in the body of 8.4 days. So the effective amount remaining is:

  • October 3: 80 grams
  • October 11: 40 grams
  • October 20: 20 grams
  • October 28: 10 grams
  • November 6: 5 grams
  • November 14: 2.5 grams
  • November 23: 1 gram

How low does it have to get before the side effects go away? I figure 5 grams in the best case, 1 gram in the worst. Then add a couple of weeks for my taste buds to regenerate and we get a target recovery date of November 20 - December 7.

Fuck. I hope my adventure in playing amateur doctor turns out to be wrong.

17 thoughts on “When will I recover my taste buds?

  1. kaleberg

    Wow, Talvey is really slow on the E in ADME. I'm guessing it has to get down into the micrograms and, even then, it will probably take weeks for your taste to fully recover. I know, it sucks.

    1. MikeTheMathGuy

      I once experienced the exact opposite. Just before Christmas, my doctor put me on a 10-day course of prednisone. For me, the most notable side effect was uncontrollable appetite -- coming at a time when my wife was making cookies, Chex mix, and other traditional holiday treats. I gained 10 pound in 2 weeks.

  2. mgb4ever

    I think you mean 80 mg, not grams. Talvey comes in 40 mg vials, so you are down to 1 mg left. 80 grams is nearly 3 ounces, a huge amount for any drug! Good luck!

  3. dmcantor

    The 8.4 day figure is an average of numerous subjects. It depends on the drug, but person-to-person variation in half-life is typically somewhere in the vicinity of 20-50%. So it wouldn't be surprising if your half-life was 4.2 days or 12.6 days. Let's hope it's the former.

  4. cld

    Say, while you're not able to taste anything now would be a great time to try all the hottest, most thermonuclear hot peppers you can find.

    You might not taste them but I bet they'll make you sweat.

    And cause all that Chernobyl-like internal dialogue!

    You could enter a hot pepper eating contest!

  5. jeffreycmcmahon

    There must be somebody in the readership who can explain how half-life decomposition works. Why does the rate level out over time, and how does the substance know to "slow down" as it were?

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