Right Now

I am just in a funk lately.

Right now, everything just feels broken and empty and I can't figure out why or how to fix it.

I'm at a loss.

My Poor Neglected Little Blog

I find it really hard to believe it's been almost a month since I wrote anything here, especially given how much I used to write, but . . . well, the date on the last entry doesn't lie, so I guess it's really been that long.

I'm just so busy lately.  Having two jobs is pretty time consuming, and it also makes me want to spend my non working time doing absolutely nothing.  (You should see how messy my apartment is right now, it's horrible.  I did clean the bathroom today, though, and I feel like that's a step in the right direction).

There's really not a lot to talk about, though.

Work is work.  This past week was really frustrating at MHC, and I'm hoping that this next week is better.  We're in a billing cycle at SHF right now, so I've been putting in a lot of hours there.  I'm looking forward to wrapping it up this week.

My second appointment with my new doctor went well, and I found out that my Lithium levels hit the therapeutic range on 900 mg a day.  I wasn't expecting that, because before I was on 1200, so it was kind of a pleasant surprise.  I'm hoping it wasn't a random fluke, but I don't get my blood tested again for a couple weeks.  At my last appointment, I was also able to get a prescription for my antidepressant, which was really exciting, because I'd started feeling like I was needing it.  I had to fight a little for it, but it worked out.  (Minus the part where my doctor didn't write a quantity on the Rx, and the pharmacy had to call her like 5 times to work it out).

The weekend before Halloween was the NAU homecoming game, and some college friends (B and her husband, plus another now married couple I went to school with)  came up from Phoenix for it, so I went with them to the game.  It was a freaking blast, and I had so much fun.  And it was a good game, one of the intense nail biter ones where we win at the last possible minute, and I like those ones.  I may or may not have had to apologize to the random lady sitting next to me for yelling in her ear . . . sometimes I forget how excited I get at football games.  It was nice to get out and be social, and nice to see old friends.  The last time I went to a homecoming game was back in 2009, and it was at that game that I was introduced to my ex.  So much nostalgia, for so many things.

Halloween weekend, I went to Kingman, and it was a very frustrating experience.  I love my family, but somehow going home just never goes how I want or expect it to.  I barely got to see Austin, my sister barely spoke to me, and all my parents did when they were around each other was bicker.  I had a good time hanging out with my parents separately, and the little time I did spend with Austin was wonderful, but I came back to Flagstaff sad and frustrated instead of refreshed and recharged.  Going home is just a complicated experience now, for so many reasons.  My parents being divorced, my sister not giving a crap about me being there, and it being the place where I started and destroyed my life with my ex all just make it a little painful.  Again, I love my family, and despite everything, I'm looking forward to going home for Christmas.  But there are times when I feel so isolated from them, and I hate that, because I feel like I'm being punished for having left, for pursuing a life outside of Kingman.  I've felt that since I left for college 11 years ago, but it wasn't as bad before I came back and left again.  And thinking that just brings up all the bitterness of the break up and this thought that if I hadn't screwed up everything with my ex, maybe my relationships with my family would be better too.

It's really pointless to think all that.  What's done is done.  I know my family loves me.  I know I had to leave and be on my own to get better.  Those thoughts are only comforting, like, 75% of the time, though.

I'm sure there's more, but I need to get to bed.

Halloween Nails

Since I was basically immobile all weekend (thank you, URI or whatever), I decided I'd take advantage of having to sit still and do my nails.  I think it was a successful venture.  Glitter acrylic is actually quite a bit easier than I thought.  Obviously I had to a Halloween manicure.

I really like how they turned out, and they've served their purpose in keeping me from biting my nails.

Unrelated to the nails, while I was sick my little Siamese buddy got super cuddly, it was very sweet.

He likes to lean against my legs while he sleeps.

I'm feeling a lot better today, and I actually made it through a whole day at MHC and then an hour at SHF.  Thank goodness!

Sick And Stuff

I've spent my weekend watching TV and taking cold medicine.  It has not been fun.

That sinus infection that's been hanging around for the past few weeks randomly migrated down into my chest.  It literally happened overnight: I went to bed last Wednesday night with my head all stuffy and whatever, and woke up Thursday morning with a nasty cough and some pretty major chest congestion.  I worked a half day, then came home and just rested.  I managed to work on Friday, but I think I'm going to call in tomorrow.  I feel like absolute shit.

Which means I got absolutely nothing done this weekend.  The house needs to be cleaned.  I have laundry to do.  There are a few sewing projects I need to get moving on.

It stresses me out when things start to pile up like that.  Like . . . I've been having mini anxiety attacks about it all day.

Not to mention the thought of missing work stresses me out.

I'm telling myself to calm down, but it's kind of a losing battle.  

Bullet Points

I feel like I think of at least 3 things I want to blog about every single day, and then I just never have the time.  But I want to keep my blog at least semi updated so . . . bullet points.

1.  I cannot freaking believe it's October.  I feel like summer flew by, I feel like this whole year is just flying by.  It's getting cold out, especially at night, and I love it.  It makes it hard to get out of bed in the mornings, though.

2.  I'm having mixed results with the Lithium at the moment.  In ways I feel better, in ways I feel worse.  I've just felt maybe a little more anxious, a little more up, a little more scattered.  It worried me for a couple days, and then Jerbs reminded me that this happened when I first started Lithium, and also all the times I restarted it.  It's kind of crappy, but at the same time, I'm committed to keeping at it until the levels balance and I feel better.

3.  I also think the Lithium's making me tired, which is frustrating.  I've never been one to be able to just suck it up and fight through being tired, and I feel like I've been dragging the past week or so.  This is a new thing, I don't remember being drowsy on Lithium before, so I'm not sure if it's really that or if it's something else (like the change in the weather, having a sinus infection (STILL), or whatever).  Again, it's one of those things that I'm just kind of waiting out, because it might go away once I'm at my therapeutic dose and my body readjusts to having it in my system.  We'll see.

4.  My mom's buying a house!  Which is pretty much the best thing I've heard all year, and I'm really excited for her.

5.  Jerbs and I have pretty much adopted this stray Siamese cat that had been hanging around our porch.  He used to just come in every night for a little while and eat some cat food, then he started spending the night inside in the living room, and now he sleeps with me every night.  He's the cutest cat.

6.  Work has gotten better since my old office mate moved out.  Now I'm sharing my office with the billing department's new hire, and it's just blissfully quiet.  Plus, having the new girl in my office means she comes to me with all of her questions, and it's been kind of cool to see how much I know about my job.  Not that I really thought there was a lot I didn't know, but it's a good feeling to be able to look at something and just know what needs to be done.  I also just found out last week that our CEO is so impressed with the billing department that we're all getting bonuses in the form of giftcards, which is awesome.  It's nice to be appreciated.

7.  I'm really trying to make October a good month fitness/weight loss wise.  Especially since Lithium is known to cause weight gain, and I definitely don't want to get bigger.  

That's all for now.  More to come.  Someday.  When I'm not as tired.

The Appointment

I am really happy to say that my appointment with my new doctor went really, really well.  Better than I was even hoping, which is always a pleasant surprise.

The doctor herself is just great.  We clicked, and I feel like that's really important in psychiatric care.  I clicked with Dr. Wright, but not with Dr. F, and I'm relieved that Dr. C and I connected.  She was very patient, and thorough, and asked questions that really . . . helped highlight the key points of my whole long history with this BS.  Not all doctors know how to do that.  Her practice is really tiny, which I like, because I feel like with fewer patients she can be more invested in each patient.  Her office is in this beautiful old house downtown, with narrow doorways, creaky hardwood floors, and the most amazing built in bookcase I've ever seen.  (I know that the aesthetics of the office really aren't important treatment wise, but I felt like it was worth mentioning).  She only has one employee, who does the billing/scheduling/reception type stuff, and she's also super nice.  It's just a very calm space overall.  It's also a pretty old fashioned kind of practice: they're all paper records, they don't do electronic billing, and I left with an actual handwritten prescription.

Which brings me to my next point: I walked out of the appointment with a prescription for Lithium!  I really wasn't expecting that at all--I was expecting to leave with an order for blood work and get a prescription at my follow up next week.  But Dr. C said that since I've already been on this medication and all that, she was comfortable with starting me on it, then getting blood work once I'm almost at my old dose.  Which meant that my follow up appointment got pushed back to mid October, which means I have some time to figure out the financing stuff.

So all in all, it was just great.  Great doctor, great staff, great office, a prescription, not having to pay for another appointment for 3 weeks . . . awesome.  Like I said, better than I was even expecting.  It was as pleasant an experience as it could be for being an overall unpleasant thing, but I think I'll elaborate on that later.

Right now, I'm just glad it went so well, glad it's over, and glad to have my medication.

Struggling

The past week-ish has just been . . . well, kind of a struggle.

It's really just a little bit of everything.  Stress at work, a sort of sinus infection kind of thing (which I've actually had for like the past month . . . ever since my co-workers' kids went back to school last month, it seems like at least one co-worker a week comes down with something, and then they bring those nasty little kid germs into work . . . blech), the whole iffy mental health treatment thing . . . I just haven't been doing well.

Stress at work is high right now because there's some shifting around going on in my department at MHC.  Nothing about it will directly impact my job; in fact, the only thing that's really changing for me is that my office mate is moving out, and that's a pretty welcome change at this point.  It's really not the shifting of things that bothers me, it's the attitude behind some of it that gets on my nerves, but I think that once everything's done things will calm down.  I try not to let myself get too worked up over it, because there's really no point in doing so.  Again, absolutely nothing is changing as far as my actual day to day duties, and I know that my boss thinks I'm doing really well job performance wise, so ultimately, there's nothing for me to worry about.  I just don't do well with change in general.  Besides all of that, a certain incompetent co-worker is getting more and more incompetent, and I'm just getting to my limit of dealing with this person.  That feeling is not limited to me, it's pretty much the whole freaking clinic, but the only person who could do something about it chooses to ignore it so . . . it's kind of a mess.

On top of all that, I can feel my mental health slipping a little bit.  I can feel myself disengaging, losing interest in things.  Not for long periods of time, it kind of comes and goes, but it's still not fun.  I've also just started to feel down and anxious quite a bit (again, it kind of comes and goes), and that just sucks.  My nerves are also just . . . I don't know.  Shot right now.  Not all the time, but I've noticed lately that when I have to do something that would make me nervous anyway, it's incredibly magnified.  I don't like it.  I've also been stress eating and retail therapying, which are both bad ideas.  My bank balance is going down and my weight is going up, and I would really like the exact opposite to be happening.

Plus I'm just nervous about the whole new doctor thing.  I'm nervous about the financial aspect, I'm nervous that she and I won't click, I'm nervous that she won't be willing to put me back on the medication I'd been on before, I'm nervous about having to get blood work and all that kind of stuff done.  I'm nervous about having to re-hash my whole story to someone new, because that's never fun.  It's all a little overwhelming.  (I did go into her office today to turn in my new patient paperwork, and being able to see the office and sort of feel its vibe has calmed me down quite a bit.  I liked what I saw).

Right now, I'm just telling myself to just get through it and it'll all be fine.  All of the mental health symptoms I'm having now are ones I've had before, and even more significantly, they're all ones I've beaten before.  And there's no reason to think that a decent doctor would totally ignore my history of success with Lithium and not prescribe it again.

Deep breaths.  Deep, deep, breaths.

A Year Without A Psychiatrist

I said in my last post that I've been without a psychiatrist for nearly a year now, so I thought I'd follow that up by talking about what I've done this past year to keep myself on track treatment wise.

The first few months were pretty easy.  Between the last of my refills from Dr. Wright, and the refill Dr. F gave me, I was fully medicated until the end of November.  In December I broke into my "emergency" Lithium stash, which was basically about a month and a half worth of old prescriptions that I'd never taken.  (I had this partly from those times when I just wouldn't take my medicine, and partly leftover from when the couple times I switched medications before the current Rx ran out, if that makes sense).  I lowered my dose a little bit and my emergency supply lasted until the end of February.

At that point I had been unsuccessfully trying to work things out with my old doctor/been looking for a new doctor, and it was taking longer than expected.  I knew I couldn't just cold turkey stop my medication, so I started looking for an alternative.  I remembered an old Hastings co-worker telling me she was (self diagnosed) bipolar, and that she took a natural, OTC Lithium supplement.  I didn't think such a thing existed, but after I did some poking around on the internet, I found it.  It's called Lithium orotate and you can get it on Amazon.  It's obviously not the same formulation as Rx Lithium (which is Lithium carbonate); it's a lower dosage made mostly of elemental Lithium, and there's some evidence that the bioavailability is different as well.  It hasn't been studied very extensively in humans, but I was desperate, and it was something, so I bought it.  I started myself out on a dosage that was higher than what the bottle recommended but lower than my therapeutic dose of Rx Lithium.

And it actually helped.  I will say that it's not as effective as "real" Lithium, but it has most definitely kept the edge off of my worst symptoms for the past 6 months.  I haven't had any manic or hypomanic episodes; I've had a few down swings but not any true depressive episodes either.  It was the most helpful the first couple months I was taking it (March thru July).  I mean, in June I was able to get a second job, so obviously I was doing OK.  It's only been the past few weeks that I've started to feel like the effectiveness was dropping off a bit, which is why I started focusing on finding a psychiatrist again.

Like I said, it hasn't been perfect.  Since the end of August, some things have fallen by the wayside: I haven't written in a while, I haven't been working out or eating right, and my house is in desperate need of a deep clean.  Right now, though, those are all things I don't have the mental energy to do.  But I have been able to get up and go to work every day and hold down my job and even do really well at it, and that's amazing.  I also haven't had any suicidal ideation or thought about cutting.  So while the past 6 months of alternative treatment haven't been my best, they've far and away not been my worst, either.  I can tell you that if I'd just gone unmedicated, I'd be unemployed and possibly dead right now, and I'm neither.  All in all, I call it at least a semi success.  I'm also really proud of myself for being able to find an alternative and at least do something to keep myself well, because old me would have just let it go and suffered the consequences.

Right now, things are on a bit of a downslope.  I haven't had any energy the past couple weeks, I can feel my temper getting shorter, and in general, I just haven't felt well.  I'm just trying to make it through as best as I can, and in less than two weeks I'll see my new doctor and everything will get better from there.  I can't even express how much I'm looking forward to my appointment, because I'm ready to get back to where I was.