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.