Some Not So Great News

Yesterday morning I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, and I went in expecting it to be pretty standard.  But after going over some basics, my doctor asked me what I was thinking of doing as far as follow up.  I was totally confused, but it turns out that Dr. Wright is actually closing his practice and moving to Arkansas.  Apparently they sent letters to all his patients about this back in June but for whatever reason they had my Kingman address on file (I KNOW I updated that when I moved back up here).  So he's leaving in September.

I'm so sad!  I'm glad for Dr. Wright and I know that he's taking advantage of a good opportunity professionally, but I will definitely, definitely miss him.  I am sincerely beyond grateful to him for his help.  If it wasn't for Dr. Wright, who finally listened to my symptoms and gave me a correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment, I would probably be dead right now.  I really do believe that.

We chose Dr. Wright because he was the first doctor Corey called who took uninsured patients; by the time we talked to him I was losing hope pretty fast.  He ended up being great for me; we just clicked, and I owe a huge amount of my success to him.  I'm so grateful for that.

I thanked him for everything he's done for me, and he thanked me in return and told me that it's been a privilege to see how much I've improved the past couple years.  He told me that he'll always remember me as a success story, and that was fantastic to hear.

As far as treatment goes, I have an appointment with another doctor in the same building in September, and after that, I'll probably start seeing the doctor who's replacing Dr. Wright.  He said he thinks she'd be a good fit for me, but she doesn't start until October and her schedule's pretty insane until December-ish, and I'll need medication refills before that, so this appointment in September is a "bridge" appointment, basically.

I'm not thrilled about having to start over with someone new (TWO more rounds of new patient paper work, awesome!) but I'm not dreading it either.  I'm at a point where I feel like I know what I need from a provider, so I feel like regardless of who the doctor is, I can advocate for myself, if that makes sense.

I'm more bummed to see Dr. Wright go than anything.  I may have cried a little on the way to work after my appointment, and I'm not ashamed to admit that.  I wish him the best, and again, my gratitude for him is tremendous.

That's What I Get For Asking What The Odds Were

My thyroid is fine.

Completely, 100% fine.  Well within normal range on both TSH and T4.  Everything else about me is fine too: glucose, iron, anemia test, and EKG, all normal.  All "perfect" according to the hack at North Country.

So basically, what we know is that I'm in excellent health except for the small fact that I'm too tired to function and I'm a full 15 pounds heavier than I was two weeks ago.

Y'know, no biggie.  It's not like I need to, y'know, live or anything.  I can totally just sleep for the rest of my life.  Sure.

Needless to say I'm a little pissed.

Let's start at the beginning.  On Sunday I checked my voicemails and there was one from NCHC, from the 25th, left a couple hours after I called and bitched and yelled and got a follow up appointment.  I don't know how I missed the call, but regardless, it was an MA saying that the hack had finally gone over my labs and that they were all normal.  I considered not even bothering with the appointment but those tests were done 2 months ago when I had no symptoms so I figured I'd go and see what happened.

This stupid bitch refused to re-test either the TSH or the T4, and she insisted that there is absolutely 100% no way that my levels could have changed in the two months since those tests were done.  She did, however, run a quick glucose test, an anemia test, and for some reason, an EKG, all of which were totally normal.  The best she could suggest is that it's depression . . . without any other depressive symptoms.  She was like, "Have you lost interest in the things you enjoy?"  And I said that no, I haven't lost interest, I just don't have the energy to do them at the moment.  She said we should consider Lithium toxicity and I was like, are you effing kidding me?  Do you think I don't know the symptoms of Lithium toxicity?  My psychiatrist has hammered them into my head at every freaking visit I've ever had with him so I know what to watch out for and I do.

My favorite part, though, was the repeated insinuation that I'm lying about my sexual history.  At my first visit with the hack, she suggested a couple times I have an STD screening, which believe me, I do not need.  Even remotely.  Today she flat out said I could be HIV+ and I should consider being tested . . . even after I told her several times that I wasn't interested in STD testing.  I was so fucking offended.  I can't even . . . good lord, I can't even tell you.  And I could just tell she thought I was lying, which I know happens, but it definitely wasn't the case here.  It was very upsetting.  And then she did a urine dip to check for sugars and proteins and all that, and she fucking had a pregnancy test run as well.  Without telling me she was going to do that, which is fairly illegal, and also totally pointless.  She was like, well, you're not pregnant!  No fucking shit Sherlock!

So I guess at this point the next step is to talk to my psychiatrist about possibly adjusting my AD dosage (the hack didn't understand why I was on such a low dose and I was like, hello, bipolar?)

The good news is that I bitched enough to not get charged for today.  So go me.

I'm really disappointed, because I missed 3.5 hours of work for nothing, and I was really sure I'd walk away with an answer and a solution, and instead, I still feel like shit and I have no idea what to do about it.

Maybe the hack is right and it is a depressive episode.  I mean, it's possible, I guess.  Maybe I'm just not sleeping well . . . there are some issues with that right now but as far as I'd thought, it wasn't that significant so . . . who knows.  Maybe I just have had a touch of the flu or something, or maybe it's a mono flair up.

I just know that right now I'm flat out dreading just living because I'm so fucking miserable.

Frustrations, Time Travel, Etc.

So this thyroid thing is getting really, really annoying.

For example, yesterday was a beautiful spring Saturday (it's officially spring because I saw a butterfly the other day), and I wanted to be out and about.  But I had no energy.  I didn't have enough energy to shower let alone go out.  I spent the whole day in my chair watching White Collar on Netflix and doing low energy things like painting my toenails and cutting out patterns.  It was lame.  I hate this because for years I was mentally unable to do anything, and now that I'm mentally healthy and WANT to do stuff, I'm physically unable.

Plus, the weight gain is really, really frustrating.  I started the year so damn determined and I was doing so well!  But now I've gained weight from my thyroid being out of wack, plus I don't have any energy to work out at all, plus the low energy means more soda to keep myself going during the day.  So needless to say, I feel dis.gus.ting.  I hate it.

I keep telling myself that Monday is almost here and that after that this will get better.  As much as I'm not looking forward to going to NCHC again I'll be glad to get this nipped in the bud so that I can get on with my life.  I never thought I'd crave exercise but I do . . . I just want to move my body and not being able to blows.  I'm also feeling very creative lately but I don't have the energy to write.

I do have some anxiety that I'll go to the appt. and they'll tell me my thyroid is fine and that I'm just going to have to deal with feeling like shit indefinitely.  I'm trying not to think about that possibility, and I am telling myself how very, very unlikely it is . . . really, what are the chances I'm taking a potentially thyroid altering medication and having thyroid related symptoms and and have had high TSH tests already and it's not my thyroid?  Slim to none, I'd think.  I think I worry that on some level I'm just being lazy and detached and not engaging in my life.

Anyway, I stayed up late last night watching White Collar (too late . . . like 5 AM kinda late . . . latest I've stayed up since I started working) and just sort of thinking.  The windows were open and there was a nice, cool breeze coming in.  At one point I went in the bedroom to get something and I could feel the breeze, and it smelled like summer time, and I could smell my sleep therapy spray and this candle (Wine Country) that I've had forever and it was an intensely eerie feeling.  It felt exactly the way nights felt years ago, when I lived on the other side of this apartment complex (it's so strange to think that just a few hundred yards away is where my whole life used to be).  The details now are a lot different: I'm employed instead of unemployed, mentally healthy instead of mentally unstable, there are more pets and fewer rooms, and a different view from the windows.  Aside from those, though, it's almost like nothing ever changed.  Nights like that it's easy to imagine that Corey and I never met, that the reality is just this and not that I found and lost my soul mate, that there was this whole other life in a whole different place in between then and now.

The nights felt like this right before I met him so in my head there's always that association.

At the same time I feel like the memories of him are starting to fade.  The other day something reminded me of something really sweet he said to me once when we were first together--the thing that made me sure I was in love with him, actually.  I used to think of it all the time but when I remembered it the other day, it surprised me, because . . . I'd almost forgotten it had happened.  I'd forgotten I had it stored in my mind, if that makes sense.  And I was surprised to see it again and also surprised to realize how long it had been since I'd thought of it.

Now I'm just rambling, but this fading makes me really uncomfortable.  It's like I'm losing what's left and I don't want that connection to completely disappear.  Then there are times that I tell myself it's all just memories now; that someday it will have been ten years since I've seen or heard from him, and that the memories will be even more faded then.  It scares me.  And it still blows my mind to think that something that was so important, someone that was so important, something that mattered so much and that you put so much of yourself into can just be fading things tucked away into the back of your mind.

I don't like that one bit.

But I also have more faith than ever that if it's meant to be it'll be.

Damn Thyroid

Remember how, back in February, I had a really awful doctor's appointment to check out my thyroid?  Well, I'm going back to the awful place on Monday to get this all squared away because all of a sudden, I'm having symptoms of hypothyroidism.

Let's start at the beginning.

I have a TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) test done every three months, because Lithium can screw with your thyroid.  The two most recent times I had this test done, my TSH was a little high, which indicates hypothyroidism (that sounds like totally backwards logic, I know, but it makes sense when the doctors explain it).  So my psychiatrist, in February, insisted that I see a PCP to get it checked more thoroughly and potentially go on thyroid medication.  I went to North Country HealthCare, because they're very geared to people without insurance, and they have a sliding scale fee so what you pay is based on income.  I'd been there once before about 2 years ago to see a psychiatrist, and I had a horrible experience.  Like, horrible.  Which is why I ended up finding my current psychiatrist and all that.  Needless to say I was reluctant to go back but I thought, it's been 2 years, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Nope.  The woman I saw was completely incompetent.  I explained to her right off the bat that I was on Lithium, my psychiatrist had wanted me to see someone, and that my thyroid might be off from the Lithium.  She launched into some BS about how I needed to have an STD exam and tried to schedule it for me . . . I was like, um, no.  She asked me twice if I was seeing a psychiatrist despite the fact that I said that to begin with, and I had to tell her I was on Lithium 3 times before it stuck in her little tiny brain, and when it finally did, she was like, "You're on Lithium?  Have you considered that you might be bipolar?"  I was like wtf?  No, dumbass, I take it just for the hell of it because y'know, I enjoy poisoning myself.  She also made me do a whole body exam where I laid on the table and she touched me damn near everywhere, which was both awkward and unnecessary.  I was so uncomfortable.  In the last 5 minutes of the visit she suddenly became marginally useful and ordered a T4 test; T4 is the hormone that will be low if you have hypothyroidism.  I got my blood drawn that day and figured I'd hear back no later than a week from then.

Well, fast forward to the end of March, and I've gone a month without any contact from NCHC.  I finally called them and was told that the provider hadn't signed off on them yet (really? after a fucking month?) and that they'd have her call me.  A week and a half later, still nothing, so I called again and got the same BS, and then a week after that I called again and the same thing happened.  I'm assuming that they needed me to come in for results but no one ever actually said that so . . . yeah.

Really, I wasn't too concerned, because at the time of my appt. I'd been having no hypothyroid symptoms, and I didn't think there was really anything to worry about.  I was just aggravated with the unprofessionalism.

And then, the past two weeks, I have felt like hell.  Last week, I missed work because I was too tired to be  there; I've damn near collapsed every day this week as soon as I got home from work.  I'm just flat out exhausted all the time.  My muscles are sore and weak all over, especially my legs and arms, and my face has swollen up a couple times.  My period this month was totally irregular, and I've gained 10 pounds in the past 2 weeks.  And I realized this morning that every single one of those symptoms is a symptom of hypothyroidism.

Well, shit.

So I called NCHC today (2 damn months after I was seen) and got an appointment for Monday so I can find out what's going on and start treatment.  I don't want to go back there in the least but I can't keep living like this . . . I'm freaking miserable.  I hate feeling so out of it, especially at work.  I hate not being able to work out, and I really hate that I've gained weight after I was working so hard to lose it.  (As far as that goes, I'm just telling myself to relax, and that once the thyroid thing is taken care of I can focus harder on losing weight.  And besides, it's not like there's a deadline on the weight loss thing, and if I don't hit my goal at the end of the year, I can just keep at it next year.  Because life is just life . . . but that's another entry).

I made it clear to the receptionist I spoke to that I was not happy with the way things were handled.  I'm seeing the same woman I did last time and I was told that this will be the last time I can see her since she's leaving the practice; I said that was fine because I have no intention of setting foot in that clinic again after this next appointment.

So that's that.  I'm actually really relieved to know what's going on with me, because I was really freaked out at how bad I was feeling.  At least this is something fixable.

More Mental Shifts

I find that lately (the past two weeks or so) I've been having quite a few positive mental shifts like the one I mentioned before, so I thought I'd write about them.  I am loving this little stage in getting better because it feels like I'm over the hill now, if that makes sense.  Like all the struggling and  trying and treatment is finally really and truly starting to pay off.

I have less social anxiety now, especially when it comes to work.  I used to kind of obsess about how I was being perceived by my co-workers, about how they saw me and how I was doing my job.  I constantly worried that I was rubbing someone the wrong way or irritating someone and there were days when I'd go home and replay conversations from the day over and over in my head.  I don't feel that anymore, or at least not as strongly.  And granted some of that is probably just actually having a good job and good co-workers where I'm respected, but still, my gut tells me that if I'd gotten this job when I was still really sick it would not have gone well.

If anything I now struggle with this in the opposite direction: I have a hard time accepting that nothing's going wrong at work, that my co-workers like me, and that I am trusted to do my job and be competent.  It's an odd feeling.

I'm also better at taking constructive criticism, although I probably still need work in this area.  There are times when I worry that whatever co-worker is telling me to fix something is secretly pissed that I work there.  At the same time I also think that if I was a big problem I'd already have been talked to about it, and they know that I'm still learning.  Still better than I used to be though.

I am less afraid now.  In the past I have definitely been the type to hide from my problems; if it's something I didn't want to deal with, I just didn't deal with it.  I would put off painful conversations, anything to do with bills and money, and anything that made me sad.  I've gotten over this in a big way.  When I need to talk about something now, even if I'm dreading it, I just do it (it's usually nothing big, I just used to be weird!).  I've stopped even giving myself time to hesitate.  Financially, I pay a lot more attention to my money, and I'm in the process of making payments that I was unable to for a long time.  I'm still working on this area because discussions about money just make me nervous, and I still need to sit down and write out a budget but I'm much better than I used to be.  I also take my financial responsibilities seriously, most noticeably in the fact that I've given Jerbs rent money out of every paycheck I've gotten since I started working.  And things that make me sad don't crop up often, but recently, Benji* was in desperate need of a grooming, so I finally sucked it up and shaved him and bathed him.  Grooming him just makes me so sad, because I can feel how frail he is and how old he's getting it, and I hate thinking about how he probably won't be with me much longer.  I think in the past, I wasn't able to put myself through that kind of stuff because I knew that it would always go deeper because I was mentally weak.  But now . . . well, it still made me incredibly sad because I want Benji to live forever (seriously, I love that dog), but it didn't fuck up my life for days.  Benji was pissed at me for a few days (he really hates baths) but whatever.  Basically I was able to do what I had to do and then continue living without over analyzing it or letting it get the best of me, if that makes sense.  In the past I'd have spent a few days moping and crying and beating myself up for being a bad dog owner.

This one is more difficult to explain, but it's also one of the best ones.  I used to have this weird feeling that I was almost outside my own body; like I wasn't invested in my life, but rather was watching from outside it, like I was watching someone else live my life.  It was an odd, odd thing, and it's almost completely gone now.  There are still days when it crops up but I'm definitely at a point where I have an easier time seeing myself in my life and feeling fully engaged than I used to.

I also used to have trouble imagining my future for the same reason.  When I would picture myself down the road, whether it was a month or a year or a decade, I would have this sensation of it just being impossible, like I was, again, on the outside looking in.  I never really knew why this was but I think now that it was because at the time I just literally couldn't conceive of ever being healthy or capable enough to achieve what I was imagining.  This was especially true of my relationship with Corey.  I would imagine us married and living outside of AZ, just being happy together; working and coming home to each other and cooking dinner together and having date nights and going on vacations and so much more, and even though it was beautiful, I also felt very strongly that the woman I imagined doing those things with him just wasn't me.  I felt like I would never, ever be the type of woman who could have that life, that kind of relationship with someone.  But now, that all feels very possible, and when I imagine those things, whether with him or just generally, I genuinely see myself in those moments.  It's beautiful**, and I really, finally believe in the possibility of my own life.

My personal favorite mental shift is that I have stopped having all these weird questions of identity.  I used to spend my days doing nothing because I was so anxious about whether what I wanted to do made sense to my identity.  Like, I'd think, I want to read, or write, or sew, or whatever, and I wouldn't know which one to choose because I didn't know which one was me.  I had no idea who I was (the benchmark of borderline personality disorder), and therefore I felt the need to fit my whole identity into a really concrete definition.  So I'd wonder: am I the type of person who writes? who reads? who sews? who hikes? who whatevers?  It was horrible.  But now, I feel much more relaxed about this, and I realize that I can be a person who does ALL of those things, and that if I go through phases where I prefer one over the other, then that's not a big deal.  I need to do what makes me happy and what I enjoy, period the end.

So I'm doing well.  Very well.  And I love it.
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*Seriously, I love Benji.  I would give anything for him to be healthy again.  If somehow I could make it that way I would.  But he's not doing so hot right now and I try to just focus on the fact that I gave him the best life he could possibly have and saved him from misery and death.  When he passes I'm going to have him cremated, and then when I die, his urn will be buried with me.  I'm also going to get a memorial tattoo for him.

**The only downside of this newfound sense of possibility is that it makes the breakup even more painful.  It sucks to know that I've finally gotten there--like I can finally legit be with someone in a real way--but that the one person I want to be with . . . well, you know.

Oh, Y'know

I start work on Wednesday at 8 AM!  I'm so excited!!

I'm nervous too.  Mostly I'm worried about the adjusting--I'm about to go from sleeping until (after) noon to having to be ready to go and out the door by 7:10 AM.  Blech.  And the thing is I'm still having hypersomnia issues, and I can't fight through the tired like normal people can.  Like, if my alarm goes off and I'm still exhausted, I can't seem to suck it up and get out of bed anyway.  I'm hoping that having a job will make it easier, and I'm also hoping that my body will cooperate and go to bed when I tell it too.  And I'm sure that being unmedicated at the moment is not helping and that once my Lithium levels are back up I'll be better about actually getting up.  Plus I'm nervous about having to postpone my psych appointment

Speaking of medication, I finally got my prescription today.  Hallefreakingllujah.  It was a frustrating process because on the 12th, I logged on to the WalMart pharmacy thing, and saw that my doctor had given me 3 Lithium refills.  I was like yay! and immediately requested a refill online.  When I logged on the next day, though, the order was cancelled--no idea why.  So I requested another one, and  when I logged on today, it was also cancelled.  I called the WalMart pharmacy (and let me tell you I was ready to go to battle!) and the pharmacist was like, "That's weird, because I have a prescription all ready for you."  Thank goodness.

Also healthcare related, I got a voicemail from my doctor today about my lab work.  Everything looked good but my thyroid is still a little elevated (dammit) so I'm going to have to follow up on that.  Sigh.  I had so hoped the first elevated result was just a fluke.  Not a huge deal but still.  The thing is, I'm not so worried about having to follow up now that I'll be financially able to.  I'd just rather have to not treat something else with medication . . . but at the same time, I really don't think I'm interested in trying anything but Lithium for the bipolar disorder.

I also found out today that the gym I want to join (the one co-owned by MHC) is running a killer special if you join in January so I'm excited about that.  Because getting home after sunset when it's 3 degrees outside is most definitely going to prevent me from walking to the work out room.  And I'm sure that there's some sort of employee discount but in case that doesn't take effect until I'm elligible for benefits, I'd be willing to just join now and pay out of pocket  for it.

Overall, a lot to be happy about right now.