Note: I am fine, except how we're all generally not fine. My antidepressants are basically holding steady, but the anxiety meds do need a tweak. Or two.


Last week, to my therapist, apparently: "...and I'll be following up with my psych about getting breakthrough meds for anxiety."

The next day, somewhere in the middle of the latest medication gothic: my therapist gets a message saying "Hey did you know your client is asking for meds? Maybe you need another appointment?"
My therapist, to herself: "My client? Is asking? For meds? We discussed it at our last appointment? WELL, GIVE THEM MEDS, THEN!"

Me to my therapist, today: "anyway they finally coughed up some of the stuff, you know, the antihistamine", and "and I was thinking, I HAVE MAXED OUT MY COPING SKILLS I COULD PROBABLY TEACH A CLASS ON COPING SKILLS, I HAVE DEALT WITH THE PAIN FROM A BROKEN TOOTH USING MEDITATION, I WENT DECADES WITH SUICIDAL DEPRESSION ONLY USING COPING SKILLS AND A LIBRARY, I WOULD NOT BE ASKING FOR MEDICATION IF I THOUGHT I COULD DO IT MYSELF."

(note: as soon as I safely could admit to a medical professional that I needed antidepressants, I did, I got them, and they would have to pry them out of my live and very angry hands if they haven't stopped working on me -- at which point I would be looking for another type that worked. my example is here for reasons of I kinda had to, and may the generations of the future never know what we had to go through.)

...

Psych appointment is next week.

Noodle is in the truck.

The death of someone in my greater circles, who I'd probably never talked to directly but I always admired her presence, is still haunting me all these years later. Her name is on Trump's body count list. I told my therapist that even if I did have the opportunity, which I won't, I couldn't possibly strangle That Man with these lily-white hands. (what a fucking phrase for a cliche, eh???) I just hope that when he goes, he is alone and scared, and that he feels the weight of every one of those deaths. And cracked a joke. She reminded me about legos. I cracked another one.

She hadn't known about the ABCDEF, and we giggled a bit about how Stephen King cracking a tasteless joke about Elon Musk's relationships resulting in him getting kicked off the service formerly known as Twitter? that was actually pretty high up there on the Grimness scale.

I'm trying to talk about the normal things in my life. History will record many of the abnormal things. But we're still sharing cat memes in group chat. We're still reading books. We're still cussing out the dishes. We're still looking at the dishbox with dismay, dispirited woe, and sometimes despair. I'm still getting cricks in my neck from excessive muscle tension.

Even if all I can get out of the day is lying in bed with a book, or maybe some not intellectually challenging video and a pair of prism glasses: I'm still here, and I'll do the best I can.


Bonus: I told my therapist about the study I'm in, and how I am using that depression-engraved ability to find problems in a constructive way, and how it is going to result in gift cards, and how I have a Target glass tree habit. And I held up the three trees on my desk in slow, dramatic succession.

"Have you seen that tiktok video, it's this doctor," my therapist wheezed, "where he goes around Target, holding things up to the camera, and saying--"
"NO!" I completed, giggling. "I actually haven't seen THAT one, but I have seen a lot of similar content over the years. Had you seen the one that's the dog toy or ... NOT a dog toy?"

Previously: line up AM pills on the left side of the desk, PM pills on the right side, and Both pills in the middle (to be added to boxes after AM pills, and then put on the PM side). This requires extra clearing off of desk space to make sure they all fit. (Bottles that have already been loaded in go back into the "Come With Me If You Want to Live" drawer, either right-side-up if I don't need to do anything else, upside-down in the fabric organizer that the primary stack of filled boxes will go in if they need a refill soon, and upside-down in that place with a little plastic dot inside them if I ran out midway; a set of matching plastic dots mark the compartments where there aren't that pill.)

New procedure: AM pills go in the pink bins on-or-near the desk, PM pills go in the blue (teal) bins, and Both Times pills go in the white bins and migrate to Blue after they've been added to AM.

The colored plastic dots come from Microlet lancet tip protectors. (Used lancets go in my mini Sharps jar, which started life as a Costco Loratadine jar and then got a red paint job on the lid and bottom using some non-preferred nail polish, and a label saying SHARPS on the side, implying Please Don't Fill Above This Line. I dump it into the big sharps bin in the bathroom.)

This weekend featured some Bodily Fail, over which I am still Disgruntled and Apologetic. Fucking cancer. Fucking cancer treatments.


Book status: finished with The Curse of Chalion a day before the audiobook was going to get whisked back to the library, and into Paladin of Souls. (We will probably not do The Hallowed Hunt, and the next person to breathlessly suggest that we do any Sharing Knife gets The Cut Direct. However: Penric, my beloved.)

In other book news, I waxed enthusiastic about All The Warnings on Cyteen to alexseanchai, concluding "But it's great about Growing Up Autistic Under Surveillance" although modern understanding of neurotypes and Azi vs Cit psychology suggests that uh, starting a kid off via 100% Tape-based learning would Probably Not result in Autism. "Oh, they're not sensitive to their discussion, are you Florian" "No, sera" (paraphrase of Ari I and Florian I) hits Significantly Different in context of Autism "Speaks", those morally bankrupt allistic and about-us-without-us fuckers.


Relevant to The Locked Tomb, Target's Halloween shit is coming out, and they have a skull-topped decorative bottle, some blatantly 3rd House skulls that are bedazzled to fuck and back, and a "Finally, some peace and quiet" coffin shaped motto board with a skull that could be painted into a number of different House skulls.

Day -1: Tuesday the 6th. Dr. O. appointment. He heard my experience discontinuing Strattera and was impressed that I'd a) recognized that I was not going to be good to drive while having that level of brain zap, and b) split the powder to keep tapering. Ritalin was next on the list to try, so I get to try it for a month, and will call to talk to someone else in the office if I need any doctor action before he returns from vacation. Dose: 10mg, 5mg before breakfast and the second 5mg before lunch.

Day 0: Wednesday the 7th, last appointment with my old therapist. I got the notification at 3:10-ish, the appointment was 4. I got out the door to the pharmacy within 10 minutes, and had enough time to spare before the appointment that I decided to try out the frozen yogurt place at the other shopping center. I had a nice conversation with the clerk on duty, who liked my necklace but couldn't wear his. The appointment with my old therapist didn't happen; I guess that's one of the things that sometimes happens. Disappointed but not Emotionally Compromised.

Day 1: Thursday the 8th, where I had not checked the calendar adequately and was still putting on clothes when Alex's appointment check-in time was. We got there within 5 minutes of the actual appointment. It took the entire drive on hold to reach a person on the phone to say "BTW, running late". While waiting in the parking lot, I took my first pill, with a chocolate caramel so I wouldn't be taking it on a completely empty stomach. It tasted bitter, but a friendly bitter like coffee, not a potentially poisonous bitter like a lot of hard-to-swallow pills. Within the first 15-20 minutes of taking it, I felt an also coffee-like sense of well-being in my intestines, which I usually associate with the physical warmth of the coffee. It was warm and relaxing, and I felt like I could nap, but no actual sleep pressure. Just took the one, because "breakfast" there was in the afternoon. Upon getting home, I made one obnoxious call after I finished an actual meal, and made 3 others shortly afterwards in the course of updating a household document. Had to drink some carbonated beverage in the evening to make my insides feel ok around about the time it wore off. In the evening I also realized that I wouldn't be able to do the things I wanted to do before bedtime, and left myself two checklist items.

Day 2: Friday the 9th. Took it on an empty stomach and tried to fall back asleep. Didn't. No feeling of well-being this time, but did knock out the two checklist items before the reminders fired. Had a bath, with bath-snacks. Needed carbonated beverage. (Hmm.)

Day 3: Saturday the 10th, day before Librarians' Friendsgiving. All the shopping. Took it without food in the morning-ish, was well-powered through the entire multi-hour trip. (Belovedest started to fade partway through.) Got a carbonated beverage on the Dollar Tree step. Powered through Safeway quickly, without going down all the aisles. Got ginger ale, because now we both seem to need it. Got some in tiny bottles, of a size to carry in my medical addendum bag. Put together the cheese plate and a detailed checklist

Day 4: Sunday the 11th, Librarians' Friendsgiving. Took it around 8:30, went back to sleep, woke up around 10, left only 15 minutes later than originally planned.

The maps steered us around a fuel spill that blocked the entire northbound direction of the highway we would have otherwise used. We rerouted and found a dollar store to get the rest of the serving implements that I wanted for the occasion. (We already had the cheese plate, but we needed some more things like serving tongs, cracker trays, salad tongs, and something that wasn't a plastic bag to serve the blueberries and orange slices.) Unfortunately J&P got caught in the highway closure and spent 3 hours in the car instead of the expected <1. Cheese and crackers sustained us until they arrived. I broke out my crocheting; M broke out her knitting. Her sister's name is the same (roughly) as Mama's.

I took a second one before the feast. I may have had a small reaction, but that might also have been the coffee that was breakfast.

Day 5: Monday the 12th, today. Deliberately declined to take a morning pill, slept in, and took one at lunchtime. "Breakfast" was a little patchy due to wearing a mask.

This time Belovedest made it until the afternoon before needing to come home.

Took Alex to appointment Thursday, then realized I hadn't put the pre-anesthesia phone call in my calendar about the time the phone rang.

This morning I popped out of the bad kind of dream, the sort with me needing to make a lot of noise because someone was touching me without permission and nobody seemed to care. Two points to correct guesses who it was, minus three points to correct guesses made in a venue his widow could see.

If the Strattera is contributing significantly to my digestive woes, it needs to go.

I took myself and my pre hospital homework to see about the thing with all the patches and the blips and bleeps. It's theoretically walk-in, but it was busy enough to need appointments. I went back home to find my wallet (it was in my bag all along), then back to get stickers around my tits.

After that I dropped by the grocery store. Completely out of carts, except I was lucky enough to sit on the motorized cart which has the busted battery indicator. It also doesn't beep. was it charged? Well, it got me around the store.

Two caramel apples and some miscellaneous starches later, I headed home. On my way out I observed one of the cart-guys deftly passing a cart across the main lane to a customer. I gave him the acknowledgement he deserved.

Made None Soup with Left Protein for Belovedest, who calls it Stun Soup (to smack the sinuses to order). Everyone is in bed early now.

I was afraid this might be a no-go due to the possible side effect of upsetting my gastrointestinal system. However, that's not yet graduated to anything further than the feeling I get when I've had barely too much coffee: a sign that perhaps I should not push that any further, but not distressing. And that's faded to the point where I suspect I'd be able to bump it up a notch without harm as long as I'm diligent about taking with food -- and I have enough other medications that I absolutely 100% must take with food that I can err in the other direction by having food and then forgetting to take any of the morning set of meds until like 6 pm. (This is not as shocking as it would be if my meals were on a morning person schedule; since my mornings are generally sedate, I typically don't have breakfast until noon, whether or not I was sleeping until then.)

And speaking of sleeping! Today I woke up at 4. I suspected that perhaps I would want more sleep. But I didn't! (I had become horizontal at 8, and conked out around 9:30.) I might possibly have gone back to sleep around 7, with the comforting sounds of the rain and wind lashing around the outside of the house and the little pops and creaks of the mini-split -- except the power then went out with some spectacular flashes of the LED string, and the Uninterruptible Power Supply Chorus in the living room all started keening, and Belovedest started snorting in the manner of someone suddenly deprived of their bilevel positive airway pressure, and Yellface decided that since everyone was yelling she should too -- so we spent a leisurely little while lounging in bed where it was nice and warm. And I didn't fall over this afternoon and need to nap just when we were heading out to go shopping, and aside from a certain amount of physical fatigue, I feel pretty sharp and ready to do another thing as soon as I've had some food and finished the update.

This isn't the only day when I've been surprised by my lack of tiredness when I would usually expect it.

I was doing well enough on Thursday that I figured I should call and set up an appointment with the new psychiatrist ASAP, instead of waiting until this coming Thursday or Friday. (He had been modestly impressed by my ability to do simple planning logic like asking "Okay, if you want to see me before Christmas if this is working out, when should I call to make the appointment?" and I suspect that I will try to bring my bullet journals in with me for that next appointment so he won't have to recite me the lecture in how Medication Is Not Magic And You Should Work With Your Therapist On How To Structure Your Life, again. I got through it the first time by contemplating where on my phone I would look to present him with a scan of one of the pages, rather than attempting to interrupt him or daydreaming about my inflatable mallet. (He's a good one, I wouldn't want actual violence.)) I called Friday and got an appointment for Christmas week, one that would absolutely not have been there if I'd waited another week. And he's on vacation post-Christmas, and he didn't want to make me wait if the meds were doing well.

I don't yet have a good read on what it's doing to my appetite, because there are enough miscellaneous confounding factors, chief amongst which would be the dental fuckery.

IRC silliness:
( Read more... )

Now, I shall go attempt to make the media room vaguely inhabitable while also cooking and eating something that is slightly more like food than the small remains of a pint of ice cream that got ejected from the freezer while we were putting away this week's shopping. I was energized and coherent enough to go to three different places, even though Belovedest was Extremely Done by the end.

Saturday: woke up at a surprisingly early hour for me, then didn't nap.

Sunday: went with a burrito-railgun group to dinner, and met all sorts of delightful people in person. Then did laundry.

Today: work, which went later than anticipated as Purple was face-down in Getting Computers To Talk To Themselves while I was still clearing old stuff out of my inbox.

Lunch was pleasant, and involved a substantial amount of spirited agreement between a UX minion, a UI guy, and an engineer with Opinions about UX.

Purple demonstrated the dead fish handshake to me, to much hilarity.


Meds:
Turns out that the new lineup gives me side effects that *nearly exactly mimic* getting bell peppered, which of course pokes at a phobia to boot.
* Side effects Thursday, first day of increased dose; thought it was hidden bell pepper
* Cafe said no bell pepper; side effects Friday also in the same fashion; realized it had to be meds
* not noticed Saturday
* noticed Sunday to my annoyance
* very carefully avoided today

Bloodcannon:
* #bloodcannon
* BLOODCANNON

So far as be being stable was concerned, February well and truly bit. I managed to get out of it reasonably sane and definitely alive, though, so I'm feeling pretty good about being me. Skipping back just under three years, to June 2003 -- definite difference in the sanity. (I did find the 36" strap-on entry, which is what I was looking for.)

If anyone ever suggests that I co-parent with marxdarx again, I will look around for something appropriate to use as a blunt object. Of all the influences for the worse on my general sanity, my high school friendship with Shawn has to have been the worst, co-parenting with Marx the second worst, and any number of things including my previous encounter with the current workplace and my relationship with BJ tying for third place. (That's for steady grind-down. The three worst shocks are probably Terrible Tuesday in 1996, the Awful Realization of early 2005, and leaving CTY in 1995 without proper closure.)

St. John's Wort seems to be doing the trick of stabilizing me at something approaching human. I'm lucky in that it works as well as it does. I'm on 900mg/day at the moment, and I've been there for about a week; I'm going to try 600mg starting at the end of this next week, probably stay there for about a month, and then get back to 300mg/day where I've been doing well except when I go off it entirely.

I know it's been working, because I did this past Saturday at work on less than two hours of sleep. I'm lucky that I can walk to work. I was acting entirely too giddy and punchy at the end of the shift, and Comic Pirate Super was wondering if the contents of my water bottle would catch on fire if offered flame, but I was there and I was functional. Homie G Super didn't see any cracks in my professionalism at the beginning of the shift, even though I told him how much sleep I'd gotten and that I was exhausted. I evidently exude professionalism there.

I realized last night that I'm probably living in the middle of a fantasy novel. This amuses me no end, of course. Life is weird enough as it is without extraneous happenings. Now that extraneous happenings have started, well, happening, I am bemused but delighted.

Last night, though, I did have a drug trip. Perfectly legal, I hasten to add. It's just that I have strong reactions to even small doses of certain antihistamines, and when I'm already tired, that makes things doubly strong.

As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was scrolling through a bizarre dreamlike environment where the background and all the objects were made up of pages upon pages of overlaid and constantly refreshing text from random snippets of things. It was as if the green scrolling columns of characters that symbolize the Matrix were replaced instead by translucent cut-outs from yellowing books, with a fresh layer lacquered on every quarter-second. I was reading everything everywhere in addition to the story that was being told. People were assigned new names, new attributes. Nothing quite fit right with reality, yet everything clicked into place.

Simply sitting up and opening my eyes in order to get a drink of water brought me back into reality, but a reality viewed through a shimmering, distorting, half-dream lens. It took five minutes to navigate the complexities of a simple middle-of-the-night restroom trip instead of only two or three.

Since the experience was assigning things that I knew to be false to things, such as assigning either Darkside or Figment with the name "George", I cannot trust any of my experiences there (not that I remember them) to be in any way related to c'thia, but they certainly were entertaining while they were going on.

I shan't ever be taking that drug before driving or operating heavy machinery, and if I'm going to take it in daylight hours, I'm either going to be in a place where I can sit down reliably, or I will be carrying a Stick of Not Falling Over with me (like I did last time I was on the stuff, when I was taking it for the ant bites and tripping out majorly to Dawn).