zeptember

Today was the first day of school. Immediately upon my arrival, one of my fellow assistant teachers came in with some kind of fragrance on her that sent me choking and gasping for air. My throat got all sticky and I got a headache - those are some of the Multiple Chemical Sensitivity signs. She felt bad, but said three TYPICAL stupid things - “But it’s only hand lotion!” and “Buy me some lotion, then! ..just kidding”…she added. Then she went on about how she wore that same lotion all last week and I didn’t have a reaction.

Well, I don’t have an answer as to WHY I did not have a reaction - I’d have to go back in time and see if I stood next to her at all last week. I’d have to ask how MUCH lotion did she use. I’d have to factor in that perhaps something ELSE in the air or carpets set me off before even her lotion did this morning. The school had the floors and carpets cleaned over the weekend.

I took a Benadryl. Then my other fellow assistant teacher came in to work and HER perfume or lotion or hair product or whatever set me off, but not as much as the first assistant’s did.

I got better gradually throughout the day. There are three children in our class that I cannot be around for very long because they have scented oil or hair product in their hair.

I can’t remember how soon the sore throat set in, but the headache and sore throat are still with me now, at 7:30pm.

In other news, I was asked to stay til 5pm at work. I said yes, totally forgetting about my psychologist appointment.

The psychologist called me exasperated the moment I walked in the door at 5:30pm, and that alone set me off. The guilt at having failed someone, followed so closely on the heels of having felt good at helping someone else out, really broke my heart. The guilt is overwhelming. I wanted to start crying right there on the phone.

My psychologist says I REALLY need a psychiatrist STAT, and set me off further by ordering me to call Magellan and set this shit up. She says I NEED to be on mood stabilisers, and that it’s IMPORTANT for me to get medicated IMMEDIATELY.

Huh. How is it that I made it through 28 years of life with this condition, and only now someone is treating me as though I might perish at any moment if I don’t get MEDICATED? I’ve been chronically depressed since about the age of ten. I’ve been getting worse as the years go by, sure. That head-on auto accident in 1994 sure didn’t help things. But I’m the one who put me on SSRI treatment for two years from 2000 to 2002, and I’m the one who took myself off that because the meds weren’t helping me. I’m the one who has been managing the best I can since 2002.

Because I had a freakout that was a combination of my own mental shit, exacerbated by experimentation with medical grade cannabis for endometriosis treatment, now suddenly I’m like this shiny self destruct button to a newly hired shrink.

After I got off the phone with the psychologist, I took 2mg Ativan to avoid a crying meltdown, because I was still feeling so guilty at having flaked on my appointment with her today, and I was feeling under pressure from her ordering me to call Magellan and find a psychiatrist NOW.

So that means I’ve had a total of 3mg Ativan today, because I took one at work.
I had 1mg yesterday. I can’t remember past that.

Out of 30 in a bottle, prescribed to me on August 14, 2010, I have used up 16 pills, which is an average of one a day. Which means some days I take a .5mg ativan, some days I take no ativan, and some days, like today, I take 3mg of ativan.

My husband is also doing poorly in the mental health department. That’s a whole other entry, though, which I don’t have time for at this moment.

As of August 18, I felt I had come out of my funk. Of course, that’s when I began spotting. I got my period on August 19, and had a hard time of it, but in general I was not depersonalising or becoming suicidal or falling into deep depressions anymore, and the mania had calmed down.

My anxiety kicked up on Sunday, August 22, because I was still in pain - I had the ‘last gasp’ as we call it, where there’s one last push of big pain and bleeding before the menstrual cycle stops again for the next 21 or so days. But the pain lasted alllll damned day. So I resumed taking ativan along with my pain meds and was a total zombie all day Sunday.

When I got to work on Monday - it was my first day back to work after being gone all summer for the teacher training - I required 1.5 ativan to get through the workday.

Monday was also my first visit with a new psychologist - Lynda Sussman. I like her. I will be seeing her weekly.

I don’t remember if I took any ativan at all on Tuesday, August 24, but the next day, on August 25, I found out that my chosen sister’s papa had died. he was my adopted/chosen grandpa. He always treated me like family. I cried for part of the day at work, and got home and spent the rest of the evening sobbing while talking to my chosen sister over the phone.

I required 2 ativan to get through Tuesday.

Today I was just a wreck, and have so far taken 3.5 ativan to get through the day/night. I took these over the course of the day, but still.
I had another chemical exposure at work today (orange oil cleaners to scrape masking tape off the floor) - I was wearing a mask & gloves but the chems leaked through gloves. I walked back into the room after taking my mask off, and was sent outside cuz I was faint/flushed and didn’t realise it was BECAUSE of the fumes. After work, I noticed my bike helmet was gone. Then, my shoelace got caught in the pedal on the way home.
And of course I’m still sad about my chosen sister’s Papa. All this makes for a needful night of crocodile tears. There’s been a lot of crying, lately. I haven’t cried such huge, wet tears this often since I was a teenager.

Oh, and I am now wondering if the bouncy leg thing is from the ativan, but then, didn’t I have this symptom before getting on ativan? Too tired to check.

I was supposed to work today, then go to the gym. Instead, I came home from work, cried hard on and off, got into pajamas, then street clothes, then pajamas, then street clothes, then pajamas again, crying each time I changed clothes, because I was trying to go to the gym but just couldn’t do it. I wanted to run a load of laundry at 8pm but just couldn’t do it. It was all I could do to clean the catboxes. I have not eaten dinner. I ate I dunno how many M&M candies, and cried some more.

And now, after this last 1mg ativan I popped about an hour ago, I’m ready to be a zombie and be in bed, now.

Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow is Friday. Tomorrow is game night with friends, even though I wanna go dancing. But if I go dancing, I WILL get drunk. So game night it is.

On a positive note, both the school owner and the director both keep telling me how great it is to have me back, and that means so much to me, so very much. I am loved and appreciated.

I need to keep seeing Dr. Sussman, and also get myself a psychiatrist, because Dr. Sussman thinks I am Bipolar II and need to be on mood stabilisers. I totally agree with her.

I did get some more homework done. By 3:11pm, I finished and emailed one of the three Rationale papers that are due this month.

I decided to have some lunch, and called my Ma to wish her a happy birthday. The phone call turned into a technical support session, because she could not figure out how to send me photos from her new phone to mine. And I actually didn’t know how to do it, either - I realised that I’ve not sent photos from phone to phone since my last flip phone. And now I have a hand-me-down first generation iPhone.

I literally could not take the pressure of trying to explain things in very simplistic, over-enunciated terms to my aging mother. I could not even handle the idea that my mother is aging. She is 66 years old today.

I began crying and told her it was too much to expect of me right now, that I’m under so much pressure from school and trying to get the homework done so I can get the final grades and thus the nationwide certification I’m after.

I immediately popped 1mg ativan. This means I’ve had 1.5 ativan today.

I told my ma that I never thought I’d be like Aunt M, who can’t handle any tiny amount of stress without running and locking herself in the bathroom all day. But that’s me, that’s pretty much where I’ve been emotionally for the past seven years.

When I hung up, I couldn’t let the matter drop. I looked it up on the web, and then texted my ma, my brother and my sister-in-law the info on how to send a photo through one’s phone to another person’s phone.

Of course, no one texted or called back to say whether they’d gotten the test pic I sent, and I haven’t gotten a re-send of all the pix they said they’ve been trying to send.

Still trying not to cry, I went and laid down for nearly an hour. I think I dozed a couple of times, but for the most part, I was uncomfortable and freezing. Then my phone rang. In the kitchen. I got up to answer it and it was some woman who’d found me on Yelp.com and wanted to know if I was available for babysitting during the day on a regular basis. I had to turn her down, saying my school year as an assistant teacher starts back up next week.

Then, my cousin D texted me and wanted to know if I know of any programs that can make his computer run faster. *sigh* more tech support. I replied that he either needs more memory installed or needs to clean the viruses. He replied that he’s been browsing craigslist.org and that’s all.
DUDE I HAVE NO IDEA. TALK TO SOMEONE LOCAL TO YOU IN FLORIDA.

I’ve been freezing and starving all day. The house got up to 70°F today, but I still feel like I’m freezing to death.
I have two pairs of slipper socks on, long pants, a tee shirt and a fuzzy sweater over that. I’m sitting on the couch with the laptop on my lap and a heating pad turned to “medium” heat on my back. I’m still shivering.

I have to make up one or two days of class this week. I missed ‘Day 4′ of Language Arts class back in July, but the teacher would prefer it if I showed up for ‘Day 3′ and ‘Day 4′ this week to get all the info I need and to turn in my homework (3-ring-binders).

The make-up days begin TOMORROW at 8am.

I am already ready to flake on tomorrow and only do Thursday. But then, george is due Thursday. I’m hoping he’s a day late. Just show up on Friday, plz.

Ok if I think about this any longer, I’m going to full on FREAK OUT.

Yesterday I needed 3 ativan to get through the day. It wasn’t because I was having panic attacks, though. I was seriously manic and scattered. Both of my legs bounced all day, the likes I have not seen since I was taking SSRIs back in 2000-2002.

Working on the papers I have due for school was very difficult. I have not worked on any illustrating for the classes in a week. I get nauseous just thinking about it.

I took my first 1mg ativan around 10am, the second one around 2pm, and I had no relief from the mania. My externalised babble kept at it. My legs bounced just the same. I flitted and paced through the house, but could barely get anything done.

I called my Magellan health services representative and left a message urging her to pre-authorise a psychiatrist for me, and said that I don’t think I need the anti-anxiety meds - I also need mood stabilisers or something to calm the mania. I said the anti-anxiety meds are not touching the mania.

I took my third 1mg ativan sometime around 6pm I think… and that wiped me out for the night. I loaded the dishwasher, made dinner, watched an episode of Carnivale with my husband, and then went to try to do some Tibetan Relaxation, which turned into leg lifts because I STILL had restless legs and scattered energy and no focus going on.
Then the full force of the last ativan kicked in, and I crawled into bed and fell asleep.

When I woke this morning, it was before my alarm went off, and it was because my lower back hurt so bad that I wanted to cry. This is the same pain I get every month right before my period.
I got up and moved around, and the pain eased up, but then the mania returned. My legs are back to bouncing, my brain is back to not being able to focus on anything, and so I decided to take the ativan. I only took .5mg this time, though.

And I wait for my Magellan rep to call me back…I called her again today but she’s out of the office. Go figure.

I refuse to go to emergency ever again. I’ve been once when I was in a car accident and they forgot to sew up my knee. I’ve been there when I cut myself cutting salmon and they charged me $1,100 to put one stitch in my finger after trimming off the protruding fatty tissue from the wound. I’ve been there in severe pain when the dilaudid didn’t stop the endometriosis pain, and they let me sit for an hour and a half to ride the pain and bleeding out in a dark room, then rushed in and forced a pelvic and sent me home because they did not know what to do with me. I screamed that they put me in pain all over again but they didn’t care. I had my surgery papers and diagnosis and everything. Just thinking about that experience makes me want to cry. And then I went to emergency when my throat closed up and got all sticky after a co-worker’s perfume gassed me out, and I was branded an anxiety case. They didn’t believe me, but gave me three shots; benadryl, epinephrine, and ativan…and sent me on my way, high as a kite, not caring that I could barely see or walk straight, I was so high from the injections.

So if you think I’m going to go to ER on a psych emergency for my continued mania, you’ve got another think coming.

I will fall through the fucking cracks and wait for the fucking call from the fucking representative to authorise me to see a fucking shrink to put me on the proper fucking medications.

Of course, the proper fucking medications will probably take three or four rounds before they figure out what works best for me.

I’d like to think a padded room and a permanent vacation from my reality would work best for me, but my husband doesn’t quite agree.

Wow. You see that? You see how that all just went? You see the progression to crazy that just happened?

I feel like I’m standing outside of myself, having just witnessed the crazy. And the hypoglycemia that precedes menstruation every month is not helping with the current depersonalisation and depression issues. The hypoglycemia brain fog started even before I took the .5mg ativan.

I want to walk into the water like Edna Pontellier did. This is not the first time in my life I have wanted to follow her out into the water. I remember vividly back in college I wanted to. And well, I almost did, in a manner of speaking, cuz I got into a near-fatal car accident. I bowed out the windshield with my head.

If I ain’t been right my entire life, I sure as shit ain’t been right since the accident.

OH, my gods.

I’m crazy just like my mama.

She admitted her wild depressions to me just yesterday on the phone. I know it was a big step for her, but I had to tell her that I already knew about it, and that I have the same.

Is it a learned environmental thing? Is it hereditary? If only I knew what form of depression my mother suffers from, I might know the answer to the question.
Is ma bi-polar like me? If she is, then yes, it’s hereditary. I’ve been suffering from profound depression and suicidal ideation since the age of ten. It is documented in my diaries and loose notes I scrawled to myself and kept all these years.

…triggers…

The first trigger to my current state of profound depression and on-again-off-again depersonalisation was going to school this summer and falling under a stress-load that was too much for me to bear. And not just me - several of my classmates were sobbing messes of stress every week for the entire run of the summer session. I don’t know how many of them recovered. I haven’t, so far.

The second trigger was the financial situation - we thought we had enough money in the joint account to cover all my expenses for going to school this summer, and we didn’t manage the money correctly. We overran the budget by well over $1,000. I still owe money for the last class, and I still owe money for a shared hotel stay with my co-worker.

Those two triggers were all it took to make me padded-room-worthy.

That means I am not very robust, emotionally. But I already knew that. You probably didn’t. Now you know. I’m not very robust, emotionally. In fact, I’m a quivering pile of freakout much of the time. It’s a wonder I can even hold a job at all.

Job.

It starts for me again next week.

I haven’t started homework today.

My vision and head are still fuzzy from hypoglycemia. My legs are both still bouncing.

…

After my last sentence, I got up from the laptop and jogged in circles around the house for a full ten minutes. My left shoulder hurts somewhat, now. I was holding both arms at right angles in front of me, like runners do. Ah well.

My left leg is still bouncing.

I think the brain fog is lifting. I might be able to do homework.

My appetite has been way up, lately. Two hours ago, I ate two bowls of cereal, a homemade 16oz goat-milk yoghurt smoothie with bananas and strawberries, and two gluten free waffles with cinnamon and gluten-free, dairy-free buttery spread. And I’m already hungry again.

My cousin D texted me around 11:45am to say “Have to keep going forward. Time goes by whether we want to or not.”

I always love his wisdom snippets.

He’s been in school this year, too. He’s in his third semester in college. I am so proud of him.

I’m gonna go attempt some more homework.

There’s good news to be had, of course…

B’s dad got out of the hospital yesterday, and they figured out what caused his blood sugar to spike up to 500 in the first place - he was given some kind of prescription-only B vitamin because he was sick with an upper respiratory tract infection. This B vitamin knocked everything out of whack and could have killed him. Ugh. But he’s doing better and is finally out of the hospital.

With B’s paycheck on August 10, we’ve been able to do a full round of grocery shopping again. Hoorah. This lifts both of our spirits a bit.

B was able to give me money to go out dancing both Friday and Saturday this weekend. For the most part, I had fun, but I admit to still being on the melancholy side. For many minutes throughout the night, both nights, one could find me sitting alone in a chair or standing up against the wall, staring off at the crowd. Even though I had friends there to talk to, I felt lonely, isolated. There wasn’t much I felt comfortable talking about with people. I didn’t feel like I had anything smart or witty or worthy to add to conversation.

The ’still not out of the woods’ part is that I haven’t done homework in two days, because there’s other stuff in life that comes up, like wanting to be there for friends who are about to get married. And there’s selfish stuff, like wanting to go to dinner with my husband, and go out dancing. And there’s health management stuff, like having to go to the pain management class on Sundays, and then get the grocery shopping and some housework done for the coming week.
Not getting homework done means guilt creeps back in HARD. And then I pop another Ativan. And then I get too tired (well it doesn’t help that I only had five hours of sleep last night).

The ’still not out of the woods’ part is that my husband is still severely depressed after all he’s been through with my mental breakdown, then nearly losing his father, and the lead singer of his band quitting (haven’t mentioned that til now but it’s also a major part of his depression)…and I don’t know what to do to make him feel better. When I suggested cuddling this morning, he shrugged and grimaced.
My eyes welled with tears and I fled the room.

After a few minutes, we talked about it. We talked it all out. We did get some cuddle time in after that, and it wasn’t forced - he was gonna ask me if I’d still like cuddle time when I had turned to him and burst into tears. So yeah, after talking about it, we cuddled for a bit, and the rest of the day was a tad brighter. I felt like I had my man back again for part of the day.

Now he’s off to game night, which I’m glad is happening, and I hope he has some fun. That’s all he would have needed was for game night to be cancelled yet again.

That leaves me here, free to start homework and get a good six hours of it done.

And yet, I’m melancholy again. Can’t focus. Can’t get started. Want to spend the evening crying.

Maybe I should just do that - get it all out - again. Ugh. So tired of this depression. I thought I was coming out of it. I’ve been taking my vitamins every day. I went and had the ‘hey look at me, I’m still part of a subculture’ boon this weekend. I got to be a foodie with my husband and eat out at Thai and Sushi restaurants again this weekend cuz he had the money for it. We have a freshly stocked pantry and refrigerator because my husband has money for it.

Has my depression just turned into PMS, because I’m due to menstruate in the next four days?
Did I screw my hormonal balance up by having one small glass of red wine on Friday night, and one small glass of red wine on Saturday night? Did I screw up my mental state by taking Tylenol 3 at 4am for the moderate, nagging low back pain and knee pain caused by the dancing I did on Friday and Saturday?

Gah. I wish I knew what is too much, what is the wrong way, what is verboten. I wish I had an accurate owner’s manual to this body.

I put myself on the waiting list for free psychological counseling through Harborside Health Center. This week I will give the Magellan psychologist a call to schedule meeting with her. I also filled out a form detailing the bad experience I had with the CBD bought at Harborside, as I am part of their patient research - I’m a willful guinea pig for the CBD - now they get the bad feedback on it. I’m likely the teeny tiny less than one percent rare side effects person in the study. I always am. But they need to know. I’m just glad Harborside offers other services besides cannabis medication. Today was the Alexander Technique class. I would like to check out their yoga sessions, too.

Right now, I’m gonna do some light housework to prepare for the coming week. This is the week I need to re-establish getting up as though I’m going to work, so I can get my body back in rhythm for that.

Then we’ll see if I’m up for getting some more homework done. I’ve learned that forcing myself through the homework only makes me go deeper into depression and tantrum mode, so I’m gonna do what I can, if I can get stuff done. And I’m going to have to be okay with that.