mutulated monkey meat
so, now that i'm feeling better, let me catch up on things a bit...
the most exciting thing for me right now is my brain. i went to the psychiatrist last monday for a med change consultation, more than half expecting him to tell me to chill out and try this dosage longer before going down because i've been feeling a little strange on the lower dose. so, i walked in, and we chatted, and i told him about feeling shaky and slightly more bored than ususal, and he smiled and told me we should go down another level now, then. turns out, i'm bored because the drug creates a lot of apathy in people, and as that lifts i become more aware of my free time. also, the shaky is a side effect of the medication that my body had become accustom to with the higher dose, but which i am noticing now that the apathy about it is dissolving. he thinks that, because these side effects are what i'm noticing, and not effects that the drug was covering that i'm seeing re-emerge, i never had any mental illness! that, in fact, the mood craziness, hallucinations, and anxiety were all caused by the damage to my temporal lobe, and as i recover, i will be able to go off all the medications that covered those issues with no fear of them re-emerging!
also, he said that i should try a new thing called neurofeedback. basically, from how he explained it, they use a biofeedback machine to make a map of electrical currents in the brain. people who have suffered head injuries have very different electrical patterns in their brains then normal adults, so it's easy to tell, with this machine, both how my head injury affects me, and how well it has healed thus far. then they subtly change the electrical currents, with therapy based on the bran map and a machine that actually pulses electricity into the brain to strengthen good new connections. it's apparently highly used for adolencents w/ ADHD and other emotional and concentration issues, and also on athletes who want to focus better, as well as people with brain injuries.
so i am VERY excited to try all this, and feel great with the new, even lower, med dosage! i feel... well, alive again... :-) and, almost, normally human
the most exciting thing for me right now is my brain. i went to the psychiatrist last monday for a med change consultation, more than half expecting him to tell me to chill out and try this dosage longer before going down because i've been feeling a little strange on the lower dose. so, i walked in, and we chatted, and i told him about feeling shaky and slightly more bored than ususal, and he smiled and told me we should go down another level now, then. turns out, i'm bored because the drug creates a lot of apathy in people, and as that lifts i become more aware of my free time. also, the shaky is a side effect of the medication that my body had become accustom to with the higher dose, but which i am noticing now that the apathy about it is dissolving. he thinks that, because these side effects are what i'm noticing, and not effects that the drug was covering that i'm seeing re-emerge, i never had any mental illness! that, in fact, the mood craziness, hallucinations, and anxiety were all caused by the damage to my temporal lobe, and as i recover, i will be able to go off all the medications that covered those issues with no fear of them re-emerging!
also, he said that i should try a new thing called neurofeedback. basically, from how he explained it, they use a biofeedback machine to make a map of electrical currents in the brain. people who have suffered head injuries have very different electrical patterns in their brains then normal adults, so it's easy to tell, with this machine, both how my head injury affects me, and how well it has healed thus far. then they subtly change the electrical currents, with therapy based on the bran map and a machine that actually pulses electricity into the brain to strengthen good new connections. it's apparently highly used for adolencents w/ ADHD and other emotional and concentration issues, and also on athletes who want to focus better, as well as people with brain injuries.
so i am VERY excited to try all this, and feel great with the new, even lower, med dosage! i feel... well, alive again... :-) and, almost, normally human