Lexapro - The Beginning
Yesterday was my first actual Psychiatrist appointment. I was totally terrified. I know that most psychiatric drugs tweak chemicals in the brain and I wasn’t sure if I trusted that idea. I know I need tweaking, that isn’t the issue. Lord knows if I could stop all the thoughts that get stuck in my head I’d be happier. But, I don’t want the medicine to change the person I am at my core. I just want it to give back to me what I was before I became sick. I’m afraid it will change *me* and that nobody will care because I’ll have stopped worrying about the table cloth and how people use dishes and I won’t be so upset about mistakes on a draft paper.
The doctor seemed nice enough, but she was also very much like my regular doctor. She had her own agenda, or seemed to. I’m pretty sure that since she deals with the mentally ill on a regular basis she is convinced she needs to take things in a firm hand and guide the situation. But still…my clinician said the diagnosis she was ‘working with’ at the moment was OCD with a-typical anxiety and affective disorder. To me, the anxiety is the worst thing, the OCD is only mildly oppressive most of the time, and the mood disorder is hardly a blip on the scale.
After she asked about my physical problems and why I sought treatment, she rammed right into the OCD. “Tell me about your routines,” she said. It’s not that kind of OCD, I don’t have routines. I just have to have some things done a certain way or life is miserable and I sit there and think about how irritated I am that things are not right. When I’m at work I have to bank stack the money and keep it this way no matter how busy I get. Which is annoying when people try to ‘help’ me and don’t put things away right. People have to wash the dishes in a pan. My table cloth is sacred space not meant to have dirt on it. Paper can’t have mistakes on it and I cannot write on paper which is wrinkled, blotted up or dirty in some way. Pens have to feel a certain way. Pencil has to feel a certain way and look a certain way on the page and has to erase cleanly. Those aren’t routines.
Then she wanted to know about the depression. Sigh. It’s depression with everyone. Perhaps my lifelong melancholy has become so much a part of daily life for so long I am desensitized to it, but most of the time it’s not debilitating and I’m normally not worried about it. There are times when I get up and all I can accomplish is staring at the wall. However, those times are very far between and usually follow a mountain top experience.
What I’m tired of is being scared when I drive, being uptight and uncomfortable with people too close to me in the mall, being angry at the least little thing and not being able to think about anything else for days. I hate people close to me, I hate strangers speaking to me if I wasn’t already looking at them, I don’t like people behind me, I don’t like it when people talk softly when I’m around because I’m sure they’re talking about me. I react very badly to anyone who does anything which could be misconstrued as disrespecting me; I don’t like being questioned in such a way that I might mistake it as calling my intelligence into question. I’m afraid of having something happen to me which will make me look stupid or less valuable than I was perceived beforehand. This is the stuff I want fixed.
She gave me medication which is supposed to control my body’s use of Serotonin. It supposedly also works well with OCD. We’ll see. I took my first pill and I’m trying to have an open mind.
I always, always, always check to see what the side effects of medication are when I get new scripts. I read the side effects of this and now I am paranoid. This seems to be the exact opposite of the reaction I desire. I worry all the time as it is. It makes me feel funny, not sick, not tired, not hungry, but something made of a little of all of them. Not sure I like that. I will have to see how things go I guess. I remember the first day I took the Amitriptyline, it made me feel like I was living in a bowl of Jell-O. Now it hardly affects me at all.
The night was interesting. I almost had a headache; it was an uncomfortable feeling in my head which made me feel a sick-tired lethargy. I wasn’t asleep either, but I was definitely not all there. And I got hot, like I used to get hot flashes, only it never went away until somewhere after midnight and before 3 am. And, I don’t know, it could be that nothing was different in my body I was just noticing it more but I noticed tingling in the bottom of my feet, shooting feelings (not tingling but not pain but it was definitely pronounced) in my arms and fingers and a few small spasms in very small muscles around my stomach. It was definitely odd. The strangest thing of all though, was a heavy pounding sensation in my heart. It wasn’t beating worse than normal, but I felt it more than normal. Normally if I feel it like this I also feel it in my head and ears, but did not this time, only in my chest. I also felt heaviness on my chest (I had that beforehand though) and made my self cough to stop whatever it was.
So I slept in the chair. When I laid down the pounding and heaviness got unbearable. Now I have to ponder. If I stopped being paranoid, anxious and overly fussy, but had to sleep in a chair, would it be worth it?
Today has also been strange. I feel my clothes more than normal and even my hair. This isn’t a good thing at all. My skin is already overly fussy, I can’t handle that for a long term thing, and I hope this goes away.
I didn’t get hungry sooner than I would, but I felt it more. Not sure how I feel about that. And I got hot again. Yes it is hot here in the trailer, but still this was out of the ordinary. I’m tired now too. I guess I’ll go sleep in the chair again.
The doctor seemed nice enough, but she was also very much like my regular doctor. She had her own agenda, or seemed to. I’m pretty sure that since she deals with the mentally ill on a regular basis she is convinced she needs to take things in a firm hand and guide the situation. But still…my clinician said the diagnosis she was ‘working with’ at the moment was OCD with a-typical anxiety and affective disorder. To me, the anxiety is the worst thing, the OCD is only mildly oppressive most of the time, and the mood disorder is hardly a blip on the scale.
After she asked about my physical problems and why I sought treatment, she rammed right into the OCD. “Tell me about your routines,” she said. It’s not that kind of OCD, I don’t have routines. I just have to have some things done a certain way or life is miserable and I sit there and think about how irritated I am that things are not right. When I’m at work I have to bank stack the money and keep it this way no matter how busy I get. Which is annoying when people try to ‘help’ me and don’t put things away right. People have to wash the dishes in a pan. My table cloth is sacred space not meant to have dirt on it. Paper can’t have mistakes on it and I cannot write on paper which is wrinkled, blotted up or dirty in some way. Pens have to feel a certain way. Pencil has to feel a certain way and look a certain way on the page and has to erase cleanly. Those aren’t routines.
Then she wanted to know about the depression. Sigh. It’s depression with everyone. Perhaps my lifelong melancholy has become so much a part of daily life for so long I am desensitized to it, but most of the time it’s not debilitating and I’m normally not worried about it. There are times when I get up and all I can accomplish is staring at the wall. However, those times are very far between and usually follow a mountain top experience.
What I’m tired of is being scared when I drive, being uptight and uncomfortable with people too close to me in the mall, being angry at the least little thing and not being able to think about anything else for days. I hate people close to me, I hate strangers speaking to me if I wasn’t already looking at them, I don’t like people behind me, I don’t like it when people talk softly when I’m around because I’m sure they’re talking about me. I react very badly to anyone who does anything which could be misconstrued as disrespecting me; I don’t like being questioned in such a way that I might mistake it as calling my intelligence into question. I’m afraid of having something happen to me which will make me look stupid or less valuable than I was perceived beforehand. This is the stuff I want fixed.
She gave me medication which is supposed to control my body’s use of Serotonin. It supposedly also works well with OCD. We’ll see. I took my first pill and I’m trying to have an open mind.
I always, always, always check to see what the side effects of medication are when I get new scripts. I read the side effects of this and now I am paranoid. This seems to be the exact opposite of the reaction I desire. I worry all the time as it is. It makes me feel funny, not sick, not tired, not hungry, but something made of a little of all of them. Not sure I like that. I will have to see how things go I guess. I remember the first day I took the Amitriptyline, it made me feel like I was living in a bowl of Jell-O. Now it hardly affects me at all.
The night was interesting. I almost had a headache; it was an uncomfortable feeling in my head which made me feel a sick-tired lethargy. I wasn’t asleep either, but I was definitely not all there. And I got hot, like I used to get hot flashes, only it never went away until somewhere after midnight and before 3 am. And, I don’t know, it could be that nothing was different in my body I was just noticing it more but I noticed tingling in the bottom of my feet, shooting feelings (not tingling but not pain but it was definitely pronounced) in my arms and fingers and a few small spasms in very small muscles around my stomach. It was definitely odd. The strangest thing of all though, was a heavy pounding sensation in my heart. It wasn’t beating worse than normal, but I felt it more than normal. Normally if I feel it like this I also feel it in my head and ears, but did not this time, only in my chest. I also felt heaviness on my chest (I had that beforehand though) and made my self cough to stop whatever it was.
So I slept in the chair. When I laid down the pounding and heaviness got unbearable. Now I have to ponder. If I stopped being paranoid, anxious and overly fussy, but had to sleep in a chair, would it be worth it?
Today has also been strange. I feel my clothes more than normal and even my hair. This isn’t a good thing at all. My skin is already overly fussy, I can’t handle that for a long term thing, and I hope this goes away.
I didn’t get hungry sooner than I would, but I felt it more. Not sure how I feel about that. And I got hot again. Yes it is hot here in the trailer, but still this was out of the ordinary. I’m tired now too. I guess I’ll go sleep in the chair again.