we're going crazy and we're going today
Damnit. I wake up at 9pm when Chance creeps into bed, and think oh, god, I have nothing to do until I'm tired enough to fall asleep again, I'll write a nice long journal entry explaining all that's been going on in my life...
Aaaaaaaaaand then it's 4:15AM and I'm left with a couple of forum posts and god knows what else (very little) to show for it.
Anyway, brief rundown of events since el Año Nuevo:
January 3rd: IUS (Mirena) insertion
January 3rd: caucus'd for Barack Obama
various night times-oh, woe, I should go, to the hospit-oh! Shit, I hate that bit, there's nothing to read and no one of wit... But woe is me, I cry and cry, can't you see, I want to die?
So instead I stare at my self-help books and write REALLY SHITTY poetry and register on boards full of crazy people and drive myself just the slightest bit nutso second guessing my psychiatrist as to whether I'm really BPII ultraradian cycling.
He says no. I say no, most of the time. And then worry sinks in and I think ... but what if I AM?
I really need to let go of diagnoses and just embrace whatever works.
Anyway:
January 9th: therapy appointment, goes well, I think?
January 10th: psychiatry appointment, maintenance on old meds, intro'd Provigil, taper myself up to 200 mg.
January 10th, later: I read the PI sheet on Provigil and find out it interferes with oral hormonal birth control-maybe, sort of, we think it's possible.
Does this affect Mirena? Is it actually something to worry about? And do I find this out before 5'o'clock so I can actually find the answers to these questions anywhere but the internet? NO.
Instead, I read more and more of the same "study" that's cited in the PI, which appears to be the ONLY "study", which kinda makes sense as it would seem to be difficult to find a demographic which would really go for a study that's basically "Here, take this drug and birth control, and see if you get pregnant, k?"
I say study in quotes because it consists of less than 20 women. Can we say unlikely to be representative of the general population? I knew we could!
January 11th: I call CMHC and Planned Parenthood about the Provigil thing.
The CMHC nurse (clinic where I see the psychiatrist AND the therapist) calls me back and says "uh... talk to your gyno." Brilliantly, I have thought ahead and have already called Planned Parenthood. The nurse from Planned Parenthood takes much longer to call me back, but says, "No way in hell, they say this about everything and it's true of maybe one drug for ORAL birth control, but you have an IUD."
(Just in case you're wondering: that antibiotics make birth control not work thing? Pretty much full of shit too.)
So January 11th: start provigil. I do not find this helpful with the sleeping, actually. I'm still as exhausted as I was the day before, if not more. I find myself going down for a nap at 4 and waking up at 7pm. Then I can't get to sleep until 2, and I wake up at noon. WTF? ARGH.
January 12th: 12noon wakeup, take my meds. I do actually seem to be much less tired this day and I don't recall taking a nap.
I call Alena and very coincidentally, she happens to be in Coralville. Oh. How nice of you to let me know--wait... you didn't. Oh. Well, do you have any time for me? Oh, sure, Alena and her boyfriend can slot me in between tea and seeing my sister, but only if I go to the kitchen store with us so Alena can wander around talking about how Alena has nothing new to buy for my kitchen with this 20% off coupon, woe is her!
I buy a 4 dollar Jamba Juice and try not to think about the fact that 4 dollars is approximately all I have in my bank account right now. On the way home, Alena casually mentions a former friend of ours from high school and I say it's a mystery to me why she doesn't like me anymore.
Alena says it's not a mystery to her. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I'm dropped off back home less than 90 minutes later. I feel this outing was a waste of makeup and a good shower.
About 8PM I start feeling really depressed and suicidal. This could be just me, since the same thing happened the week before, but it feels odd and it wasn't really brought on by anything. I mean, the Alena outing sucked, but not much more than seeing her has sucked recently. A friend of mine kicks me in the ass about it and I tell Chance and he comforts me.
I do not go to bed until 5AM because the_xtina forces me to stay on the phone by TRICKING ME. Damn her and her crafty minded tricksiness. Hahahaha-she has to take care of four cats for a month. (Although at least her animals go in a litter box. God, I hate walking the dogs.)
January 13th: Wake up, approximately 2pm. Chance has already left for roleplaying group. I lay in bed and contemplate nature of existance and whether it is worthwhile to continue if you are chronically ill, even if that illness is mental; also contemplate how likely dogs are to defecate in the house depending on when he walked them last and whether I would rather clean up shit than go outside. Hell is not other people, Sartre, it's being so depressed you would rather condemn your poor innocent animals to shit on the carpet than leave your house.
Luckily, I cheer up a bit and get on IM, where I proceed to tell Alena that our friendship has pretty much lost its connection and she doesn't really seem to give a fuck about me, so screw it. She has a good life: a good job, a great boyfriend, other friends-she makes it abundantly obvious that she doesn't need me. She counters with some stupid bullshit about how she feels inferior intellectually.
I make a snide remark about how if a friend of mine had problems, if I actually cared about them, I would try to understand their problems as best they could. She whines about how she just doesn't have the TIME to understand me or DEVOTE to me, jeez. I refrain from saying that if I were really as important to her as she claims, she would make time, as I have in the past.
She ends by saying she doesn't want to "throw everything away" or some shit like that, I don't know, I've tuned her out because she's just throwing good money after bad here. My life's hard enough without having someone who doesn't really care about understanding it be a major part. This would be why I rarely talk to my family about serious issues!
I'm pretty sure I don't eat anything. I wonder if Provigil is killing my appetite. I really don't care if it is, actually.
I notice that I'm grinding my teeth. Definite Provigil side effect. I try to stop myself from doing it whenever I notice. My jaw doesn't hurt so I must not be doing it too much.
I try to run the roomba in the computer room, but it picks up nothing. I think I may not have connected it properly. I try hard not to see this as a metaphor for my life.
Chance gets home and holds me until I fall asleep at about 9PM. After a brief 3 hour wake up in the middle of the night, I wake up at about 3pm on
Monday: (this is 15 hours of sleep for all of you who can't add)
Shit! I was supposed to mail that computer part today! But I have no money! Damnit. I compromise by finding a box for it and promising myself I will find packing peanuts, address it, and mail it on Tuesday.
I walk the dogs. GOD DAMN IT IS COLD.
I research school stuff and send emails to Chance about how if he works as a school librarian for five years he could get roughly 30,000 dollars of his student loan forgiven! And the federal government will forgive his perkins loans!
I then have serious questions about whether I really want to get my grades from HSU or not. I like the idea of not, but I'm wondering if the University will actually let me do that. I'm also wondering if I should really go to Kirkwood first or should I go to the U of I straight off. Unfortunately, again, I have these queries after 5PM, so it's too late to bother the university admissions people.
I do not take my Provigil because I don't remember to take my medication until 6PM and I don't want to be up all night. Considering I'm writing this post at nearly 5AM, it doesn't seem like that line of reasoning worked too well, but it seemed sound.
Chance calls at about 6:20pm, just as I'm lying down for a nap. He asks me to walk the dogs if I can, I mention the nap. NAP NECESSARY. He says, well, ok, try to at least. I promise I'll try and set up two alarms. I have vague memories of swearing at the alarms and shutting them off.
At 9PM, Chance gets into bed and I wake up. See beginning of entry. (I did end up walking the dogs at about 11pm to midnight, so they have not been neglected.)
Total times when I asked myself whether I should commit myself: 100+
Total phone calls to therapist: 1
Total times left house: ... 3? (once with Alena, twice with dog walks, maybe more than 2x dog walks)
Eye twitches: irritating as fuck
Total friendships I got pissed about: 2
Total friendships possibly in ruins: 1
Amount I care about that particular friendship: 0! (at least right now) FREE HAHAHA.
Now that we're all caught up, hopefully I can chart breaking news AS IT HAPPENS. Radical idea.
Feel free to comment with your own interpretation of the last few days. Bonus points if you draw it in Paint.
Aaaaaaaaaand then it's 4:15AM and I'm left with a couple of forum posts and god knows what else (very little) to show for it.
Anyway, brief rundown of events since el Año Nuevo:
January 3rd: IUS (Mirena) insertion
January 3rd: caucus'd for Barack Obama
various night times-oh, woe, I should go, to the hospit-oh! Shit, I hate that bit, there's nothing to read and no one of wit... But woe is me, I cry and cry, can't you see, I want to die?
So instead I stare at my self-help books and write REALLY SHITTY poetry and register on boards full of crazy people and drive myself just the slightest bit nutso second guessing my psychiatrist as to whether I'm really BPII ultraradian cycling.
He says no. I say no, most of the time. And then worry sinks in and I think ... but what if I AM?
I really need to let go of diagnoses and just embrace whatever works.
Anyway:
January 9th: therapy appointment, goes well, I think?
January 10th: psychiatry appointment, maintenance on old meds, intro'd Provigil, taper myself up to 200 mg.
January 10th, later: I read the PI sheet on Provigil and find out it interferes with oral hormonal birth control-maybe, sort of, we think it's possible.
Does this affect Mirena? Is it actually something to worry about? And do I find this out before 5'o'clock so I can actually find the answers to these questions anywhere but the internet? NO.
Instead, I read more and more of the same "study" that's cited in the PI, which appears to be the ONLY "study", which kinda makes sense as it would seem to be difficult to find a demographic which would really go for a study that's basically "Here, take this drug and birth control, and see if you get pregnant, k?"
I say study in quotes because it consists of less than 20 women. Can we say unlikely to be representative of the general population? I knew we could!
January 11th: I call CMHC and Planned Parenthood about the Provigil thing.
The CMHC nurse (clinic where I see the psychiatrist AND the therapist) calls me back and says "uh... talk to your gyno." Brilliantly, I have thought ahead and have already called Planned Parenthood. The nurse from Planned Parenthood takes much longer to call me back, but says, "No way in hell, they say this about everything and it's true of maybe one drug for ORAL birth control, but you have an IUD."
(Just in case you're wondering: that antibiotics make birth control not work thing? Pretty much full of shit too.)
So January 11th: start provigil. I do not find this helpful with the sleeping, actually. I'm still as exhausted as I was the day before, if not more. I find myself going down for a nap at 4 and waking up at 7pm. Then I can't get to sleep until 2, and I wake up at noon. WTF? ARGH.
January 12th: 12noon wakeup, take my meds. I do actually seem to be much less tired this day and I don't recall taking a nap.
I call Alena and very coincidentally, she happens to be in Coralville. Oh. How nice of you to let me know--wait... you didn't. Oh. Well, do you have any time for me? Oh, sure, Alena and her boyfriend can slot me in between tea and seeing my sister, but only if I go to the kitchen store with us so Alena can wander around talking about how Alena has nothing new to buy for my kitchen with this 20% off coupon, woe is her!
I buy a 4 dollar Jamba Juice and try not to think about the fact that 4 dollars is approximately all I have in my bank account right now. On the way home, Alena casually mentions a former friend of ours from high school and I say it's a mystery to me why she doesn't like me anymore.
Alena says it's not a mystery to her. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I'm dropped off back home less than 90 minutes later. I feel this outing was a waste of makeup and a good shower.
About 8PM I start feeling really depressed and suicidal. This could be just me, since the same thing happened the week before, but it feels odd and it wasn't really brought on by anything. I mean, the Alena outing sucked, but not much more than seeing her has sucked recently. A friend of mine kicks me in the ass about it and I tell Chance and he comforts me.
I do not go to bed until 5AM because the_xtina forces me to stay on the phone by TRICKING ME. Damn her and her crafty minded tricksiness. Hahahaha-she has to take care of four cats for a month. (Although at least her animals go in a litter box. God, I hate walking the dogs.)
January 13th: Wake up, approximately 2pm. Chance has already left for roleplaying group. I lay in bed and contemplate nature of existance and whether it is worthwhile to continue if you are chronically ill, even if that illness is mental; also contemplate how likely dogs are to defecate in the house depending on when he walked them last and whether I would rather clean up shit than go outside. Hell is not other people, Sartre, it's being so depressed you would rather condemn your poor innocent animals to shit on the carpet than leave your house.
Luckily, I cheer up a bit and get on IM, where I proceed to tell Alena that our friendship has pretty much lost its connection and she doesn't really seem to give a fuck about me, so screw it. She has a good life: a good job, a great boyfriend, other friends-she makes it abundantly obvious that she doesn't need me. She counters with some stupid bullshit about how she feels inferior intellectually.
I make a snide remark about how if a friend of mine had problems, if I actually cared about them, I would try to understand their problems as best they could. She whines about how she just doesn't have the TIME to understand me or DEVOTE to me, jeez. I refrain from saying that if I were really as important to her as she claims, she would make time, as I have in the past.
She ends by saying she doesn't want to "throw everything away" or some shit like that, I don't know, I've tuned her out because she's just throwing good money after bad here. My life's hard enough without having someone who doesn't really care about understanding it be a major part. This would be why I rarely talk to my family about serious issues!
I'm pretty sure I don't eat anything. I wonder if Provigil is killing my appetite. I really don't care if it is, actually.
I notice that I'm grinding my teeth. Definite Provigil side effect. I try to stop myself from doing it whenever I notice. My jaw doesn't hurt so I must not be doing it too much.
I try to run the roomba in the computer room, but it picks up nothing. I think I may not have connected it properly. I try hard not to see this as a metaphor for my life.
Chance gets home and holds me until I fall asleep at about 9PM. After a brief 3 hour wake up in the middle of the night, I wake up at about 3pm on
Monday: (this is 15 hours of sleep for all of you who can't add)
Shit! I was supposed to mail that computer part today! But I have no money! Damnit. I compromise by finding a box for it and promising myself I will find packing peanuts, address it, and mail it on Tuesday.
I walk the dogs. GOD DAMN IT IS COLD.
I research school stuff and send emails to Chance about how if he works as a school librarian for five years he could get roughly 30,000 dollars of his student loan forgiven! And the federal government will forgive his perkins loans!
I then have serious questions about whether I really want to get my grades from HSU or not. I like the idea of not, but I'm wondering if the University will actually let me do that. I'm also wondering if I should really go to Kirkwood first or should I go to the U of I straight off. Unfortunately, again, I have these queries after 5PM, so it's too late to bother the university admissions people.
I do not take my Provigil because I don't remember to take my medication until 6PM and I don't want to be up all night. Considering I'm writing this post at nearly 5AM, it doesn't seem like that line of reasoning worked too well, but it seemed sound.
Chance calls at about 6:20pm, just as I'm lying down for a nap. He asks me to walk the dogs if I can, I mention the nap. NAP NECESSARY. He says, well, ok, try to at least. I promise I'll try and set up two alarms. I have vague memories of swearing at the alarms and shutting them off.
At 9PM, Chance gets into bed and I wake up. See beginning of entry. (I did end up walking the dogs at about 11pm to midnight, so they have not been neglected.)
Total times when I asked myself whether I should commit myself: 100+
Total phone calls to therapist: 1
Total times left house: ... 3? (once with Alena, twice with dog walks, maybe more than 2x dog walks)
Eye twitches: irritating as fuck
Total friendships I got pissed about: 2
Total friendships possibly in ruins: 1
Amount I care about that particular friendship: 0! (at least right now) FREE HAHAHA.
Now that we're all caught up, hopefully I can chart breaking news AS IT HAPPENS. Radical idea.
Feel free to comment with your own interpretation of the last few days. Bonus points if you draw it in Paint.