Mental health update.

 I'm now approximately a full month into the med change that Dr. M. made. When we spoke last week, he talked about keeping me on this dosage of Vraylar because of the dramatic improvement is has made in my symptoms. My anxiety is within tolerable limits, even with life throwing dumb stuff my way. My sleep is finally such that I am getting a full night of sleep. He's going to keep me on the medication that he switched me to for that (I'd spell the name but it is even more like a random handful of scrabble tiles than the Vraylar).

My mood has gone from moderately depressed all the time to actually feeling ok. That is a big improvement over the severely depressed that got this med change rolling. I was scared that the medication was going to make me a zombie and mess with my short/long term memory. It hasn't. This is a very good thing because while I was in that severely depressed/too anxious to function state, I didn't keep track of things like my blood sugar and other health details that I need to so that I can stay on top of my conditions. (Fortunately, my glucometer has a function that it saves the information. I'm still filling it into my planner just in case this thing goes wonky like the last one.)

My memory from the severely depressed/too anxious to function state is shot. It's pretty much all brain fog from about mid March up to when this med change started taking effect. Beloved tells me that the brain fog is my mind protecting me from the pain that I was in during that period. It makes sense but is aggravating at the same time. Fortunately, I do have one thing that I can use to help reconstruct what was going on during that time, my morning journal. I wasn't writing anywhere else, but I had my daily entries. Most of them were about how tired I was, how guilty I felt for not getting stuff done, and my terror over things like the idea that someone was going to come and destroy my family. The entries after I had my medications adjusted were about more typical daily stuff, the change was just about immediate.

So, that's where things stand right now. I got really bad for a while. I got help. Now I am not only functional but I feel alive and like I can tolerate what the world throws at me.