day: gods only knows what of this bullshit.

I'm still kicking. I am exhausted. Some of this is the side effects of my body adjusting to this medication's higher dosage that I'm on now. Some of this is the damn heat dome over my region of the US. I am still depressed. Dr. M. explained that the Latuda doesn't act on the Seritonin receptors of the brain like the Vraylar did and this is why my symptoms persist. They're more mild than they were in March. But I have no drive to do anything and a massive case ennui. 

Despite this, I am making progress on getting the boys community supports to help them get through the summer with their sanity intact. Living in a fairly isolated environment isn't very good for one's mental health be it an adult or a youth. I'm going to take a moment to brag a bit. Cuddle Bear made Principal's list this year. He took some hard classes (like a college entry level physics course) and did well in them. He has matured a lot over the last year and grown several inches. I think he's actually taller than me now.

Snuggle Bug struggled with mathematics this year, which is typically his strong suit. I suspect it was a case of his learning style didn't mesh with the teacher's teaching style. I'm concerned but I am not going to worry because I know that they're going to work on that in summer session. Snuggle Bug is worried that it's going to be ridiculous like it was last year but I reassured him that they have a new teacher for summer session and it's going to be different. 

Back to my initial comments. Dr. M. is talking about putting me on antidepressant that will get me over the last bit of symptoms. I'm a little nervous because there's a number that don't work properly with my brain. (I suspect the fact that I developed migraines after being on Paxil is not a surprise because it is genetically contraindicated for me. It also did nothing for my depression.) There's this really cool test called GeneSight that checks your genetic profile against a battery of psychological medications and tells you which ones work for you and which ones don't. I got lucky and my health insurance covered it.

The antidepressant list of what will work is disappointingly small. Hence my mild anxiety about it. But Dr. M. is a good psychiatrist and an all around good guy doing his best to help me. I just wish I didn't have my brain doing this stuff. I basically slept through spring and a good portion of summer. These are usually my productive months. It makes me dread when the seasonal affective disorder burst in like the Kool-aid man and screws everything up again.

My celebratory post was a bit premature. Oops.

I am on a run of almost a week of being awake for the majority of the day. It was not easy because the dosage of my new medication went up right after my last post and I was drop kicked back into the land of Nod. It was exceedingly frustrating because chores piled up, appointments were missed, and projects lay idle. I was grumpy and unhappy. I am feeling more alert and much better today.

I am really hoping that holds. The magnitude of the shift in my brain from this time two months ago is pretty huge. I was on the verge of suicidal depression in March when I talked to my psychiatrist who initiated this medication change. The last two months have been exhausting. Which is pretty ironic considering that I was sleeping most of the time. But, it was exhausting and uncomfortable. I was sleeping so much that my body was getting sore which ever position I slept in. I needed to be upright and moving to feel better but I simply couldn't do it. 

I am trying not to be resentful of all the stuff that didn't get done, appointments missed, and such. I am attempting to focus on gratitude and moving forward. I was having a really hard time summoning up the will to write a damn thing when I was awake. As such, blogs and journals were not updated. It is not a thing most people feel much about but I feel pretty bad about that. I feel like I let down my readership and I was failing to keep record of what going on in life around here.

At one point I had a therapist ask me why I keep a journal and a daily log of activities in my planner. I joked that I worked for the redundancy department of redundancy. Namely, I am terrified of losing my memory. The fact that my brain is an unreliable narrator is horrific enough. The idea that I would lose my memories and forget who my family are is bone chilling. I watched dementia consume my great-grandmother Hazel. I will never forget the day that I came to visit her at the nursing home and she didn't recognize me. My heart broke. I promised myself that I wouldn't let that happen to me.

Thus, I kept a scrapbook through middle school, high school, and part of college. And when it was safe to keep a journal, I wrote in it religiously about almost everything. Trauma in my life and my psychiatric illnesses have robbed me of memories that many people take for granted. I have spotty memories of my children's early childhood. If I were asked when they said their first word, I wouldn't be able to answer the question or necessarily tell you what it is on a given day. I rely on my journal to be my memory keeper. 

That said, I have spent most of the last two months sleeping and I'm hopeful that I will be only sleeping at night now. We'll see.

Yay! I'm awake and functional!

I have had a rough couple of months. I thought that the depression was awful. It was horrid and I think it was one of my worst cases of it. The medication change helped a lot with that. It came with it's own toll. I found myself adapting to it slowly as I was titrating up to the full dosage. One of the most irritating side effects of the whole process was the utter exhaustion that had me sleeping all the time. Seriously, full night of sleep and then sleep the whole day. It was worse than the dizziness that happened.

Well, the dizziness cleared up. It looks like the utter exhaustion is clearing up. And now I just have to get my blood sugars under control again. I suspect that when they check my A1C, they are going to find it has gone up due to medication stuff. I had a consultation session with the diabetes education (they have a new one) and got some good news. My range of what I can eat is wider than what I was initially told. I can have snacks but they have to have good protein to them. This is my justification for my cheese snacks despite my lactose intolerance. (It's funny, between the CPAP and the lactose intolerance, my teenage sons have been running from me when I have gas. Which is rather frequently right now.)

I feel better but I'm not going to push myself too hard. This is the beginning of something new and I want this to work out well. I have a new plan for how to eat, some ideas for how to get exercise in, and how to get back to my writing stuff. It just takes time management and my doing things the smart way instead of my natural inclination for the hard way.

Stepping away for a month. Approximately.

I'm in a deep depression and I couldn't fake it until I made it out. I talked to my psychologist. He is weaning me off of the Vraylar and then slowly putting me on Latuda. The whole process should take about a month. Because I'm on doing well, I'm stepping back from blogging and social media (not that it makes a big visible difference right now due to how depression has been impacting both) until the medication change is complete.

Fiber Fluff: I got sidetracked.

 This confounded sweater has made me decide that I'm never knitting a sweater again. It shrank 13 inches. It won't fit either of the kids. That is a 12 in ruler to show how it is most definitely not 21 inches. I knit 21 inches. In acrylic yarn. And after blocking it and everything, this is what I have. I am deeply disappointed.

Cuddle Bear has been so patient with the process. It's been three years in the making. He kept cheering me on and got excited when I had him try it on before washing and blocking. Then this disappointment happened. And he said he had a plan for it. His first plan was to give it to his younger brother to see if it fit him. His second plan was to give it to the thrift shop in town so someone who it fits will have something warm to keep them ok in the cool weather.