Today, tonight, rather, is Friday - and on Saturday past, I had a seizure.
The first seizure that I know of having. I say that because, as an ex-addict, it's more than likely that I've had at least one seizure before. Especially given which drug I was addicted to.
This was the first time I was at all aware of having had the seizure, though. I went to bed last Friday night feeling very... off. I don't know how else to put it. I woke up feeling just as strange, if not worse.I woke up Saturday and as the day wore on, quickly might I add, I started feeling notably not good. I was having a hard time staying awake sat on my couch, I felt nauseous, my head felt unbelievably cloudly... I just wasn't right. Eventually, I completely blacked out - which my boyfriend tells me was the seizure. Apparently, my eyes rolled back into my head, I was foaming at the mouth, I was convulsing, and I started off incredibly warm and by the end was shivering. When I came out of it, I couldn't find words and was speaking gibberish, and was incredibly nauseous. I actually puked twice, the last time being late Saturday night, closer to Sunday morning.
The next day, my boyfriend had me call my therapist, and when I ran into her on Tuesday, she told me to see my family doctor. So I did that, which resulted in another repeat of what happened followed by my being taken off of the Wellbutrin I'd come to love, having blood taken, and having to pee in a cup.
Yesterday - Thursday - I saw my psychiatrist, and he offered me two options: A) Stay off the Wellbutrin and just... see how things go, or B) get on something new right away.
Well, I wasn't happy about being off the only antidepressant to ever do much of anything for me, so I chose the latter option. My psychiatrist put me on Prozac, promising the possibility of weight gain was slim. I picked it up today, and I start it tomorrow morning.
I know there are going to be side effects, probably nausea. I just hope I'm able to go to temple - class and ritual - tomorrow, I missed last week because of the seizure, and it's something I look forward to every week.
I still don't know why I had a seizure. I haven't been purging - I think the last time would've been January at the earliest; and June marked my sixth year clean.
I'm still feeling residually tired and worn out.
Hopefully Prozac works out well for me.
Showing posts with label meds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meds. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 July 2015
Wednesday, 1 July 2015
Forgive Me
... I forgot I ran this blog. So, please, my dears, forgive me. I'll do my best to re-cap.
The last post I made was in May... early May, so I'll start there. May was hard for me, really, brutally, teeth-grittingly hard for me. Flashbacks, all the lot of what you can get with PTSD. It sucked. I was a mess. .... Even more so than usual. However, my (awesome) individual therapist has been helping me with that, and she had me go to a CPT for PTSD information session near the end of the month. Trauma treatment is not a thing I'm excited about, but I know I just can't live like this forever. I can't. With that in mind, my therapist is trying to get me ready to start trauma treatment in (I think) late September. She thinks that if I do this treatment while I'm still in DBT for BPD, it'll be easier, because I'll be able to use and keep learning skills that can help me tolerate what this trauma treatment demands. I'm mostly just going along with whatever she thinks is best, or what she thinks I'm ready for. If I let myself completely be in charge of those decisions, I never would have gotten help to begin with. So that was May. Teary, tumultuous, just ... bad. Dark.
That's not to say I'm a ray of sunshine today, though.
June was better, I'll say that. I finished my philosophy course - which felt like a big achievement given all the 'vulnerability factors' - and started a new course, studies in literature. I can carry it into the summer, and even though the school is only open on Wednesday afternoons in the summer, I get to get - hopefully - another credit. My guidance counselor is hopeful that they'll be able to grant me about five or six 'freebie' credits based on life experience/etc. ... Which would mean that I only have to take between one and three courses in order to graduate. Which would allow me to graduate around January. Which would have me registering for college. I'm really happy about that.
Another development is my quickly-expanding friendship with a girl I've been 'kind of good-ish' friends with since late 2013. She and I have been spending a lot of time together - we have similar mental health issues; we both kind of.. have no one else*; we have a lot in common, we just get along. We just 'get' each other. I don't feel like I have to wear my daedric armor around her.. she's safe.
The anniversary of my being recovered from drug addiction was.. well, it was hard. I had intense cravings the night before and the day of. I resolved to celebrate only the 'big' anniversaries. This was six years.
Church/temple's been going really well, too. I'm getting to know a lot of people and I'm feeling really accepted. I've never had a community like this before, and it's just blowing me away at how positive it feels.
And now, to the now. Summer's out, so the boyfriend is working less. I'd really like it if we could go to the zoo or to a conservation area and go swimming. I'm - hopefully - starting violin lessons soon, I just need my boyfriend to get it all squared away - he's in charge of sign-ups. I'm trying to write more. I'm trying to enter into participation more. I'm trying to be more social. I'm trying to start doing nice things for myself.
Also, on a 'meds' tangent, I'm two weeks into taking Abilify and haven't noticed too much. Any experience or advice is welcomed.
--------------------------------------------------
*Story time: My 'best friend', the one I've known since kindergarten, has in the past year or so begun to prove herself as not the kind of friend I want in my life as an adult, increasingly so. I haven't trusted her in well over six years, and I'm afraid a falling out would mean a spilling of my secrets. She's a very narcissistic person but also plays the martyr.
The last post I made was in May... early May, so I'll start there. May was hard for me, really, brutally, teeth-grittingly hard for me. Flashbacks, all the lot of what you can get with PTSD. It sucked. I was a mess. .... Even more so than usual. However, my (awesome) individual therapist has been helping me with that, and she had me go to a CPT for PTSD information session near the end of the month. Trauma treatment is not a thing I'm excited about, but I know I just can't live like this forever. I can't. With that in mind, my therapist is trying to get me ready to start trauma treatment in (I think) late September. She thinks that if I do this treatment while I'm still in DBT for BPD, it'll be easier, because I'll be able to use and keep learning skills that can help me tolerate what this trauma treatment demands. I'm mostly just going along with whatever she thinks is best, or what she thinks I'm ready for. If I let myself completely be in charge of those decisions, I never would have gotten help to begin with. So that was May. Teary, tumultuous, just ... bad. Dark.
That's not to say I'm a ray of sunshine today, though.
June was better, I'll say that. I finished my philosophy course - which felt like a big achievement given all the 'vulnerability factors' - and started a new course, studies in literature. I can carry it into the summer, and even though the school is only open on Wednesday afternoons in the summer, I get to get - hopefully - another credit. My guidance counselor is hopeful that they'll be able to grant me about five or six 'freebie' credits based on life experience/etc. ... Which would mean that I only have to take between one and three courses in order to graduate. Which would allow me to graduate around January. Which would have me registering for college. I'm really happy about that.
Another development is my quickly-expanding friendship with a girl I've been 'kind of good-ish' friends with since late 2013. She and I have been spending a lot of time together - we have similar mental health issues; we both kind of.. have no one else*; we have a lot in common, we just get along. We just 'get' each other. I don't feel like I have to wear my daedric armor around her.. she's safe.
The anniversary of my being recovered from drug addiction was.. well, it was hard. I had intense cravings the night before and the day of. I resolved to celebrate only the 'big' anniversaries. This was six years.
Church/temple's been going really well, too. I'm getting to know a lot of people and I'm feeling really accepted. I've never had a community like this before, and it's just blowing me away at how positive it feels.
And now, to the now. Summer's out, so the boyfriend is working less. I'd really like it if we could go to the zoo or to a conservation area and go swimming. I'm - hopefully - starting violin lessons soon, I just need my boyfriend to get it all squared away - he's in charge of sign-ups. I'm trying to write more. I'm trying to enter into participation more. I'm trying to be more social. I'm trying to start doing nice things for myself.
Also, on a 'meds' tangent, I'm two weeks into taking Abilify and haven't noticed too much. Any experience or advice is welcomed.
--------------------------------------------------
*Story time: My 'best friend', the one I've known since kindergarten, has in the past year or so begun to prove herself as not the kind of friend I want in my life as an adult, increasingly so. I haven't trusted her in well over six years, and I'm afraid a falling out would mean a spilling of my secrets. She's a very narcissistic person but also plays the martyr.
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Monday, 30 March 2015
I'm Still Alive
It's been a tumultuous couple of weeks.
My depression - that usually spans October/November - February - is continuing into April with a vengeance. It's gotten bad.
Last week, on Thursday, I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to do it. I was going to do it. I could barely stop to catch a thought, my mind was racing. I was hysterical, crying and incoherent. It was when I got home from my CBT group, and it was about 4PM, so my boyfriend was at work. I called him, because I didn't know what to do, and he's the first person I turn to in every situation. In retrospect, I feel incredibly guilty for putting him in that position. He couldn't leave work, and I made him worry he'd come home to me passed out, or a corpse.
So I called a local youth crisis hotline. I'd never called before. I'd always had my boyfriend call and speak for me, because I would get too anxious and I would be crying so hard I couldn't speak properly. Well, that was still the case this time. I don't know how I managed to make the call, but I'm kind of glad that I did. It was a woman who answered, and she was really helpful. We talked for about a half hour, and I felt much more calm, and a little in control by the end of it.
I was going to call a local shelter - more of a safe environment really - to see if I could just go there for a few hours until I felt safe, but I felt like I was okay enough to try to stay safe on my own.
I took a hot shower, used my favorite body wash - strong smells can be grounding - , put on comfortable clothes, made a tea, put a movie - Twilight - on, and got my 3DS and the stuffed Hello Kitty that my boyfriend gave me. I curled up in a blanket writing in my journal, and I tried to be okay. I made it through the night... obviously.
I've been more in control every day since, but every day I still have strong thoughts and urges to hurt and kill myself.
I don't know how to cope. I've been drinking more than I should but I don't care. I woke up for school this morning and went back to sleep for an hour and a half before I finally got up and half-assedly went to school.
I've been trying to write more, because I can turn my blood into ink. I've been listening to music.. a lot. I've been amping up my studies in Wicca, and just today I picked up some more incense for the coming full moon and invoking Hecate, and to dispel the negativity in my life; also picked up a leather bag just the right size for my raw clear quartz point on a string. I burned frankincense earlier today, and cleansed the crystal, and took the opportunity to attune with the Goddess. I'm finding things that.. not work, but help. Improve the moment.
I've been seeing my new therapist - in the DBT program - weekly, and I feel really positive about that. I feel like she can help me. When I saw her on Friday, we talked about Thursday night, and we talked about why I feel like CBT isn't helping me. She made a good point in asking me if exposures are really going to help me get better if I don't have trauma treatment. That my lack of improvement and progress in my attempted exposures is valid, because I have this impediment that the rest of the women in my CBT group don't have.
I get to start group DBT on the fourteenth, and I'm excited about that. It's going to be hard... really hard, but I need to do it. I can't live like this forever. I mean, I would, I absolutely would... but I want to be the kind of girl my boyfriend can love without stress, keep forever, not have to worry about. I know recovery should come from within, but I'm not quite there. I feel like I'm a little closer to being 'there' now than I was a year ago, so that's something. I don't care if I get better, to be honest. However, I care about my boyfriend - I love him more than I hate myself, most of the time - and I want to be better, healthy, recovering and eventually recovered for him. If nothing else, I want a life with him. I also have my goal of becoming a published poet.. so I have little motivators.
I get to - finally - see the psychiatrist on the ninth, which is a great thing, because my medications are in need of some serious tweaking. I know I need my Valium upped. I want to up my Wellbutrin, because now that my purging is almost completely under control I'm much less at risk for seizures, and my depression is at a point where I feel like I need .. more. I love Wellbutrin. I haven't gained at all on it, and I had virtually no side effects, and it just.. works. I just need a little more. .... And I feel like something needs to be done about my psychosis. I'm on Lithium and Saphris - antipsychotics - and I feel like something could be done with that. .... And now that I think of it, I'd like to up my Clonidine - sleep medication - too, because I'm on a very minimal dose, and it doesn't do as much as it could in terms of keeping trauma nightmares at bay.
I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm robotic, just going through the motions and every day is the same, occasionally needing to re-charge and being completely useless for a time.
So I'm still here. Alive. Safe.
I'm not okay, but I'm doing my best.
My depression - that usually spans October/November - February - is continuing into April with a vengeance. It's gotten bad.
Last week, on Thursday, I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to do it. I was going to do it. I could barely stop to catch a thought, my mind was racing. I was hysterical, crying and incoherent. It was when I got home from my CBT group, and it was about 4PM, so my boyfriend was at work. I called him, because I didn't know what to do, and he's the first person I turn to in every situation. In retrospect, I feel incredibly guilty for putting him in that position. He couldn't leave work, and I made him worry he'd come home to me passed out, or a corpse.
So I called a local youth crisis hotline. I'd never called before. I'd always had my boyfriend call and speak for me, because I would get too anxious and I would be crying so hard I couldn't speak properly. Well, that was still the case this time. I don't know how I managed to make the call, but I'm kind of glad that I did. It was a woman who answered, and she was really helpful. We talked for about a half hour, and I felt much more calm, and a little in control by the end of it.
I was going to call a local shelter - more of a safe environment really - to see if I could just go there for a few hours until I felt safe, but I felt like I was okay enough to try to stay safe on my own.
I took a hot shower, used my favorite body wash - strong smells can be grounding - , put on comfortable clothes, made a tea, put a movie - Twilight - on, and got my 3DS and the stuffed Hello Kitty that my boyfriend gave me. I curled up in a blanket writing in my journal, and I tried to be okay. I made it through the night... obviously.
I've been more in control every day since, but every day I still have strong thoughts and urges to hurt and kill myself.
I don't know how to cope. I've been drinking more than I should but I don't care. I woke up for school this morning and went back to sleep for an hour and a half before I finally got up and half-assedly went to school.
I've been trying to write more, because I can turn my blood into ink. I've been listening to music.. a lot. I've been amping up my studies in Wicca, and just today I picked up some more incense for the coming full moon and invoking Hecate, and to dispel the negativity in my life; also picked up a leather bag just the right size for my raw clear quartz point on a string. I burned frankincense earlier today, and cleansed the crystal, and took the opportunity to attune with the Goddess. I'm finding things that.. not work, but help. Improve the moment.
I've been seeing my new therapist - in the DBT program - weekly, and I feel really positive about that. I feel like she can help me. When I saw her on Friday, we talked about Thursday night, and we talked about why I feel like CBT isn't helping me. She made a good point in asking me if exposures are really going to help me get better if I don't have trauma treatment. That my lack of improvement and progress in my attempted exposures is valid, because I have this impediment that the rest of the women in my CBT group don't have.
I get to start group DBT on the fourteenth, and I'm excited about that. It's going to be hard... really hard, but I need to do it. I can't live like this forever. I mean, I would, I absolutely would... but I want to be the kind of girl my boyfriend can love without stress, keep forever, not have to worry about. I know recovery should come from within, but I'm not quite there. I feel like I'm a little closer to being 'there' now than I was a year ago, so that's something. I don't care if I get better, to be honest. However, I care about my boyfriend - I love him more than I hate myself, most of the time - and I want to be better, healthy, recovering and eventually recovered for him. If nothing else, I want a life with him. I also have my goal of becoming a published poet.. so I have little motivators.
I get to - finally - see the psychiatrist on the ninth, which is a great thing, because my medications are in need of some serious tweaking. I know I need my Valium upped. I want to up my Wellbutrin, because now that my purging is almost completely under control I'm much less at risk for seizures, and my depression is at a point where I feel like I need .. more. I love Wellbutrin. I haven't gained at all on it, and I had virtually no side effects, and it just.. works. I just need a little more. .... And I feel like something needs to be done about my psychosis. I'm on Lithium and Saphris - antipsychotics - and I feel like something could be done with that. .... And now that I think of it, I'd like to up my Clonidine - sleep medication - too, because I'm on a very minimal dose, and it doesn't do as much as it could in terms of keeping trauma nightmares at bay.
I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm robotic, just going through the motions and every day is the same, occasionally needing to re-charge and being completely useless for a time.
So I'm still here. Alive. Safe.
I'm not okay, but I'm doing my best.
Labels:
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DBT,
depression,
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mental illness,
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PTSD,
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self harm,
suicide,
therapy,
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witchcraft,
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