06.15.10
Posted in Chinese medicine, Health tagged acupuncture at 11:36 pm by kyrias
As a result of the on-going effort to find out just what is wrong with me, my mother hunted down an acupuncturist and has been dragging me to go see her for about three weeks now.
Short version of my health problems: PCOS, major depression, debilitating ADHD, extreme fatigue (sleeping 18 hours a day), disfiguring amounts of acne, and a noted failure to lose weight. I suppose there’s some other stuff around there, but that should cover most of the major points.
Everything aside, just the inability to stay awake for more than 2 hours at a stretch and feeling extremely tired all the time was pretty frustrating.
The first week, the acupuncturist felt up my pulse, told me that I had “heart fire”, a “kidney deficiency”, “liver fire”, a “spleen deficiency”, and then proceeded to stick needles in me. If anyone tries to tell you that acupuncture doesn’t hurt — they’re lying. What they’re leaving out is that when something is wrong with you, then it can be painful to press on certain pressure points corresponding to whatever has gone awry, and sticking needles in said pressure points can be quite painful. Sometimes it just hurts going in, sometimes it hurts like the dickens going in, and sometimes it will continue to feel sore, throbbing, and in general not at all comfortable.
Second week, she took a look at the mass of acne on my forehead, and decided to “cup” it to make it heal faster. According to her, I have congested blood in that area which will not dissipate readily on its own, which was also probably causing the on-going acne, and that a couple of sessions of cupping should solve matters. I wasn’t quite so credulous, but decided to go with it anyways in the hopes that it would help. She pricked the area all over with a needle, causing pretty acute pain, and then created a vacuum in a glass cup and proceeded to try and suck out all the bad stuff. By the way, by acute pain, I mean “nearly peeing in the pants” pain. The vacuum action was also very, very painful. It felt that there was stuff trying to crawl out of my skin and rupture my face. The “cupping” did indeed suck out quite a bit of black blood, more than you would guess from ten or so needled pricks, so I guess something good (?) happened. When she was done, although I had a raised bump on my forehead from the vacuum action, it seemed like the acne did go away much faster than it otherwise would have. The discoloration that remained from previous acne bouts also seemed to be gone. Perhaps that was the congested blood she was talking about?
Today was the third appointment. She took one look at the acne on my forehead and asked me if I had been eating spicy foods. I had to admit that I did. She proceeded to give me a laundry list of things I can’t eat.
- spicy foods
- black or white pepper
- beef
- lamb/mutton
- lobster
- shrimp
- fried foods
- “heating spices” which probably include cinnamon along with star anise and stuff like that
I’m sure I’m forgetting something because that honestly was a long list. Then she proceeded to stick more needles into me, stuck electric currents to needles in my face and head, and in short delivered PAIN. I was almost disappointed when she didn’t cup my face this session, but the rest of the painful stuff and the NUMEROUS needles in my face with electrodes attached dissuaded me from asking for it. Next time maybe. I do want that acne gone, gone, gone.
I kid you not, every single time I leave a session, I feel utterly drained from all the pain and anticipation of pain and stuff and end up spending at least a day or so sleeping it off. Today, there was pain in the places where she stuck needles in my head every time I bent or crouched or did something to my head that I haven’t quite figured out what except that it hurts to move too much.
I’d quit going, except going to a Chinese doctor in Taiwan did help me immeasurably, and I did commit to giving it a fair try. Also, it might just be a placebo effect or cognitive dissonance at work, but I think it might be helping. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t sound too far off though: Needles! Pain! It HAS to be doing something!
Oh well. More updates to follow! At least I can attest that whatever she does will work on bad acne.
ETA:
No alcohol, curry, chives, or spices of any sort. Yes, that includes cinnamon. FML.
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04.07.10
Posted in Health tagged ADD at 11:43 pm by kyrias
Talking with my dad today just brought home again just why I didn’t and don’t talk to him about my problems. His penchant for turning a purely philosophical discussion into one about my faults is another reason, but that’s another therapy session altogether.
To start off with, he mentioned something about my brother wanting to fight past his ADD and “get over it” on his own steam.
Unlike me.
I didn’t ask if he was proud of my brother for that, or if he thought that was another one of Kevin’s many, many mistakes regarding pride. More on that later.
From what my father said yesterday, I don’t believe he really sees ADD as something debilitating, something that actually matters, in terms of obstacles to be overcome. He said something yesterday about if someone with Parkinson’s could do x and Y and z, then…
I just want to make it really, really clear here: ADD, or ADHD, is a mental disorder. Ok?
This means that in order to even be diagnosed with it, that means it has to significantly impact your life in a negative way. This means that if the diagnosing doctor is any good, then not just any pansy can walk in off the street and get a prescription for Adderall. The fact that some doctors are shit doesn’t mean that the disorder is the same.
They all say mind over matter, or some bullshit like that.
Then I ask you, what the fuck do you do when your mind isn’t yours to control?
This isn’t about willpower, intelligence, or even what you desire.
When you can turn around in the kitchen and forget what you’ve been intending to do, when you can stare at a test paper frantically trying to remember how to spell your name or even what your name is, when walking from the kitchen to the bedroom results in the smoke alarm going off because you managed to forget the oven was on because something shiny caught your attention…
Tell me, oh sage ones. Tell me what I can do to make it better. Tell me what I can do to make myself better.
I can’t even begin to say how damaging it is when no one believes that you’re trying. That you’re the only person who knows just how much it took to get up, get dressed, and go to class. That no matter what you do, always there’s the bootstrap comment.
For the record, I went through my entire academic career without relying on medication of any sort. I graduated from a decent college with a 3.0 GPA whilst holding down a job for the last two years.
This is not to brag. This is me saying that I went the route of denying that there was a problem, clinging to the idea that if only I tried harder I would do better, desperately draining myself of every last drop of willpower I had just to make it through.
I did it, and I wish I didn’t. I wish that I had gone on meds when I first suspected that I might have a problem.
There is nothing inherently better about going through life without meds when they can make things easier for you and when your life is significantly negatively impacted by going without them. It’s like refusing to use an artificial limb when you’ve had a limb or two amputated. Sure, you could, but why would you?
For me? The answer is pride.
I admit that I have a real problem with pride.
Looking back, I can’t imagine how much I screwed myself just because of my pride. From what I can see of my brother’s life? Probably a whole damn lot.
My brother’s teachers think he’s a problem student because he gets bad grades and he doesn’t approach them for help. My father thinks that my brother has an attitude problem and needs to fix it.
I look at this, and I feel broken. So broken that I just want to scream at my father, at my brother’s teachers, at all the people who feel so free to judge when they haven’t even made the effort to understand.
Pride is all I had. All I still have, actually.
There’s a special sort of shame when you realize that all the shit you’re in is because of your own damn fault. When you know, deep inside, that if you only spent a little more time on your academics and a little less wondering where the fuck your brain went, you’d be doing so much better.
I never used to approach my teachers either. I was so deeply ashamed of not doing well that I felt stricken at the idea of even telling my teacher that I had problems. Even if I had said something, I felt like I didn’t deserve their help, because whatever I was going through was all because of my own fault. In a way, I felt like I deserved whatever grades I got because it was only just that I be punished for my sins. I was convinced that my teachers hated me. It was even harder when I realized that I was so far down shit creek that I didn’t even know where to begin to get a paddle.
So I can understand when my brother does the same thing.
My father thinks my brother has an attitude problem.
I think my brother is too bound up in pride and it’s going to cost him. But I sympathize. Because some days it’s only the pride that keeps you going.
Only the pride that keeps you from collapsing in despair and quitting because dammit, your momma ain’t raised no dropouts. Only the pride that keeps you from shriveling in your very seat because of the disdainful comments your teacher makes about those kids who don’t study and want a free ride. Only the pride that keeps your backbone and upper lip stiff when all you want is to just jump out of a convenient window when your teacher who you love tells you that she’s so very disappointed in you and that you’ve let her down.
Double edged blade, but I couldn’t have done it without it.
In retrospect, I might have done better if I had asked for help. If I had known about my ADD in high school. If I had not let down those teachers who I loved and who loved me without ever giving them a good reason as to why I did what I did.
But perhaps not.
Perhaps not.
In the end, it’s only the pride and the shame and the knowledge that if you just put one foot ahead at a time, maybe you won’t collapse. Maybe you’ll find a way out.
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03.16.10
Posted in Health tagged weight at 8:25 am by kyrias
Kell linked me to this site tonight, and it gave me the impetus to start counting calories. After all, with a relatively handy tool like this, there’s little reason not to.
What I really like about that site is that I can also keep track of my daily water consumption, and it will keep a log for me of how many overall calories I’m consuming over the course of days, weeks, or months. What I found frustrating was that there were multiple choices when I tried inputting certain foods. Bananas, for example, ranged from 105 to 200 calories. It might not seem like much, but those discrepancies can really add up. Also, if you make your own food or eat things that are even slightly out of the norm, then it might be hard to get an accurate tally.
With that in mind, I think that perhaps either using the iGoogle calorie counter tool, which has more options in place with less “float” or using this site to calculate the caloric load of what I’m making, then inputting things manually might be a better idea.
The funny thing is that what is prompting me to start calorie counting is that I’m having eating problems. When I’m on my ADD medication, I tend to eat less than I should. I’m just really happy that I’m no longer on Wellbutrin, which was doing a real number on me.
Then when I’m not eating as much as I should be, I often feel justified in eating high calorie foods like cookies, pie, and cake in place of or in addition to my meals. Clearly sub-optimal. It’s not just about not gaining weight or losing weight, but it seems that I’m probably going to have nutrition problems if this keeps up.
What clinches it is that although my doctor wants me to lose about 9 pounds for health reasons, she was slightly concerned at the rate I was dropping weight whilst on meds. Now that I’m no longer on Wellbutrin, I feel like I’m going to have the yo-yo dieting effect because of how much my metabolism slowed because I wasn’t eating properly on it.
So! What the numbers say:
I’m 154 cm and hovering at about 61kg. That’s about 5 feet and 134 pounds in US terms. The BMI calculator tells me that I should lose at least 4kg in order to be within a healthy weight frame and that I can stand to lose up to 18kg before I get underweight.
Hah! Not that the latter is likely, but it’s good to know what framework I’m working within.
According to various calorie calculators, with my mostly sedentary lifestyle, I should be aiming for a maximum of 1900 calories per day if I want to maintain my weight and 1500 per day if I want to lose a pound a week.
I don’t think I’m going to be actively tracking my calories in order to lose weight. That way lies madness, in my opinion. What I’m mostly going to be using this for is tracking what I am and am not eating to get a good picture of how healthily I’m eating. Hopefully I’ll be eating better and healthier. I figure if I’m eating better, then the weight should melt away, albeit at a much slower rate.
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02.07.10
Posted in Environment, Health tagged organic food, pesticides, poison at 8:01 pm by kyrias
I think that I’m going to boycott strawberries from the shopping list unless they’re organic.
So, what I didn’t know before this is that strawberry and tomato farmers routinely fumigate the soil they plant their crops in — literally killing all living organisms within the medium before planting the strawberries.
The chemical that they used to use is methyl bromide, but it is getting bad press because of its ozone depleting properties. As a result, the Montreal Protocol, established in 1987, promoted the US to agree to phase it out by 2005.
We’ll ignore that Bush apparently negotiated exceptions to that protocol for American farmers and just skip to the point: Americans weren’t going to quit using it entirely until they found a suitable alternative.
The alternative that they found is methyl iodide.
If the similarity in names trips warning bells, then you might just be more clever than the EPA is/was.
Let me just say that methyl iodide works so well as a carcinogen that scientists use it in labs, complete with all the safety gear they can get on, to conduct research on cancer.
All I can say is that I personally don’t find it a good idea to grow food in poisoned soil. That purely asides from the ethical implications of using a poison in the environment where it could get into the watershed and where people living around the area are negatively affected by its use.
Now that I’ve heard about this, I’m just curious about what other food crops are grown with this level of poison use. Truly disturbing. To think that the majority of people probably don’t know this disturbs me even more. I wonder who would still want to eat strawberries grown conventionally after hearing of this? Not to be overly melodramatic, but it seems like eating the fruits of murder. Of humans, no less, not just the petty animals or microorganisms.
Hrm, so about potentially planting strawberries in the house…
I think I might be poking our local nursery for strawberry runners next week on my day off.
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01.29.10
Posted in Health tagged milk kefir grains at 9:54 pm by kyrias
At the start of this year, I bought some milk kefir grains and a kombucha SCOBY from the kefirlady.
I had heard all about its amazing probiotic properties and I wanted to try it out. I had thought about just making yogurt, but the complications of trying to keep it warm in our house made me re-think it, at least until spring or summer. So, I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that I could culture kefir by just adding cold milk to the milk kefir grains and leaving it out overnight. It helped that most of the people that wrote about it in their blogs mentioned how very tasty they found it.
Well.
I found it really strange, but I sort of liked it. I don’t know if I can drink it plain, but it’s pretty good in a smoothie with ripe bananas and strawberries. That really wierd thing was the carbonation — the tingly effect on my tongue really wasn’t what I’d call pleasant. But then, I don’t drink soda or really like anything with carbonation anyways.
What I found surprising was that Caesura really didn’t care for it. It wasn’t just that it was tangier than yogurt usually is, apparently he found the concept of drinking his yogurt really off-putting. I might try buying a yogurt strainer and seeing if I can make it a bit more solid so Caesura would prefer it.
Mr P had a taste and all but spat it out. He found it way too sour.
I suspect that I could just start feeding it more milk and perhaps drinking it before the full 24 hours has passed. However, that brings me to the point of this post:
My milk kefir grains are eating me out of hearth and home. Does anyone in the Boston area want some milk kefir grains?
If you come to pick them up, you can have them for free.
I finally gave in and tried dehydrating some of them, and I’ll have to see if they’re still viable after a while. I’ll probably just start eating them out of hand or dehydrating them, because I usually only have a glass of smoothie a day and so I really can’t keep up with them.
They actually taste pretty good, a bit chewy with the faint fragrance of fresh kefir.
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01.12.10
Posted in Depression tagged The spoon theory at 10:15 pm by kyrias
Yes. It’s more whining navel-gazing.
Being depressed means not really knowing what it’s like to not be depressed. It means not knowing your own self because your entire perception is so colored by the depression that you cannot tell where it ends and where you start.
It means, to a certain extent, never knowing yourself. If you can’t comprehend just how fucking frightening that is, then I’m happy for you.
It means that when people assume I’m a slob because I don’t clean up enough, I can’t say anything to the contrary — because the proof is right there.
It means that when people assume that I am lazy and I’m overweight because I’m a bum who hates to exercise, I don’t have much of a retort.
It means that when family and friends drift away because I’m too much of a flake to be a reliable correspondent who remembers birthdays and get-togethers and proactively seeks chances to hang out — I just have to suck it up because it’s my own fault after all.
It means that no matter that the person who I think I am or should be isn’t the person that other people see, I just have to live with that discrepancy. It’s not the failing that does the most damage. It’s the trying and failing and being judged for the failing and knowing that this is not how you would have it if only you had more energy, more vim, more something or the other.
What also hurts is when the meds don’t work. Or the meds don’t work well enough. Or the meds work, but you can’t live with the side-effects.
Remember that little discussion my classmates and I had about what side-effects would be deal-breakers? Well, I’ve discovered that when your anti-depressants kills your appetite and makes you want to sleep 20 hours out of the day, then that’s a deal-breaker too.
Those spoons — I do not have perhaps even a fifth of the ones you own. This cannot be stressed enough because the normal, not-sick person just does not get it.
I’ve actually given up explaining, because there is no explaining, there is only the sickness and the fail, and the knowledge of fail. Just yesterday night my father brought up the topic of willpower and once again I had that bitter taste in my mouch.
I have a set number of spoons each day. This number goes up or down depending on how poorly I slept, how late I slept, if I’ve managed to eat properly lately, how stressed I am, how much is going on, and how much stress I get to look forward to… etc.
Dealing with people takes spoons. Just getting ready to walk out the door to go to work takes spoons. Having to interact with people without descending into a gibbering screaming mass of hysteria takes amazing number of spoons. This isn’t even the run of the mill random strangers. Sometimes often it takes spoons even to deal with friends and family. Being at work takes spoons. Getting back home from work takes spoons. Every single little detail of my life can potentially take away a spoon and sometimes it smacks me out of the blue how many spoons I just lost.
Details:
It takes spoons to get to and from work because every time I go out the door, it’s an endless stressfest about whether I have all my stuff. My keys, my wallet, my IDs, my bags, my props for work or whatnot. If I’m not careful, I forget and lose things. If I’m not careful, I fall asleep (because of my meds) and miss my stop — which is a fucking problem when you’re on the commuter rail.
It takes spoons to deal with people because sometimes the ADD really makes it hard for me to focus on what people are saying without really working at it. Sometimes it’s real work to not be negative and complain incessantly and talk all about myself and all my problems. Yes. Note this blog post. Often when I’m not feeling too chipper, which is far too often considering my comorbid depression, I find it very hard to interact with people. My almost non-existent patience just goes into the negatives. When you add in the effort of trying to connect and interact with someone in any meaningful manner and be entertaining whilst you’re at it without wanting to bite their head off, that’s a lot of spoons right there.
It takes spoons to get to therapy. It takes spoons to get through therapy. It takes spoons to go to my doctors appointment and explain just once again what exactly I think is wrong with me. Dealing with doctors who seem skeptical about my problems pretty much takes all my spoons for the day.
To be honest, although I’m looking forward to Arisia — I’m probably going to running on fumes and spoon-less the entire time. This is an alien concept to people. Yes. Even things I enjoy takes spoons. How’s that for mind-boggling?
This will sound like unbelievable amounts of whining. Probably even most people who know me well will consider this unbelievable amounts of whining.
That’s fine. I’ve decided that I can’t care because to care is to quietly give up spoons without being able to actually affect anything. The only way to deal is to try not to care as much as possible.
Dealing with people who don’t know the concept of generalized reciprocity is hard. Dealing with people who cannot or will not put themselves in other people’s shoes is fucking hard. Dealing with people who only know how to complain and take, take, take without actually being willing to do fucking something about the entire situation is just damned fucking hard. Dealing with people who refuse to believe or refuse to take into account that for the love of the gods there’s only so many damned spoons in my hand is just a fucking worthless waste of time.
I’m sorry you think I’m a flake. I’m sorry you think I don’t care. I’m sorry you think I’m a slob. I’m sorry that you’re all superior because you’re not broken. I’m sorry that you cannot see past your own problems to see that I’m drowning here. I’m sorry that because you think that because you’ve overcome what problems you have and because of all the problems you do have that everyone else just needs to suck it up and deal. I’m sorry that you somehow have this overblown idea of just how much you’re doing as compared to what I’m doing. I’m really sorry that you cannot see the real me that is struggling within what is not a chrysalis but a shroud.
It’s ok. I often can’t see me too. Just remember, there’s only so many spoons, and if it takes too many spoons to deal with you on a regular basis — I will drop you, because there’s no way I can survive otherwise. I might hate doing it, I might regret it, but honestly, I cannot live with that amount of toxicity in my life anymore.
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01.10.10
Posted in Depression tagged rants at 11:30 pm by kyrias
Thene, my favorite link guerilla sent me something today.
I looked through my archives to see if I’ve talked about something similar, but my tagging system is erratic, full of fail, and not comprehensive. Therefore, I’m probably going to be going over old ground.
I guess that’s ok. As I was just saying to Thene, somehow navel-gazing, like talking about sex, never fails to be vaguely entertaining even when it’s getting trite.
As I said before, depression, to me, is just mostly about boredom and tedium.
I realized a while ago that my depression stems from my frustration that I feel that I’m judged and found lacking because of my lack of ambition. I feel guilty about hoarding my intelligence and creativity and not using it for the “powers of good”, whatever that means. I feel pressured to conform, to be just another cog in the machine — which depresses me.
I realized at a very young age that I really didn’t mind being a girl. All the other crap didn’t manage to overshadow the fact that being a girl meant that I could potentially spend my life doing what I preferred to do. Much to my dismay, the feminazis those women, society, and practical members of my family have killed that for me.
I think I once admitted to a friend that my goal was to become a housewife. His immediate loss of respect was palpable and lest I be accused to paranoia, he said something to that effect.
The thing is, I don’t see the point in becoming just another easily replacable cog in the corporate machine when that’s really not where my talents or interests lie. I believe that I would enjoy myself more and be more useful being a homemaker. Feeding the people I love and making sure their life runs smoothly is more meaningful to me than just being another worker ant. I don’t see the point in having both members of a couple sit there on the couch in dazed weariness after work, too tired to even care that their quality of life has gone straight down the drain in the name of feminism, practicality and reality.
The fact is, when Caesura and I were both going to work, our life sucked. I would get home from work, too exhausted to even think about nuking something for dinner, much less making something delicious and healthy. Laundry would only get done when we were absolutely out of clothing. We would stay up until late at night, desperately trying to unwind enough to go to sleep. I would come straight home and log onto World of Warcraft because it was a easy, mindless, soothing thing to do — that I could see my riches accumulate in a more tangible manner was also good for my soul. Unlike real life, there was actually progress. Between my stress levels, my unhappiness with how I was spending my time, the amount of money we spent on eating out or convenience foods, and my work wardrobe — I don’t believe we were coming out on top at the end of the month in terms of anything.
Despite my telling my parents this, they are pressuring me to find a job. They worry because a woman who is merely a housewife is vulnerable. They worry more because I’m not even a wife, so I wouldn’t even get alimony if things go south. The many women that we know who are in a bad spot because they put themselves in a financially vulnerable spot in their marriage are legion.
The feminists believe that I must needs only find the right job for me and I would feel fulfilled. My wanting to stay at home is a slap in their collective face and they can’t believe how someone would just so easily throw herself away like that.
Reality tells me that I’m in a terrible place unless I can find someone else to latch onto if Caesura breaks up with me. Not having money, having a sparse resume with a large blank in years worked, falling out of step with the rest of society… I know all that and more.
I can function with depression. I even flatter myself that I’m fairly high-functioning for the level and duration of depression I have.
It’s just this endless thought of how easy it would be to end it all and why not end it all? Life is filled with soul-killing tedium, and endless grind that doesn’t even reward you with anything worth speaking of. There’s no hope of it getting better because unlike someone who would be happy with getting a raise or promotion or even more money, all I can think about is how I would rather be home puttering in the kitchen or getting the chores done. It’s not even as simple as working as a chef or something like that, because I’m still just another kind of cog in another machine. There’s nothing to look forward except a lifetime in a job that barely pays you enough to do anything past existing and then perhaps retirement or perhaps just an early death from depression. Nothing but counting the hours until the end of work, and mourning how the minutes away from work speed by like a meteor shower. Life drags on, slower and slower, until the only thing that stops your hand from reaching for that knife is the thought that it would be cruel to have your family or friends walk in the bathroom and find you floating in a tub of bloody water and the only fear left is of the last, ultimate failure.
My reason to say all this is because it’s necessary for what I’m going to say next:
ACW, your comment was not only not helpful, but offensive. I’m sure you meant well, but congratulations, you fail.
To quote:
“As I leave this comment, a character from a book I once read pops into my head, saying, “If you’re going to wax poetic, don’t be trite.”
I’ve never been diagnosed, though certainly we all have a bit of that Seasonal Affective Disorder going on this time of year. I recognize that Depression (with a capital D) is different from just being low every now and then. Regardless, I thought I’d share a favorite quote that helps when I’m low or thinking self-defeating thoughts. I hope it’s not trite. I also hope that, whatever your thoughts on religion or spirituality, you can pick out the good parts. I know I do.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
–Marianne Williamson”
First off, that quote is trite.
Seasonal affective disorder is not depression. For that matter, no two people with depression have the same story. It’s just aggravating for useless comparisons to be made.
Then, thank you for assuming that my depression stems from self-esteem problems. In fact, thank you for telling me what’s my problem.
On top of that, it’s irritating for you to bring God into this. The assumption that I either know or care about God and his supposed plans for and about me is, frankly, bloody presumptuous. Leave him out of it and stay out of my religious views or lack thereof.
Lastly, I love how you’re managing to throw in a guilt-trip about how I’m not serving the world because I’m not brilliantly shining whilst liberating myself and others. Thanks. That’s exactly what I needed to hear.
To be fair, there might have been or will be a time when I would have been able to draw something out of that quote. That’s not saying much, though. At best, it’s just another one of those generic motivation things that doesn’t really manage to sound like anything other than a platitude because it was trite the first time it was said. It doesn’t resonate with truth and nor does it tell me anything that I haven’t heard a million times before in other incarnations.
Meh.
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12.29.09
Posted in Bupropion/methylphenidate, Depression, Health tagged health problems at 4:21 am by kyrias
My rosebush wasn’t doing so well at the end of summer. It had strange spots all over its leaves and if you so much as brushed against it, it would shed leaves like crazy. As for the roses? Forget about it. It maybe gave me a handful of blossoms for the entire summer after I bought it.
It had been sitting outside on the stoop for more sun, but I decided that I should probably bring it inside so it didn’t freeze to death. When I brought it indoors, Azora said that I should prune it back for the winter. I figured I might as well, since the poor thing seemed to be all but dead anyways. So the two of us set to with scissors and whacked off most of the green stuff — to the point where it pretty much looked like a Y-shaped branch stuck into a pot of soil.
A couple months later with indifferent watering…
Here’s a closeup of the perfect rosebud that I never got during the warm months:
If you can tell, there’s three buds on the bush right now. Three. When I was lucky to have a half-browned, wilty little bud on the bush half the time during this summer. The other half of the time there was nothing, just lots of leaves.
So looking at my sad, sad basil plant and my dead rosemary plant — perhaps next time I should just start whacking them too? For that matter, if anyone can tell me how to keep rosemary plants alive, I’d be terribly grateful. They seem to just shrivel away even with constant watering. I now have a very nice, dry, rosemary plant sitting in a pot of moist soil.
On an entirely unrelated note, further news on things in general:
I have a therapist now. I don’t really know if he’s going to be useful or not. Our first session, he pretty much just asked me the usual questions and then gave me worksheets pertaining to my sleep and what activities I engage in.
For the X’mas weekend, I pretty much had one word to sum up what I did for that Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: Slept.
I’m not even joking. I woke up at 7 AM on Saturday morning, realized no one else was awake and decided to lie back for an hour or so. At 9:40 or so, I finally drag myself out of bed after hitting the snooze button countless times. I eat something, then sit down on the couch in the living room, and proceeded to fall asleep whilst Caesura and my father have a conversation. I rouse myself briefly to move to the other couch to watch my brother and Caesura play Puyo, and fell asleep. I realize it’s some time after lunch time, get a bowl of soup, eat that, sit down with a book, and fall asleep. I then wake briefly, rallied to read a couple more pages, and fell asleep again. Dad asks me to go help him with dinner prep at some point, so I go, then we eat, then I sit back down on the couch and watch some TV. At about 9:00 PM, I feel dreadfully sleepy…
Sunday sort of proceeded in a similar fashion.
I believe my therapist would tell me that if I only had something to engage myself with, I wouldn’t be falling asleep that much. If so, I have to say I don’t believe him. After all, when I had classes earlier this year, I would get on the train and zonk out, then I would get to class and then zonk out halfway through taking notes. In fact, I have quite a few samples of notes that pretty much went from coherent to faintly comprehensible gibberish within five sentences or less. When I was falling asleep in class in college from lack of sleep, the descent into gibberish was a lot more gradual. Of course, that’s hardly scientific, I realize.
Dad wants me to get a job. He believes that it would bring structure and meaning to my life. I believe that I would probably fall dead asleep in whatever job I managed to get and then proceed to be ignominously fired. He also believes that I suffer from self-esteem problems and guilt because I don’t have a job and don’t contribute anything to anyone. Asides from the usual self-esteem stuff, he thinks that I should get a job because if I ever broke up with Caesura/ Caesura died / something similarly unfortunate, I would need to be financially solvent.
He wants me to tell him what my “goals” are this weekend.
I really want to tell him to leave me alone until I sort out this whole problem with narcolepsy. I can hardly go job-hunting in this condition.
I also realized something unfortunate yesterday: For some reason, I’ve been continously leaking blood this entire past month even though I’m on the Nuva Ring. I thought about it and wondered if the narcolepsy might have had something to do with the constant blood loss. But then the narcolepsy was a problem before this month — so perhaps not.
My mother and my grand-aunt want me to go back to Taiwan so they can run comprehensive medical tests on me.
I really don’t want to. Asides from not wanting to deal with my mother on a daily basis in the context of living with her, I really don’t want to be living under someone else’s roof for however long it’s going to take for my body to sort itself out. I don’t know how healthy I can get with that sort of constant stress.
On the other hand, if the doctors here can’t fix me, I might not have a choice. As of right now, I’m sitting on the endless period problem and not telling the family about it because I can see a total freak-out session from everyone in Taiwan, resulting in a one-way ticket back there with no idea of when I’d be leaving. Dad pretty much knows about the narcolepsy, which is really unfortunate because now I’ll bet he told mom, which will worry her, which will lead to Bad. Things. At least I don’t think he picked up on the appetite problem or the hand tremors bit.
Ugh. Just. Ugh.
Thank the gods for small mercies, I guess.
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12.19.09
Posted in Health tagged bupropion, methylphenidate at 9:51 pm by kyrias
So the doc gave me a prescription for methylphenidate, and the pills came in 5mg portions. I was supposed to up my dose if I didn’t feel it, so to speak.
5 mg was as a pebble into the sea. 10 mg seemed to improve my game of Puyo.
Which, by the way, is my new obsession. It’s like some unholy offspring of dominos, tetris, and weird gelatinous …things…puyos. If you like Tetris, there’s a good chance you’ll like Puyo, and if you don’t like Tetris, I’d bet that you’d still like Puyo.
No, I’m not biased at all, oh no.
Anyways. I took 15mg this morning at 8am and I’m still feeling it, 12 hours later. The usual: accelerated heart rate, feeling like it’s a bit hard to breathe, and utter loss of appetite. All new record of only eating one buttermilk pancake, one quarter of a scallion pancake, and one dumpling. In 13 hours.
I’m not even going to calculate the caloric value of that, because it’s going to be scary.
On the other note, when watching Taiwanese Idol, aka 超级星光大道：
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Friends don’t let friends wear _____ when showing up on tv. This, however, really deserved a blog mention:
The woman is really talented in terms of singing, song composition, and lyric writing. I’m just going to put it out there that I really admire her — which is why, I guess, that seeing that outfit of hers hurts so much.
That combination of tube top with two bared arms and that scarf-thing is just… I have no words for it. It’s not even a skinny, decorative scarf; it totally seems as if she took all the material that would otherwise have went towards a proper shirt with sleeves and just scrunched it all around her neck. Doughnut-scarf-thing + tube top = *speechless+horror*
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12.10.09
Posted in Bupropion/methylphenidate, Depression, Health tagged Wellbutrin at 5:05 pm by kyrias
It’s been, what, about 3 weeks or so since I got on Wellbutrin? I honestly don’t quite remember. Let’s call it three weeks for the sake of simplicity.
What’s changed?
My hands shake so much that I think any chances of my knifework improving went straight out the window. I’m hoping that the shakes will go away after I stabilize on the meds, but just in case it doesn’t, I’m going to bid my future career as a sous-chef adieu.
I’m down to about one meal per day. Wellbutrin is/was apparently used as a diet medication. I get hungry, but I either A. forget to eat B. get too lazy/caught up in what I’m doing to eat or C. get bored of the act of eating and quit before I’m full. A, B, and C kind of imply that it’s not just that I’m taking something that also functions as an appetite suppressant, leading into the next problem:
My ADD has gone through the roof. If I thought my brain was like Emmental cheese (hah! Thene!) before, I’m most apologetic towards my brain, because what I’m experiencing now is what it’s truly like to have the brain capacity of a goldfish. I have a 10 page paper due today, and fuck if I can focus on it. That same paper I wrote 383 words on after spending 8 hours working on it without any outside distractions. For the record, I now have a full page single spaced after at least 48 hours of working on it. My mind for details has entirely gone and forget about remembering anything important. I managed to entirely forget my second psychiatrist’s appointment because I thought it was later. So it’s entirely possible that my ADD may be what’s contributing to the one-meal-a-day phenomenon.
I’m having problems with what looks like narcolepsy. Alright, I’m exaggerating, but not by that much. Even after 10 hours or so of sleep, I get suddenly very sleepy after two hours of being awake, and manage to fall dead asleep in class. Or I totally conk out on the T — leading to missed stops. I can wake up at 2pm and feel desperately sleepy at 6pm. It’s getting to the point where I feel like I should just stay in bed because there’s no point in getting up when I just want to crawl back an hour or so later. Insomnia is a documented side effect of Wellbutrin — so as Thene said, I did a great job on that one.
I have a constant bitter taste in my mouth that I’m not really enjoying. I can’t help but feel that it means that the drug is doing wierd things to me that might not be entirely benign.
Despite all this — I feel less depressed. I am not sure it isn’t apathy yet, but I think that I’m still worried about my paper should be a good sign. I guess, so long as I’m resigned to being a cheerful goldfish with no ability to get intellectually challenging things done, I’m good? Happy as a clam and all that, y’know?
I had an appointment with my psychiatrist and there are some real gems of conversation we had (keeping in mind these are trancribed from memory — which is really faulty lately ):
After I mention my problem with going down to one meal a day:
Dr: “I don’t think you need to worry about it, there have been no accounts of people wasting away whilst on Wellbutrin.”
I sort of blinked at him and decided not to bring up the fact that if I started taking stimulant type ADHD medication — that’d also be an appetite suppressant, which might make things really interesting.
Me: “I’m feeling better and all, but I’d really prefer not to fail my courses.”
Dr: “Oh well.” <– Yes, he literally did say that. Exactly that.
After describing my sleeping problems:
Dr: “You don’t look very sleepy now.”
…I guess that was a fair statement? But it isn’t narcolepsy after all, and aren’t most people usually a bit stressed from seeing their psychiatrist that they wouldn’t readily just fall asleep? I don’t know. It just seemed a bit odd, almost as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me.
My psychiatrist is a good man, I’m not throwing that into question. Furthermore, I think he’s probably also a good doctor. However, I think it’s hysterical that he’s so utterly unsympathetic.
What’s also interesting is that I almost had to twist his arm to prescribe me an stimulant-type ADHD medication. He didn’t seem keen on it, but he did it, which makes me wonder what exactly was going through his brain at the time. He said he didn’t want to muddy up the waters by throwing another drug into the mix, and I would usually be whole-heartedly behind that as really, I don’t like one drug in the first place much less two. But honestly, I’m tired of just conking over like that. P’raps he only did it because stimulants don’t really have much of a long-term effect and it goes out of the system fast enough that if I reacted poorly to it, I would be able to go straight off it. I have no idea! I really want some insight into this man’s mind!
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