Blog #24-from myspace.com (2/7/2006)

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Dysorganized Current mood: numb Wow, for my entire life I have been told I'm very organized, very detail-oriented, in other words - obsessive compulsive. So, what do I do? I take medication for this. . because some of my organization goes a little too far. For a while, this works pretty well and then the seduction begins. You suddenly hear about new drugs that are better and have less side effects. You hear about these in all the media and you decide that maybe you aren't doing the best you can do in terms of medications. So you switch to a new one and find that they do have less side effects but don't help you as much as the first. You are then seduced again. Seduced to believe that a regular MD isn't as good as a psychiatrist and that you really should be seeing one instead. You break your decade long alliance with your MD and see a psychiatrist who instantly tells you that you are clearly on all the wrong medications. What would a silly MD know? This is her job to know. So, she gives you a new drug and what happens? You have this complete and total melt-down within 48 hours of taking it. You act like a meth addict and don't sleep, you have such bad shaking that you can't keep your head still, you call and call and call your doctor, oops, psychiatrist--and she never returns your calls, not even 3 days later when it's all said and done. Then, a few days later you realize that you have this odd rash on the one side of your back and wow, you've got SHINGLES. You go to the emergency room doctor, just a silly MD remember, who says that a very stressful situation or a severe reaction to a medication could've caused this breakout. . hmm. . does anything in my recent past meet this criteria? Fortunately, the silly MD gives you medications that stop the spread of the shingles but you do suffer for about 6 months. During this time, you go back to your psychiatrist and she says it's very rare and there was no way for her to realize that you'd actually have such a reaction. . but time to move on, let's start you on a better drug. You ask what the side effects are, as this is not your normal OCD drug and she says they are less than the SSRIs, which are usually used for my type of problem. You take her in total trust because you truly believe, plus she's a PSYCHIATRIST for God's sake, so she must be really knowledgeable about it. You start taking this drug and at first, all seems well. However, you suddenly start slipping into oblivion. Yep, all the OCD signs are gone. . it sure is working great! However, there seems to be a slight problem. . you don't seem to have the motivation to do ANYTHING. Showering, brushing your teeth, eating, going to work, having fun, exercising, loving your family -- geez, can't quite get the energy up for any of those, but my meds are working! My smart psychiatrist says so! Then one day you realize that you sleep about 16 to 18 hours out of a day, but that's normal, right? I mean, the OCD problems are gone and I sure am better. I go and see my smart, nice, trusty psychiatrist and she informs me that she is not going to keep her practice anymore and geez, in this small town, there ain't another one. She assures me I can find someone and leaves it at that. So, I return to my faithful MD who is appalled that I am on this drug because it's not even indicated for OCD and I am on double the max dosage. . stupid me for believing the psychiatrist. He explains how bad the withdrawals are going to be. . didn't my smart psychiatrist tell me this before I started taking it? It's considered the medication for life. Meaning, you can never get off of it because the withdrawals are so bad. Really? Geez, that might have been nice to know, but I guess I didn't really ask about withdrawals just side effects -- oops, my mistake. But how bad can it actually be? Thus, I start my withdrawls in early July and I soon find out that wow, this stuff isn't a joke. I hallucinate, throw up and have diarrhea daily, have an all-over body itch for 2 months, lose 15 pounds, and don't sleep . . . but that's okay because I just have to worry about going to work every day and making a living. I only have a mortgage and the regular bills all adults have so geez, no pressure there. . and then I break. I humbly tell my just-an-MD that he was right from the very beginning that I didn't need to change medications. He's very nice about this and offers to help me through this time. . but at this point, I'm way too far gone. My body (and mind) is damaged severely. I am forced to leave work for 2 months and am flat on my back. . so sick and weak. Gee, I woulda thought my smart psychiatrist would have thought to have a regular blood work check ran on me to rule out other problems but of course not, I'm *normal*. She *knows* what the problem is. . but my just-an-MD insists that we should check things, just in case. What a novel idea! And guess what? I'm so anemic that at the current altitude (about 7000 ft) where I live he's wondering how I'm walking around, and my thyroid is completely out of whack. So the next 2 months are spent trying to recover but soon money runs out and I must return to work. I'm not better. . I'm still sick. First, I blame it on the physical issues but by December they are a whole lot better and I can't really blame my feeling lifeless on that. In some ways I find the whole thing amusing. . I start off trying to control my actions of over-organization, constant cleaning, overworking, having everything in place, always remembering dates and deadlines, planning for every part of my future, taking immaculate care of my pets and family, and on and on and on. . . . and now, not only do I not have the motivation to do even one of those things, I don't even have the motivation to move my legs and turn over in bed. But, I guess my super-smart psychiatrist sure did fix my problem! I'm certainly not "overly organized" anymore. I guess I didn't realize that it would mean my entire life would have to end and I would have to be pushed into such a depressive state that I almost think dying would be easier. Oh, and did I neglect to mention that the medication she put me on was supposed to be used for other anxiety illnesses that I do *not* have and that it forces you to be more "low key", i.e. - at 2 times the normal dosages, extremely depressed. So now, I'm hanging by a thread, making it just day by day. Here's my life. . it's a simple synopsis, as it never changes from day to day: I drag myself from the bed in the morning and go to work, I make myself stay there until it's time to go home (not an easy task, especially when your work place sucks ass, which is another story entirely), I don't eat breakfast or lunch because it's too inconvenient for me to get up and get something. I go home and change into my PJs and go to sleep. When my husband comes home, he wakes me up and sometimes gets me to eat dinner, sometimes not. I then go back to bed. End of life. Repeat every day, 7 days a week. I finally have had enough. . I'd much rather be the OCD "freak" I was before who went to work and blew through stuff, had a great appetitite, loved to go out with friends and have hobbies, volunteered at so many different places, laughed and had a sense of humor, and yes, spent a lot of time working on my life -- because as it stands now, I don't have a life. I simply exist. I am here because I don't have anywhere else to go. The really ironic part is I'm depressed now not due to a medication but because of all that happened to me *because* of the medication. . I am caught in this web of being completely dysorganized and am not only back at square one, but at whatever square came before that. .