Last Day of Effexor, Last Day of Therapy

So today is two big lasts: my last day being on Effexor and my last day of going to mental health therapy. It was completely random that they coincided like this.

 

So far, the drug transition has gone pretty well. I’m on week two of three. I see my regular doctor on Thursday about everything, but I think it’s gone pretty well. I had a few bad days and a few really good ones and several in between.

 

The therapy went really well, too. I’ve learned a lot more about myself and what I want and how to get there from here. My therapist was really great to work with and asked a lot of good questions that honestly if I’d been self-help-booking it I would have just glossed over and not answered. It’s important for me to have someone there looking at me waiting for an answer before my brain will provide me with one.

 

I have spent the last two weeks mostly avoiding the world, though. I haven’t done any writing at all (though plenty of daydreaming), or paying much attention to the calendar (sorry I missed a few things), and am at the whoa-nuke-my-email-inbox-and-start-over stage of emailing. Thankfully nearly all important things are texted or FB messaged these days. So if you’ve been waiting for an email response from me…well, try again through another method because I have totally just been deleting everything these days.

What else? This afternoon I start writing actual words again. Tonight I’ll work on a therapist-suggested daily schedule for writing/housework/hobbies. I’m also outlining a new chores/consequences schedule for the kids, since they have not been motivated by rewards (also therapist-suggested). Tomorrow I’ll put all that into motion.

I think that’s it. Whee! On to the writing….

Health updates

Yesterday I said I’d get some chronic-girl health updates done, but got bogged down in running kids here, there, and everywhere.

Rheumatoid Arthritis: I’ve had a few little flare-ups here and there, one bad enough to go on prednisone again for a taper. That seemed to do it for me, though, and although I’ve had ongoing knee pain, most everything else has been fairly okay.

Fibromyalgia: Stressed Lisa = tense muscles = twitching. It’s been bad, y’all. My left eye is the worst, then my upper right arm, then my left thigh. I have a sample of Lyrica that the doctor gave me, a month’s supply, but I’m just worried about the side-effects, so I haven’t taken it.

Migraines: Just one in the last couple months, which is quite lovely. I killed it with sleep.

Anxiety/Depression: Yesterday was an up and down kind of day. Sometimes I felt manic and anxiety-free and then I’d just spiral back down into sadness at the drop of a hat.

Day Four of Effexor/Trinellix transitioning: Today the vertigo and tummy troubles hit. Not so pleasant.

 

 

Transitioning from Effexor to Trintellix

As most of you know, I deal with both depression and anxiety disorder in my daily life. I’ve been on and off meds for them since I was about 16. The drug that worked the best and for the longest has been, up until recently, Effexor. It has reached the failure point, though. I keep going up on dosage and nothing happens.

So my doctors decided it was time to get me off the Effexor. I’ve gone off it once before, years and years ago, before they knew quite what an ordeal it was. I went off it basically cold-turkey then and spent several weeks thinking I was going crazy and writing poems about pain and darkness. It was delightful, really.

Now that the drug is not new, there’s a protocol for going off it and I am following that protocol. I started this week going down a notch on it and started taking the starting dose of my new medicine Trintellix alongside it.

Day One: Euphoria. It was like I was Harry Potter and I’d just taken the Felix Felicis potion. I could do no wrong. Everything felt right and good. I did a couple doctor visits, all the laundry, and the dishes. Got it all done quick and easily with energy to spare.

Day Two: The Utter Blackness of Despair. It started even before I’d properly woken up, that feeling of doubt so deep that even moving my foot to start getting out of the bed felt like I was making the worst decision of my life. My brain was telling me all the bad things that could go wrong every second of the whole day and reminding me of every mistake I have ever made. In addition to that loveliness, I felt like my blood had all been taken out and replaced with Listerine or Icy Hot. I was literally writhing in discomfort all day. I mostly wallowed around feeling awful, but did manage to get a few necessary things done, like calling and cancelling all those things we never use, like my gym membership, magazine subscriptions, etc.

Day Three: Seems to be a little bit of a combination of day one and two. I’m back to feeling a bit euphoric, like it might be a really good idea to drive to Frisco and shop at IKEA this afternoon before driving back home and picking up kids, but tempered by the brain whispers telling me that I need to have money in the bank to shop and that IKEA takes way longer than 90 minutes. So since I seem to have motivation again, I am spending the day writing and getting some random housework done before getting started on a cross-stitching project of the Star Wars logo.

 

Words, words, words

Yesterday I had no words left after a good week of writing. I decided to give myself the day off from writing and to let myself doing some story intake instead. So I watched bits and pieces of a few different things.

 

Today when writing time came, the writing came out like a deluge. I wrote about 1500 words in about 45 minutes. It was fantastic!

 

Then I spent some time perusing other writing projects I’d set aside and adding details into them and bringing their files up to date. During the digging through old files, I found a little chart I used to keep of how many words I wrote each day about 14 or so years ago. I never managed to get above 250 words at once.  I am doing so much better now! 🙂 I can usually do about 1000 words an hour these days.

 

Sometimes it is good to look back at old things. There were a few story ideas that I feel more than willing to tackle now that I didn’t feel like I knew enough about writing to do in the past.  I’m so excited that I’m back to writing and feel good about it again.

Starting Over

I have a novel that I’ve been working my way through on and off for a couple years now. I like my characters, I like the setting, I have some great scenes, my brain keeps coming back to it, but something about it just hasn’t been working.

So this week I’ve taken some advice and am just starting over. I didn’t do anything drastic like throw away my notes or delete my files, but I have allowed myself just a little bit of re-imagining time with it. I’ve done a few exercises from The 90-Day Novel: Unlock the story within and am enjoying some new insights into my characters. I’ve also let myself start a new Scrivener file for it from the 7 Point Story Structure template I downloaded from The Self Publishing Toolkit several years ago.

I’ll let you know how it goes. 🙂

Novel in 90 – Day Two

Today I got the rest of yesterday’s words done and went 47 over on today’s number of words as well. It’s going pretty well, although at one point Scrivener told me that I had written -22 words (I got rid of a terrible scene and replaced it with a better one that was apparently 22 words shorter than the original.)

2017-03-02-17-39-53

Ben caught me writing in the van on little bitty post-it notes. He thought I was crazy. I probably was…but I’d had thoughts and my little travel keyboard needed charging before it would connect with my iPhone and I was desperate. Six or seven post-its later and I was fine. 🙂

 

Now Writing!

During our writing retreat last weekend, Steph told me her writing group was doing Novel-in-90 starting March 1st, so I joined that community. Yesterday we started. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted because I was busy, busy, and more than busy, but I hope to make up for it today.

I am working this year mainly on the Magical PTA novel, which I started during a different Novel-in-90 with the same group of people a couple years ago. I’m about 25,000ish words into it already, as I obviously didn’t finish last time. Hoping to do much better this time around. 🙂

Homecoming for the non-conformists

My eldest kid surprised me last night with a request for a homecoming mum for his girl. LAST NIGHT. After three weeks of me saying “Are you sure you’re not going to change your mind?” They did and they didn’t. They still aren’t going to the dance, but they are going to go out and he requires a mum for this process.

First I was flabbergasted.  Then I flippantly said at this rate all that would be left was Halloween ribbons and I could make a Harry Potter mum. His date loved the idea.
This morning I spent an hour and a half and $119 and now we have supplies to make our own mum. For $60 I could have purchased a pre-made one, but this one is half-school spirit, half Harry Potter so it’ll be better. Also, it will be bonding for David and I and that’s priceless, right? As a bonus, I can hot glue him to something when he pisses me off.
There was an owl selection process. 

After multiple texts, we chose the one on the front right because it had feet and did not have a stick up its butt to deal with.


Some of the rest of the supplies. Oh, and a Bible. Cause I’ll need it after dealing with a kid and a hot glue gun for hours later.
Wish us luck!

Long Time, No See

I know, I’ve been gone forever. Well, there is a very long list in my head right now about things that are super aggravating me and that is one of them. Here are a few so I can feel like I have vented and can get on with my day:

  1. Fundraisers – I know, I know, I’m on the committees and I know all about the budgets and where the money goes and why we need it right now just after all the school supplies were bought, but that doesn’t mean I am any happier about it than the rest of you. I really, really hate fundraising to the very core of my being. I wish we all had all the money we needed to do all the things that need being done.
  2. All the stupid reminder apps I need to download to keep in touch with kids schools and extracurriculars. Dude, I am so happy you want to keep in contact with us, but can we just agree as a whole town or state to use this one thing and be done with it? I have two for Greg, three for Ben, and two for David. Plus Evite and FB Events and PTAvenue and WordPress and and and. MY PHONE IS FULL, people. Either the state or local government needs to start paying for more storage for our phones or stop using these things. Remember paper? I like paper. Paper is good. I can set it on fire when I get tired of it. I CANNOT SET MY PHONE ON FIRE. It’s very toxic.
  3. Schedules: I just want the school schedules to get along. I want to drop my kids off youngest to eldest and pick up that way and I want to be able to have time to drive to one school and get in the pick-up line in a decent place at the next school without someone running me over or giving me death looks every day. I also want the elementary programs not to overlap the middle school or the high school and all that vice versa. I don’t want to figure out how I am going to chaperone a high school football game for band and a dance for the middle school at the same time or how to pick my kid up from band, take him to scouts (which he’s late for because it runs the same time as band, which makes no sense because scouts are usually band kids), and attend a school board meeting all at once (which, seriously, all the scouts meet on Monday night and scout parents are usually the kind of parents you want at your school board meeting.). Also, money pick-ups for schools: If I am dropping off and picking up all my kids at the same time as the schools want me to be picking up money brought to them by said children for PTA stuff, how am I supposed to be picking up and dropping off my kids? I literally literally cannot be in that many places at once. Do you see why I am insane?
  4. Ok, I think I’m done. I mean, I have more, but my brain feels a little calmer now and the ringing in my ears and the tightening of the vice grip of anxiety has lessened to a point where I might be able to get on with my day now. Thanks for “listening” people. I love you. 🙂

Phase One: Done!

I am done with Phase One of my diet.

Phase One: Complete!

Before and After Phase One

Measurements:

Weight: -5 lbs

Neck: -.5 inch

Arms: -.15 inches

Waist: -4 inches

Hips: the same

Thighs: -.5 inch

PROGRESS!! WOO HOO!!