Every once in a while I do one of these posts for the newbies, or to set down for myself what I've been able to observe about my behavior vis a vis my mental illness and how I handle it. Or, as in this case, both.

This is not, please, to be seen as a passive-aggressive comment to anyone. I've been thinking on this a while. I'm just working some things out. ( Read more...Collapse )

It comes and goes. Soon I will begin the familiar process of pushing the fallen boulder back up the hill, hopefully not to have it roll back on me again for some time. For now, I'm going to continue to lay low.

And anyway, I see my psychiatrist soon and if I don't he's going to kick my ass.

In the last week I have:

1) Spent the night with a friend as she explained the brother she buried last week actually had a psychotic episode during which he set his apartment on fire, ultimately killing himself from burns and smoke inhalation;

2) Had two great-uncles on opposite sides of the family die the same day (Monday, almost exactly 12 hours apart);

3) Been observing a bizarre incident unfold at one of my jobs, which included allegations of a patient buying and abusing narcotics, conspiring with a meth addict after dumping her stable and loving husband, neglecting her small children, and committing murder of a family member for inheritence money, culminating in my boss having a meeting with the head of the local FBI field office.

I feel these the last few days can be summarized in six words: "What is this I don't even."

Yes.


As a completely arbitrary addendum, I also spent some time vehemently rejecting a friend's suggestion I hook up with a webzine as their Female Reviewer of Genre Fiction on a number of grounds, including such facts as the zine not supplying the review materials and paying only $20 for a review (ie, less than the cost of a hardback book, effectively requiring I lose money to contribute, and $30 less than my father makes for comparable online work) and the detail that declaring myself any kind of female perspective whatsoever is probably false advertising. (And though I see what they're trying to do, I'm mildly insulted when it's assumed women have markedly different opinions on things like quality, story, and subject matter. It'd be one thing if they wanted to explore, say, specific issues the treatment of women in the works of Heinlein vs. Whedon or something, but having a female reviewer just to say you have one on payroll makes my eyes roll right out of my head.)

Now I return to my exciting life. I've got this burgeoning dog-induced contusion on my foot that I am mapping as it grows more colorful by the day. Call me crazy, but I wanna see how this shit turns out.

So last Friday the steering arm in my car broke in the middle of a commute from one job to another. If you have never experience this before, it's like going into a skid that never ends. Even though this is normally the result of striking a pothole at high speed, 1) I recall no such impacts, 2) I do not drive at high speeds, especially on icy roads (ie, the last month), and 3) the mechanic found none of the associated damage that would indicate this to be the case. His best guess is either rust or simple part failure. This just adds insult to injury, since at $400 for a repair I feel I should at least have been getting in some sweet off-roading.

Despite my impending financial purgatory, this morning I had the world's most obvious epiphany that I was probably depressed for most (if not all) of 2010 rather than just the last quarter of it. I realized this only because now that I've picked up the second job I've found I have more energy, a little more sociability, and generally feel less like shit. I do like the second job, which helps considerably, but I suspect the major issue was my financial situation. In 2009 my hours started getting cut back to 4 days a week, then in 2010 it became 3, then 2. I understood the need, since the company just wasn't making money (and as the book-keeper oh man did I know it), but when you've got medication costs, a car payment, rent and student loans and you're only working 10 hours a week understanding only gets you so far. I knew the OCD was flaring; somehow, though, I missed the concomitant depression until it had hit critical mass. (Seriously, how many of these rodeos do I have to attend until I take notice before the bull kicks me in the face?)

I don't want to quit my original job, since I like my coworkers and find it easy work, but I'm beginning to realize that if it continues as it has been I may not have a choice. The infrequent and super-flexible work hours that are ideal for some are driving up my anxiety level. This isn't fun under normal circumstances, but with a mental illness . . . well, yeah. I've been trying to coast along under the Shikata Ga Nai setting, but there comes a point when even the justification becomes unsustainable. The bottom line is that the second job gives me more hours at greater pay and, most importantly, stability. Right now, anything that staves off brain shenanigans is at the top of my priority list. If nothing else, depressive funks are @#$%ing boring.

So I'm about to finish my second week with a local internist, and it's going pretty well. I enjoy my coworkers, especially the main receptionist (who I'm primarily supporting and so thank god we get along), I work a few more hours there, and I have a substantially higher salary. It is for this reason that I thank the 8" of snow for falling today and not tomorrow, when my next shift is.

Favorite quote so far, uttered after the order of an STD panel: "Is there a diagnostic code for 'dumb'?"

Unfortunately, from the start I knew that eventually I'll see something that will haunt me. After a good first day I went to the elevators and heard a woman leaving a tearful message for her husband. When she got on with me I asked her if she was okay; she confessed that no, she'd had a bad test result. I didn't ask which. She was crying. I gave her an uncharacteristic hug, but that one stayed with me for a while. That woman was a stranger, but the office has a number of dementia patients and at least one suffering from MS, so it's only a matter of time.

But that's a small worry. There's social interaction but at a managable pace, and it's a good place to see different types of people, which is useful on any number of levels. Plus, I'm markedly less weird now that I'm working more than 10 hours a week, and that's always good.

Now off to a little more Unseen Academicals and what I hope isn't going to be an icy commute tomorrow.

Well, the dog's bill of health came back clean (but no less expensive), so that's good. Especially since it proved to be a good conversation piece in today's interview.

I went to see the job prospect today. I wore gender-appropriate clothing and everything. It's the office of a concierge doctor, 13 hours a week (as opposed and in addition to my current 10), and mostly backing up the overworked medical assistant. After I finished talking to her boss I asked to talk to her, since we'd be working together, and after realizing I had no questions seized upon a key physical clue and asked if she had a pet. Indeed, she had a 6 month old basset hound. Having had several animal-related jobs, I recognize claw marks when I see them. We then proceeded to spend abot 20 minutes not talking about the job I was interviewing for.

So I start Friday. The speed is not unusual, the physical interview being the point at which I deploy my Mind Powers.

(I'm not sure why my parents express such shock every time I tell them I've gotten whatever job I'm going for. I've never been turned away once I've reach the interview stage.)


Anyway, all caught up on the Dresden Files, with the exception of the contents of Side Jobs. I did quite enjoy Changes, although I think Butcher occasionally suffers for his conservation of detail (for example, I spotted the traitor of Turn Coat back in Proven Guilty), though that may just be because I can spot the techniques he uses to lay groundwork. I also seem to be pretty good at projecting the narrative fate of his secondary characters, but his climaxes are nicely unpredictable and he's outright blindsided me a few times, and I appreciate that. I enjoy, too, that he's not afraid to destroy the status quo, which I think too few authors do when they have a playground and premise like the one Butcher's created. All in all, it's been a worthwhile few weeks of reading.

(Not that it isn't always, but I do need to recall when this happened for veterinary reasons.)

Today I let the damn thing romp through the elementary school woods, slipped the lead back on it, took a few steps with it, and it promptly had a seizure.  At first I thought it was limping due to ice in its back pawpad, but once I cleared that out the same weird limping gait happened with a forepaw. I lifted that one, and then suddenly all three of the dog's legs turned to jelly and it started to lose its balance. It wobbled around for a few seconds, developed a full-body tremble, and went vacant-eyed. Moreso than a dog usually is.

Weirdly, he never actually fell; I think he was still quasi-responsive, because when I saw he was staggering I told him to go into a sit and he did (with a few seconds' delay). I sat down on the asphalt and let him lean against me for a minute or so, during which I had a lot of time to think about how much it was going to suck if he couldn't get up again with my parents out of town and us both out of eye and ear-shot of nearby houses.

(This was especially surreal because, honestly, if I'd had to guess which one of us would've ended up suffering some catastrophic health-event during a walk, I'd have been sure it would be me . . .)

Anyway, he came out of it eventually and I managed to get him walking back home. I don't think he really registered what was going on again until we'd left the school grounds, at which point he heard a car and immediately transformed back into his hyperactive self. By the time we got back home he was alert and prancing again, but I dragged his fluffy ass to the vet anyway. Something about random seizures can put one in an urgent state of mind.

Long story short, vet found no immediate heart abnormalities (her first guess), so we're waiting for the labs to come back on his various cultures. He'd been showing no signs of neurological abnormalities before or after, so the whole thing was really perplexing. Barring a brain tumor or electrolyte imbalance or something, she said it could just be one of those strange one-off things pets and people experience sometimes. But you know, this is Wilson, so it's probably gonna be something expensive. (Though I'd be okay if it was just epilepsy. If I knew it wasn't immediately dangerous the noodleleg-effect would be hysterical.)

Either way, that is how the dog ruined my Monday afternoon.


Otherwise, nothing exciting. Got a phone interview for a hospital job on Thursday (set up by my current boss, in fact). Part-time, but still more than I'm getting at my current job. Brothers are in town for a bit. And Abyss has me reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, of which I have just begun Turn Coat. Fun stuff . . . and I will be forever grateful that Laurel K. Hamilton will not be Missouri's sole contribution to urban fantasy.

1) AMC's adaptation of The Walking Dead is pretty good, if predictable, and

2) When my friends and their weekend host have drunken lesbian sex with too much S in the requested M, I am the one they call.


Re: #1: I found the crawling torso strangely touching, which I credit to the filming. Nice dichotomy between nature/peace and, you know. Zombie.
Re: #2: What the hell is my local reputation?


Still feeling out the new med regimen. The new addition is what's essentially time-release xanax that makes me a bit time-release stoned, which, while a nice change from paralyzing anxiety, periodically makes me very interested in things only slightly more fascinating than carpet patterns. I'll have to wait for myself to habituate a little before I can assess functionality.

Oh, yeah. There goes the first hit now. Good times.

So okay, I finally got an appointment with my psychiatrist. I did not arrive in particularly great shape, needing a full xanax just to stop shaking, and I guess it showed, because at the end of the session the doc did something I've never seen happen before and waived the entire $250 session fee. He told the receptionist it was "just a little thing I'm doing for me", and then she told me to put my credit card away. (Jesus, how bad did I look?) If there hadn't been other people in the waiting room I would have hugged him. That was the biggest break I'd had, for anything, in months. I still can't believe he did it.

I got my scripts renewed, and I have a new one that I hope will help with the constant anxiety, and I didn't have to shell out half of my monthly earnings to get them. So yeah. Today was a pretty good day.

I think my psychiatrist just did the equivalent of breaking up with me over Facebook. I assume that's what it means when your psychiatric meds get refused a refill on the grounds you're "no longer a patient" and his office doesn't return your messages.

I get that he doesn't like it that I go 9-11 months between visits, and I respect that he doesn't like to feel like a drug dispensory. It's one of the reasons he's a good doctor. But it would be nice if I'd gotten a phonecall or something telling me what was up instead of just getting cut off cold-turkey from a medication prescribed for an anxiety disorder at the most stressful point of the past two years. It's actually gotten bad enough that I think I really do need regular therapy, but because my company is collapsing I'm only earning $386 a <b>month</B> and I cannot fucking afford it because sessions are $250 per hour. 

The thing is, this isn't the end of the world. Presumably I'll eventually get in touch with him and straighten this out, or go to my mom's (cheaper) doctor. Likewise, I might as well try some time away from the sertraline anyway -- it'll save me a monthly expense, and plenty of people have and do go without. This is not a dire situation. But it is one that's pissing me off, because of all the reasons I should still be up and angry at 1:30 in the morning a mental health professional should not be one of them.

So fuck it. I'm up. I'm going to write.

Erf. Kind of up and down the past week. Thursday I was feeling well enough to do a little exposure-therapy on myself in the form of doing shots of vodka (inebriation being as close as I can get to triggering a hypochondriacal reaction to medication without risking an OD), and that went well. Friday night, when I arguably needed it more, went less so and despite not pushing it I'm still having the odd spell of jitters. Additionally, a helpful rash of thunderstorms is making my head pound. I am medicating when necessary.

Running with other neighborhood dogs almost every night of the week is having the unexpected side-effect of making the beast better behaved . . . I guess.  He's started waiting for my permission at the base of the gate even if it's already open and, bizarrely, allowed my to dissuade him from chasing a roller blader despite a lack of leash or any other control device. It's uncharacteristic verging on actively creepy. Less creepy and more disgusting is that he's developed some boils on his belly which I strongly suspect to be a resurgence of allergies. After a useless week of appealing to my father, I showed my mother. I'm hoping she got him in today, before the rash achieves

Current free-writing is plotless and fragmentary, which is fine for the context. It's something like the sixth time I've tried to work on the same basic idea. I think the main problem is tone. I tend to adopt that lofty, vaguely pretentious tone with certain subjects which bores me even as I write. Need to work on that. But I am proud I finished pencils at work today; usually I work at home, but I was so behind this weekend I thought what the hell. And I finished it all before my boss even showed up, so, you know, win. Less to do when I get home.

That's all I got. It's no wonder I don't post much.