Ahem…
I do not know what to say. So much. In fact I am afraid to begin. I suppose today I shall approach things in an “update” sort of way. Just to get it out so that I can start smearing brain garbage all over the place.
I honestly have to look and see what my last post was… I have no idea where I’ve even been.
Ok…
So…
I was sick. Like really sick. For ever. EVER. It’s all a blur and I yet I still feel deeply within my still-recovering innerds that I am a seriously huge dick for even calling myself “sick” at all. People have cancer. Since my last post, more people. Just now… more people. I found out a few weeks ago that my Paw Paw has it. Extensive Multiple Myeloma. Yeah… google it. I don’t even know.
Beep Beep Beep.
Finished my taper off of Seroquel for the SECOND horrible time in October-ish. The WD during that three month dwindle were horrendeous.
When you taper you think that the taper is it. You believe, because you have to, that the taper is the withdrawal. That your last day, your last half of a half of a pill is it. It feels like victory. I had never tapered back into myself entirely at any point over the past few years. I’d gone from one thing to another, mostly all related poisons, and never just been… well… naked. When I quit the Seroquel I also quit Abilify cold turkey. I went from “withdrawals” back to the pits of hell that are the Discontinuation Syndrome that I preach and preach about. CRACkK-FUkKiNG-HEAD. Twitching, itching, awake for weeks. Miserable. I ticked, I chewed my face to pieces, I paced, hyperventilated, cried in the dark. The whole nine yards. During this, my body, which was already caught in a downward spiral, gave up. I was depressed, sick, and totally over it.
Things I thought I knew how to manage: Bipolar, Schizo, ADHD… yada yada, Diabetic, Fibromyalgia, G.E.R.D., RLS, and just basically feeling like shit all day every day.
Chronic, seemingly incurable, Sinusitis and Bronchitis. Now going through withdrawal and not sleeping.
Needless to say, all of these things, and the attempt to tackle all of these things individually, were killing me. I gave up on my brain. Trying to fix my brain was killing my body. I’d like to think that my body keeps my soul within its fleshly confines and therefore might be important. It just might be. I figured we should forfeit the sanity and save the body, maybe at least it could be sent for groceries and asked to do a dance or two for someone’s entertainment and serve a purpose before it got struck by lightening. IDK. If nothing else, I like to think that I would make a mighty sexy chalk outline on a sidewalk someday and I may never survive long enough to get somewhere with sidewalks if I didn’t at least try to make it.
Funny how someone who so often ponders her own demise could even care about making it, but I have some pretty rad kids to chase around and it takes a pulse to do that. Nobody can chase my kids like me. Fact.
That all said, I fired my Doctor, middle finger in the air, when he offered me yet another round of antibiotics to “fix my wagon.” Really? “Chronic Sinusitis” is what he insisted. This was, of course, because my sinuses APPEARED to be draining, which was really just a result of my desperately weeping in his office begging him to figure out why I’d spent the past two years coughing until my ribs would break and in what I felt to be hell. Despite my asking him over and over to stop seeing me as a runny nose and a cough and acknowledge that my BODY is sick, that I, AMBER, am sick, that it is not JUST sinuses and to please, for the love of God, TRY to figure it out, the man sent me away with another “gorilla-cillin” shot in the ass, some prednisone, and another round of amoxicillin to throw on top of the six previous rounds of oral antibiotics, three rounds of steroids, and three other shots of penicillin. I could not take it anymore. I’d been in bed for two months. I was sick of being sick of being sick.
I called a new doctor, an internal medicine doctor. Before I could make that appointment on Jan 9th, I officially, completely finished throwing my back out on New Years Eve by walking across a 20 foot lawn and got to make a few trips to a few ER’s and ride in an ambulance… by the way, ER will ignore the SHIT out of you until you are healed by Jesus in the waiting room. They will also completely ignore the fact that you are in more pain than natural childbirth and send you home with a prescription for Alieve and discharge papers stating “arthritis pain” in a 31 year old who was paralyzed from the waist down for seven hours and screaming in agony alone in the waiting room while the girl with the recurring UTI who knows all the security guards gets hooked up with free Dr. Pepper. By the time I made it to my previously scheduled appointment with the Internal Med. Dr. I was homicidal.
SO. The new Dr. is wonderful. He immediately referred me to a Sinus Specialist but said that he felt it was definitely not “only” a sinus/respiratory issue. He totally acknowledged that I have Fibromyalgia and that it was being aggravated by all of the infection that was showing up in my blood-work. The Sinus Specialist figured out by looking at my vocal chords that I was not being diagnosed with the type of Reflux that I really had and that it was the culprit for my sinus issues and the bronchitis that kept turning into pneumonia because of my not being properly treated for infection. A trip to a wonderful Gastroenterologist and an endoscopic surgery later and we find out I have both G.E.R.D. and L.P.R.D. as well as several ulcers. So… once those things are under control, guess what, it’s a miracle. Chiropractor three times a week, tons of omeprezole, lots of other fun stuff… anyway I freaking survived. I. AM. ALIVE.
Now… back to the other junk. The Discontinuation Whatever-it-is lasted until the first week of March. I have been off of Adderall for about a month as well, which was another fun time. I was taking 90mg a day. I am now officially only taking birth control (which may also be jacking with my little body) and Requip to help with my RLS. Back to not sleeping for days, hearing invisible wind-chimes, watching little gremlins dart around the house… but feeling better on the outside for a change.
Moral of the story is, the day I started trying to “fix” me is the day I started to kill myself. I have NO idea what advice to give in this matter other than to trust yourself. If you start taking medication and are hearing your doctor say “you have to weigh the benefits of the medication over the side effects and decide whether or not it’s worth it” and you feel like you are dying… don’t overlook it. Don’t be so desperate to “fix” yourself and let yourself fall apart because you are ignoring the obvious. If your body is sick, your mind will follow suit and all the Seroquel in the world will never fix the fact that you are simply killing yourself by accident and not on purpose. I don’t blame Seroquel… although when I began taking it the drug warnings about blood-sugar were not listed and I have to say that I would have rather lived an insomniac’s life than a diabetic insomniac’s life… in fact, I do blame it, but that’s a story for another day. More than anything, I don’t blame, I am just pissed in general. Don’t be pissed in general, kids. Don’t let someone that has spent 45 minutes watching a clock and barely listening to you give you something that can/will possibly change your life entirely and just put it in your mouth like a fucking sheep. I feel like psychiatry in general feeds off of desperation. Nobody goes to a psychiatrist because they aren’t feeling out of options. No one calls and makes an appointment and utters the words “something is wrong with me” that is not desperate. I can only beg of anyone who has a shred of hope in life, be so careful with yourself. Be so so careful.
Charming Aberration 