Treatment Records

Evening, dear readership. I'm a little tipsy as I write this.  Day 96 on Lexapro. Withdrawal hit me really hard today; I ended up caving and taking a 10mg half dose (turns out, my molars do a real damn good job of splitting pills), plus some ibuprofen. Let's see how I feel in the morning.  Mood: Well, right now, I'd rate myself a solid six. Today's also been a solid six. Sixes all around.  I did so many things today. Like, it's almost ridiculous how much I did. Had to ask Favorite Person like five times to go through the day so that I had it all straight.  First - Pier Art Center. It was cool.  Then - ring of Brogard. It was also cool, but it felt sacred and therefore like my being there was wrong.  Then - Maes Howe. It was also  cool. It seemed like a good place for an acid trip. Also, I met a cat. He or she was really nice and ate some of my cheese.  Then - Kirkwall again. Withdrawal started screwing me up at this point. I got ice ...

Evening. It's 10:06pm as I begin writing this, and the sky is far brighter than it should be.  Day 95 with Lexapro. The first mild twinges of withdrawal started occurring later today, at least I think that they have. I've not been listening to my body as closely as normally today. Mood: 6 overall,  4 right this second.  I really need to start religiously jotting things down as I do them; these days have been packed with activities, and I'm starting to forget what I've done a few hours after they happen.  The events that follow aren't necessarily in chronological order.  Some standing stones. I don't remember the name and I don't feel like looking it up. There were, for some reason, four sheep in the little enclosed area with the artifacts; naturally, I attempted to pet them. It didn't work - they all walked away from me as I approached, even the ones that were laying down. Sheep are kind of ugly and stupid-looking up close; I recommend observin...

Evening. I write to you from Orkney Island, a very nice little place. It's, ah, 11:46pm as I begin writing this post, and there's still light in the sky, which is incredibly strange. It should be completely dark by now, but I am significantly further north than I'm accustomed to. Day 94 with escitalopram. I've definitely reached the four-day threshold where I'd normally start feeling symptoms of withdrawal, but I still feel fairly normal. Hopefully this holds; I'll see if I can endure the entirety of the Orkney trip (three days, not including today) without it. That being said, I didn't leave the Lexapro back in Piperdam; should symptoms of withdrawal begin, and get to the point of being completely unbearable, I'd rather have it than not. Mood: 6.5. I laughed, I teased, I joked, I saw, I drank. I felt light; I felt grounded; I felt connected. Today was a good day.  Today was a day of travel, from the house in Piperdam to the hostel on Orkney. We left a...

Evening. This post will be fairly short, since not much happened today.  Day 93 on escitalopram.  Mood: 5.75.  Today was spent making preparations for the three-day Orkney trip we've got coming up. I did laundry, and we made an alcohol run at a near-ish Tesco. I got a ginger beer and plenty of cider.  Lunch was Scotch eggs, tomato bisque, and some kind of roll that was kind of like an English muffin but way softer. It was all so good, especially the eggs, which are a foodstuff that I've wanted to try for years now.  Dinner was a lovely barbecue picnic - burgers, sausages, chicken thighs and drumsticks, rice, leftover couscous salad, a mixed greens salad, corn on the cob, ciabatta rolls, and some other stuff that I'm probably forgetting. I ate waaay too much, and it was all so, so, so delicious. Dessert was fruit salad with Greek yogurt.  There's not much else to discuss about today. Favorite Person's had about four, four and a half standard drin...

Evening. I completely forgot that this blog exists yesterday, started writing this morning, forgot that I'd started writing, and here we are! Day 92 with Lexapro. It's been a couple days since I took any, and I'm waiting for withdrawal to kick in. Mood: 5.5. Wait, no, a cloud of 5.5 with points of 7.5 interspersed throughout. Like a conglomerate of emotion. Yesterday was spent exploring Glasgow. Before the trip began, the professor over the program said that there's a definite difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh as far as how the two cities feel, and he's definitely correct. Glasgow feels so much like my native Chicago - thrumming with life, full of gritty people, with so many things to do and see. It's a more industrial city, steel and concrete and straight lines, as opposed to the more reserved, scholarly air of Edinburgh. Both places are equally beautiful, just in radically different ways. Even though yesterday was my first time visiting, Glasgow felt li...

Afternoon. Evening? I don't know. Day 91 on Lexapro. There's apparently no way to gradually taper myself off without consulting my psychiatrist, which is more or less what I expected. I don't know if there's any way to combat the symptoms of withdrawal that come on hard and fast after a few days without taking any, and I'd rather not deal with them while abroad. Mood: 4.75. The weather's really nice today - sunny, with a high of around 85. I certainly didn't bring clothes for this weather, burning up in my lovely, comfortable pocket-less dress pants. We went back to Dundee this morning, walking around some. In a moment that is more me than anything else I've done on this trip, I purchased five tins of super fancy organic and grain-free cat food from a little charity sale, the proceeds of which are going to a cat sanctuary. Hopefully, my two babes back home will enjoy it. We also stopped at a pound shop  I woke up feeling somewhat better today than I did...

Why did I come on this trip? It's all such a mistake. I'm so stupid. No one probably wants me here anyway, but they're too polite to say so. Besides, what good would it even do? I can't be gotten rid of anyway. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid. No one cares about me or how I'm doing. That's a fact. The world would be so much better if I never existed within it. All I do is cause problems for other people. No one genuinely enjoys my presence; everyone wishes I were gone. Anyone that says otherwise is a liar. No one in their right minds would want the company of someone as irreparably damaged as I am. No one would want to get involved with a piece of trash like me. 

Evening, or afternoon? It's 9pm as I write this, but the sun is still high in the sky. Day 90 on Lexapro. Mood: 5.  Today, we went to Dunnottar Castle. It was a castle; I've seen a few by now, so it wasn't anything special to me. What was more fun, though, was being down on the rocky shore. There wasn't a whole lot of animal life to be found, aside from a good number of snails and a singular hermit crab, but I walked among the rocks and made some stacks of them. The fishing villages were kind of eh. Nothing really stood out to me. Lunch was butternut squash and leek soup with bread for dipping, and fried carrot croquettes that were entirely too sweet. Dinner was mashed potatoes, mashed turnips, haggis, and a beautiful whiskey sauce. Haggis is amazing - don't knock it until you've tried it! Dessert was a raspberry trifle. Mentally...I don't know. Today was a bit strange. On one hand, I didn't feel awful , but on the other, there was a strong sense of b...

Evening. Day 89 with Lexapro. I'm weighing the cost/benefits of stopping it cold turkey again, but I don't know if I can handle withdrawal again. Mood: 3. Today, I hiked up a mountain (though the Scots would call it "walking up a hill"), felt like garbage, and tried a cider that I really liked. It was Kopparberg strawberry and lime, and it is my new favorite alcoholic beverage. Getting to Loch Brandy, 2070' above sea level and about 1800' above the starting point, was a challenge, though more mentally than physically. Sure, I had to pause and rest more frequently than I would have liked, but my mind was a storm of why did I decide to do this? , I should turn around and go back down , what am I doing here? , I didn't deserve to go on this trip . Continuing to move forward despite all of what went on in my head was hard, to say the least. I did not enjoy the hike up; my body didn't like it, my mind didn't like it. The only reason I kept going was to ...

Evening.  Day 88 on Lexapro. I think that, at this point, continuing to take escitalopram is making me feel worse. My options are really limited here, as far as what actions I can take to fix and/or deal with the situation. I could stop taking my antidepressant, but then be forced to deal with the unpleasant physical effects of withdrawal. I could continue taking it, not have any physical effects, but feel psychologically awful and be thousands of miles away from any kind of help. Favorite Person doesn't count here. I think that I'm going to have to take the plunge and wean myself off Lexapro on my own, while I'm here. There are probably enough resources available online for me to figure out how to do so in a mostly safe manner. If something goes wrong....I'm just going to have to tough it out. No one should carry my burden but me; if it gets to be too much to bear, I just have to find more strength. Mood: 4.5. Maybe less. Today was spent largely outdoors, though it s...

Evening. So much for getting these up at a more reasonable time. Day #87 on Lexapro. I feel like I'm slipping, and like there's a storm on the horizon. I don't know how big, or how far away, but it's there. Mood: 5. Today was spent walking around Edinburgh. Favorite Person and I, along with the rest of the group, started out at the Scottish National Portrait Museum. It was cool, I guess - as a science person, I don't really have the eyes to appreciate portraits beyond going "hm, yes, this is a portrait". Less than an hour was spent there before we left, looking for other things to see, though I did purchase a miniature plant press. It may come in handy, and didn't cost much. I bought a newspaper at Sainsbury's for my grandmother, bringing me up to a total of three papers for her. We moseyed over to the Waverley Mall, stopping first in an ultra-touristy shop. While there, I purchases a Highland cow plush for my sister, a Scotland pin for my good int...

Evening. I think that I'm going to write these posts in bits throughout the day, rather than try to hammer it out all at once at the end of the day. That way, there'll be more detail, and I won't be trying to recall what happened when I'm tired and very ready for bed. Today was day #86 on Lexapro.  I haven't felt any ill effects from the drug, or from forgetting to take it for several consecutive days. I also haven't noticed a marked improvement in mood that can be directly related to the escitalopram. My depression seems to be strongly linked to stress, and I am far, far less stressed out now that the semester is over. As a result, a part of me wants to try tapering off the Lexapro altogether and not starting another antidepressant as planned. At the same time, though, I don't want to withdraw that pharmacological support and then have a resurgence of the severe bouts I endured before beginning the drug. I'll have to talk to Dr. Gilbert about this, ...

Evening. Time's weird, yo.  Day 85? on Lexapro. Mood: 6.5. Well, I didn't sleep at all last night - rather, I stayed awake, doing whatever I could to not fall asleep, listening to so much music and watching YouTube and playing web games. My approach to get myself on UK time is simple if challenging - completely disrupt my sleep schedule in order to reset it. It seems to be working - it's 10:57pm as I write this, and it definitely feels like almost 11pm. I ate an incredibly late supper at around 12:30am. It was a chicken curry, rice, and naan, and I found it to be quite tasty. Dinner was accompanied by a glass of half red, half white wine - it was okay at best. I'm not a huge fan of dry stuff. Dessert was this fantastically rich but light lemon custard topped with strawberries; I wish I had had more of the stuff. Breakfast, around 9am, was leftovers from dinner, chicken and rice. It was still fantastically delicious. Since it was raining out, we ended up going to the U...

Evening. The date's funny because time zones are a terrible and confusing human innovation. Today's day #84 with Lexapro. Mood: 7, 5, 2, 4. Things happened today; that sequence follows the flow of time.  As I said in the previous post, I'm writing you all from the UK, particularly a little town in Scotland called Piperdam. It's 11pm here as I begin composing this, and while I'm not quite on UK time yet, I definitely don't feel like it's 5pm (Chicago time). I won't mince words: there was a lot of stress in transit from Chicago here. It started with getting to O'Hare. My family left the house an hour and a half before we intended to get to the airport, thinking that that would be plenty of time. However, with very heavy traffic, it ended up taking about two and a half hours to get there, if not longer. Being late is a stressor for me as it is, but that combined with the nervousness I was feeling was a very uncomfortable mix. Once I got to the airport...

Evening, readers. Day 83 with Lexapro. Mood: 5.  I don't have much to report on; not much has really happened. I found a giant slug yesterday; it was rather cute. Tomorrow (or, rather, later today), I leave for Scotland. I'm very nervous, but at least Favorite Person is going as well. Or more accurately, I'm going with her.  My next post will be from the United Kingdom. Until then.  18 May 2017 

Evening. Day 81 with Lexapro.  Mood: 6.  Today was largely spent running hither and thither to get things I need for my trip to Scotland, and I'm feeling pretty good about preparations. I got a $20 raincoat with amazingly deep pockets from Gander Mountain, various toiletries, menstrual supplies as a just in case, and other stuff that'll be useful. A good jar for Scottish sand was obtained as well; I feel good about that purchase. Speaking of feeling good, I felt cute today, for the first time in a long time. While shopping, I accidentally got a look at myself in a mirror, and rather than look away in shame, the thought wow, I'm pretty cute crossed my mind. Round belly, fat thighs, all of that - it was a rare, pleasant moment. I tried to avoid processing it out of existence.  I can be both fat and cute. I can be both fat and cute. It's a statement of fact that I need to keep telling myself. My excitement for my upcoming trip continues. Today, I spent some time...