Treatment Records

Afternoon.  Day 108 on escitalopram.  Mood: 5, +/- 1.  Today was the first field work day of the summer! It was VERY hot (the high was around 90), and I spent more or less all of my ten hour workday outside, but I enjoyed it. Field work, even when it's boring, gives me something to focus on. Something that isn't inside my mind.  My partner and I surveyed four sites - two agricultural fields, a wooded area, and a roadside. The ag fields had been hayed recently, so there were relatively few flowers growing. This meant very few bees - in a total of 320 person-minutes, or five and a third person-hours, we hand-netted fewer than 30 bees across both fields. The wooded area was no better. It was entirely dominated by a nightmarish amount of poison ivy, and the few flowers that were present ( Erigeron  sp., black eyed Susan, and wingstem) were all at the end of their blooms.  I'm extremely glad that I don't react to poison ivy. The stuff was nearly s...

Evening, nonexistent reader.  Today was day 41 on Lexapro. The higher dose is definitely making me extremely tired; it's physically difficult to get out of bed in the morning, and even if I go to bed early , I still don't feel like I'm getting anywhere near enough sleep. I was so tired this morning that I couldn't make it to my 9am biostatistics course, which I find intensely distressing. However, Curly's also in that class, and she ever so graciously agreed to give me her notes for today. Knowing that my inability to make it to that class won't set me horrendously back is somewhat comforting, and slightly lessens the distress that being so tired that I can't get out of bed generates.  Mood: 5, at least I think it was. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say 5 +/- 1? Today has been a strange, strange internal day. I think that it'd be better if I started reporting my emotional state as a range - the number being the set point, the +/- value being ho...

Evening.  Day 39 on Lexapro.  Mood: 3. Today has not been a good day for me. I didn't get the research grant that I applied for, which was a major blow - I had so much hope, and was looking forward to carrying out my project, so to have that dashed physically hurt. Immediately afterward, as I was walking back to my lab, I got stormed on, and soaked through all of my layers. It wasn't a good day to neither carry an umbrella nor wear a jacket...By the time I finally made it to the space that feels more like home than any other at this point in my life, I was shivering and trailing small puddles. Of course, I didn't have a change of clothes or anything, so I spent the next hour and a half or so mopping myself as best I could with paper towels, trying not to track water all over the lab.  Favorite Person gave me a ride back to my room.  Something I've noticed recently is that my mood changes much more unpredictably than is characteristic, and I'm having a ver...

Evening.  Day 25 on Lexapro.  Mood: 4.6 I'm just as overwhelmed by things today as I was yesterday, compounded by the fact that I didn't get enough sleep last night and am consequently very irritable. There's just so much to do in such a short period of time, and my surefire period of productivity - 1am to 3am - can't feasibly be utilized.  When I wasn't fretting about what needs to be done, I spent time thinking about my "out" plan, to euphemize it. I recognize that it isn't at all a healthy thing to consider, but working towards one that is foolproof and figuring out the logistics of it - when I'd carry it out, where, whether or not I'd leave a note, who should find me - is oddly comforting. It gives me an exit if things ever get to the point of being beyond what I can tolerate.  I told Favorite Person that I wasn't suicidal when I mentioned it briefly to her, but some part of me isn't so sure. This is the kind of thing tha...