Treatment Records

I began composing this over three months ago, and never finished. And I never will. Enjoy. Morning. I know that I said I'd shoot for thrice weekly in my last post, but it's just going to be whenever I muster the will to compose something worth sharing.  As of this writing, I've been taking bupropion for 43 days. I tolerate it fairly well (though I have had headaches in the last two weeks that were , and overall, it's more helpful than escitalopram was. However, I think I'm reaching the point where my brain chemistry has fully adjusted to the presence of the drug - the point where I stop seeing improvement, the point where it's all downhill. An episode rolled in hard and fast a few days ago, with the first inklings coming on July 31st and full-blown depressive hell the day after. It left me unable to do much more than scroll idly through Facebook; I missed an entire day of work. I'm still not fully recovered from that period, not by any stretch of the imag...

Hello, readers. It's been over a month since my last proper post. The most important event that has transpired is my transition from taking Lexapro to a new antidepressant, Wellbutrin (buproprion). I took Lexapro for a total of 133 days, and have been on buproprion for 27. So far, I've seen much more improvement on this drug than I did with escitalopram, and am experiencing fewer side effects. However, and this is critical, buproprion is a far less forgiving drug than Lexapro as far as the repercussions of missing doses. Missing just a single dose of buproprion results in a rapid and intense resurgence of all of the worst aspects of my depression - the feeling of worthlessness, the belief that no one cares about me, the sensation of profound separation, the desire to die. It was an experience that scared me such that the mere thought of not taking it, or not having access to my medicine, makes me anxious and fearful in a way that nothing else ever has. Overall, though, my depre...

Evening.  Day 111 on Lexapro.  Mood: 6 in the field, ~4 in my room.  Today was another field day, only of the more interesting variety. My team surveyed all inventory sites and opportunistic roadsides (more or less places we pass and go "hey that's a good place to look for bees"), and those kinds of sites are far more enjoyable than agricultural fields. There's a much higher diversity of plants, and that greater plant diversity supports greater insect diversity. Plus, they tend to be just plain more interesting locations than fields of wheat or clover.  Ah, I paused for a long while as I was writing and I lost whatever train of thought I had.  The sites were interesting, I saw a ton of cool plants (but didn't catch a lot of bees). One of the sites was adjacent to a pasture where cows where grazing, and during some downtime, I walked up to the fence separating them from me. The level of intelligence in their wary faces as they watched this strange new...

Evening, yet again.  Day 105 on Lexapro.  Mood: 7.5.   Yesterday, I met with a friend that I haven't seen in years (I think I'll call him...Kofinsa), to catch up. While waiting for him at the designated meeting place, this odd nervousness began bubbling up. This friend and I have some history - we had a thing for each other around the time when we first met, though that never went anywhere. From time to time, those old feelings still come up, though they're usually tainted with a lonely veneer these days.  I was worried and nervous for no reason, though. When he finally made it to the meeting place, and when I hugged him, breathing in that familiar scent, it was like no time had passed between seeing each other at all, like putting on your favorite pair of house shoes that you'd forgotten about in storage but still fit absolutely perfectly. We walked down Michigan Avenue for a while, looking for someplace shaded and quiet to park ourselves to picnic. Neither ...

Evening. Yes, I've missed quite a few days. I'll try to get myself back up to speed; if I can stay awake, there will be a bit of a post dump today.  Day 103 on Lexapro.  Mood: 5, I guess. It's hard to retroactively gauge how I was feeling, and then condense that into a single, neat number.  Since it's a few days out from the events of the 7th as I write this, I've probably forgotten small details as far as what went on, but that's fine. The gist is that I made my 7:45am flight back to O'Hare, got an Uber from the airport to the house of my childhood with my mother, and went to sleep later than I should have, considering how long I'd been awake.  Some inconsequential information that I do remember from the day: I slept through my 4am and 4:30am alarms, and was awoken by the sound of Favorite Person knocking on my door.  We found one member of our party that had disappeared the prior day, but lost another.  For some unknowable reason, Favorit...

Evening.  Day 37 on escitalopram. I don't seem to be having any additional side effects with the increased dose, which is a good thing. I've contemplated adding the number of days that I've been on this dose, but I'm too lazy and don't really want the header to get any more bulky than it already is.  Mood: 5.  I still feel better, but I have no confidence that it'll last. Each hour that passes is spent waiting for indications that I'll sink to a very low low once again, perhaps for the final time. Death seems to never be far from my mind, no matter what my current state may be.  Today, as I said in the last post, was spent volunteering - I pulled seven or eight pounds of the highly invasive plant garlic mustard, Alliaria petiolata , from natural areas in a preserve. It doesn't sound like much, but these weren't exactly huge plants. The largest one I pulled up was perhaps a foot tall, and that was just the tall spike that had flowers. Being th...

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...

Morning, all. I fell asleep while attempting to write this last night, so pardon me. Day 24 on Lexapro.  Today was a 4. Lots of things are happening quickly right now, and I'm more than a little overwhelmed by everything.  Not much of note happened yesterday. Spent a few hours shallow breathing because I was (and still kind of am) very sure that I'd fail a major upcoming exam, was unable to pay attention to important material in a class.  The only vaguely interesting thing I did was pipette very small amounts of water conditioner into microcentrifuge tubes - 175 in total. It was tedious and repetitive, but tedious and repetitive in a way that was soothing.  My mood seems to go from really bad to mostly okay and back in short periods of time, far more quickly than is characteristic. I don't know if it's due to the escitalopram or the stress I'm under right now, but it concerns me greatly. I'll have to discuss it with my psychiatrist when I see her agai...

Evening, all.  Day 20 on Lexapro. I take back what I said about less jaw clenching.  Today's mood was an overall 4.6, +/- 0.1.  Nothing really worth mentioning happened externally - I watched the last three episodes of Black Mirror , showered and shaved (I don't mind the way body hair looks; I just prefer the way hairless skin feels), and made salmon for dinner.  The salmon was quite good, even if I was a little too liberal in my use of salt and of cayenne. Mentally, not too much went on, since I was watching one thing or another all day and didn't have much time to ruminate. However, the indefinite span of time between me being aware of no longer being asleep and actually getting out of bed was decidedly unpleasant, because in those moments, all I could think about was how strongly I wanted to be near another warm body, preferably spooning someone soft and nice-smelling . I've probably said this before, but I'll repeat it here: I hate how strongly ...

Hello.  Day 18 on escitalopram.  Mood: 6  Today, I went to the Museum of Science and Industry with my best friend from high school (think that I'll call her Soul Sister). The weather was kind of crap, with lots of blowing snow, but I still had a good time, since neither of us had been to MSI since mid-2014. It was fun to see what had changed (not much) and what was the same (more or less everything), and it felt good to be back, since I spent more or less every weekend from fall 2010 to spring 2014 there volunteering. We did a nice speedthrough of the museum, going to the exhibits we especially love (like the chick hatchery, U-505, and fairy castle) and skipping the ones long established to be uninteresting (like the Pioneer Zephyr, toy factory,  and bike history). The crowds were pleasantly light, which does not come as a surprise, given that today is a Tuesday when the local kiddies all have school.  I always enjoy the time I spend with Soul Sister, pa...

Hello all.  At this point, I have to check previous entries to be sure what day of Lexapro this is. Today is day 17. I'm going to just omit the side effects section until something new comes up, if something new comes up, because I know that reading the same thing over and over and over again can't be interesting. Not that I have any readership to please or something like that. Mood-wise, today was a 5, but that's likely due to the fact that I was out and about, and it was snowy. Unlike the majority of the American populace, it seems, I truly, genuinely like snow and the cold and all it brings. It's the only time of year that I feel completely alive. I didn't think much about, well, thoughts and thinking, which is unusual. Chalking it up to being busy today. Anyway, I visited my high school, to chat with the teachers that I'm friends with. It was great to see them, and talk about how things are going (both on my end and on theirs), but there are also a lot few...

Hello, whomever may read this. I write you from my childhood home in Chicago.  Day 14 on Lexapro. I had a follow-up with my psychiatrist this morning - I don't know why I thought that 8:15am was a good time for an appointment - and mentioned the jaw clenching I've noticed to her. She seemed a little concerned about it, and said that we'd keep an eye on it, which makes me a little nervous. Hopefully it doesn't indicate that something terrible is going on.  Mentally, well, today wasn't a good day either. There was the stress of making sure that everything was done and packed and ready for the 5.5 hour trip up here, which wasn't helped by the fact that I am incredibly tired - it's been a few days since I've gone to sleep earlier than 1am.  On top of that, though, was a cold, slow sadness and longing, and a continuation of the feeling of being unwanted that I wrote on yesterday, intensified by the impending spatial separation. I'd rate today's ...

Hello again. Forgive me for missing a day; I was up late working on an assignment, and this got put off.  Day 13 on Lexapro. Aside from the jaw clenching, there's nothing to report side-effects wise.  Today was not a good day for me. On my 1 - 10 scale, today's overall mood was a 4. The good feeling I enjoyed the first few days on escitalopram is gone, and a sadness I've come to regard as familiar took its place, only with a hazy, foggy quality to it. I couldn't pinpoint a reason internal or external that I'm feeling this way if I tried.  I would be less bothered by the sadness if it weren't also accompanied by a feeling of being unwanted and unloved as well. The sensation of being a replaceable, throwaway, inconsequential satellite character in the lives of the people I'm closest to is intolerable, as is the feeling that they collectively are more important to me than I am to them. It's not something I'd wish on anyone. A part of me wants to g...