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Sep. 13th, 2016 12:21 pmMost of the things on my to do list for the week require mental effort rather than physical. I’ve got about a dozen phone calls to make about changing our phone number, for example. Those aren’t urgent, but I’m never going to do them unless I force myself. I need to work on that pinch hit fic. I need to nominate for Yuletide. I need to decide whether or not I’m going to run a game at UCon and, is so, what system and scenario. The physical chores for today aren’t too much, mostly dishes and trash and possibly some cooking (and possibly not).
I’ve gotten through two thirds of the CDs I got from the library. I’m not sure if I’ll listen to the others today or not. I might put that time into library DVDs that need to go back. But Cordelia wants to watch the one set that has a waitlist. I don’t think we’re going to get through it all before it’s due, though, because Cordelia’s only willing to watch an hour a night.
I don’t think I got as much sleep as I needed last night. I just had trouble falling asleep. Scott got up at 2:00. I woke at 6:00. Cordelia got up at 6:30 and came in and then came in again at 7:40. I got up at 9:30.
I ended up taking a cab to the downtown post office yesterday and not buying lunch downtown. I had about seventy five minutes before my appointment by the time I was done at the post office, so I had time for lunch, but I thought that spending more money, on top of the cab, wasn’t a great idea. Instead, I thought I’d do a little Ingress and then find a place to sit until I was ready to go inside. I ended up walking a lot. My knee only hurt for about the first fifteen minutes (and then started hurting again later after I’d been sitting for ten minutes), so I spent about an hour hacking portals and capturing portals and linking portals.
Part of all the walking around was that I wanted to see if I could do that while taking the metoprolol tartrate. My doctor warned me that the main effect is that one’s heart can’t speed up, and I wasn’t sure how that would affect my ability to exert myself physically. At this point, I don’t think the metoprolol is a good option for anxiety when I need to think and react to things. Mainly, it just makes me feel like having emotions is too damned much work, and it’s very hard to get myself to do anything. I’ll try it for curriculum night on Thursday because I don’t actually need to be fully mentally present for that. I don’t think I’ve used information from curriculum night ever. I’ve been to seven or eight of them (I can’t recall if I went last year or not. I might have had to send Scott instead).
My psychiatrist and I discussed medication options. We’re going to try Zoloft because I never have. I’ve had poor luck with SSRIs, but we don’t want to try an MAOI just now. Oral MAOIs require serious dietary restrictions. I had good results from the one I took in the early 1990s, but the food issues were huge. There is a patch option that doesn’t have dietary restrictions, but I need to find out if my insurance will cover it because it’s horrifically expensive ($1500 a month out of pocket). Also, no matter what type of MAOI I took, I’d no longer be able to use my migraine medication or take sudafed. Both of those are a big deal for me.
We picked Zoloft because, out of the things I haven’t tried before, it’s the least expensive and most likely to be covered by my insurance. My insurance might cover something else if Zoloft doesn’t work, but I’m pretty sure that they’ll require pre-approval and evidence that we’ve tried all of the cheaper SSRIs. I’m to start at 25 mg (cutting a 50 mg tablet in half) a day for a week. If that’s okay, I’ll go up to 50 mg a day until I see the doctor again next month. She said that, even at 50 mg a day, I should be okay to stop cold turkey if I get unacceptable side effects.
I’m not sure when I’ll be able to fill the prescription, though. Scott is pretty certainly not going to want to go out to fill it after his twelve hour shift today, and he wasn’t willing to do it yesterday. I also need more multivitamins because I ran out on Sunday.
I emailed the oncology folks to ask if I should be concerned about not having had a period since May. The first response sounded like the nurse hadn’t actually read what I wrote beyond the first sentence because she wanted to know if I was having heavier flow than usual *and* offered to order a pregnancy test. I responded to that and ended up with a brief message from the nurse practitioner I actually see. She said that they aren’t concerned and won’t be until it’s been a year since my last period. I suppose I’ll see what happens.
I don’t have a lot of female relatives older than I am, particularly on my mother’s side of the family. My mother’s only sister died in her late 40s from early onset Alzheimer’s (she had Down’s). My mother’s mother didn’t have sisters, and Grandma’s been gone almost twenty years. My father’s sister has brain damage (meningitis compounded by alcoholic malnutrition almost twenty years ago. That was a really terrible few years on both sides of the family). My father’s mother is still around and might remember her own experience. That would give me two data points. My sister doesn’t count because her menopause is surgically induced. I’m the oldest of all the cousins on both sides, and the cousins on my father’s side are all male, anyway.
I’ve gotten through two thirds of the CDs I got from the library. I’m not sure if I’ll listen to the others today or not. I might put that time into library DVDs that need to go back. But Cordelia wants to watch the one set that has a waitlist. I don’t think we’re going to get through it all before it’s due, though, because Cordelia’s only willing to watch an hour a night.
I don’t think I got as much sleep as I needed last night. I just had trouble falling asleep. Scott got up at 2:00. I woke at 6:00. Cordelia got up at 6:30 and came in and then came in again at 7:40. I got up at 9:30.
I ended up taking a cab to the downtown post office yesterday and not buying lunch downtown. I had about seventy five minutes before my appointment by the time I was done at the post office, so I had time for lunch, but I thought that spending more money, on top of the cab, wasn’t a great idea. Instead, I thought I’d do a little Ingress and then find a place to sit until I was ready to go inside. I ended up walking a lot. My knee only hurt for about the first fifteen minutes (and then started hurting again later after I’d been sitting for ten minutes), so I spent about an hour hacking portals and capturing portals and linking portals.
Part of all the walking around was that I wanted to see if I could do that while taking the metoprolol tartrate. My doctor warned me that the main effect is that one’s heart can’t speed up, and I wasn’t sure how that would affect my ability to exert myself physically. At this point, I don’t think the metoprolol is a good option for anxiety when I need to think and react to things. Mainly, it just makes me feel like having emotions is too damned much work, and it’s very hard to get myself to do anything. I’ll try it for curriculum night on Thursday because I don’t actually need to be fully mentally present for that. I don’t think I’ve used information from curriculum night ever. I’ve been to seven or eight of them (I can’t recall if I went last year or not. I might have had to send Scott instead).
My psychiatrist and I discussed medication options. We’re going to try Zoloft because I never have. I’ve had poor luck with SSRIs, but we don’t want to try an MAOI just now. Oral MAOIs require serious dietary restrictions. I had good results from the one I took in the early 1990s, but the food issues were huge. There is a patch option that doesn’t have dietary restrictions, but I need to find out if my insurance will cover it because it’s horrifically expensive ($1500 a month out of pocket). Also, no matter what type of MAOI I took, I’d no longer be able to use my migraine medication or take sudafed. Both of those are a big deal for me.
We picked Zoloft because, out of the things I haven’t tried before, it’s the least expensive and most likely to be covered by my insurance. My insurance might cover something else if Zoloft doesn’t work, but I’m pretty sure that they’ll require pre-approval and evidence that we’ve tried all of the cheaper SSRIs. I’m to start at 25 mg (cutting a 50 mg tablet in half) a day for a week. If that’s okay, I’ll go up to 50 mg a day until I see the doctor again next month. She said that, even at 50 mg a day, I should be okay to stop cold turkey if I get unacceptable side effects.
I’m not sure when I’ll be able to fill the prescription, though. Scott is pretty certainly not going to want to go out to fill it after his twelve hour shift today, and he wasn’t willing to do it yesterday. I also need more multivitamins because I ran out on Sunday.
I emailed the oncology folks to ask if I should be concerned about not having had a period since May. The first response sounded like the nurse hadn’t actually read what I wrote beyond the first sentence because she wanted to know if I was having heavier flow than usual *and* offered to order a pregnancy test. I responded to that and ended up with a brief message from the nurse practitioner I actually see. She said that they aren’t concerned and won’t be until it’s been a year since my last period. I suppose I’ll see what happens.
I don’t have a lot of female relatives older than I am, particularly on my mother’s side of the family. My mother’s only sister died in her late 40s from early onset Alzheimer’s (she had Down’s). My mother’s mother didn’t have sisters, and Grandma’s been gone almost twenty years. My father’s sister has brain damage (meningitis compounded by alcoholic malnutrition almost twenty years ago. That was a really terrible few years on both sides of the family). My father’s mother is still around and might remember her own experience. That would give me two data points. My sister doesn’t count because her menopause is surgically induced. I’m the oldest of all the cousins on both sides, and the cousins on my father’s side are all male, anyway.
