Tag: anxiety and depression

Medication Bingo, Round (Approximately) Eight Million

Haven’t posted lately–I was put on sertraline and while it helped with my anxiety, it didn’t do much for the depression aside from leveling out my moods, and it utterly destroyed my creative spark. Any time I tried to focus on writing or any other creative endeavor, it felt like my brain was bouncing around like a ping-pong ball. We tried to mitigate this admittedly known symptom by upping my bupropion, but that did not help, and it finally got to the point where it was making me more upset not to be able to create than the sertraline could handle.

I had an appointment last week, and my doctor agreed to put me back on venlafaxine. She did not agree to let me keep taking the bupropion with it, despite the fact that taking bupropion with the sertraline also carried a seizure risk, and the fact that I was taking the bupropion/venlafaxine combo for more than a year without any such symptoms, and the fact that I was doing extremely well on that combo. But whatever. If the venlafaxine isn’t enough by itself, I’m going to ask to try atomoxetine. I was on it briefly a few years ago, but I don’t remember if it was more or less effective than bupropion.

Sertraline is one of those medications you have to taper off, and I have to say, this is absolutely murdering me. I start the venlafaxine tomorrow and it cannot start working fast enough.

Scorpions and such

I had Plans for today but then I got called in to work. (Story of my life) That kind of cast a pall over the day, which did not exactly dawn bright and cheery in the first place. Then as I was getting dressed, I found a scorpion in my pants, so that was fun. Fortunately for me, it was already dead (probably got washed and dried with the jeans), so I did not get stung, but you better believe I won’t be throwing my dirty clothes on the bathroom floor for a while.

Anyway, instead of spending a couple hours at the library, I spent it sorting and stocking and organizing stuff in the big cooler at work, and now I’m tired. Also it very rudely started raining while I was in the grocery store, and now I am slightly damp and the humidity is at 110%. I’m going to eat shitty frozen pizza and lie down, and then maybe I’ll have the energy to do writing things. I got in 1800 words yesterday so I guess I could give myself a break, but I’d really like to get the next chapter started while the words are still in my head…

Pancakes

I have kind of gotten out of the habit of cooking for myself. This has been true for a while, and has only gotten worse as the medication bingo drags on. The anxiety meds I’m on now have ruined my appetite, which is a bad combo with the whole executive dysfunction thing.

But every once in a while I wake up and want a nice breakfast. Mostly I just make fried eggs on toast, but I’ve collected a couple of go-to recipes for when I’m feeling more adventurous. One is a Chinese recipe I found on Tumblr for scrambled eggs with tomatoes. Due to Tumblr being a barely functional trash bin, I was unable to locate the recipe, but basically, scramble some eggs, remove from pan, put a chopped up tomato in the pan with a bit of oil, mirin, soy sauce, seasonings to taste (I use curry powder because I don’t have Chinese five spice which was what was in the recipe, and a dash of sesame oil. I also subbed the mirin for chinese rice wine because that’s what I had on hand. I’ve also made it with rice vinegar, but you’ll need to add some sugar to cut the acidity and make it thicken.) Cook at medium heat until the tomatoes break down and the liquid thickens into a sauce consistency, add the eggs back in and cook until they are heated back up. You’re supposed to serve over rice, but I can’t eat rice, so I just have it without, although I did put it over soba once, and it wasn’t bad. But cooking noodles for anything requires timing and I generally can’t be bothered.

But today, I wanted pancakes. My favorite regular pancake recipe is the Silver Dollar Pancakes from Penzey’s. No link for this either, since it seems to not be on their site anymore. I made it today with soymilk for the first time, since I was out of lactose free milk, and I have to say, the recipe doesn’t really hold up with it. It also required me to raise the temperature by a half setting to get the good golden crisping, which is kind of interesting. Maybe because of the lower fat content? I always buy whole milk. It’s what I grew up on, and even though I can’t actually drink the stuff, old habits and all that. Plus instant pudding tastes better with whole milk.

I ate the pancakes despite not being particularly impressed by the effort. I like them with whipped cream or ice cream, but my freezer is being a butt about ice cream (it wont stay frozen sigh) and I don’t have cream either, because I didn’t get to the grocery store yet, so I tried them with a dollop of lemon Greek yogurt and some strawberry preserves. It was fine, not great, but I did eat it all. (I’m not a fan of yogurt, but of the kinds I’ve tried, Chobani’s Greek style yogurt is…edible. The one I’ve liked the best is Oui, because it’s almost like pudding.)

I also like to make Japanese style pancakes every now and then, but those are a bit more effort than I can be bothered with just now. I use the Cooking With Dog recipe. (And look! An actual link to that one! ;)

Catching up

Been a while. I always mean to blog more, but I’m an ADHD gremlin to my core, so the inconvenience of attempting it on my phone or tablet tends to discourage my already barely-existent executive dysfunction.

My reading slump continues. I thought it was getting better, but all the impetus to get through the long list of books has dwindled, and my attention span has become so bad since I stopped taking my ADHD meds that even listening to audiobooks a bit at a time has become a chore. I was in the middle of Gideon the Ninth, and it was really good, and I just…can’t pay attention enough to listen without having to stop and rewind every time my brain decides to go off on a tangent.

It was severely impacting my writing too, since I finally finished the draft of my last project. Editing is much harder than writing, especially when your progress is carried more by momentum than intent. There’s a sort of letdown once the euphoria of actually finishing a really long manuscript is over, and it took me a while to get back into the swing with the new one. (I’m not even technically done with the previous project, there’s still a bracketed note that says ‘insert flirting scene here’ that I’m not looking forward to writing.)

But now that I have a laptop again, it makes it much easier to switch around between my various other projects. I’ve started volume three of my steampunk fic, and I’ve made headway on the side story that sort of bridges all three volumes. I’ve been poking at Golden Wolf again, and the Unicorn and Incubus thing. I’ve picked up another research project, for after I’m done with my folklore and fairytales research for that one urban fantasy thing that’s been percolating. It’s about magic systems, how the growth of fantasy as a genre and the advances of science and technology has influenced the way we develop them. Obviously I’ll need the grounding of the fairytales and folklore first, but I have begun to collect early examples of fantasy, like Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (I managed to find a translation online, since I am the last person who would understand Middle English.) I have a spreadsheet that I’m still filling up with books. It’s not as long as the folklore and fantasy spreadsheet yet, but give me time.

Crawling out from under my rock

A dewberry flower, five petals, white with pale pink accents
Dewberry flower

The dewberry vines are flowering in the ditch, so it must be spring. A little early, it’s still February (because it’s leap year) but I’m not going to complain. My peach tree is also starting to bloom, pictures to come. Hopefully this stupid cold front doesn’t blow off all the flowers.

So the bupropion/buspirone combo is not working as needed, and I have made the decision to discontinue the bupropion for now. This leaves my ADHD untreated, but I’m going to have to prioritize my mental health for the time being and stay on the anti-anxiety medication until I have the spoons to make an appointment with the new brain doc at my doctor’s office. My physical health appears to be good, all my labs came back with decent numbers for once, which is a load off my mind. I’m still attempting to crawl out from under my current…episode, seasonal affective disorder, whatever it was. Feeling better, enough to have dived right into my usual spring fever, been seed prepping since last Friday. Logging my farm progress over at the spacecat.studio site. As I tanked my progress pretty hard on that front, I’ve decided to go a bit slower at it, not intending to renew my nursery license until next year at the earliest, just gonna focus on getting plants going, setting up the beds and trellises and things, repairing the greenhouses (the wind today blew out another panel, which I found in the ditch while walking Ben Ben), soil enrichment, trying to germinate seeds that are a bit past their prime. Slowly rebuilding my succulent collection. (Very slowly, sigh. I still can’t think about all the plants I lost without getting discouraged; cleaning out the small greenhouse is going to be tough.)

Things are still creeping along on the creative front. Tor 2 is still not done, still can’t read anything, not even the slightest pretension to art stuff. It’s frustrating.