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.

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! ;)