Monday, O Monday...

Monday was an exciting day. First, the furnace guy returned. From last Thursday [starting sometime Wed. evening] through Monday, we had no heat. Again. 

Furnace got repaired maybe 2 weeks ago?

The kittens and I got shut into our BR so he could work. HRM was upset; the heat came on near instantly, but the imprisonment didn't end!

Queen Misty wanted to dig her way out from under the door. This was also the opposite of fun.

The plus was that I wasn't sitting there, sans socks, in a cold room in a cold house, trying to calm two kittens. Unlike the previous furnace repair!

Weirdness medical: o_o

~~ Weirdness medical: the details ~~

A few mornings ago [Thursday?] I had odd numbness. I get the usual stuff everyone does -- feels like you slept on your arm. Normally it's my right hand, sometimes left also or instead.

Numb fingers have been waking me up nearly every day for weeks now. Sometimes it happens in the middle of the night, a change from the hot flashes*. :/

But the odd kind was the normal "gone numb" feeling first... which then went to another LEVEL of numbness. I don't know how to explain it better than "It felt bubbly" -- just like carbonation!! -- which is frickin' surreal.


~~ Weirdness medical: the backstory ~~

At the law firm where I worked in 1989, I reached too far for a file and got a pinched nerve in my neck. Right side.

I had physical therapy back in '89. [Hated the ectoplasm, loved the massage, mmmm.] Nothing more troubled me til late 2003. But that's another blog post.

The second car accident in 2015 put me into a double regimen: MAT / muscle activation therapy combined with chiro. Weekly. The one was out of pocket and therefore reimbursed [such fun that was!] while chiro was covered under health insurance.

In '16, the specialist said I might have fibromyalgia... but not TO ME.  Oh no, heaven forfend! =eye rolls= He put it into his written report.

Sure, it was for my auto insurance -- who wanted to stop paying on my claim for weekly sessions. But was there some reason that doctor could not say, "And hey, you might want to ask your own doctor to look into this?"

What if I was the kind of person who didn't read the documents later on?????

MORE hypo-medical stupid...!

Briefly, if possible, but perhaps that's unhelpful... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've been arguing for some time that my doctors should listen to me on meds*. When it comes to mania and near mania and hypomania and near hypomania -- they don't. In recent years, I've gotten wayyyy too close to all four of those latter stages. Multiple times.

Now, I am starting to enter menopause. That could be the other problem.

Thing is, I just don't know. 

This year, I began having really erratic menses, like nothing I'd have before, and/or normal menses mixed in with crazy throwbacks... as in, blood levels from over a decade ago, or even my first decade of periods!

=-=

Spring update...

Tiny Cat went missing 13-April-18. Three days before his birthday.

I have a couple blog posts started about Gatito, our Smoky, who was almost a year old.  Short version, we're positive he was rescued by someone who figured he was a cute polite young cat, and that's why there's been no sign of him. He'd always come home before. * 

I hope that person has other cats for him to play with, and takes good care of my baby. I miss him terribly -- we all do.

A horrible and vicious tomcat had been attacking Smoky, and Vee, and pretty much every cat here who wasn't Shadow. The only cat who the Orange Monster could mate with; I call him that rather than constantly cuss, okay?

Experimenting... again.

Lately I've been trying to find an antidepressant, since the depression returned in late summer. Worsening in early fall.

This hasn't proved successful.

Over the past week, since I didn't make it to my doctor's office yet -- I'd had dizzy spells, that seemed a really bad time to be driving -- I tried Vraylar again.

=-=

Yes, by myself. Just like when I stop any of the meds that suck, or make me worse, or ruin my sleep, I stop them myself. Since I react FAST to subclinical doses, this means I'm not waiting days [or weeks] for the doctor to decide. Atypical, but so it goes, and I've been living with my own body and reactions for decades -- they haven't. 

My recent doctors act like if they treat me like I don't have atypical reactions, then I'll respond normally. Not logical, and frankly the opposite of helpful! 

Since these drug reactions stay in my system for far longer than most people [i.e., six months in 2017] it's another reason I don't wait. I cannot. When meds don't work, I'm the one who needs to make that call.

I suspect the doctors I've been seeing hate that. Certainly a few argue with me about reactions I've had, as if denying them means they didn't happen. Man, when I've had hot flashes waking me up multiple times all night, wrecking my sleep -- I was there. 

Don't disparage my experiences! It lacks class. 

The worse thing is that I wasn't basing my experiences on one or two drugs. I was up to ten (10!) just by December 2016. 

=-=

Medical stupid. -_-

[ Written 10-May-17 ]

I'd been wondering about the adverse effects of the second drug my doctor "layered" onto me, as a friend wisely put it.

I'm still having those effects. They appear to cycle.

MANIA may cycle. If a drug is somehow cycling in you, that's perfectly horrible. It shouldn't do that.

I took frickin' Risperdal  Vraylar for three [3!] days. I stopped it myself. Same as the previous drug the doctor tried on me; after barely two weeks on RisperdalVraylar, I realized I was seriously hypomanic.

I stopped taking that and told him why.

[ Edited Feb. 2018: Apparently I mix up these two, maybe because I took two drugs too close together!]

Lists and surviving ADHD...

Instead of blogging about the cats [alas!] or other things, like copyediting or rants... today I'm doing an informational blog post. This is for my reference as well as anyone else, of course. 8)

It's also so I can close more tabs. :b