Trying to fix things

My insurance company told me I still had 7 visits to a physical therapist, occupational therapist or chiropractor. I called my doc and relayed that message and now I have appointments with the same physical therapist that helped me rehab my knee. First visit tomorrow and it can't come too soon.

My back is aching, especially at work. I'm trying different chairs to see if that makes a difference but so far nothing feels better. Lounging on a sofa is comfy but that won't do for work. Not like I can call in sick for the next few weeks until my back feels better.

My best friend right now if my bottle of muscle relaxants. I've been warned that they're terribly addictive so I don't want to take too much, but one in the evening helps me sleep (that's one in the evening with a glass of wine). I think I've had more complete sleep for the past 3 nights that I've taken them than I have for the last 6 months. I won't take them every night but it's amazing the difference they make.

My stomach is feeling better. Not good, but better. The worst time is about 4-5am when I first awake and it's tough to go back to sleep. After I've been vertical for a couple of hours it feels better, unless I eat too much or don't eat anything. Or eat the wrong thing. I haven't been able to eat fruit all summer. Veggies don't seem to bother me as much.

I missed the second to last run with Pam last night. Hopefully I'll be able to run with her next week, although I don't think it's too likely. She said she'd walk with me if I couldn't run, so we'll have that. Mondays and Thursdays won't be the same. I'm so happy I have Olivia to continue weekly runs with, even though she's too fast for me. We'll work something out.

My moods are still unstable, but the swings aren't as wide. I still feel weepy much of the time but I'm able to not cry. That's a huge improvement. Judging from my reaction to a call last night I'm still able to get horribly frustrated and hurt and angry. But the meds are helping. They certainly aren't taking away the highs and lows, just making it easier for me to deal with them. Somewhat.

Betrayal

I've always been able to rely on my body to do what little I asked of it. When I started running marathons several years ago I asked for more, and my body responded at first with a stress fracture but then by complying and running happily and for the most part healthily. Little things would pop up and go away on their own. I'd have minor health issues that would, in short time, go away with little fuss or bother. My sister has health problems, my brother has health problems, my mother has a ton of health problems, but I've only had high cholesterol and post-menopausal issues. This year has been different.

First there was the knee problem. My knee had acted up before, several years ago, but cutting back on running for a few weeks made whatever was wrong disappear. Mysteriously and magically, it just didn't bother me at all. Until this January when it got too sore to walk on, let alone run. After an MRI and diagnosis of femoral-patella dysfunction and a torn meniscus I had 3 months of physical therapy. That helped, although the meniscus pain continued on.

Then my stomach started hurting. Not eating hurt. Eating hurt more. It hurt in the morning and woke me at night. I started eating less to try to ease the discomfort. The silver lining of that was I lost weight, so I lived with the problem and decided it was stress related.

When the weather got warmer I started having hot flashes again. During the day they were just a nuisance but at night they'd wake me over and over. Woken by hot flashes, kept awake by the stomach pain.

The topper was the depression. I've been sad before, hurt and angry and disappointed at changes in my life, but never before have I felt the crushing anxiety and despair that I've been feeling for the past two months. That finally sent me to a doctor to get fixed. Two weeks ago I started taking an antidepressant for the first time in my life. After a couple of days I was infinitely worse, then seemed to turn a corner and started to feel, on a limited basis, almost human again. At the same time I started taking a powerful antacid, assuming that my stomach problem was caused by the stress and depression.

The first week of tri training I tweaked my lower back by doing mule kicks. I took it easy for the next couple of weeks, watched my activities, and it seemed to go away. By last Saturday I was feeling fine: my back felt good, my knee felt great on the short run, I was happy to be on the team, I was feeling much better than I had for weeks. Then I picked up my tri pack and tweaked my back again.

This time it was worse. While driving I could feel the spasms in my back. Sitting hurt, standing hurt, activity hurt more. I did the long bike ride on Sunday and although it didn't hurt too much while cycling, it ached when I finished. But I figured it would get better and go away on its own.

The stress from that made my neck hurt too. So I had the lower back pain, and I couldn't turn my neck. Nice.

Last night at our workout we were scheduled to run, cycle, run, cycle, run and repeat until it got too late. From my first steps I knew my back wasn't happy but I decided to gut it out. I ran out for 5 minutes, turned and ran back. I changed to cycling gear and tried to get on my bike. I couldn't even lift my leg high enough. I just couldn't move. Forlornly I stood there and realized my workout was done. My back ached and the depression returned in a rush. As coach after coach asked me what was wrong, I could only say through clenched teeth, holding back tears, that it was my back.

Today it's still causing severe pain. Driving just sucks, sitting at a desk hurts like hell. I need to go see someone. Last night one of the coaches, a chiropractor, gave me a stern talk about how it's not going to get better by itself. In fact, although I might make it through the tri I would certainly have the problem again and again. She said there was obviously an underlying problem that probably stemmed from when I originally hurt it (20 years ago) that hadn't been corrected. She said, and I'm paraphrasing, I need to fix the immediate problem, repair the damage, build up and correct whatever had failed in the first place. That won't happen just by wishing and hoping and magic.

So I'll take tonight off, tomorrow off, and I insist on doing the 1 mile open water swim on Saturday. I may not be able to run afterward, may not be able to cycle on Sunday. I don't know when I'll be able to get in to see someone, I'm not even sure who to go see.

I think I'll just sit here and cry now.

Tired and shaky

For the past several nights I've had a change in my sleep patterns, unfortunately not for the better. I get tired, I go to bed, I toss and turn for an hour, I get up, I read for at least an hour, I go back to bed, I fall asleep, a couple of hours later my alarm goes off. I'm averaging about 4-1/2 hours asleep each night, not nearly enough to let me function capably.

The antacid isn't working quite as quickly as I'd hoped. One reason I can't fall asleep and one reason I'm awakening so early is that my stomach still hurts. A burning, clenching, bloating pain. Fun.

The antidepressant isn't working quickly either. I'm still subject to frequent outbursts of tears, I'm emotionally exhausted to go with the physical exhaustion. I'd truly like to just stay in bed, not an option.

I didn't run last night. I couldn't face the chance that I couldn't keep up with them and have to follow them in. I didn't want to run alone and didn't think I could tell them what was going on without crying. That only leaves a couple of runs left with Pam. Damn.

An improvement?

I made it out of the house today. I've only broken down crying twice. Or maybe three times. But I managed to not flip out in public, either with my team or my family. I count that a victory.

I've never felt like I did yesterday. The overwhelming despair and pain, for no discernible reason. I've been unhappy, been hurt, been pained. I've been through deaths of beloved family members and betrayal in marriage. But I've never wanted to curl up and cry all day just because.

I got a few hours of sleep last night and my stomach feels marginally better. It's been a long day and I'm tired of holding it together. I think I'll just go to bed.

Despair

I couldn't go to work today. I couldn't even get out of the house. I think I only managed about 3 hours of sleep last night and not much more than that the night before. I stood in front of the shower and couldn't muster the effort to get clean.

Today I'm having periods of clarity and periods where I can't stop crying. I just feel so bleak. I don't want to read, don't want to watch tv, don't want to eat and don't want to knit. Staring at the wall seems all I can do today.

Why are things worse? I've started on the meds and while I don't expect instant results (ok, maybe I do) I certainly didn't expect things to get worse. I don't know what to do.

Runner Girl Breaks Down

Depression. Insomnia. Stomach pain. Endless crying jags. Anger. Hot flashes. This has been my life for the past few months and I finally decided I had to get help. I knew it was time when I almost went postal at the person who mis-scheduled an appointment for my mom.

I'm not horribly fond of my doctor. I had another doc for many many years and figured I'd grow old in her practice since she was around my age. I had history there, she knew me, I knew what I could expect from her. Then a couple of years ago she unexpectedly retired and left me trying to find someone who could jump into my health care.

I'm normally pretty healthy. I have a genetic predisposition to bad cholesterol and have been on statins for about 4 years to correct that. I've had migraines, allergies, some asthma, a sports injury here and there, a surgery or two, and I went through menopause a few years ago, but mostly I'm content to get my annual and leave it at that. I had to find a doc that I could tell my medical history, my family's history, and jump right into continued treatment for the couple of pre-existing conditions.

The first visit went ok, the second year there was no follow-through and it took forever to get my test results back and they turned out to not be perfect so I had to at least change my statin. That shouldn't have been a problem and was actually something that thrilled my insurance company because the new drug was cheaper. But soon after I started taking it I got bad stomach problems.

Meanwhile, the rest of my life was slowly falling apart. Between the situation with my mom, things getting more intense at work, and training feeling impossible I was turning into a wreck. Add to that the guilt that I couldn't handle what seemed like just normal occurrences, an exaggeration of my normal insomniac habits, an escalation of nightly hot flashes and bam! I was toast. Everything, and I mean everything, makes me cry. I'm crying several times each day. And night. Staying awake most of the night. Massive stomach pains when I don't eat and worse pains when I do.

A small bright side was that unlike any other time in my life when I was stressed I actually lost weight this time. Eating just hurt too much, so I cut way back. I've lost about a pound per week for the last couple of months, more than I've ever been able to do on Weight Watchers. Sure, I'm training hard most days of the week but I've trained this hard for marathons and gained weight then. So I was resistant to get help, just because of the weight loss.

We'll discuss my issues with being fat some other time, thank you.

So I finally went to see the doctor, not knowing if she'd even be interested in helping me or if she'd look for a quick fix and get me out of there. I was very pleasantly surprised.

There are different approaches we could have taken to regain my health (and sanity). I made it quite clear that I will not take any medication that has any possibility of weight gain, no matter how small that chance is. I could do HRT, hormone replacement therapy, but there are lots of drawbacks there: my family history of heart disease, my former life as a smoker, my tendency to high cholesterol, my fat. HRT also comes with a host of possible side effects including weight gain, bloating, bleeding, irritability, etc. Although getting rid of hot flashes would help me sleep through the night, the trade-off to me wasn't worth it. We decided against HRT.

On the off chance that my stomach problem is not just gallons of stress acid tearing holes here and there, I've scheduled a sonogram to confirm there isn't something else going on. Apparently if it's acid reflux then it should feel better with food, not worse. I'm also going to be taking large doses of a strong antacid, Protonix, which should help.

I've been toying with the idea of going on antidepressants for quite a while now. Although intellectually I know there is nothing wrong with doing it, and it would truly be a smart thing to try, a small part of me feels it's a cop-out and a crutch. But I need to so something so I'll start on Wellbutrin tomorrow. I'll begin with a low dose and hopefully there won't be any break-in weirdness like walking into walls (more than I normally do) or complete spaciness. I'm told it's unlikely I'll have a problems at the low starting dose.

As a final help my doc prescribed Sonata, a sleeping pill. I'm very resistant to using any type of sleep aid, at any time, but it's nice to have something around. This medication would be used, rarely, if I woke in the middle of the night and couldn't fall back to sleep. I'm not saying that it's rare that I awaken in the middle of the night and can't fall back asleep; that's almost a nightly occurrence. I'm saying I would only rarely use a drug to fix it. It has a short half-life and I could take it when there was only 4 hours of sleep time left and needed to get sleep after many sleepless nights. The last time I was prescribed sleeping pills was 4 years ago and I still have 2/3 of the bottle left, even though they've expired. So I knew that I was in no danger of abusing the new prescription. I liked the idea that I could try to sleep on my own, and could take the pill at 2 am and still be able to function the next day.

We discussed counseling and although we both agree that it could be beneficial, one of my problems these days is not having enough time to do what needs to be done. Trying to fit even another couple of hours each week into my schedule would only cause more anxiety. If necessary later it's still an option.

Finally, my doc gave me a hug. I guess I really looked like I needed one!

I dropped of the new prescriptions, along with a couple of refills of my inhalers, and told the pharmacy that I'd pick them up later. I returned to work where my computer broke down. After a while of frustration I called it a day and returned to Longs.

Where they tried to charge me $110 for the sleeping pills. A generic form of the sleeping pills yet! Apparently my insurer needs prior authorization before they'll pay for this drug. And Longs didn't think it was important enough to call and tell me this. I hit the roof. I just went nuts and -- yeah, I really need these drugs. It was a poor choice on their part to so cavalierly treat a person picking up antidepressants and sleeping pills, they might have known I'd react badly.

I start the other meds tomorrow morning. Here's hoping they work quickly ...

Update on the 4th

It turns out that my jerkoff neighbors DIDN'T take to heart the warning about private fireworks. Immediately following the official show, they started with loud, sparking explosions. I listened to that for 15 minutes, then called the cops. Enough is enough.

I'm not sure if the police ever showed up but after 10 years of watching/hearing those jerks create massive fire hazards I feel much better. There was an incredible mess in the street when I left early the next morning. Morons.

Sucktastic 4th

Since I was a small child I've loved fireworks. If I had a chance I'd run to see the ooh pretty colors, ooh bright lights, ooh big noises. Ten years ago when I moved to this house I realized I could clearly see San Ramon's annual big show from my front lawn. Tonight I realized I can see the show from my family room. I'm blogging by the light of fireworks.

I was outside where my asshat neighbors have paid attention to California burning by toning down their annual testosterone fest and only having sparklers and a few rockets. Waiting for the big explosions, waiting to see the show. Saw the first couple of minutes and turned back around and came inside. This year they're not exciting, not fun. No joy. It can't begin to balance the rest of the day.

Where has my joy gone?

No joy

I'm a planner, mostly because I like to know what's ahead, what's coming. I anticipate, I prepare. And I look forward to things. Except these days when I just don't want to do anything. I don't want to go to work, I don't want to train, I don't want to see or talk with my family, I don't want to socialize with friends.

I just want to be left alone for a while. Not a long time, not forever, I just need a break. I don't want to go to picnics or parties and I don't want to go out to eat. Since just about every damn thing makes me cry, I don't particularly want to be in public at all.

I'm not feeling part of my new team but that's at least partly my fault. There have been emails about get-togethers but I'm just too tired to go. And I'm not feeling perky and upbeat and go-teamish and I certainly don't want to be the wet blanket.

I awake every morning feeling nauseous and I don't know if that's a physical thing or just my body rebelling from what my emotions are feeling. I feel pulled in every direction and my overdeveloped sense of responsibility is keeping me from telling everyone to just back off.

Holiday weekend my ass. Just another time when I'll be babysitting my mother, trying to pretend I'm sweet and loving and caring. I just want to hover under a blanket and not leave my (filthy disgusting) house.

Blue Tuesday

I ran last night with Pam and Olivia. True to form, I couldn't keep up with them. I managed a couple of miles and then when Olivia passed me by and I kept increasing my own speed to keep pace, I finally waved them on. I wheezed my way for the last mile and walked the final tenth or so. My lungs felt like someone had taken sandpaper to them and I was trying to hold myself back from coughing. The air was better, but not good enough. And I didn't do myself any favors trying to run. But I think I'll only have 4 more chances to run with Pam before she leaves and I intend to take every chance.

I woke up early this morning feeling that I was done sleeping. It was still dark so I glanced at the clock: 1am. Great, 2 hours sleep. I tossed and turned the rest of the night. Either I was too hot, too cold, too stiff, too sore, couldn't breathe. I'm glad I slept Sunday night, even though it took a pill to do that. I don't want to get in the habit of pilling to sleep.

I'm so on edge emotionally that I'm ready to burst. I was hanging on a thread before I found out that Pam and Sandy were leaving and that made it worse. Every little bitty thing is making me cry and I'm sick of it. I had a little talk with myself this morning and said I was done with it and then I got in the office and started weeping again. And I was showing some bad evidence of road rage on the way to work that is totally unlike me.

My mom called me this morning and said they still hadn't scheduled a time for her surgery. What the hell? It's the day after tomorrow. I just don't understand how it hasn't already been set for a time. Obviously they have to book the surgical room, they have to tell the surgeon where to be and when. Maybe a week ago they wouldn't know, but it's 48 hours from now. How the hell is someone supposed to schedule their rides and their aftercare if they don't even know when it'll be needed? Oh, and supposedly they told my mom that they weren't certain she'd need someone with her after the surgery and she should wait and talk with the surgeon when the surgery is finished. I'm really hoping she was confused about that because otherwise I want to go over there and knock some sense in their heads. If she needed aftercare 2 weeks ago when she was originally scheduled then she sure as shit will need it this time. What's the matter with those people?

I want to go home, pull the covers over my head, hug a bear and just pass out. I'm having a hard time dealing with life today.