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 ...