Evaluation.

I think it is important to remember that what happened to me yesterday was due to withdrawal from my medication. I have very drastically gone from 450 mg to 150 mg a day, which is quite a change, and I was bound to run into trouble. It is going to take my body about 2 weeks to get adjusted to the new dose and then I will have to reduce the rest that I'm taking. In the meantime, the new medication needs about 2 weeks to build up into my body properly until it is at a constant level, so you see that these 2 weeks are going to be difficult for me. I didn't know ahead of time how difficult they were going to be, but yesterday afternoon showed me a glimpse of it.

I went through a long crisis and somewhere towards the end it started to dawn on me that I was having withdrawal symptoms. Once I realized that, I started to deal with it differently and not take everything so very personal and serious. I did take the withdrawal process seriously and knew I had to get through it the best way I knew how. I decided to let myself cry as much as I wanted to. So that's what I did and I cried about everything. After that I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the sofa and slept for a couple of hours.

This morning I feel better. I had a long night's sleep and didn't get up until eleven o'clock. It took me a good hour to come to my senses. It felt like I was awakening from a coma. I drank my coffee on the sofa and cuddled Tyke, who likes it when I sit on the sofa, because it gives him the opportunity to show me all his tricks that he thinks of himself. Like, how to jump from the sofa to the coffee table without knocking over the coffee cup that is standing there. Life is a circus here thanks to Tyke and his ingenuity. We rarely have a dull moment.

Having Tyke sleep in the bedroom with me at night is working out well, because he behaves very well and patiently waits for me to wake up. That's why I get to sleep so late in the morning. There's not a sound out of him all night and when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he follows me in and out of the bedroom with few problems. He does get sidetracked by Gandhi, but that is easily solved by calling him to order.

He also lets me know when he needs to go out back for a piddle. He's figured out how to do that on his own. He puts his front paws on my arm and looks at me very intently. That does not mean, I want a cuddle. It means, I have to go now! How I tell the difference I don't know. I think it's mostly guess work.

I realize that with me being comatose until the late hours of the morning, I can't make any appointments until the afternoon and I can't go shopping with my sister in the morning. I just talked to my sister and told her that we can't go shopping at 8 o'clock in the morning tomorrow, so we have to do it in the afternoon after my domestic help has been here.

It also turns out that my other digital alarm clock is broken, so now I'm without an alarm clock, but I'll tell you honestly that I'd hate to be awakened by an alarm clock in the morning before I'm done sleeping. It would be a disaster to not get the sleep I needed and to have to function on not enough. I think it's better if I just wake up on my own and get started at my own speed and save whatever appointments I have to make for the afternoons. I don't want to upset the precariously balanced apple cart.

I hope the episodes like I had yesterday are few and far between. Right now I feel so good, that I can't imagine having another one, but I know I mustn't tempt fate. Things aren't finely tuned right now and everything is unbalanced. I feel that I walk a tight rope and I could fall off at any moment. So, I must enjoy the times that go well and I do, believe me. Every moment that is pleasant is savoured. Nothing is taken for granted.

I have to get dressed now and take Tyke to go and have coffee with my sister. She is home from a week in Italy, so we have some catching up to do. Besides, she has very good coffee.

I hope you are all having a good day.

Ciao,
Nora.