It's the coffee...

You see, it's the coffee that's keeping me going now. I had that decaf, but it didn't do me any good. I just mentally collapse and find that I'm on the verge of the throwing in the towel. I just want to give up and more than anything throw all my medication down the toilet for all the good it does me. I know I can't do that because of the withdrawal symptoms, but I wish I was a year along and off a lot of these things I'm taking now. I've never been as depressed and anxious and stressed and unstable as when I've been on the medication.

Anyway, I make myself a cup of coffee and drink it and I'm okay again. I'm not collapsing any more, but I can't stop and think about my situation too much, because if I do, I become very disheartened and disgusted and I want to run away from it and wish myself into another life. I am most unhappy and I don't care who knows it and everybody can have their opinion about it and their suggestions about how to make it better, but I tell you, I have to get off those drugs that are screwing up my mind.

I'm always having to artificially pep myself up to make it through the day because of all the sleep inducing medication I take, and I take a lot, even though I want to take a little. I had just reduced my anti-psychotics and my tranquilizers when my psychiatrist increased them again when I started on the Welbutrin and stopped taking my other antidepressants. I'm sure that this was well intended and done as a precaution against the problems I would have with withdrawals, but I think it wasn't necessary, really, and now I have to reduce those medications again. I can't do anything on my own without his express approval, so my hands are tied.

For as well as I was doing for the first 2 weeks on Welbutrin, I am doing badly now, but I will also blame it on withdrawal of one antidepressant that I completely went off immediately without any back up. It's gone completely out of my body now and no doubt it is having its effect. If I don't feel a marked improvement on the Welbutrin in a little over 2 weeks time, I'm going to stop taking it and not use another antidepressant, but just depend on my mood stabilizer. Then I can start reducing the anti-psychotics, which is a medication I really want to stop taking, having never been psychotic.

You realize, of course, that I'm using this blog to organize my thoughts. As I write these things down, they become more clear to me and my course of action becomes more obvious. I'm not really writing this down to get answers to questions from you, though input is always welcome. I guess I'm trying to make clear to you how I live in the artificial world of pharmaceutical products and how that influences my mind and my body and how really unhealthy that is. When my second psychiatrist had to hand me over to my third psychiatrist, he worried a great deal about how he was going to explain my list of medications to him. You know something was rotten in Denmark.

So, I'm having my second cup of coffee now. If that's what it takes to keep me going, then so be it. It's really an hour earlier than it says on the clock and I will pretend I live on the Mediterranean and have a nightlife. I started out this post with a feeling of despair, but it has settled down now to a feeling of control. I see what I need to do and the road that I need to take to get there. That does not mean that I will not sit here the next time without feelings of despair again. My moods are as unpredictable as the March weather here.

For those of you who think I like changes very much because I changed my blog template, I have to tell you that it s very double. I get very excited because it is something new and I look forward to how everything will look and which template I will end up with, but at the same time I also don't like changes very much and am most at ease with the familiar, so doing this is a daring step for me. It's a challenge and I have to get used to it myself and I feel very insecure about it. I would have liked to stay the toad forever, but now I'm a watercolor. I'm trying it on for size. Maybe it will be scary and I will flee back toward toadness.

I have a feeling that I'm not going to stay up that late, in spite of the coffee. It will be good to get a decent night's sleep or as long as I manage it. I have to pick up pieces of cardboard in the morning and go to the tobacconist.

Thank you for letting me bounce my thoughts off you. It's been very helpful.

I wish you all a good night.

Ciao,
Nora

All done with that.

I've done chores and I read blogs until I got blog-reading-tiredness and couldn't even leave comments anymore. That's because I was behind on my blog reading and hadn't realized how far behind I really was, so I gave up and I hope that I will be excused by all of you who have not received a sign of my presence to your blog. I may have been there, but have been too overwhelmed mentally to leave behind a sensible comment. You should never do too much of one thing for a long time. It will drive you crazy.

I've just made myself a cup of coffee, because I'm starting to give up the ghost. I am yawning very badly and am in serious need of sleep, but I'm trying to fight it because of the time of day. In another 20 minutes I need to take my medicines and I hope to get my second wind from this cup of coffee. If everything fails, I'll go to bed for a nap, but it can only be a nap. I don't want my body to get the mistaken idea that we're settling down for the night.

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Well, I went to bed and slept for an hour and a half and it was nice. I'm now drinking decaf, but I think I'm going to need a regular cup of coffee to really wake me up. It will be an exception to the rule of not drinking coffee in the evening. I think one of my medicines will need to be adjusted to make me less sleepy during the day, and that will be fine with me, because as far as I'm concerned, I'm still taking too many. I think the anti-psychotic is the culprit, because one of the side effects is that it makes you very sleepy. That's why I've stopped taking them during the day. I was constantly sound asleep on the sofa. The other culprit could be the tranquilizer that I take at a high dosage during the day. I need to start reducing those, but I can't do that on my own. I need to do that in consultation with my psychiatrist.

I very much regret getting on some of these medications. I thought they would help me at the time, but more and more were added and now I'm stuck with the consequences of trying to get off them. And they all have side effects. I would not recommend to anybody that they get on some of these medicines. I think they are dangerous and unhealthy and the pharmaceutical industry is pushing doctors to prescribe them. There's supposed to be a pill to fix everything, but sometimes the cure is worse than the symptom and medicines get misused. Heavy duty medicines get prescribed when something lighter might have worked too. I have to get off some of these drugs before it's too late. I want to keep my antidepressant and my mood stabilizer and that's it. All the rest can go.

Well, now you know the true feelings I have about the drugs I take. I'm not such a blind believer in them. I shouldn't be on most of them and I'm on my third psychiatrist and they all inherit me with the drugs. Oh yeah, I forgot about the sleeping pill.

On to other things. My body has been tricked by the decaf and thinks it has had a real cup of coffee. Isn't that funny? I'm going to have another one. Maybe they should give me placebo pills instead of the real ones and they will work because of my believe in them.

I'm going to try and read a book in bed tonight and hope I have enough sense to put the book and the reading glasses away before I fall asleep. I haven't read anything for such a long time and I really miss it. Tyke will have to be on his best behavior if I mess it up.

I'm going to get ready for bed, I think, although it's not that late and tomorrow is Saturday. There is no humor in this post and that bothers me. I should write another funnier post now immediately, but I don't know if there is anybody funny home. I could have a look.

Have a good evening, or a good night, whichever applies to you.

Ciao,
Nora

A rainy Friday...

It is fairly early in the morning still and it has rained already. I think it rained during the night too. I have the back door open and could hear the birds welcome the day. It smells good outside, like springtime should, but that could all be in my fruitful imagination, because it is that time of year. When you hear the birds sing like that, you automatically start thinking along those lines.

Tyke has been running in and out and thinks he is having great adventures. He comes in quite excited and then plops down to go to sleep. I think he is just chasing cats that can climb fences and frustrate him and maybe the occasional bird. Oh, he just came to get me. Apparently he can't poop end pee without me watching him. I'm so honored.

I slept very well last night. I climbed under the covers and was asleep within a minute. I slept for 8 hours and could have slept more, but I felt like getting up. There may be a nap later in the day, though, now that I know it doesn't interfere with my night rest and now that I have decent decaf to drink. Welbutrin is supposed to cause you insomnia, but that has not been my experience. What causes me insomnia is coffee.

I just had my breakfast of Brie and a glass of cold milk. I'm still drinking the milk. This morning I had lost 5.2 kg, that's about 11.5 lbs.

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I suddenly found myself so sleepy that I had to shut down the computer and go back to bed where I slept another 2 hours. I'm in the process of waking up now with another cup of coffee. I hope I'm successful, otherwise I'll have to go back to bed and it will be so boring for the dog, who's now looking out the window for people and dogs to bark at.

About the weight loss. I had said I would not weigh myself compulsively, but I find that I go on the scale almost every morning now. Just like I used to do when I was losing massive amounts of weight, so it is becoming a big deal to me and I want to keep track of it daily, so that I know I am losing weight and not unknowingly gaining any. Yeah right, it's becoming compulsive behavior, but I think it is very understandable and forgive myself for it. There are worse habits to have and I only have 12 kg to go. At this rate, it will take me 6 weeks. That's why I'm so excited.

Okay, I have sufficiently calmed down now and will write about something else. Tyke had found a book that had slipped under the bed and has torn it to pieces during the night. It is another fine mess for me to clean up. He had much fun chewing on the cover and spitting out the pieces. If he had hands, I would make him clean it up himself, but then again, he doesn't have the sense that God gave him either. He's more like a very inept small child that's just out of it's Pampers. Every time I think he's done destroying things, he finds something to tear apart. That's why I don't go to bed with a book and my reading glasses. I'll fall asleep with them in place and wake up to a disaster. If you'll remember, he's already destroyed one pair of reading glasses.

Now all I have to say is, "It's my monkey," and he grabs his monkey and keeps it just out of reach of me until I manage to grab it anyway and then we have a tug of war which I let him win. "How to amuse your dog and play other boring games with him. A handy guide book in 10 chapters, illustrated with very interesting photographs.Published by Reader's Digest."

Oh, I just found out that I have a choice of languages now to write in and have a spell check for. Well, that sure simplifies my life. Now I don't have to keep rereading the text for stupid mistakes. I can also point my mouse to an English word and it gives me the translation in Dutch, which is interesting and not always to my agreement, but then nobody asked me first. I think they should have.

Before, it would only spell check in Dutch and, of course, it was underlining every word and giving me Dutch words to put down instead. Now it's reading the text in American English. It gave me that option, so the dictionary must have installed itself anyway. They just assume you'll figure out all these things by yourself, which I did, quite by accident. Maybe I'm a dumb blond after all.

Well, it's time to do something else besides sit here and write posts, though what it could be I have no idea. Well yes, there are several options when I really think about it. None are really urgent, though, but not many things in my life are. They are things I ought to do.

Have a great day. It's still raining on and off here.

Ciao,
Nora

A long nap.

I suddenly had to stop writing my last post, because I was overcome with sleep and had to go take a nap in my bed under the duvet. I slept for nearly 3 hours and felt better when I woke up. All day long, though, I have been trying to get rid of a sad feeling that is at the root of everything I do and say. There is a distinguished lack of happiness and courage to the point that I have to force myself to act like I felt two days ago, so that nobody will notice the difference and think that my medicine isn't working, while in fact that is probably just the case.

I think I'm not functioning well on just one tablet of the Welbutrin and that I miss the second tablet very much. I've always reacted immediately to the tablets from the first moment I took them and I think not taking the second one is draining me. I noticed it again tonight when I took my other medication at 6 o'clock. I sat here all worn out and unenthused and unhappy and I just could not get excited about what I was doing. At 7:30 I made a decision and took a second tablet and I'm now waiting for it to start working.

I'm turning things back to the original scenario and will have to inform my SPN tomorrow. I am going to see what I can do about influencing my moods myself by going to bed on time and getting enough sleep and not letting myself get pulled along by the drama of the events. I have to try and stay calm and in control at all costs and I know that I can do that. My psychiatrist and my SPN made their decisions based on my interpretation of the event and that influenced their reaction to it and it may have been totally overdone.

Anyway, here I am sitting writing another post again and eating Brie, which is very good, but I can only have a little bit of it. I bought some expensive decaf and I'm now going to taste it. Well, it's not bad as decafs go. I can live with it.

Outside the weather has changed. It's a lot cooler and it's raining. I just had to let Tyke out back, but I was cold standing there with my bare arms. I'm wearing a short sleeved top now and my green scarf wrapped around my neck, which provides a lot of warmth. It's the best invention since the wheel.

As is usual, I'm wasting a lot of time writing this and it will be bedtime when I'm done. That's okay, I'm ready to go to sleep, I think. I'm looking forward to crawling under the covers and sleeping. I'm a little bit worried about taking the antipsychotic, but I'm going to take it at the normal amount, so it should be okay. I'd like to take even less than what I take now, but that's something for the near future to be decided upon.

I'm boring and I'm going to quit writing,

Have a good night, everyone.

Ciao,
Nora

A fool for love...

Well, I'm not a fool for love, necessarily, unless you count my love for writing posts. I write so many posts that people don't get the opportunity to comment on them. So, please go to this post for the latest news on the visit with my psychiatrist.

I was planning on going to bed early tonight, but then I couldn't find that email address of that person I was talking about earlier, so I looked through all my older comments until I found one by her and got her email address that way. It was a lot of work and it kept getting later and pretty soon I was past that crucial time of going to sleep. I had stopped yawning and was wide awake again, but it is my experience that writing a post at this time of the night is sleep inducing and that very often I don't even have to finish it before I'm ready to go to bed and can just delete it. Probably that will be the case tonight too.

It was strange to go through those old comments. Of course, I didn't stop and read every one of them, I was just looking for a name, but every once in a while one caught my attention and I read it and was reminded of what it was in reaction to and what I noticed the most is that I went through an awful lot of ups and downs and that they followed each other rapidly. One moment I was okay and the next moment I wasn't. I see now how totally unacceptable that was and how it never should have happened, but how could it have been stopped? I was rapid cycling constantly, it seemed, and somehow I kept on functioning as if that was normal. Well, except for the infamous suicide attempt. I certainly don't want that to happen anymore and expect my moods to be regular now and steady.

I had my 4th cup of coffee, but didn't finish it all. I wish I could find a good decaf and I would drink that instead. I'm going to have to look around at what's available and see if there's a good brand of decaf. Even if it is expensive, it would be worth the money. I like the taste of a cup of Senseo and could easily be fooled by a good cup of decaf. To me that would taste like the real thing and be just as satisfying.

I had momentarily lost my dog and didn't realize he was lying under the desk. I didn't see him anywhere. He is sound asleep and so quiet. When I don't see him, I get a little feeling of panic as I think an accident has befallen him and he is lying somewhere injured, because he's always getting into things. Usually I think he has choked to death on something he has tried to eat that was not edible. It's just like having a toddler in the house. He swallows everything that he thinks is small enough. I just hope it all comes out at the other end. I don't care to look for it specifically to see if it did.

Gandhi is playing it safe and has just about taken up permanent residence on the dining table. Right she is. That pesky dog can't bother her there. She's lying on the open phone book now that I needed yesterday and left out for her, as she seems to think it is comfortable. Anything to accomodate a cat, really.

The cats like their kibbles better from the ceramic bowl than they did from the metal dishes and also prefer their water from a ceramic bowl and it has to be as fresh as possible. That's why I set it in the sink, so new water can be added all the time. Toby still likes water straight from the faucet and Gandhi still prefers cold milk. Don't you love cats that come with an instruction booklet? It makes life interesting. Tyke eats his food from a ceramic dish and drinks his water from a metal bowl and it needs to be refreshed every day at least once. It's a big bowl for a little dog.

I'm sufficiently yawning now, no doubt induced by writing this post, although I hope that reading it will not have the same effect on you. If so, please go to the other more interesting post, or the one before that. Take your pick. I will go put on my PJs now and take my medicines and sit here until I get really drowsy, until I fall of my chair. I'll probably curl up next to Tyke under the desk.

Sleep tight!

Ciao,
Nora

Idleness...

My friend Gail says she is stuck to her computer chair with Velcro and that she so dislikes the sound of it coming undone that she doesn't move at all. So you see I'm not the only one who is very attached to her PC, and I have it from good sources that there are more of us. Given the choice between doing dull household chores or blogging, the last one wins hands down.

I fell asleep on the sofa while watching TV last night, although that was not at all in the planning, and when I woke up, I immediately moved my area of operation to the bedroom, where I slept until the alarm clock went off at 7 am. I wanted to ignore it, but it is very insistent and I stumbled out of bed, trying to not step on the dog who was laying there oblivious of everything.

My first cup of coffee was too cold, because I had poured in too much milk straight from the refrigerator, but I drank it anyway. It was caffeine, after all. My second cup of coffee was better. At first I thought there was something wrong with the Senseo machine and I envisioned a future without coffee in it and having to drink only tea, but luckily I was spared that. Although I don't dislike tea at all. I just don't know if it will wake me up in the morning.

I was staying with people once who only drank decaf, but I didn't know that, and I wondered why I had such a hard time getting my act together in the morning and why I was hanging all over the furniture like a wrung out dishcloth.

I took the dog for a long walk yesterday evening. We walked in streets that we had never been in before and he enjoyed it very much, anticipating at each corner where we would go. He did very well and it is so easy to make a dog happy. Just give him a new environment and he is full of curiosity. We made a big circle outside our usual territory and when we got back to familiar terrain, he knew just when to cross the street to get back on his regular route.

He was worn out when we got home, but after about 15 minutes he wanted to eat and barked at the cats to keep them away from his bowl while I filled it. He is so assertive! His appetite is very good lately and he eats with a great deal of hunger until his bowl is completely empty. He leaves nothing for the cats to their great dismay. He handled the distance just fine, though, and wasn't shaking on his legs like he sometimes does, so that is encouraging.

Today is housecleaning day and go to the tobacco shop day. I'm slightly discouraged about the house cleaning. Somehow I'm not really in the mood for it. I know I have to do it, but it is such a unpleasant activity that not one bone in my body is getting excited about it. I think if I dust and vacuum first, that will make a great deal of difference and it won't make me feel like I'm up against an impossible job. I wouldn't mind so much if I knew that tomorrow it would still be as clean and I wouldn't have to do it all over again.

Oh shoot, I'm suffering from the housewife blues and that is not allowable. I have to get over that in the shortest amount of time possible. The best thing to do is to dig right in and to not think about it too much. Too much thought spent ahead of time only makes it worse. I think I will eat something first and then get the show on the road. It's easier to work on a full stomach.

Have a terrific day. We're partly cloudy here.

Ciao...

Nice hot decaf.

I just woke up from a nap on the sofa that I started to take while I watched the last little bit of the news, so I can honestly say that I'm informed again. The last thing I saw was the weatherman pointing to the temperatures tomorrow, which will differ quite a bit from those of today, although our mailman was an optimist and wore short sleeves, but he is hardy and almost always does, even when that awful hailstorm hit us.

I must remember to take my naps on time and not wait so long. It would be better if I took one right when I got home in the afternoon, but I'm too stubborn to go lie down then and think I should do half a dozen other things, none of which are really important when you get down to it. I keep going until I look cross eyed from exhaustion and have to drag my body over to the sofa for a good bit of sleep.

Someone told me today that it's all the medication I take that makes me so tired and maybe that is true. Fact remains, I have to take it and I guess I can blame it on the tranquilizers that I still take and that the psychiatrist wants to wean me off in the future.

So, now I'm awake again, sort of, and I'm drinking a mug of decaf, but frankly, it isn't doing much for me, so I think I will have some regular coffee next, or some coke, that may do the job as well. I need some caffeine, because I'm yawning something awful.

I had the other creative therapy today, the one in which I make the doodles. Well, the doodles are done now and I remembered to take some pictures of the last two and here they are:



Our regular therapist was on vacation so we had a stand in, one of the male therapists who happens to be handsome in a very rugged way. He has blond hair and blue eyes and is quite handsome. He came and sat next to me while I was working on my last doodle and let me tell you, I am very much a full blooded heterosexual female, because I wanted to pull that man right into my bed. I lusted after him with my whole being. I felt it radiating right off me like an aura and I thought for sure that he was going to notice something.

I didn't do anything, though. I kept right on working on my doodle with my head bent over the paper. I didn't think flirting was in order. I was happy for the feeling. I didn't think I had it in me anymore.

Anyway. After my last doodle was done in the afternoon session, I started to paint. I picked out an abstract postcard and a large piece of paper and acrylic paints and started in the middle of the page. Some colors I have to blend, and, as this is the first time I'm doing a painting, I have to guess at what I'm doing and so far I'm guessing right.

For the afternoon session we had a different therapist and she was fussy and forgetful. She wanted to be involved in every aspect of what you were doing, but then forgot to follow up on what she was going to do for you, so I decided not to depend on her for help and figure things out for myself. If I did need her to do something for me, I guided her through the process, like you would a child.

Jesker was behind the front door again when I came home. I guess he wants to "hear" when I come home. He's asleep there, because he scrambles to his feet when I push the door open. Gandhi is always there too, but I know she can hear me come home.

Well now people, I have to go to bed. Tomorrow I have ergo therapy and I have to get up at 7 am. Oh, this morning I weighed 94.6 kilos. I've lost more than 5 kilos now.

Ciao...

During the news....

I fell asleep during the eight o'clock news and woke up at ten o'clock. Ms Nap, that's who I am. I also slept for a couple of hours during the day and wiled away most of the afternoon that way. I think I use the weekends to recuperate from the activities during the week and one way or the other they must exhaust me enough that I need this extra sleep.

I must say that the weeks seem to fly by and that one day passes into the next very quickly. Time speeds by and before you know it, another week has gone by and it is weekend again, which I don't mind, as long as it's not a three day weekend like we just had. I'm glad when it's Saturday and I can be a bit lazy, but I 'm also glad when it's Sunday and I can look forward to the next day when I'll have creative therapy again.

The biggest satisfaction is on Sunday evening when I put out the trash and the green container to be picked up early Monday morning. Then I know I can go to bed and the day has ended and I have somewhere to go the next day,

I knew I needed those naps today, because every time before that I became very grumpy and was in a down mood. The blues hit me and that's a bad sign. Luckily, I'm smart enough by now to understand what's going on and to turn off the computer. I could write a huge lament, but I'm smart enough not to do that. I very much see the glass half empty when I'm like that and my thoughts are not pretty. I could not even joke about them and make a farce out of them.

Every time I get down and grumpy, I need to go to sleep. That's the only cure for those feelings. The temptation is to eat, but that's the wrong thing to do, that's not really what I need. I've seen food as a comfort thing for a long time and that was all emotional. Soft warm smooth sweet food to make me feel better, except that then I still needed to sleep, but I did it on a very full stomach and when I woke up, I wanted more of it. That's the first thing I thought of.

I have no such comforting foods in the apartment now, so I've left myself no opportunities to do such eating. I can have a glass of juice or warm low fat milk instead. Warm milk is very satisfying, if you don't overdo it. I have one glass of it a day, plus the milk I drink in my coffee.

I have been drinking a lot more decaf. I figured it's no good to take tranquilizers and then to drink a lot of coffee. So lots of decaf it is and I really don't taste the difference. Some people swear they can, but I can't. It all tastes like coffee to me, except that the one doesn't make you wired late at night.

Needless to say, I didn't get anything done today but walk the dog with my very sore toe and feed him and the cats. I did have some ambitious plans, but they fell by the wayside. It doesn't matter. I'll see how tomorrow goes and maybe I'll get some things done then, even though officially it's a day of rest and I should take advantage of that. I will try to vacuum and mop the bathroom floor.

I really, really dislike the sound of the vacuum cleaner. If I could have a silent vacuum cleaner it would make things so much better. I dislike not being able to hear anything else while I run it. Life is full of frustrations like that. If you mop the bathroom floor, there are the nooks and crannies that you can't get to beside the washing machine where all the dust and dog hair hides. Just like it hides under all the furniture that you have to move when you vacuum. The same way there is always a mess by the food bowls and the water bowls of the animals that you only get clean on your hands and knees with a damp rag.

As I'm typing this, there's an old Morse on TV. They have been showing a lot of English detective series lately, all of them late in the evening when I'm normally in bed. Lewis is quite young in this one, compared to how he looks now in his own series, which I like so much. He just got beaten up by a bad guy. Why is it that all British detective series are so superior to those of other countries? They must have the magic formula.

Well, I'm going to bed now. It's late and that alarm clock is going off early in the morning. If I hear it.

Sleep tight, everyone. Happy dreams.

Ciao...