Things are going well in my world. Getting off this medicine has been something else, but now, 15 days later, I believe it is finally setting me free. I feel 90% better now. My sinuses are also already doing better as well.
It is so interesting to me that something that can be so good/help in the beginning can do so much harm later. Those anxiety meds were like a panacea for my anxiety in the beginning, but then you can't get off of them. And it is so mental with insomnia and everything else. I will still carry them with me, but will try not to take any, at least for a few months so my body does not want more. I have a good friend who still carries around his meds and he has not had any for 3 years. He said it is a crazy security blanket, but I guess that will probably be me.
I am going to a wedding today. This is the last known one to me of people my age. It is also a farce because the guy getting married pronounced about 3 years ago, drunk at our Christmas party, that he had always loved me. How can you get married if you are gay or bisexual? I guess people do it every day though. Yikes.
Then tomorrow is my niece's birthday party. She will be 8. That is freaking hard to believe. I cannot believe she will be 8 years old. It seems like yesterday she was born. I am in such a better place now!
This week was so hard with work. I cannot wait until summer. I am doing absolutely NOTHING this summer. I just need to chill, hit the gym, and do some soul thinking. I love having summers off. What a recharging it can be. I also will never have another summer like last one, so it will be a relief.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
I did not write yesterday. I had a weird day. Not bad, but weird. School was OK, but my sinuses were really bothering my and my Zyrtec does not seem to be working lately. By the end of the day I had a headache that got really bad. At about 7:30 last night I went to the urgent care clinic. Good thing I did because I have a sinus infection and also got some meds for my migraine. So not a terrible night, but it was not super pleasant either. I am glad I went to the doctor because I usually wait until it is much worse and I need to stop that. So hopefully this will not last very long.
I watched the Royal Wedding today since I am home. It is actually very significant to me because when Prince Charles and Diana got married I was 10 years old and remember it vividly. It is kind of hard to think that that was 30 years ago and now 30 years from now I will be 70. Our lives are truly short. We have to make them count. And a lot of people might think it is ridiculous, but I thought it was cool, probably mostly because I felt 10 again. I remember my whole family being enthralled by it and I was probably more enthralled by them being enthralled than the wedding. Perhaps it was my first time witnessing people being enthralled? LOL That word is starting to look and sound weird.
So at least it is Friday and I have the weekend to relax. Cheers! And here's to the infection and the headache going away.
I watched the Royal Wedding today since I am home. It is actually very significant to me because when Prince Charles and Diana got married I was 10 years old and remember it vividly. It is kind of hard to think that that was 30 years ago and now 30 years from now I will be 70. Our lives are truly short. We have to make them count. And a lot of people might think it is ridiculous, but I thought it was cool, probably mostly because I felt 10 again. I remember my whole family being enthralled by it and I was probably more enthralled by them being enthralled than the wedding. Perhaps it was my first time witnessing people being enthralled? LOL That word is starting to look and sound weird.
So at least it is Friday and I have the weekend to relax. Cheers! And here's to the infection and the headache going away.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Today has been SOOO much better than yesterday. We did have a very stressful site visit today, but I got plenty of sleep and was very prepared. It finally feels like the year is wrapping up. I will NEVER be so thankful for a summer break like this one...so much has happened in one year.
Something hilarious happened today. I finished my second class and went to the restroom. It looked like I had hair gel in. I realized that I did not wash my freaking hair. I took a 45 minute shower and did not wash my hair this morning? WTF? =) So I came home around noon and washed my hair and Mikey looked at me like I was REALLY nutty, and I just laughed. I told a teacher at the end of the day and she said she noticed it but thought I slicked it back for the site visit. How gross is that to have hair that greasy in 16 hours? LOL
The anxiety is better today but still there. Way better than yesterday and the day before. This is 12 days without meds and it was only supposed to be in my system for 8.5 days or so. I will not give in. I have had my moments but I just calm myself down. I will not be tired and chemically-induced anymore. I don't need it. I really think the majority of my panic stemmed from my mom's health and I am so much better now that I have had time to heal from her death. Time is the ultimate healer.
Something hilarious happened today. I finished my second class and went to the restroom. It looked like I had hair gel in. I realized that I did not wash my freaking hair. I took a 45 minute shower and did not wash my hair this morning? WTF? =) So I came home around noon and washed my hair and Mikey looked at me like I was REALLY nutty, and I just laughed. I told a teacher at the end of the day and she said she noticed it but thought I slicked it back for the site visit. How gross is that to have hair that greasy in 16 hours? LOL
The anxiety is better today but still there. Way better than yesterday and the day before. This is 12 days without meds and it was only supposed to be in my system for 8.5 days or so. I will not give in. I have had my moments but I just calm myself down. I will not be tired and chemically-induced anymore. I don't need it. I really think the majority of my panic stemmed from my mom's health and I am so much better now that I have had time to heal from her death. Time is the ultimate healer.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Gonna be a real challenge to do this during the week. Yesterday was HORRIBLE with anxiety, but I took no meds. Horrible----I guess it is finally out of my system so now I cannot have caffeine or ANYTHING. This is going to be HARD but I will do it.
School was exceptionally hard. What a hard year. A 4 day vacation and felt like no vacation at all-----maybe I am ready to move on professionally. I feel like it.
Other than that, OK. I know I sound depressed but I am not. I am just worn out from today. Huge site visit tomorrow so I had to do 3 hours of work right when I got home and will wake up tomorrow AM to work until 7 when I leave for work.
Bright spot--ate exceptionally healthily today. Sorry, but all I can do for today....
School was exceptionally hard. What a hard year. A 4 day vacation and felt like no vacation at all-----maybe I am ready to move on professionally. I feel like it.
Other than that, OK. I know I sound depressed but I am not. I am just worn out from today. Huge site visit tomorrow so I had to do 3 hours of work right when I got home and will wake up tomorrow AM to work until 7 when I leave for work.
Bright spot--ate exceptionally healthily today. Sorry, but all I can do for today....
Monday, April 25, 2011
April 25, 2011 Monday PM posting
Well, I have had an interesting day. I woke up and felt GREAT. I then drank some coffee as I have been doing for about a year now (I only started drinking coffee about a year ago--I have never been able to handle the caffeine) and after only one cup it made me feel jittery....this leads me to conclude two things: I think the medicine is totally out of my system and I guess I can't have coffee anymore. I have not felt great the whole day, and I would definitely say I feel a little anxious. It feels kind of like withdrawals I guess. Why would I have them so late? It is not bad enough to take any medicine for, but will be interesting to see how this develops over the next few days.
I graded some papers this morning (which I despise--eats up SOOO much time) and then met a friend at a Caribbean-style restaurant. It was kinda nice but not too veggie-friendly but they did have one item on the menu that turned out being really good...it was a veggie portobella mushroom sandwich with some other grilled veggies. It also came with a side of beefsteak tomatoes that had herbs and a nice vinaigrette. It was a very satisfying meal.
I then went over to Dillard's and bought a friend a wedding gift. He is getting married this weekend and I believe he is the last friend that I have that will be married--it is weird to have all of your friends married, many with kids not so young anymore (6-10 years old).
I came home and felt kind of sketchy so I took a nap--ended up being very deep and had lots of dreams again. There is definitely something up with all of this dreaming. I also sweat a good bit while I was sleeping and it was cool in my room so something funky is definitely going on.
After that I graded more and I believe I am done for the rest of my holiday day off. I have more stuff to do but I can do it tomorrow morning before school and during the regular work week. We do not get another holiday until Memorial Day at the end of May so I need to enjoy the rest of this day off.
I didn't go to the gym but I am OK with it since I have felt weird. I don't need my first day back to be surreal....More tomorrow morning...signing off.
I graded some papers this morning (which I despise--eats up SOOO much time) and then met a friend at a Caribbean-style restaurant. It was kinda nice but not too veggie-friendly but they did have one item on the menu that turned out being really good...it was a veggie portobella mushroom sandwich with some other grilled veggies. It also came with a side of beefsteak tomatoes that had herbs and a nice vinaigrette. It was a very satisfying meal.
I then went over to Dillard's and bought a friend a wedding gift. He is getting married this weekend and I believe he is the last friend that I have that will be married--it is weird to have all of your friends married, many with kids not so young anymore (6-10 years old).
I came home and felt kind of sketchy so I took a nap--ended up being very deep and had lots of dreams again. There is definitely something up with all of this dreaming. I also sweat a good bit while I was sleeping and it was cool in my room so something funky is definitely going on.
After that I graded more and I believe I am done for the rest of my holiday day off. I have more stuff to do but I can do it tomorrow morning before school and during the regular work week. We do not get another holiday until Memorial Day at the end of May so I need to enjoy the rest of this day off.
I didn't go to the gym but I am OK with it since I have felt weird. I don't need my first day back to be surreal....More tomorrow morning...signing off.
April 25, 2011 Monday after Easter
Yesterday and this whole weekend have been amazing. I have gotten so much rest and have really purified myself of these medications and just feel amazing. Also yesterday was week 3 of no meat, which was a little hard because of Easter but I made it. This week I have to start on eating more low-fat vegetarian, meaning I need to cut out the cheese as much. I have leaned on it, but now it has got to go if I am to lose weight.
I have a lot of stuff to do today, but that is good. I am in the mood to be productive. I have to go meet a friend for lunch, have to buy some pants and a gift for a wedding, organize my data notebook for school, grade some papers, and get ready for school. I also promised I would mail a friend a cd so I have to go to the post office, which I HATE.
I have been having random, but AMAZING dreams lately. I have read a lot that benzos suppress REM sleep and it must be true because the whole weekend my dreaming has been intense and comprises A LOT of my sleep. I wake up feeling rested and I have not napped in a week. I think my body was telling me it was ready. I am still shocked, though, how easily I was able to get off the Valium. I guess it is because I only took it for 9 or 10 months and I had the other drug for 2 weeks to mask any ill effects. But today is day 10 of no Valium so it is 100% out of my system. What an accomplishment. I have had the monkey of these drugs on my back for a long time and now I feel free. The sky even looked bluer yesterday.
I am ready to finish out the school year. I think I will have a lot of fun and be SOOO appreciative of the time off. I will do my final reflecting about my mom (even though that is a lifelong thing) and I will really, really get serious in that gym. I am ready. I have said that for a long time, but I really am, especially with these meds out of my system. Gonna be a great day! From now on I will probably do a summary-of-the-day blog at the end of the day to mark my accomplishments and note any standout moments of the day.
MY VISION IS BACK. I am reading and typing this with no glasses....definitely the medicine, which is SCARY if you think about it.
I have a lot of stuff to do today, but that is good. I am in the mood to be productive. I have to go meet a friend for lunch, have to buy some pants and a gift for a wedding, organize my data notebook for school, grade some papers, and get ready for school. I also promised I would mail a friend a cd so I have to go to the post office, which I HATE.
I have been having random, but AMAZING dreams lately. I have read a lot that benzos suppress REM sleep and it must be true because the whole weekend my dreaming has been intense and comprises A LOT of my sleep. I wake up feeling rested and I have not napped in a week. I think my body was telling me it was ready. I am still shocked, though, how easily I was able to get off the Valium. I guess it is because I only took it for 9 or 10 months and I had the other drug for 2 weeks to mask any ill effects. But today is day 10 of no Valium so it is 100% out of my system. What an accomplishment. I have had the monkey of these drugs on my back for a long time and now I feel free. The sky even looked bluer yesterday.
I am ready to finish out the school year. I think I will have a lot of fun and be SOOO appreciative of the time off. I will do my final reflecting about my mom (even though that is a lifelong thing) and I will really, really get serious in that gym. I am ready. I have said that for a long time, but I really am, especially with these meds out of my system. Gonna be a great day! From now on I will probably do a summary-of-the-day blog at the end of the day to mark my accomplishments and note any standout moments of the day.
MY VISION IS BACK. I am reading and typing this with no glasses....definitely the medicine, which is SCARY if you think about it.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
April 24, 2011--Easter 2011
Today is very special for me. I have never been an Easter person, but it was my mom's favorite holiday, and since it still has not been a year since she died, she is on my mind so the holiday has significance. She took Easter very seriously religiously, but she never pushed her views on anyone. I really liked my mom's religious views. She was disgruntled with going to Church, but she was highly religious. But she was also extremely open-minded, a trait that I did not know about whatsoever until we had "The Discussion". Ever since that day she never ceased to amaze me at just how liberal she was about so many things--she truly was a live-and-let-live type person. So cheers to her on this day.
Growing up, we did have fun Easters. As a little kid I got AWESOME Easter baskets, but that didn't last very long. We got Santa Claus until I was abnormally old, but the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy were dispelled early on. =)
One year my birthday was on Easter. I need to look up a calendar and see the exact year since you can do that via the internet nowadays....hold on.....that is crazy how fast I found that. It was 1983. It was the year that "Preppy" dress was all the rage, and looking back it was truly ridiculous. My mom got me a yellow Polo shirt and green Polo shorts and a green Polo shirt and yellow Polo shorts. And yet she claimed she never "knew"? Pu-lease, woman. =)
I loved to Easter egg hunt as a kid. We were also highly odd about that. My parents would hide the eggs for us maybe twice, but then my brother and I would do it all day. We had a massive yard on the river when I was of Easter egg hunting-age, and the possibilities for hiding places were infinite. We would do this ALL DAY (kooks) and by the end of the day the places the eggs would be were so impossibly hard to find that sometimes months later we would find a rotten egg in a tree nook 20 feet high somewhere, faded, and never found. It was actually a lot of fun.
Easter also usually meant going and visiting my mom's side of the family which I loved and hated. My mom was from a very large, very Southern family. The food was always amazing, but my grandparents house scared the hell out of me and I could never fall asleep there (Stacy--remember the "Walking Man" story??--It was at its height during this time)......but again, the food was always amazing but we would always get picked on as the "city kids", in a nice, but ribbing way. Looking back that is so funny because it is like we were from thousands of miles away but my grandparents' house was only about 120 miles away. But J-ville was considered "big city" back then. Funny that it never was, and still is not compared to an even moderately-sized city today.
All of the food was artery-clogging but delicious, but some of it I will never eat again because the folks who made it never used recipes and are no longer alive (like my mom)......one year was especially fun. We had an Easter egg hunt and the prize egg was sitting on top of my grandfather's head on his hat. It had silver tin foil around it (some "prize" egg, LOL) but it did get me 20 bucks, which was a lot of money for a kid back then in the early 80s......
My baby brother also drowned right before Easter and my birthday was very close....let me look again....April 10, 1977 and he died April 2nd and my birthday is the third, so Easter ever after was always a bit sad for my family. I did not understand this as a kid and hated that my brother died the day before my sixth birthday. It made me sad at first but I was so young it later made me very pissed because I had "forgotten" since I was so young when it happened and yet it was still so fresh for my parents. I never once had a birthday party. This is why to this day birthdays are so important to me....
Today I am not going to do much. We are supposed to go to a fancy brunch at a restaurant but I don't think I am up for it...I would rather make breakfast here and hang out in bummy clothes. Why? Because we can......=)
It is so nice to have tomorrow off from work. Don't know why it happened this year but it did and I will savor the day. This has never happened in my 16 year career.
Happy Easter! =)
BTW, I just looked it up again and it appears I had an Easter birthday in 1988 when I was 17 and also one in 1994 when I was 23. I was waaaaaay too out of it to remember those birthdays. =)
Growing up, we did have fun Easters. As a little kid I got AWESOME Easter baskets, but that didn't last very long. We got Santa Claus until I was abnormally old, but the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy were dispelled early on. =)
One year my birthday was on Easter. I need to look up a calendar and see the exact year since you can do that via the internet nowadays....hold on.....that is crazy how fast I found that. It was 1983. It was the year that "Preppy" dress was all the rage, and looking back it was truly ridiculous. My mom got me a yellow Polo shirt and green Polo shorts and a green Polo shirt and yellow Polo shorts. And yet she claimed she never "knew"? Pu-lease, woman. =)
I loved to Easter egg hunt as a kid. We were also highly odd about that. My parents would hide the eggs for us maybe twice, but then my brother and I would do it all day. We had a massive yard on the river when I was of Easter egg hunting-age, and the possibilities for hiding places were infinite. We would do this ALL DAY (kooks) and by the end of the day the places the eggs would be were so impossibly hard to find that sometimes months later we would find a rotten egg in a tree nook 20 feet high somewhere, faded, and never found. It was actually a lot of fun.
Easter also usually meant going and visiting my mom's side of the family which I loved and hated. My mom was from a very large, very Southern family. The food was always amazing, but my grandparents house scared the hell out of me and I could never fall asleep there (Stacy--remember the "Walking Man" story??--It was at its height during this time)......but again, the food was always amazing but we would always get picked on as the "city kids", in a nice, but ribbing way. Looking back that is so funny because it is like we were from thousands of miles away but my grandparents' house was only about 120 miles away. But J-ville was considered "big city" back then. Funny that it never was, and still is not compared to an even moderately-sized city today.
All of the food was artery-clogging but delicious, but some of it I will never eat again because the folks who made it never used recipes and are no longer alive (like my mom)......one year was especially fun. We had an Easter egg hunt and the prize egg was sitting on top of my grandfather's head on his hat. It had silver tin foil around it (some "prize" egg, LOL) but it did get me 20 bucks, which was a lot of money for a kid back then in the early 80s......
My baby brother also drowned right before Easter and my birthday was very close....let me look again....April 10, 1977 and he died April 2nd and my birthday is the third, so Easter ever after was always a bit sad for my family. I did not understand this as a kid and hated that my brother died the day before my sixth birthday. It made me sad at first but I was so young it later made me very pissed because I had "forgotten" since I was so young when it happened and yet it was still so fresh for my parents. I never once had a birthday party. This is why to this day birthdays are so important to me....
Today I am not going to do much. We are supposed to go to a fancy brunch at a restaurant but I don't think I am up for it...I would rather make breakfast here and hang out in bummy clothes. Why? Because we can......=)
It is so nice to have tomorrow off from work. Don't know why it happened this year but it did and I will savor the day. This has never happened in my 16 year career.
Happy Easter! =)
BTW, I just looked it up again and it appears I had an Easter birthday in 1988 when I was 17 and also one in 1994 when I was 23. I was waaaaaay too out of it to remember those birthdays. =)
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