I came across a blog I started a few years ago, but never followed up. The introduction page is still very relevant today, so instead of wasting what I wrote then, I've copied it into the page 'The Twisted Stuff'. It might shed some more light on the way I see & do things.
Below is another post from the old blog, which might be helpful to someone......
I thought
I’d admit to you all what a Nitwit I've been & what havoc one little action
caused me.
About 3
months ago I became aware that I was feeling over lethargic in the mornings & as
recently as last week I seemed to be regressing, finding myself standing
in the middle of a room with the ‘off’ button pressed, frozen in time,
staring, like I used to do when I first had a breakdown back in March
‘07. I was beginning to have frightening & debilitating sudden onset depressive
episodes which were totally indeterminate in time scale. They could last for a
few hours or a few days.
Old
behaviours returned: the constant need for sleep & the
preoccupation with finding escape slots in the day when I could do this; being
starving hungry yet unable to motivate myself to go & get something
to eat; disinterest in things in which I would normally involve myself;
sleeping on the sofa till the early hours because I couldn't be bothered to get ready for
bed; suffering daily migraines which I’d go to bed with & wake up with the
next day & the next & so on, until I could say that I had a constant
pain in my head, with a day here & there where it would leave me
alone.
Eventually
I felt this situation worsening, so I went to see my Doctor. He suggested they
check my blood & took five phials of the stuff! I returned for the results
& the Doctor patiently went through all my symptoms. He said my blood sugar
& iron levels were at rock bottom & my red blood cells were hanging on
by a thread! Then he read the current dosages of my medication……..& the
penny dropped!
About 3
months ago, as I said, I thought I was over lethargic in the mornings, so I took
it upon myself to reduce my night time medication by half! What
an idiot! I can’t
believe I did that, because I’m the first to lecture my friends & family
about tinkering with prescribed doses. I suppose my actions were simply an
effort to reduce my tiredness & not because I felt I knew better about
medicating the underlying depression. Anyhow, I had totally forgotten I had
reduced my dose all those weeks ago.
The net
result of my faux pas was a gradual decline in my mental strength & all
that comes with that; the need for sleep; the inertia; the disinterest in life. To top it all, the drug I take at night is a tricyclic
antidepressant, which is also used as prophylaxis for migraine! So that
interminable pain I had been suffering & everything else that went with it
was entirely my own fault! The reason for my abysmal blood count was that I had
been starving myself through the inertia & lack of motivation that reducing
my dose brought about. Eureka! Now it all made sense.
Catastrophic
as all this felt at the time, it has been a great lesson for me, if a little
disappointing that it revealed the depression is still alive & kicking
behind the control of the medication, where I had thought that maybe I could
start to be weaned off after 3 years’ treatment.
I am now
taking iron tablets like a good girl, am trying to be in bed before 11 pm,
having an apple (instead of nothing) at lunch time & having something
halfway decent for my tea instead of tea & biscuits! I hope some of you can
relate to what I've shared, and may give a little hope to those of you who have
done something similar.
LESSON:
If you feel like hell on earth, check your medication doses first!
