The latest developments (revised)

Today I weighed 184.4 pounds. That means I've lost 15 pounds since November. Oddly enough, my clothing size hasn't changed at all. Still solidly a 16W. More important than that, though, is the validating truth about Lyrica. It did make me gain a lot of weight. My diet never changed before or after--only my weight.

Medication: I'm down to Seasonique (Pill), 4.5 mg of EMSAM (I cut a patch in half), 100mg of Lamictal and 600mg of lithium. The Lamictal and lithium are at a fraction of what was prescribed. My goal is to get the three mental health drugs down to much lower amounts--just enough so there is some still in my system so that if I need those meds again, I won't be starting from zero and I can get therapeutic value in a hurry.

May is a genius.

Acupuncture--still not doing anything. I don't see what people get out of it. It's having no effect on me whatsoever.

I'm pretty sure I never had true bipolar disorder. The more I learn and the more I look back, I think I was predisposed, and I had a mental meltdown fueled by an SSRI. It appears that I am one of those people who is made irritable, restless, and suicidal by SSRIs. Unfortunately, the idiot who prescribed it didn't know about this hazard of SSRIs, and so it just went on way too long. Maybe I have BP now, but it's pretty much dormant. I'm not sure that's the drugs. I'm more confident it's due to all of the really hard work I did to get my brain and my life back.

Still no friends within 800 miles.

Finally tired and going to bed.

Addendum: After thinking about what I wrote here, I'm coming back to say that I think it should be illegal for primary care physicians to practice anything that even hints of psychiatry. After having read the Rolling Stone article about Zyprexa and how psych meds are presented to PCPs like an act of seduction, I'm even more convinced that mood-mending is so specialized, it should require a separate medical license. I'm just sayin'...

Yeah, it's bad

My attitude needs to change. Apparently, if you have a negative outlook, if you let life wear you down, if you feel sad and overwhelmed, if you stop seeing the sunny side of life, you cannot balance your qi.

Unbalanced qi leads to a world of troubles. Poor sleep, weight gain, indigestion, malaise, rashes, headaches, cramps, and irritability.

Balanced qi leads to a life of loveliness.

The problem is, I suck at balancing my qi. Seriously, I don't believe qi exists.

Other things I think are bullshit until scientifically proven:

• God of any type
• Reiki
• Clairvoyance
• Astrology (but I read my horoscope every day anyway)
• Remote viewing
• Acupuncture
• Homeopathy
• Chain letters
• Chakras
• Moon-related moods

There's more, but I'm too lazy to plow through all of the crap in my brain that's in the way of actual thoughts.

Oh, Suze,

It was 3:00 in the morning, and there was nothing worthwhile on TV. It was a vast stretch of infomercials across every tier of cable service.

CNN was hooked on a story about a car that didn't explode in Times Square. QVC and HSN were selling something stupid or ugly. A few channels later, Suze Orman was dishing advice about fiscal responsibility.

Her advice was foreign to me: You must have at least eight months of salary in a savings account or you will meet with certain doom in these economic times.

She ticked off a list of ways Americans fritter away their money. Starbucks! I don't go to Starbucks. Magazine subscriptions! Mine all lapsed. Debt! OK, I have a lot of debt, but I'm busy paying it down, paying it down.

Suze was strict. No vacations! No gifts! No gadgets! No Starbucks! No restaurants! No hobbies that cost money! No driving! No new anything unless you're replacing something that is unsolvable.

I made a mental list. Frank and I have cell phones, but we have a limited plan. We have a low-cost long-distance plan on our landline. We put only 6,000 miles a year on my car and half that on his.

Here's where it all goes wrong...

• We eat out three times on the weekend.
• We buy beer and wine.
• I pay for a wireless connection for my laptop in addition to the broadband line we have in the house.
• We pay for two cell phones.
• We use the dryer.
• We buy plants and flowers for our garden every summer. Annuals.
• We don't have our car insurance with the same company. It would only save us about $40 a year if we did.
• I buy beads sometimes.
• I buy a lot of medicine.
• I go to the doctor a lot.
• I buy greeting cards.
• We have cable TV service, but no premium channels
• We take good care of our dog and cats

We don't take vacations. Ever. We don't live large, buy decor things for our home, or even tires for my car. We don't use credit cards. We don't buy gifts for each other or anyone else. We don't wear clothes that require dry cleaning. We don't go anywhere or do anything. When we do spend money, it's for the house.

We are a financial disaster anyway.

Suze, don't admonish me; I just don't know how to fix it and me, too.

Something has to change

I have a birthday coming up this week. I am the Cinco de Mayo girl, after all.

I'll be 49 years old. How did I make it this far? How in the world can anyone think it's realistic for me to make it another 25 years or so. There's no way. My tolerance for pain, emotional distress, lack of social connections, and mental isolation is not infinite.

If I celebrate on Wednesday, what am I celebrating? I know what other people will acknowledge, but it's an empty day for me. I've done a lot to make life better for other people, but my life is not something for me to celebrate on my end. It's not worthy of that.

I'm fat, I'm slow, I'm dorky, I'm unpopular, unloved, unattractive, and I can't do anything right. I'm in chronic pain and I am a failure at having meaningful relationships. People do not like me. I can't stand me.

If nothing is going to change--and it appears it won't--then I want to die. Soon.

Go ahead, check it out

Some time ago, I discussed the "Faces Pain Scale" in my blog. I'm too lazy to go and find it and provide a link. Basically, it's meant to answer the questions, "Rate your pain on scale of one to ten, wit ten being the worst pain ever. Like childbirth." Having never given birth, that escapes my pain of reference. When I came across the faces scale, I thought it was marvelous. there are two versions: One is for kids, the other for adults who can't speak. The row of faces express unhappiness from none to crying. It's a wonderful visual depiction of feeling like crap.

Of course, it has its limitations. One of them is that the first faces are smiling. I thought I was the only one who found this odd. Why would you go to the doctor if you had no complaints about your discomfort?

There is a blogger who has rewritten the faces scale and she has done it with accuracy and hilarity. Please take the time to read it. It's one of the funniest things I've read in a long, long time.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/02/boyfriend-doesnt-have-ebola-probably.html

Now you're talking

Xanax really is a lovely medication. It doesn't reduce my anxiety any--it make me sleep through it. It also seems to calm all of the hellacious menstrual monsters that are tormenting me this week. Next stop, the medical marijuana tincture.

Acupuncture, on the other hand, is total bullshit, and after spending hundreds of dollars, I feel qualified to arrive at that conclusion. Can you say "placebo effect?"

Enlightening

Having not had to suffer through menstruation for six months, going through it now has made me aware of certain truths:

• My mood tanked within 48 hours of starting the placebo pills. I went from reasonably even-keeled and pleasant to the classic stereotype of a hormonally-rattled woman: weepy, irritable, sensitive, and somewhat despondent.


• The pain chewing up my gut and lower back is almost unbearable. This has caused a flare-up of every issue I have in the abdominal region, including IBS, muscle spasms, and interstitial cystitis.

Try as I might, I can't find any medical justification for stopping menstrual suppression four times a year. What is this accomplishing except for causing me misery? What biological benefit is supposed to come from these four periods a year? What could be so medically necessary about those four periods that it warrants a week or more of grinding pain and mood disruption on a quarterly basis?

I plan to find out what happens when suppression is truly continuous. This afternoon I am finally going to pick up some free Pills that the nurse practitioner procured for me. She got the medication to save me money, but she has really done me a much bigger favor. I still plan to buy my regular supply as prescribed, but with the extra packs, I can go for an entire year without having to endure the side-effects of a period.

I hate having a uterus. I would get the whole system yanked if I could.

Ow.

I'm in the process of getting my period for the first time since about October. I prefer continuous and permanent suppression, but for whatever reason, all of the long-term pills force a period every four months. Nobody seems to be able to tell me why it's necessary.

My uterus feels like it's trying to tie itself into a knot. My lower back feels like the sacrum is cracking. My gut is on fire. this is sure to set off a firestorm throughout my entire central nervous system. Any inflammation creates havoc in how my body produces, interprets, and manages pain.

Despite the hormonal assault on my body, my mood is A-OK. The physical pain at this moment, on the other hand, is very, very bad.

Yee-ha. Good times.

I just need a little rest

Nobody should be as busy as I am right now. I definitely should not be as busy as I am right now. I am reasonably sure that the pace of the last few weeks is not what my doctors had in mind for me.

I can't catch my breath; then again, there's no time to even give it a real try.

In addition to the mountains of things that need to get done, my entire body is screaming in pain. There is no time for that.

Here's what I need right now: A magenta ink catridge for a Canon Pixma iP4500 printer, time to hem three six-foot lengths of fabric along the selvages and ends, and eight hours of quality sleep.

All are impossible. I'm not the super-May I used to be.

Such a disappointment.

It's always something

Where to begin?

The acupuncturist says that in Chinese medicine, pain around the heart is the result of cumulative trauma, either emotional or physical. In other words, my heart really is broken. I've moved on, but my heart is just getting started.

My new primary care doctor says I'm in the grip of something called Prinzmetal's angina, or coronary artery spasms. They don't sound very serious to me. Well, it could lead to a heart attack, but that's not usually the case.

I am not afraid to drop dead of a heart attack. I am afraid to continue living in pain for decades. That's a truly scary thought.

In a few weeks, I'll have an appointment with a cardiologist. I chose a doctor from a list my primary care doctor gave me. He has a ponytail. He meditates. He took percussion lessons at a school that works to preserve Pakistani and Indian musical traditions. He should fit right in with the rest of my team.

That is, if I go to the appointment. Apparently, I'll need an angiogram. OK, not just the catheter procedure, but an enhanced version where the doctor chemically induces a coronary artery spasm in order to measure the severity of the situation.

Woooo. Big fun. I might have to skip that particular field trip.

Busy

May has been busy. Busy working, busy thinking, busy doing health related things, busy entertaining a Flat Stanley (not his real name, but we're all incognito on Blogger).

May is worried. Concerned. Embarrassed to mention that something else has come up. I think I have angina. For the last few years, I assumed that given my history, it was probably just anxiety attacks. Eventually, though, I had to face the fact that nine times out of ten, I am not experiencing any anxiety at all when the attacks come. Troubling indeed. For a year, when the possibility of MS was out there, I assumed it was the "MS hug." I don't have MS, though.

Here is what it feels like. I'll be doing something completely normal and mundane. It comes on suddenly and starts with pain in my jaw. My mouth fills with saliva and my jaw locks up and feels like it's going to crack. At the same time, my chest feels like it is going break open because I feel like my ribs are tightening, squeezing, and crushing me in a band just under my breasts and often radiating to my back between my shoulder blades. It hurts like hell.

Sometimes, I break out into a clammy sweat. Sometimes my left arm goes kind of dead, but that doesn't happen most of the time. I can breathe; in fact, I can take deep breaths and that's what helps the whole thing pass. I concentrate only on breathing and relaxing. My pulse doesn't seem to change. It's not unusual for my jaw to have residual pain for hours or even days. This frightens me.

The first attack came about 11 years ago when I was at work. It came on so suddenly and with such force, I thought I was going to die right there. There were no more attacks for over a year. After that first one, there were only two or three a year. Now they're coming much closer together, although not with the same ferocity as before.

It's true that I'm very overweight, but in 1999, I was a healthy weight. I also rode my bike to work most days, and I exercised vigorously five or six days a week. I was fit. Very, very fit. I was very fit until 2005, and then I stopped exercising completely. My point here is that whatever this crushing chest pain is, it did not start as a result of obesity or poor diet.

Health has been on my mind far too long. I'm tired of doctors. Medications irritate me on principle, so I've stopped taking most of them. I'm down to Seasonique, a low dose of lithium, a really low dose of Lamictal, and Emsam about twice a week. I don't see the point of taking an antidepressant indefinitely. At some point, I need to check to see if I am, in fact, clinically depressed.

Dr. G and Dr. S. (the overachiever systemic wellness lady) both wanted me to try medical marijuana and acupuncture. The marijuana didn't help anything--I can't believe I used to love it so.

Acupuncture is expensive. I pay $65 a week to be stuck with needles on my meridians and other special points. It hurts. A lot. At the moment, I have tiny little metal balls stuck in each of my outer ears. This is supposed to activate some healing energy along the vein that represents the pelvis.

Throughout each treatment, Cheryl checks my pulses. They are, apparently, "wiry." Cheryl seems very focused on putting needles in the tops of my feet and my ankles. This is the source of my "element." My element is wood. I am like a tree, strong but also rigid, and with branches going out in every direction. My wood is a little dry, though, so my sub-element is water.

I have no idea what this means and I do sincerely think it's all bullshit.

Cheryl is quite sweet. She's a tiny woman in her late 30's with a funny voice--she sounds exactly like Yeardley Smith. Cheryl is determined to help me, although I'm still not sure what the goal of her treatments is. She hasn't really articulated that.

When the needles are working their magic on my Qi, I'm supposed to concentrate on relaxing and letting go of my burdens. That's hard--$65 per treatment is my burden. I'm supposed to pay attention to the thoughts that surface during this time. Usually those thoughts are something like, "Wow. those needles in my left foot burn like a sonofabitch. I'd like to scratch them, but my hands have needles stuck in them and the needle sticking out of the top of my head seems like it shouldn't be jostled. I wish my nose didn't itch."

I'm giving it three more treatments, but unless I experience miraculous healing, I'm turning my $65-a-week energy to nice shoes instead of needles.

I hate Bank of America

Forget all that stuff about bailouts, irresponsibility, billions of bailout bucks used for bonuses for bastards. That's not relevant to my discussion of Bank of America here.

During the years when my brain was melting, I lost the ability to keep track of bills and money. It was maddening, because it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get it right. Of course, at the time, I wasn't lucid enough to know that the rules were changing on a nearly monthly basis, along with the number of days in any given billing cycle, due dates, and minimum payment required.

Eventually, I worked out a system. In all cases possible, I negotiated to get all of my billing due dates changed to coincide with when I get paid. I get paid once a month, so budgeting is the only key to me not getting into a situation that finds me on the losing end of an argument with a phone clerk that ends with me in custody in an ER.

I am meticulous.

My bank's bill pay system is set up to pay all of my bills electronically on the same day that I get paid, regardless of when they are actually due in the course of the month. Computers orchestrate a flurry of transactions between my employer, my bank, and my creditors. There's not a lot of input needed from me, except to make sure I've allocated enough money to sufficiently cover each transaction. The last business day of the month is a busy one in my financial life, even if I sleep through it.

Today I got a letter from Bank of America saying that I was delinquent in paying on my account. This was puzzling, given the safeguards I have in place. I haven't used the card in at least 18 months--probably longer--so I know how much I need to pay each month and when it's due. The actual card was destroyed in 2008, so there's no chance of say, the balance going up and affecting the payment due. I pulled out my paper statements from the last three months. In each case, I had not only made the payment due, but I had paid more than double the minimum payment. I picked up the phone.

I spoke with Ryan and explained that I believed there had been a mistake. I asked him to just be quiet, listen to what I had to say, and follow along on his computer.

For each month, I read from the statement: Closing date, payment due date and minimum due, my actual pay date and the amount I paid.

Ryan told me that the problem was obvious. In February, the statement closing date was Friday, the 26th. I wasn't following. This was also the last business day of the month, therefore, the day I got paid and the day the bank paid my bills. As Ryan went on to explain, he said, "So, you see, you never did make a payment for March."

I replied, "But I did. My bank statement is clearly showing that Bank of America accepted $225 from me on February 26th."

Ryan said, "Well, that was the closing date and we count that as the last day of the billing cycle. Technically, you paid twice in February, so, ma'am, you were still obligated to make your regular payment in March."

I couldn't believe it. "Let me see if I understand what you're saying. There was a two-hour overlap between when my bank closed out the fiscal month and when you considered it the end of the month, so nobody there was able to see that it was likely supposed to be the payment for the next month--I mean, given my unflaggingly consistent payment pattern? Is this because there is no actual human being involved in working with customer accounts?"

Ryan started to get condescending. "There was a human involved and you made an error. It happens sometimes."

I had to digest that for a moment. "So, what you're telling me is that by being extremely diligent in making sure that my payment is never, ever late, I was penalized because nobody at Bank of America was able to identify that, given my payment history, this was meant as the March payment?"

Ryan said that this was correct and they were not, under any circumstances, going to count it as an on-time payment, let alone as the payment for March (that missed posting as March by two hours). I didn't pay late--I paid two hours too early.

Ryan was kind of a douche bag, so I stopped being polite. When I asked how much this was costing me, he said, "Well, I understand that you made a mistake, and since you did the right thing and called us to let us know about your mistake, I can waive the $39 late fee this one time, but you need to be aware that I won't be able to do that for you again."

I was dumbfounded. I said, "But my payment WASN'T late. It was early. You're penalizing me because I paid on time? This makes no sense to me. So, what happens to the APR? Does it go up to 50 percent now?"

Ryan said that since I had sent in a payment yesterday, March 31st, I had just barely made the 60-day time frame, but since I "managed to get that payment there," my APR should be unaffected this time. I explained that I didn't pay late and that yesterday's payment was the current payment--the payment for April. Nope, nope, nope. Ryan would not change how it was applied, period.

I told Ryan, "Look. I get it. You need to be right, and in your scenario, I need to be wrong, and you aren't going to concede anything to a mere customer. Who always pays on time."

The reply was, "No, no, it's not like that. We understand that people make mistakes because they have things going on and they can't always get that payment in when it's due." Was this guy smoking crack? Was he acting out some phone clerk version of the movie Memento?

He also took that moment to remind that he had done me that favor of waiving the late fee, but it would still show on my account as a late payment.

I hung up.

I logged onto my bank's Website and transferred a second payment to post in 24 hours to Bank of America. I haven't even received a bill yet, but it has been paid, and it will be credited for the correct month so my account that was never late to begin with is now current. My car needs new tires, but as of tonight, that's not going to happen.

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