Redwolf's Journal (continued)

I am so tired of being pissed off at people at work. Tired of the last-minute hires, decision changes, and general bullshit. Tired of coming in to work to have absolutely none of the IT requests of the day addressed without me and feeling like I'm the only one doing anything. Tired of thoughtlessness. Tired of not being listened to. Ugh. I spent most of the day simmering over what seems like it should be a minor detail and all the spiraling concerns it caused, but now the anger is passed and I'm just tired. And while I was hoping I wouldn't end up here, I feel as if there is a weight upon my chest. And I think... it's time to renew the prescription and start back up on the antidepressant. It was worth trying to see if I might get by without, but I recognize this feeling. It's already worse than the relatively-mild side effects... *sigh*

Being sick sucks. I'd almost forgotten, as I don't get sick all that often. But in this case, I missed out on a trip to Albuquerque Comic Con (which I think was still the correct choice) and I'm still trying to shake the last vestiges of illness almost two weeks later. I'm still not sure if I should chalk it up to cold or flu, but either way the symptoms have ranged from sore throat and feeling feverish to runny nose and nausea. Whee. I've also sort of stopped taking my antidepressants during this period of illness. That's something I'll have to monitor and keep in mind. If I can get by without, fine. If I find myself in an emotional spiral, that's not so fine. A few dreams of late, though I can't claim to remember much of them. One stood out at the time that involved a group of scifi thief-types breaking into a facility only to have things go wrong and damage the space-time continuum. This leads to them going their separate ways until one of the...

Technically, it may not be for a few days yet, but the weekend has been t-shirt weather and I've started needed allergy meds, so it feels like it to me...

Because, why not? Nice weather, free time, and a desire to do something other than sit around and be bored - all plenty of reasons to get out and start walking. And now that I have a smart phone, I was even able to collect some data on the trip to the top of the ridge and back. Out the door and back to the door: 2 hours and six minutes Distance walked: 5.41 miles (2.6 mph average speed) Vertical change each way: 1,163 feet

So I met with my doctor again this morning to discuss being on the antidepressant. Very brief overview: possible decrease in libido, one day of weirdly brief and scattered headaches, a few days of trouble sleeping and blunted appetite, about a week of subtle (yet somehow euphoric) mood improvement, and three weeks of "feeling pretty normal, which may or may not be better than previous." It's hard to say that's medication and what is just happenstance. After some discussion, he offered about what I expected: trying a higher dose, going from a cautious starting 10 mg/day to 20. And I'll go back in about four weeks and we'll see how things are then.

Day 1: 1/17/14 Picked up prescription before work and popped a pill around 3 pm. I suspect the minor headaches and euphoria in the first 1-2 hours may be psychosomatic, because that seems a really, really short onset time... 5:30: Antsy, but that could totally the office getting quiet and having no particular projects on my plate for the evening shift. A certain amount of that isn't abnormal when hitting a point of boredom at work. End of day: Lots of "maybe this is the medication and maybe not." Possible altered levels of energy/anxiety, but not sure. Possible odd feeling to stomach, but not sure. The only thing that feels reasonable definite at this point at the fleeting, generalized headaches over the last several hours - not localized, relatively minor, and they come and go. We'll see how sleeping goes. Day 2 Woke up more or less in the realm of "normal" with questionable subtleties still. Seemed like a lot of dreams over the night/morning. Came t...

Four days of taking medication like this is far too early to make any sweeping conclusions. It's difficult enough to sort through subtle (key word for the most part) changes in emotions and biological processes asking "is this real or imagined?" and then figuring out "has this actually changed?" I'm skeptical by nature, so I'm really wary of stating any claims as truth without more evidence. But keeps asking me how I'm feeling, and I've been dancing around that a bit due to all of the above. So here's a bit more of an answer at this early stage. This seems promising and I'm cautiously optimistic. On the "side effect" end of things, I did have some random, mild headaches the first day. Hunger feels a little different, perhaps muted, but that hasn't seriously impacted my eating habits. It seems a little bit harder to get to sleep and stay asleep than before. On the up side, I feel a bit more energetic, having gone for...

Well, got in my almost-annual doctor appointment this morning. I'm still alive, that's a good start. Getting allergy tested last year has helped in a few areas. Still a tendency toward dry skin. Could use more exercise. Could probably eat healthier, though I still try to mitigate my intake of junk. The main thing on my mind was sitting down and saying the St. John's Wort doesn't seem to be making any measurable long-term difference in my periods of depression. It still hasn't been bad enough to keep me from going to work or sparked any real suicidal thoughts (feelings of worthlessness of life, sure, but not actually thinking of ending it). It does, however, continue to hang over me in general, making it hard to motivate toward improvement or to really enjoy much. That's been about the size of things for the last... I don't know. Five to ten years maybe? So we talked about that a bit. He pointed out that exercise and such can help - not news to me after ...

Recurring injuries suck. I first remember this one several years back when leaning over the center console in my car and feeling a "pop" at one of the ribs on my right side. It hurt for a while, and was uncomfortable when moving certain ways for... weeks, I think. Since then, I seem to have managed to do the exact same thing a few times when applying pressure to my rib cage - again, usually leaning over something. Blargh.

Not feeling as well today. Not terrible, but a little bit more runny-nosy. Whee. I'm sure the five hours of sleep last night, getting called by work at 9:30 this morning, scarfing down a small bowl of from-frozen Chinese food, and coming in roughly five hours before I was scheduled to a stressful day of fixing problems (rather than making forward progress on our hosted email setup as expected) has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. No matter how many times an install team says "we've done this before" we seem to be mired in a nightmare when it comes time to go live. It's like this place is a black hole of bad upgrade karma or something.

Monday evening, I started to notice a scratchy feeling in my throat, and was sniffing some. "Lovely," thought I, "this feels like the onset of a cold." I made a point of drinking more fluids and getting some extra sleep. Tuesday morning felt a little worse, but by Tuesday night I felt... mostly okay. Today I've been a touch stuffed up, but barely noticeable. It feels like my taking care of myself has kicked a cold before it really fully manifested. Go team? The irony being I almost wish I'd done otherwise. Being sick would at least be an excuse to take some time off work. And I seem to need excuses these days to justify such things to myself. I finished up The Janus Affair last night, the second Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novel. I seem to be unable to find my comments on the previous one to link at the moment. Steampunk secret agent adventure, this time about miraculous abductions and the parties responsible. The setting isn't bad, but I find...

So I went in for an annual exam today (nevermind that it's been more like 14 months than 12, it's still an improvement over waiting years). No major/general problems. A few points discussed. - Based on the continued (if occasional) appearance of little rashes/blisters between my fingers, I'm getting a referral to an allergist to investigate the possibilities from that side. I've suspected a possible food allergy, but my dietary tweaking hasn't been able to pin down a certain cause. - We talked about a two-week (or so) period at the end of October when I felt constantly dehydrated and thirsty. I was guzzling 2-3 liters of water on top of that which normally worked into my day (and went to the bathroom with corresponding frequency). While I might not always drink as much water as I should, that was... extreme. Since I don't seem to be going through that anymore, we're taking more a wait and see approach. - And we chatted a little about depression. Based...