A dear friend once came to dinner with my family and somehow, magically, within five minutes she had managed to say devastating things to everyone at the table. Things like "How is your job?" to someone who had just been laid off. Or "How is soccer going this year?" to the person who had just been forced to quit playing competitively due to a recent chronic health condition. "When are you graduating?" to the person who had stopped taking classes... Honestly I can't remember what it was that she said to everyone, only that she had just enough information about their lives to be amazingly, accidentally, agonizingly hurtful. Then she wanted to crawl under the table and disappear. I wish I could remember what she said. It really was amazing. Five minutes and she found the sore spot for everyone at the table. I am completely unbothered when friends and family and coworkers express concern for me in my capacity as the Woman who is Kicking Depression's Ass. It feels nice, actually. This is the opposite of that dinner experience. Since the whole mind/body health thing and the shrinking role that Depression plays in my life is front and center in my mind, I don't feel bad when people ask me how it's going, say they are thinking of me, or even that I am in their prayers. (At one time I was quite allergic to people praying for me, but I seem to have gotten over that since becoming Quaker.) I do feel terrible and guilty and awful, though, when I am asked about how other things-- things that I have not been doing-- are going. Hey, how's that novel coming? Have you put in that egress window yet? Used the power tools in the garage to make anything awesome? How is Weight Watchers going? Are you done with that present that you started for me six years ago? Sent thank you notes to everyone who has given you a gift for the past 42 years? Crap. I have been meaning to do that. And then the guilt. I wonder if I do this to people? Ask them about things in the hopes of making conversation and accidentally totally destroy their peace of mind... At least twice I know for a fact that I did this. Time #1 I was in high school in All State Band. We had rehearsals in the summer and a concert in February. In the summer my stand partner mentioned that she had just met some boy that she really liked. In the winter I asked if she had ever gotten together with that boy. Yes. in fact she had been impregnated by said boy and then dumped by him and in the aftermath of that she had the most trying year of her life... and this turned out to not be a very good topic for casual small talk. Time #2 I was in college and I idly wondered if a friend of mine might be gay. I wondered this aloud to her. We had plenty of friends who were not straight so I didn't think it was a big deal-- just casual college conversation. Unbeknownst to me she woke up every morning thinking to herself, "My life might be messed up, but at least I am not gay." Some time later she realied that straight people do not wake up thinking this every morning. But at the time having a good friend wonder this about her was devastating. I had no clue. Perhaps this is why I do not like small talk. I am not good at it. I probably have just enough information to be absolutely, amazingly, agonizingly devastating. I forgot to take my meds this morning. I can tell because I am sneezing without ceasing. Ker CHOOOO! I will post this, then go take my meds and call to have the bupropion refilled. Side note: at some point I accidentally started taking 600mg instead of 450mg of the bupropion. I was wondering why I ran out so fast. I remembered that I was supposed to take "more than I used to." Apparently that was not good information to go on since once I got used to taking 3 pills I thought, "Oh, I am supposed to take more than I used to," and started taking 4. Which means I have been UNINTENTIONALLY LYING when I wrote that I was taking 450mg per day. How long? I don't know. I could probably figure out if I counted the days that I was supposed to be on 2 pills and the days I was supposed to be on 3 pills and see how many I should have left... which I might just be anal enough to do. And holy crap I just read that going from 450mg - 600mg increases the risk of seizure by tenfold. I knew that 450 was the maximum recommended dose. I just didn't think about how many mgs were in the pills I was taking. So, the day that I thought I was having rapid heartbeat and trouble breathing and I had noticed an "intentional tremor" and wondered if it might be a side-effect of the bupropion... it was probably a side-effect of unintentional overdose. Holy frickin' crap. And I just didn't do a good enough job of telling either the nurse on the care line or the doctor at the clinic that I wondered if what I was feeling was drug-related. Of course at the time I didn't realize that I had been regularly O.D.ing Nobody Panic. Nothing Horrible Happened. And tomorrow I will call Psych Recovery and let them know what happened and make sure that I can refill my prescription tomorrow even though I am not supposed to have run out yet. Also, I am going to start using a pill-minder in conjunction with this blog to track my meds. Crap. Crap. Crap. Grateful Crap: that I did NOT have a seizure or hallucinations or suicidal ideatiion or any of the other possible things that could have happened with an overdose. Daily Convexions: will take sertraline 150mg exercised today: 1 hour on elliptical trainer packed my lunch Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |