The Bloody Doors Off

Mornings are proving difficult. Normally I’m up at 6:30am, taking a little me time before waking the household and getting the boy’s lunch prepared before he heads off to school. But this week I’ve struggled to get out of bed, usually taking between 30 and 60 minutes to get moving. Today is a school-from-home day so I slept until 8am.

Which is rare.

Normally I wake up at 5:30 and go back to sleep. Dunno why. My CPAP mask is leaking air out the sides and that has me waking several times a night to fix it. I’ve tried readjusting the straps to no avail. I think it’s time for a replacement mask, which they say you should be replacing every few months anyway. Not like I have that kind of money.

As I said, this week has been a tug-of-war. And after waking, I’m filled with a sense of helplessness. I can’t concentrate for long periods of time. It takes me roughly three hours just to shake it and get on with my day. It’s affecting my eating habits, as well. At most I have a blueberry muffin for breakfast, with copious amounts of coffee. I’m lucky if I eat a bagel sandwich for lunch.

I don’t know if this is a side-effect of starting the lithium, but it’s not impressing me at the moment. Yes, its tamping down my more aggressive impulses, but if this continues I’m gonna reassess with my psychiatrist.

Whom I haven’t spoken to in a month. We have scheduled appointments and he’s missed the last two. I need to follow up with him. He’s close to retirement and sometimes I worry he’s had an accident. But he put in my new scrip for sleeping pills so I know nothing has befallen him.

It’s depression, I know. It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain. But these moments of lucidity are infrequent, and the haze that envelopes me is strong.

What I don’t know, is how to change this.

I don’t want to ride it out. This feels like a roller coaster ride where you go backwards. Which I’ve been on, and refuse to do ever again. (Thank you, Canada’s Wonderland The Bat.) If I’m gonna dip and turn, and do loops, I prefer to be facing front.

My annual CT lung scan is coming up next month. There’s a tiny spot, benign, been there for years. Despite the truly stressful moments where I consider lighting up a cigarette, I’m glad I quit eight years ago. Here’s hoping there’s been no growth over the past 12 months. In the meantime, I get to play the waiting game. And I’ve got no patience for it.

A bit of recent good news: my bloodwork came back mostly on target. My AIC is 6.4, the lowest it’s ever been. That puts me in the pre-diabetes column and if I can get it below 6.0, I may be able to come off of some of my medications. I’ve got a phone appointment with my endocrinologist this afternoon, so we’ll see what he says.