Coming unglued

I'm having my first good panic attack in over a month. My senses are on high alert with everything keyed-up. I'm on-edge and ready to fight or scream or cry or just curl up in a corner and start shaking.

My mind is racing, my back is hurting like hell again today, I have a stack of work a mile high, I want to get things under control and haven't had time to work on my personal organization system, I feel like I haven't spent any time with my kids, I think I may be in over my head at work (again), I have a lot of things just languishing and commitments piling up. On top of that I'm feeling some of the wonderful after effects of my muscle relaxers and pain medications - not quite withdrawals but still sucks. Oh....and I ate something that's not agreeing with me. It might be the corn chips I had for lunch (I'm allergic to corn...and stupid) or it might be the hot pepper sauce I slathered on my burger tonight.

I am an absolute wreck right now and I feel like everyone can see it but me. I think a lot of it has to do with messing with my anxiety medication. My doctor and I have been trying to figure out what's been going on with me for over a year now. I went in complaining about being really tired all of the time and having anxiety problems. He found out that the fatigue was a hormone problem and we've got that under control.

However, the anxiety has been a long trek. First we tried an SSRI. Yeah, that worked awesome, it was almost as good as being on opiates. Unfortunately the infamous side affects hit me and I got off of that as quick as I could. Then we moved to buproprion. He started me on a low dose and that seemed to help keep me from laying on the bed shaking like a leaf and pulling the blankets over my head. I was able to work, but I kept complaining about terrible insomnia. We tried Ambien, but I could even ward that stuff off. I'd just sit wide awake in a hypnotic state all night.

I mentioned it to the doctor a few months back and thought it was because my hormone replacement therapy was off a bit. We did a test and it came back normal (I'm still not convinced that it is, but that's a different discussion). So the nurse calls me and says that the doctor thinks I might be depressed. I snorted at her. Yeah, I'm not depressed. I know depression. We're old friends.

So, I finally go in to see the doc again for my yearly check-up. We go through the regular stuff and then he comes back around to the insomnia thing again. He asks me if it's depression. Hell, how am I supposed to know now? I can't sleep, my hormone levels are normal, maybe it is, but it's just different this time? So, he decides to double my dosage for buproprion. Fine, I figure, if it helps it helps. Besides the bupropion never really got me to stop stress eating all the time like the SSRI did.

That's not all though, the doc's also worried about sleep apnea. I don't say what I'm thinking which is "Dude, I can't freaking sleep! How can I have sleep apnea if I'm not, you know, ASLEEP!?" Well, we do an O2 test anyway. No big deal, just put a monitor on my finger all night and read my oxygen levels. If it drops significantly then I might have apnea (stop breathing while asleep). Except I spend all night awake watching the freaking monitor. You can read the whole story on The Refuge. It was not a fun experience.

I eventually realized that what I had experienced that night was a panic attack. In fact, it had been pretty much going all day. The next day I started doubling my buproprion dose. It took about two days and all of a sudden all of that background anxiety started to fade away and I could focus on work again. Until tonight I haven't had another panic attack.

So why did I mess with my medications? Because I thought I was experiencing some "unpleasant" side effects with my buproprion. It turns out that wasn't the problem, it was one of my other meds doing it (I think it was one of my pain medications), but that really doesn't matter much right now. I took a little "drug holiday" over the weekend so I could move from taking it in the morning to taking it in the evening. It wasn't too bad. I felt a little off, but I knew it was manageable. I was starting to think that my move was a good idea, but tonight I decided to move back to the AM schedule. I realized that the new schedule had the medication mostly out of my system by 5:00 and I found myself getting grumpy at home with the family and my sleep is kind of messed up again. I haven't felt like that in a while and I don't like it. So, I'm moving back. No big deal, just don't take it tonight and get back to the regular schedule in the morning.

So, here I am. It's almost 11:30 at night and I am awake. I took a nap when I got home because I could barely keep my eyes open. Now I'm wide awake again. My little personal oximeter is showing my pulse is up and my oxygen drops once in a while if I just forget to breath normally. I want to get work done, but it just isn't going to happen. It's just sitting on the kitchen table staring up at the light. I finally gave up and packed it all up again.

I'm guessing that all of it combined finally got me and with my buproprion dosage off I'm back to anxiety hell. I'm not scheduled to take my medication until in the morning. I have no idea what I'm going to do right now. So, I'm starting a blog after something someone else said on The Refuge. What the hell, it's better working my thoughts out in words than running through them in my head.

I think tomorrow I need to go back and do a mind sweep and just start cranking through a few things at work again.

I just figured out why my back is suddenly hurting again after yesterday being so good. Outside there are flashes of light. A thunderstorm just rolled-in. I'm a walking barometer and all day I've been feeling worse and worse. Guess my spine knew this storm was coming.

Now, will there be wildfires tomorrow filling our area with smoke again? Somehow I wouldn't doubt it. Off to surf the web again...