Saturday 5 March 2016

Alone in the night

A few weeks ago I was terrified that I was going to kill myself.

I have been struggling with what I've been told is "situational depression", although it seems like it's been a long time. I've been dealing with a lot of health issues for the past year and it's occasionally taken it's toll on me.  In February of 2015 I went on citalopram after finding out that I may need to go on Tysabri, which absolutely terrified me.  The citalopram was more for the anxiety attacks I was having, but after a month of being on it I found that my stress was reduced, I felt less anxious, I worried less, and felt... happier and more optimistic.  I felt like me again.  At the end of July I had a severe reaction to another medication I was on, ended up in the hospital, and taken off all my meds (and put on prednisone and a whack of new drugs to counteract the side effects of prednisone, which was, in its defence, saving my life) You can read my other blog posts to learn more about that ordeal, but I'll fast forward to about a month and a half ago.

It was taking a lot longer to recover from the severe drug reaction. I'm still on prednisone, even though I was supposed to be off it months ago, but my body freaks out any time I taper too fast... or even what was considered a "gradual" taper, and we've had to modify it to "a really long taper".  I am so tired, and stressed out, and just... down.  I asked my Internal Medicine doctor if it was okay for me to go back on citalopram.  Since my liver enzymes seemed stable, I was given the okay.

The nausea was absolutely horrible.  I was practically bed ridden for almost a week, dealing with nausea and dizziness, even though I downed a ton of gravol. It started to get better after a week.  After a month I still would wake up around 3am nauseated.  I spoke to my pharmacist who suggested I take it in the morning instead of at night.  This made sense to me, I used to take it in the morning last year. So I started taking it in the morning... and didn't sleep.  The 3rd night, I had slept a total of maybe 4 hours at this point.  I was up most of the night.  I lay in bed and had visions of me getting up out of bed, walking to the kitchen, and slashing my wrists.  The visions were so vivid, and I felt so out of control, that I was terrified to even get out of bed to use the washroom because I thought I wouldn't be able to stop myself from walking into the kitchen.  I just lay in bed and cried for hours. The next day I spent the day in bed.  Not doing anything. I couldn't go on social media, or watch t.v., I couldn't even e-mail my prof and tell her I couldn't make it to class. I just laid there and looked at the wall for hours, sometimes drifting into short periods of sleep.

I am thankful that I was able to recognize that these were not normal thoughts for me, and I made an appointment with the doctor at the school health clinic, who is very supportive of mental health concerns. He upped my dose of citalopram, and had me take it at night again. He offered me the option to speaking with a psychiatrist as well, but I wanted to try the adjustments first. That night  slept... I woke up nauseated and had to take a gravol, but I slept most of the night.  After 5 days of not getting more than 13 hours of sleep in total, I slept.

It's about a week and a half later. I'm starting to feel okay again.  Not great... but I haven't had any of those thoughts since.  It is amazing how much your brain can mess with you when you haven't slept, it just makes everything worse.  I'm sure the prednisone hasn't helped.  I had different but equally scary thoughts when I was on high doses of it.  I remember my neurologist once telling me "if your body tells you you need to sleep, then sleep"  that's a bit hard to do as a full time student who works, and I worry about all the students out there pulling all nighters.   It isn't just bad for your physical health, it's bad for your mental health too.

Next week is Mental Health Week at UPEI... I think it's important to share experiences, so I wanted to share mine.