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.

Practically Baby Food

So I have been having a lot, a lot, a lot, of digestion issues since the beginning of December.  At the time, the doctors thought it was viral gastroenteritis. My symptoms matched, it was going around... but it never got better.  Since I was on prednisone they figured that the 5-7 day normal period may last 2 to 3 weeks.  It is now 10 weeks. My Internal Med doctor thought it might be a pancreas issue, but I don't really have any other symptoms.  He ordered some tests though (I'm waiting for the results).

In early January I went on a "low residue diet" which actually kind of made things worse, so I was only on it for about 3 days.

Today I started, what I am not-so-lovingly referring to as "the practically baby food diet".   Easily digestible veggies, low fruit, low fat, low protein (since I have issues with protein anyway), low grains... basically I can eat the following:

I hate to say it (because I'm a foodie), but my digestion was already greatly improved today.  BLAH. After a few days I'm going to reintroduce foods back in, and see how they go.

For breakfast, I had an epic fail.  I apparently forgot that I don't really like sweet things.  I tried to make banana pancakes.   Mashed banana, egg, a bit of coconut flour... I found them really dry (I maybe shouldn't have added the flour) so I topped them with applesauce, and some cinnamon.  I ate about half and was done. The rest are currently sitting in my fridge while I figure out a solution because I hate to waste food.  I must be able to mix it or something (maybe more banana and freeze it...)

bleh. 

Lunch went WAY better.  I made risotto. Arborio rice, vegetable broth, asparagus (uh... that might not be on my list, but I had some and didn't want to waste it), topped with a bit of goat mozzarella.

so delicious and filling!

Supper was the highlight of the day.  I grated sweet potato and steamed them (they could have been steamed longer), added some mild curry spice, coconut flour, egg, and grilled them.  Topped with some probiotic active bacteria yogourt and mustard.  I have some left over for tomorrow!

I liked the ones with mustard the best.

For snacks, I made sweet potato, zucchini and goat feta muffins using banana flour.  I didn't like them warm, but absolutely love them cold.  There's only about a net of 11gr of carbs per muffin, and only 1gr of fat, and since I'm still dealing with steroid induced diabetes, it makes it a perfect snack.

 best snack ever (Banana flour is EXPENSIVE though!)

All of the ridiculousness of the past almost 7 months sometimes catches up with me.  This digestion thing just seems like something else on the long list of things I have to deal with. I try to remember that I'm alive. 20% of people who go through what I went through don't make it, I could have been that 20%. All of the crap I'm dealing with now has to be worth it, because I get to be alive. I get to go to school.  I get to study something I love, I get to work on my Honours research project that I absolutely love. I get to work, although it isn't as much as I'd like to, I get to help people. I get to connect with people.  I get to do things, even if I'm limited in the amount of things I can do. 

Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes people suck... but sometimes it's worth it to get to be alive, and do things you love, even if you can't do everything you want to.