Phil was wrong
(Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog oracle, reportedly did not see his shadow this year. Tell that to the folks in Minnesota who've had windchills of -40 degrees Fahrenheit in the last few days.)
I considered other more witty or dramatic ways of saying this, but then that took too long, so I'll just say it: a lot has happened since I last wrote.
Everything up until December 23 is pretty much a blur of vague anxiety and dissatisfaction. The only thing that sticks out in my mind now is my interview at ARAMARK. That was a little interesting, but ultimately a bit disheartening, as I was never a viable candidate for the position, in retrospect. I had been determined, for about four months, to get a change in my work situation. By early December, I was riddled with anxiety because it looked like I had painted myself into a corner. My current group was showing me as unavailable after Jan 1 2007, in their planning docs, but I hadn't been picked up by the new group. So anyway, at the last moment I was pulled in for an interview at ARAMARK, and discovered that my lack of recent Microsoft experience pretty much made me a non-starter. So I just continued where I am, at Centocor in Horsham.
I was "officially" diagnosed with ADD in October, after taking tests in August and September. To be honest, I've read the report of the evaluation a million times, and I'm still not sure exactly how the psychologist tied the test results to the diagnosis. She also pointed out, primarily from my questionnaire answers but also possibly from her initial interview with me, that I have symptoms of depression and anxiety. So that's what it said on the report (paraphrase): "He has ADD and depression and anxiety; he could benefit from medication for all of that." So then I went to a psychiatrist to see about medicine and he more or less disregarded the part in the ADD evaluation that said "he doesn't have bipolar disorder", and decided from several answers in our initial interview that I had bipolar disorder and should go down that medication path-- Clonopin, Depakote, a few others were mentioned.
After discussing it with a few people I decided to drop that doctor and I went to another one, who requires that patients meet with him weekly for psychotherapy sessions if he is going to prescribe any medication. I met with him five times or so before getting around to "popping the question", i.e., directly asking him to prescribe me Adderall (for ADD). (It took me about that long to fully come to terms with the fact that he was never going to suggest anything to me, let alone suggest a medication.) He wrote me a prescription, I dropped it off immediately at the pharmacy across the street from our house, and several minutes after that he called me to tell me he had changed his mind and wanted to try me on Wellbutrin instead. All a little awkward, but no big deal. I have been on 100mg of sustained release Wellbutrin (aka bupropion-- ever hear of Zyban, smoking cessation drug? Same stuff.) since December 23.
Again, I'm a little leery of sounding overdramatic and breathless here (and honestly, I'm not feeling dramatic or breathless as I write), but as far as I can tell this drug has had a profound effect on me. I'm not sure I can remember one time since I started taking it, when my heart raced out of anxiety or fear over some situation. At least in the first week or two it made me a tiny bit "faster", in terms of my speed of response in conversation of a moderately complex and/or sensitive nature, so Angela was not excited at the prospect of my increasing the dose. (100mg is usually considered just a stepping stone to the normal therapeutic dose of 200-450 mg a day.) I am *way* less drowsy during the normal course of a day, which also means that it's much easier for me to "get by" on 5 or 6 hours of sleep many nights in a row than it used to be, and I have to watch out for slipping into a manic-type state. Also, sometimes I feel that Angela and play this parlor game of trying to determine the precise cause of my snippiness, when I'm snippy. "Is it the medicine? Is it the lack of sleep catching up? What?" But when crises arise (and boy, have a few arisen in the last six weeks), they don't tend to have the cascading effect of anxiety that troubled situations used to have on me. Heck, I used to have plenty of background anxiety and negativity without any crises. In sum: I'm glad I'm on it.
Um... That seems to be it, really. But three big things have happened in Joel-Angela-Abigail Land since the beginning of the year (four if you count Angela turning 40). First, Abby's right hand was injured in an accident with a door at church, on January 14. A few days later it was rewrapped and placed in a cast for three weeks, which ends today. A lot of you already know about all this and I don't feel like talking it about it much further.
Second, my father escalated into his first manic episode in over seven years, right around the same time that the thing happened with Abby, maybe a week or two earlier. He went into the hospital last week, the evening of January 30. He was going to be discharged this past Monday, but that was delayed as they waited for some blood test results to come back. So we're kind in uncharted territory, i.e., not sure how much longer he will be in a heightened state. Mom says that he didn't appear to change much over the course of the week or two he was in the hospital.
And finally, the night before Dad was admitted to Belmont, we began to help Tara Harrison move into our finished attic space. We moved stuff on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, and she and her son Oni stayed overnight for the first time on Wednesday. On Friday we had a party to celebrate Oni's first birthday. So far things are going really well, with typical adjustments and negotiations taking place. As far I as I'm concerned, it is a win-win-win-win-win situation. I.e., each one of the five of us is benefiting from this arrangement in different ways. So we'll see how it goes.
This is not much of a news flash, but it's been really cold for the last four days or so. And with that, I guess I'll wrap up for the time being.
I considered other more witty or dramatic ways of saying this, but then that took too long, so I'll just say it: a lot has happened since I last wrote.
Everything up until December 23 is pretty much a blur of vague anxiety and dissatisfaction. The only thing that sticks out in my mind now is my interview at ARAMARK. That was a little interesting, but ultimately a bit disheartening, as I was never a viable candidate for the position, in retrospect. I had been determined, for about four months, to get a change in my work situation. By early December, I was riddled with anxiety because it looked like I had painted myself into a corner. My current group was showing me as unavailable after Jan 1 2007, in their planning docs, but I hadn't been picked up by the new group. So anyway, at the last moment I was pulled in for an interview at ARAMARK, and discovered that my lack of recent Microsoft experience pretty much made me a non-starter. So I just continued where I am, at Centocor in Horsham.
I was "officially" diagnosed with ADD in October, after taking tests in August and September. To be honest, I've read the report of the evaluation a million times, and I'm still not sure exactly how the psychologist tied the test results to the diagnosis. She also pointed out, primarily from my questionnaire answers but also possibly from her initial interview with me, that I have symptoms of depression and anxiety. So that's what it said on the report (paraphrase): "He has ADD and depression and anxiety; he could benefit from medication for all of that." So then I went to a psychiatrist to see about medicine and he more or less disregarded the part in the ADD evaluation that said "he doesn't have bipolar disorder", and decided from several answers in our initial interview that I had bipolar disorder and should go down that medication path-- Clonopin, Depakote, a few others were mentioned.
After discussing it with a few people I decided to drop that doctor and I went to another one, who requires that patients meet with him weekly for psychotherapy sessions if he is going to prescribe any medication. I met with him five times or so before getting around to "popping the question", i.e., directly asking him to prescribe me Adderall (for ADD). (It took me about that long to fully come to terms with the fact that he was never going to suggest anything to me, let alone suggest a medication.) He wrote me a prescription, I dropped it off immediately at the pharmacy across the street from our house, and several minutes after that he called me to tell me he had changed his mind and wanted to try me on Wellbutrin instead. All a little awkward, but no big deal. I have been on 100mg of sustained release Wellbutrin (aka bupropion-- ever hear of Zyban, smoking cessation drug? Same stuff.) since December 23.
Again, I'm a little leery of sounding overdramatic and breathless here (and honestly, I'm not feeling dramatic or breathless as I write), but as far as I can tell this drug has had a profound effect on me. I'm not sure I can remember one time since I started taking it, when my heart raced out of anxiety or fear over some situation. At least in the first week or two it made me a tiny bit "faster", in terms of my speed of response in conversation of a moderately complex and/or sensitive nature, so Angela was not excited at the prospect of my increasing the dose. (100mg is usually considered just a stepping stone to the normal therapeutic dose of 200-450 mg a day.) I am *way* less drowsy during the normal course of a day, which also means that it's much easier for me to "get by" on 5 or 6 hours of sleep many nights in a row than it used to be, and I have to watch out for slipping into a manic-type state. Also, sometimes I feel that Angela and play this parlor game of trying to determine the precise cause of my snippiness, when I'm snippy. "Is it the medicine? Is it the lack of sleep catching up? What?" But when crises arise (and boy, have a few arisen in the last six weeks), they don't tend to have the cascading effect of anxiety that troubled situations used to have on me. Heck, I used to have plenty of background anxiety and negativity without any crises. In sum: I'm glad I'm on it.
Um... That seems to be it, really. But three big things have happened in Joel-Angela-Abigail Land since the beginning of the year (four if you count Angela turning 40). First, Abby's right hand was injured in an accident with a door at church, on January 14. A few days later it was rewrapped and placed in a cast for three weeks, which ends today. A lot of you already know about all this and I don't feel like talking it about it much further.
Second, my father escalated into his first manic episode in over seven years, right around the same time that the thing happened with Abby, maybe a week or two earlier. He went into the hospital last week, the evening of January 30. He was going to be discharged this past Monday, but that was delayed as they waited for some blood test results to come back. So we're kind in uncharted territory, i.e., not sure how much longer he will be in a heightened state. Mom says that he didn't appear to change much over the course of the week or two he was in the hospital.
And finally, the night before Dad was admitted to Belmont, we began to help Tara Harrison move into our finished attic space. We moved stuff on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, and she and her son Oni stayed overnight for the first time on Wednesday. On Friday we had a party to celebrate Oni's first birthday. So far things are going really well, with typical adjustments and negotiations taking place. As far I as I'm concerned, it is a win-win-win-win-win situation. I.e., each one of the five of us is benefiting from this arrangement in different ways. So we'll see how it goes.
This is not much of a news flash, but it's been really cold for the last four days or so. And with that, I guess I'll wrap up for the time being.
posted by Joel GL at 1:51 PM
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