Irony and psychiatric meds

Today we felt good!  The birthday is over and we are clear of some of the pain and confusion that birthdays bring.  We even got a call from the local primary school to say that we’d won a raffle, with the prize being a $50 meat pack.  It’s rather ironic in that we can’t touch meat. What will be even more amusing, is if the meat pack comprises mainly of pork (otherwise known as Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web).

So we were feeling settled and mildly amused by life again.  But then we made the mistake of opening an email from our psychiatrist.  We’d emailed him earlier in the week to tell him that the trial of Buspirone was not working very well as we’ve been experiencing the common side effects of light headedness, nausea and a worsening in our insomnia.  We asked him what he suggested considering this reaction, thinking that he would want to talk over the options.  Instead we got an email from him saying that he wants another trial.  This time of Stelazine (Trifluoperazine) and Propranolol.  They’re rapidly running out of drugs to trial us on.  We’ve already been told by two previous psychiatrists that drugs are possibly not a viable option for us as we’re sensitive to drugs and often experience quite dramatic side effects.

We’re not sure if we want to go through another month of playing around with our brain chemistry.  At the very least we were hoping to have a discussion with him about the options.  But then, he knows we’d just go and research the drug he suggested anyway, so this way he saves himself a half hour appointment.  OK, that sounds too harsh…  He actually is a very kind man.  I think we’re just stinging a bit as it feels as if we’ve been treated as a number rather than a person.

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Now playing: Missy Higgins – Stuff and nonsense
via FoxyTunes

Reflections and realisations

Today we were doing some work on our old blog when we realised something which tells us a great deal about our coping mechanisms and psychology.  Reading through the December entries it is obvious that we were struggling with what Bob was asking us to do – evicting one of us from our internal house.  But what is also obvious is that we were fighting!  We were arguing, trying to learn, working it through.  There was humour obvious in our entries despite the confusion – for example Today’s lesson on how to bang your head against a brick wall… When we compare these entries with the entries over the last few months, it appears obvious to us that our fighting spirit has gone.  Things are no worse than they were then.  In many ways they’re better.  What has changed is our reaction to the things around us.

Potential reasons for this –

• We’ve been trialled on several different anti-anxiety medications, none of which have been effective and have often caused very nasty side effects.
• We haven’t heard from Ellie (affectionately known as the “Irish Bitch” by Carrie) since before Christmas.  Ellie takes on many of the characteristics (and accent) of an amazing Irish uncle who told brilliant stories about his times as a policeman in Rhodesia and running black market flights in and out of Africa.
• Management has been around only sparingly since that time as well.
• The restructuring at work was badly handled and our job was changed to one that we don’t get any satisfaction from.
• Our levels of exhaustion caused by chronic insomnia have not been able to be relieved by any catch-up weekend sleeps.
• We took the risk of caring for Kriss and it proved to be a disaster.
• People around us who knew about “us” mentioned that they wanted to talk to the “real T” and that they didn’t want different ones coming forward to perform their roles.  This told some of us that they weren’t wanted and were being rejected.
• We don’t have anything concrete in front of us to fight.  We don’t have the husband to get rid of, Liz doesn’t generate the anger that Bob did and we don’t care about our job.

What we’re going to do about it…  kick ourselves in the butt.  Remind our collective selves that the reason we survived that kindergarten fort, rugby clubrooms, parties etc is because we are stubborn fighters!  It’s about time we remembered that.

At the moment we need to poke and prod at ourselves to get that fighting spirit back.  We need Management, Ellie, S, Sophie and every one of us to fight back against this apathy.

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Now playing: Iggy pop – Lust for life
via FoxyTunes

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Own worst enemy

We’re currently being trialled on some medication to see if it can assist in reducing the anxiety that we have fairly constantly.  This in itself isn’t a bad thing – reducing anxiety is good.  What is a problem, is that the psychiatrist who has prescribed the medication has put it on closed control dispensing because we’re considered a suicide risk.  This means that we have to go pick-up the medication weekly.  Normally this isn’t a problem.  But last week they didn’t have enough pills to fill the prescription so told us we had to come back in a couple of days when they’d been resupplied.  Again, this wasn’t a problem.  We thought that we’d be able to just go in when the current meds finished and pick up the ones owed and the new weeks medication – it was their error for not having enough supplies on site, so we didn’t see the big deal.  Well apparently it DID matter…

1. Initially they were just going to give us the new weeks worth of medication.
2. We stupidly asked for the balance of last weeks medication.
3. Pharmacist went back to the computer to check what the balance was about.
4. She brought out the 1.5 days of medication that was the balance from last week.
5. We asked for the new weeks as well – we didn’t want to have to waste more petrol by coming back in two days.
6. Then they started on about the closed control dispensing and not being able to give the medication early, or more than a weeks worth at any one time.
7. We questioned the validity of this statement considering they were about to give us the weeks worth two days early just a few minutes ago, and it was only when we asked about the balance that this became an issue.
8. They again talked about closed control and brought out the original prescription notes from the psychiatrist.
9. We agreed that it was closed control, however it was not our fault that they couldn’t control their stock levels.
10. They talked about not being their fault and that they couldn’t not fill other peoples medication just because we might come in.

By this point we were more than a little unimpressed.  We haven’t attempted suicide in nearly a year.  Closed control is pointless – we’re librarians, we could find a recipe online easily that didn’t include taking this medication.  This medication isn’t working, so we’re jumping through hoops to obtain a medication that is doing nothing – but we need to keep taking it until we see the psychiatrist again.  At least we’re having no side effects…

After much discussion, we walked out of the pharmacy with the weeks worth of medication and the assurance from the pharmacy that they were going to call the psychiatrist to tell him that we’d come in early to pick-up the medication.  We asked if they were also going to inform him that the reason why we had to pick-up the medication early was because of their stock issues.  We were assured they would.  Doubting whether it happened…

What we found really interesting about the whole interaction is that the pharmacists immediately thought that we were saying that other peoples prescriptions shouldn’t have been filled because we were more important.  They didn’t seem to understand that we were questioning their ability to manage their own medicine stock levels.  I would hope that they gave the medication to the other people.  Again our inability to carry out basic communication.

I sometimes wonder if we get mixed up because of the internal conversations that occur.  I wonder if we forget or don’t realise that something that has been discussed internally has yet to be verbalised to the external world??

As a separate issue, we created the clip One year on… We are worried about making it live because the friend who has been strange with us, might get hurt by it.  Really annoyed with ourselves that we are changing things we should be happy about because of him.

We are our own worst enemy at times…