If any of it helps, I'm glad.

I found it helpful to store in the back of my mind too. Thanks, WindSparrow.

All best thoughts for you, Steph. You are a good person, and very brave in the face of huge obstacles and events. May you and your therapist figure out how to help you believe that.

Gar, sending you ~ma that everything works out for the best.

why is it that the people you wish were dying to talk to you are never the ones that are?

You know, every time I heard that line, I sang it and punched the air like a badass. Until about 2 months ago. Now every single time it makes me cry. I can't imagine not feeling like this. I don't think things will ever, ever be better.

If it has been better, then it can be better again. This isn't the way things have always been, so it won't be the way things always will be. Your brain chemistry is making this happen, and there are medication and non-medication ways to get it back to the way it was.

ION, speaking of medication, my blood test results came back and showed high trigylicerides, again. The doctor sent me a message, saying I could either improve my diet and exercise five times a week, or I could go on medication. Exercising five times a week is simply not going to happen, and I know my family history, and my triglycerides have been high for a while, so I said I'd go on medication. Note that I've been on Lipitor for years, because of totally screwed up HDLs and LDLs, and that this doctor prescribed me a refill of the Lipitor a week ago. So, I figured that, when she said medication, she meant one of the drugs that's specifically for triglycerides, since all the rest of my lipid number are great. She messages me back, and tells me that she's going to put me on a cholesterol medicine called Lipitor. At the same time, I get a message from CVS, asking me why my doctor is sending in another prescription for Lipitor when she just sent one in last week. New prescription and old prescription were at the same dosage. So I message the doctor back and say that I'm already on Lipitor. She responds as if she totally knew this, and that she meant that she was increasing my dose.

So, in other words, she just prescribed me a medication without even looking at my chart to see what other medications I was already on. I really liked the first doctor I saw at this practice, the one that Steph recommended, but then that doctor left and I got reassigned to this one, and I think this is the last straw, and I'm finding a new doctor. Because, really, that's just negligent. I'm also nearly certain that, even though I've been seeing her for six months, she still hasn't looked up what EDS is. (She'd never heard of it when I first mentioned it.)

Oh yes, Hil, new doctor, stat. That is just not on. I've had doctors do that with asthma drugs and ... nope nope nope-ity nope.

I think I might have to stay with this doctor at least until my rheumatologist appointment in December, if I want to keep getting pain meds. She gave me a post-dated prescription last week that I can fill in a few days, and that will get me almost to the rheumatologist appointment if I take one a day, and will last me until then if I have some days when I don't take one.

Yeah, Hil. I had a doctor do that with my antidepressants. Not acceptable.

Steph,

my first reaction when you said you were breaking all of your electronics was...seriously...is she developing super powers? I may be watching too much superhero TV.

then after all the other posts I wanted to tell you that I take 4 ADs and an anti-anxiety med everyday. They are all low doses and they each help with something the others don't. I need them all to function and sometimes have to double up on one or 2 to counteract something, with full permission from my doctor.

I don't know if it helps to know that. but, without them I'd literally be dead, probably by my own hand. So, better living through better chemistry is my survival skill.

Medication is a difficult and very personal choice, and affects people in so many different ways it's hard to point to a particularly consistent experience. I had never been on brain medication until 2012, when all my things started to go off the rails. So many times I had been in a supportive role with my friends, with depression and anxiety and other things, but I didn't really understand what the full definitions of these conditions were until I started being a valuated for them. And when That got extended to attention deficit, I knew instinctively that something in my brain had been missing.

That thing was dopamine. The educated guess is that my dopamine has always been very low. One day with adderall and I was almost crying because I didn't know there was a way to feel how neurotypical people describe feeling.

I have med for depression, one for anxiety, one for sleep, one for adhd. And one for when things go utterly pear shaped. I went twenty eight years without ever having a brain med to having a suite of them. And I am materially worsened when I don't comply with the regimen.

It can be a harrowing, personal choice. But for me it was not just tunnel-light. It was a train picking me up and whisking me out of the dark.