 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I feel like I haven't done anything today, but I clearly have. I've: * caught up on sleep (badly needed after 3 days at College) * put two loads of clean laundry away * sorted out and run one load of dirty laundry * sorted out but not yet run another load of dirty laundry * gone out to vote (and voted) * done a teeny bit of recycling * filled in the form for why I need disabled tickets for the Download Festival, which is awaiting a doctor's letter * found a birthday card for Richard's sister because he couldn't find ANYTHING in the shops that didn't "actively offend" him * filled in the mitigating circumstances form for College, to explain why I haven't done my coursework yet * found out that my deadline is tomorrow/later today (depending on how you think of it) 4th May, and not 7th May like I thought, so it's just as well I started filling the form in when I did!! Now I feel exhausted and emotionally wrung-out, but far too stressed to sleep yet. I think I'll go & kill things in Skyrim, or read a book or something. Tags: aargh, college, mental health
Current Mood:  stressed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I am stressed and headachy. If anyone else is also feeling this way, please enjoy this photo of a bear falling from a tree onto a mattress, with accompanying story. Machine pareidolia - exploring the tendency for humans to see faces in inanimate objects. (I'm curious - do people with faceblindness also recognise faces in inanimate objects?). Very nerdy. If you prefer the art version to the computer science version, please enjoy the Hello Little Fella! pool on Flickr. My favourite so far is this (though this, er, human brain has to be a close second). I have a particular reason, even beyond loving Portal 2, for approving of the Perpetual Testing Initiative video. And yes, it HAS SUBTITLES. I also have lots of political-type links that are anger-making, but my head hurts too much to want to inflict those on anyone else just now. Tags: links, mammals, video games, videos
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I am currently "enjoying" a "SURPRISE!" period :( Thinking about it, it's right if you ignore when my last one happened (which was ridiculously late) and instead count 2 x 28 days from the one before. Apparently, my body/hormones are going for some sort of extreme 5 week/3 week cycle now. Nonetheless, I have wasted the whole day asleep, and my sleep pattern may indeed be as broken as it was before. We shall see. A surprise period explains why I was so utterly exhausted & tearful the other night - it was clearly PMS. I prefer that as an explanation to "my drugs have stopped working". Still, I really feel like all I do is have menstrual cycles these days. I'm either having a period or having mittelschmerz or waiting for my period to start. And I'm sure I have at least another 20 years of this to look forward to! Yay! In other news, I need good wishes for the safe location of my lab chair. It was "temporarily" living in my office because there wasn't enough space in the lab, and I hadn't started doing any synthesis yet. Then "they" made us move office - twice, in the space of a week. I didn't bother to go in during this because my sleep patterns were screwed up; also, the email I got was after the event, which pissed me off since if they'd sent it 12 hours earlier, I could have moved my own stuff. Dragged myself in yesterday (which I could do with congratulations for) only to find they have actually bought us new desks!! and almost all of the furniture from the old office has disappeared. (We still have the same crappy broken chairs though - I'd have preferred to keep my old desk and have a new chair). I've lost the contents of my old desk because the drawers were locked - though it's only a box of tea, packet of paracetamol & box of sanitary towels, so not the end of the world. But I'm rather concerned about what's happened to the lab chair - which belongs to me not to College, cost rather a lot of money, and was funded through Student Finance England. They're not going to pay for another chair if some idiots at College have thrown the old one out! And no, I don't need advice about this just yet. I know who to talk to. It's just an underlying worry to go on top of all my usual anxiety. Tags: icky girlstuff, pms, sleep disorders, stupid departmental politics
Current Mood:  sore
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Okay. My sleep "pattern" is now so firmly lodged in upside-down mode that I'm going to have to take Serious Action to fix it. I am going to rush through a chronotherapy sleep reset cycle WAY faster than you're supposed to, because the other option is continuing to be non-functional. Yay. So if you happen to phone, text, or email the address with my real name in it this week, please do so during the following times of day: Today until 12 pm. Wednesday midnight until 3pm. Thursday 3am until 6pm. Friday 6am until 9pm. Times may be reorganized later in the week depending on how things go! Also, those of you who live outside the UK will have to convert this to your local time... so to avoid confusion, just use my "baratron" or "astra" email addresses, which don't make my phone beep! And yes, I could set the options on my phone to turn off beeping on all emails and texts... but do you honestly think I'll remember that when I've been awake 15 hours and am dropping on my feet? When I'm overtired, I can barely manage coherent English, let alone thought...!</p> Posted via LiveJournal app for Android. Tags: sleep disorders, via ljapp
Current Mood:  irritable
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So wrecked right now. So very emo. Went to the doctor on Friday 23rd March to discover that the reasons why she wanted me to reduce my dose of trazodone had nothing to do with its sedating effect. No, the reasons given were: a) It's an "older medication" and now that the "older generation of GPs" has retired, there "aren't enough people in the practice who are familiar with prescribing it". Um. I don't know what you think about this, but my reaction was ( Read more... ) b) It's the last medication that was added, so it should be the first medication to be reduced. ( Read more... )So, yeah, I am pissed off. Increased my dose of trazodone back up to 100 mg, and started feeling better almost immediately - but now I'm back to feeling shitty again, and don't know why. Definitely anxious. I "have" to be reading fiction or playing video games all the time because I stress out as soon as I think about things. My sleep patterns are entirely dysfunctional and inverted relative to the time zone that I'm in. I think that I need to find a new physiotherapist (yes, physio- not psycho-) since my old one retired, and the NHS in this area don't have anyone specifically trained in chronic hyperventilation. I've reached the point where I go to bed and can't fall asleep for hours because I can't relax because I can't breathe. And then I can't wake up because I've been having nightmares all night because my breathing is messed up. It's all very circular. Also I've been doing a bit more tutoring for money (2 students per week rather than 1 - but that's 8 hours per week rather than 2), and it's also fairly obvious that the extra talking is not helping at all. I explained very clearly before I started why I couldn't go to the student's house, but now I'm getting emotional blackmail on me to go there. This should be easy enough to dispense with logic, but the mother "conveniently" loses the ability to understand English. I don't need this shit! I'm pretty sure that the key is better breathing. I think that's at the root of everything. But oh - how stressful it is having to try to find a new physiotherapist when you're already too stressed to function :( Tags: mental health, sleep disorders
Current Mood:  depressed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Have not been to the doctor - today was her day off, & I thought it was entirely pointless seeing someone else. The problem with doctors is that more than half of their notes are in their heads rather than on the computer, so I/we/another doctor can guess at her reasoning for changing the drug dose as much as we want - doesn't mean we'll be right.
I have spoken to the pharmacist, who's been making up my prescriptions for a decade, and he says that a month is long enough to be sure it's not working. So I will try to get an appointment tomorrow, which means being awake at 8.30am. *Properly* awake, since it'll either involve going there, or being held in a queue on the phone. Last month when I tried to call, I kept falling asleep while in the queue, which was no use for anything. Posted via LiveJournal app for Android. Tags: drugs being annoying, mental health, via ljapp
Current Mood:  blah
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last time I posted, I don't think I was very successful in getting across just how miserable I was. Only got two comments, and that almost made me feel worse. Which is pathetic, I know, but such is bad brain chemistry. I am still miserable. I don't think this lowered dose of trazodone is sensible. But I also don't know how long I should try it for before giving it up as a bad idea. Clearly, if I've been on a dose for 8 years, then 1-2 weeks isn't going to be long enough for my brain to revert to what it should be doing unassisted. It's been a month now, and not only am I depressed, but I have my horrible PreMenstrual Dysphoric Disorder back as well - self-loathing and body-hatred. For the past couple of days I've been feeling so dreadful that I couldn't face doing anything, including reading fiction or playing video games. Instead I've been sitting on the sofa cuddling Richard while he played Skyrim. I suppose I need to go back to the doctor. This is hard. I wish my old doctor had never retired :( I also need some interaction with other humans, but this is also hard considering that I can't face phoning anyone, and have nothing to talk about. And I'm miserable enough to feel guilty for writing this self-indulgent whining while other people have actual reasons for being depressed. Eugh. Feel free to offer *hugs* or blank comments if you want to express sympathy but don't know what to say. Would also welcome supportive comments about dragging myself back to the doctor, and gifts of spoons. Tags: drugs being annoying, mental health, moaning, pms
Current Mood: depressed
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wow. I am so flaky. It is nearly 7 am, and I am still awake because I haven't done anything useful today. My brain isn't in a very good place. My "new" GP (well, okay, I've been seeing her for 9 months, but that's still new, especially as I don't go to the doctor every single month) suggested I should come off trazodone, since it has a sedating effect which could be making my chronic fatigue worse. Normally I leave medication changes until holidays or other times when I don't have work to do, but I agreed to do it right away because I didn't think trazodone was doing anything for me *. MORE FOOL ME. So I've spent the week getting increasingly tearful and unable to cope. I've stopped crashing out and being comatose for 12 hours on end, or having incredibly weird, vivid dreams that make me wake up exhausted from tossing and turning - but I can't stay asleep for more than 2 hours at a time either. And I feel slightly as though my head is about to fall off, all my skin is uncomfortable, and every so often I drift a few inches out of my body. Not as badly as proper, depressive depersonalisation episodes - but still not exactly pleasant. I'm going to continue with my current trazodone dose for another couple of weeks, until either the discontinuation syndrome goes away, or I entirely lose the ability to cope. I'm not sure which will happen first. (I wish it was easier to titrate drug doses - chopping a dose from 100 mg to 50 mg is quite a big jump. Would've been easier if a smaller decrease was possible). Also, my vitamin D level was 41 nmol/L in my most recent test. (It was 57 nmol/L in the summer, and that was still bad - 75 nmol/L or more is generally considered as the bottom end of "normal", and lately some doctors have started recommending 100 nmol/L as the minimum). The doctor started quizzing me about compliance with the 800 i.u. per day of vitamin D that she told me to take - she honestly thought I was missing it out. I pointed out that I've been taking 1250 i.u. per day because of the amount that was already in my multivitamin, and she suggested 2000 i.u. per day for the next 6 months. Blah! Fortunately, I finally found a source for vegan vitamin D3. The different forms of vitamin D are closely-related steroid compounds, and there's some controversy about whether D2 (ergocalciferol, derived from plants) is as good as D3 (cholecalciferol) made in animal skin. Obviously, it's D3 that our bodies actually use. On the basis that everything I eat is fortified with vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and yet I was still horribly deficient, I've been taking D3 derived from lanolin in sheep's wool for the past few months year, since there weren't any vegan forms of D3 on the market. But apparently it can be produced by lichens. GO LICHENS! * I haven't been on a single antidepressant in years - my old GP was a great believer in taking several different drugs on lower doses to get the best balance between positive useful effects and bad side-effects. Tags: blood test results, chronic fatigue, drugs being annoying, mental health, science
Current Mood: aggravated
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Also, if you're wondering what I'm doing up at 8.30 in the morning, I'm having "fun" with Powerpoint. Usually I'd use OpenOffice, but for the presentation I'm giving on Thursday, I'm "not allowed" to plug my laptop in to their projector as it will take too long for each student's laptop to be connected and disconnected. So I have to transfer my presentation to their computer using a memory stick, which means I have to use fucking Powerpoint. Since Office 2007, the Mac versions are substantially more usable than the PC versions since Apple "banned" the stupid "ribbon", but Powerpoint in particular is still in "burn it with fire" territory. You're regimentedly forced to use THEIR themes (I suppose geniuses can make their own, but it seemed like it would take far more effort than it's worth), and it's a ridiculous pain in the arse just to do something simple like have 3 frames on the screen instead of 2. I've worked out how to do it, but... ugh. 20 minutes ago, I was cursing because I deleted a row to make some more space, and it randomly resized my slide from my choice of 24 pt to *26 pt* to use up the "wasted" space! I NEEDED that space to type another sentence in! I guess if I'd ignored it, it would have resized the text back again - but really, it shouldn't do that automatically! There should be an option somewhere... but I did look, and couldn't see anything obvious. It's weird that I love my Xbox 360 so much when I generally loathe everything else that Microsoft have ever done. Well, that's not true - Office 95 and Windows XP were both pretty good. It just all went to pot after that. In my opinion. Obviously.Tags: literature report, not geeky enough it seems, presentations
Current Mood: irritated
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Richard & I were successfully married last Wednesday at about 3pm. The Very Difficult relatives did not attend, the Difficult Relatives mostly behaved themselves, and we had twice as many friends there as we'd been expecting to have - so it was a rather good day. Apart from the fact I was feeling ill and in pain for a while at the beginning, but that was bearable. A couple of people said it was the least stressful wedding they'd ever been to, which is sweet and amusing. The highly religious aunt has told the entire family how thoughtful we were of people's differing religious sensibilities. Yay. Photos exist, but need extensive Photoshopping before they can go online. The lighting in the registry office was bizarre. The photos in the room we got married in are all too red, and the photos taken in the hallway of the building have everyone alarmingly green-tinged like aliens. It's something I can do, but I need time and spoons to pick out the best photos and do the colour correction. Also, the more people that are in the photograph, the more likely it is to be unflattering to someone - nothing much you can do about that, though. Nothing has actually changed in our relationship, which I'm pleased about. Some people do feel different when they get married, but we didn't think we would. I think some people put too much thought into planning the wedding and not enough into the marriage. I hope we've got that balance right. People have been embarrassingly generous with presents. We need to write thank you letters soon. However, right now I'm busy stressing about the presentation that I need to give next week that doesn't even exist yet - 10 minutes with no more than 7 Powerpoint slides and 5 minutes for questions, in front of as much of the whole department can be bothered to turn up, and assessed by the Graduate Committee Of Doom. Argh. Still not very functional from the S.A.D. - I'm up now because I am most able to do work when I'm in bed with the laptop and Richard is asleep next to me. He's a very calming wuzzie. Tags: college, seasonal affective disorder, wedding, wuzzie
Current Mood:  anxious
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Back at home, doing last-minute wedding preparations. Things that have annoyed me today: 1) The booklet on how to get married provided by Hammersmith & Fulham Council specifically says " If you would like a particular piece of music that may be 'special' to the two of you, please bring it along to the register office before the day of your marriage." The booklet on weddings, which I don't have right in front of me to quote, even says that music must be approved in advance by the Senior Registrar! So why, when I turned up with a CD today, was I told that I could have just brought it tomorrow? 2) Whole Foods in Kensington were being sucky. Last Tuesday or Wednesday, I went there to enquire about how to order cakes. I wanted to place an order for 2 x 7" vegan chocolate fudge cakes. I was told by the Bakery assistant that not only was there not a form to fill in, but they always make several of those cakes fresh every day so there is no need to order them. Well, today I went, and there was all of ONE 7" vegan chocolate fudge cake. As a result, there is Not Enough cake. Grrr. 3) Richard forgot to buy (or tell me to buy) a pocket watch. So now he's complaining that he can't fit his wristwatch under the strange sleeves of his wedding outfit, and it's too late to do anything about it. I tried looking for pocket watches online, and the cheapest ones available in shops which exist in Kingston were £150 (and quite ugly). I only know two people who might have one to borrow, and one of them lives too far away to be any help. For people who want to know why anyone needs a watch at a wedding, Richard always needs a watch. It's a Richard-thing. He feels undressed without one and indeed, often walks around the house wearing only underpants, a watch and his ring. 4) Our menu, which looked so good on A4 paper, looks awful on A5 paper. A5 is half the size of A4 - I've gone from formatting it as a flat, double-sided sheet to a four-sided booklet. But it just looks ugly. I have to figure that out before I can go to bed. 5) I have period pain. Gah.\ 12 hours to go... Tags: annoyances, icky girlstuff, moaning, wedding, wuzzie
Current Mood: irritated
Current Music: Special Effects - Freezepop
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
content
surprised
amused
Previous![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.6){kind=small}
