The ascent
If you haven't read the previous two posts, go back and read them before reading on. This is the 3rd post talking about my mental health journey.
My story continues at the point where I return home from my last semester at OU.
I came home with no real plans besides get help. Be in an environment surrounded by people who can help me and watch out for me. Lucky for me, this was as simple as moving back home. Its not always that easy for everyone, but I have a family who understands this journey. I told them what was happening with my health and my relationships and they assured me that they love and care for me and would do what they could to make sure I was doing alright. They encouraged me to do what I felt was needed to get through this.
Enter me: attempting, and failing, to schedule an appointment to see my doctor.
This process was TERRIFYING. I called the office at least 2 or 3 times telling them that I was having bad anxiety and wanted to schedule an appointment with my doctor. Now granted, my doctor is a very busy man, with a ton of patients, but each time I called they said it would be a few weeks before I could schedule something. I always passed because I couldn't wait that long. I kept calling and hoping he had a cancellation or something. My phone anxiety was UNREAL. Telling some person I didn't know, over the phone that I was depressed.... yeah that didn't really work. Well, after this happened a few times, I finally managed to say that I had depression and anxiety... I'm not sure if I just got the right person on the phone that day or if it was the depression that got their attention but this woman insisted I come in right away and even asked me if I was in need of immediate medical attention, and if I was I should call 911.
I went in to my appointment and answered all their questions about if I felt down, depressed or hopeless:not at all, a few days, more than half the days or nearly every day in the last week.
I did my best to answer all questions honestly without trying to make myself sound any more or less well off than I was.
As we've seen from the previous two blog posts I was pretty well depressed so my doctor recommended that I try medication since I had already been utilizing psychiatric services. He also recommended me a counselor at home that I could go to. Step one was to try a moderate dosage of Lexipro starting the next day.
Of course it is totally normal for medicines like this to not feel like they are working for a few weeks, so we scheduled a follow up appointment a month out with the condition that I wasn't having any negative side effects.
So, I woke up the next morning ready to tackle a new journey that might make me feel worse or would, hopefully, start making me feel better slowly. Honestly, neither of those was the case. The medicine I started taking that day made me feel completely different in under an hour. I'm not kidding you this stuff went to work right away! It is, to this day, the craziest thing I have ever experienced. Suddenly my head was quiet and didn't feel like it was buzzing constantly. This was especially weird because I didn't notice that was even a thing until it went away. The slow build up of what I can only describe as "mental noise" made it impossible to recognize as it got worse but incredibly jarring when it suddenly went away.
If you want some info on what mental noise is, this site has a really good description of what its like.
https://www.successconsciousness.com/mental-noise.htm
Everything listed there is something I experienced but also it wasn't always a tangible voice or thought. A lot of the time it felt more like 100 people in a room all talking at once to the point that you can't actually hear any one train of dialogue or thought but just the general buzzing chatter of the whole room. Have you ever seen a recording of a stage production where the audience is talking and the lights go off or the orchestra starts tuning and the chatter of the audience goes away pretty rapidly? That's exactly what this experience was like. When you're in the audience you don't realize the increasing volume of chatter as people get to their seats but when the lights go out, the noise you didn't even know was that loud suddenly goes away and you can hear the single voice of the person on stage.
That experience alone was enough for me to be completely bought in to the efficacy of this medicine.
Now I'm not going to say that the rest of my symptoms went away instantly but it was a pretty big improvement on all fronts. I finally felt like I was starting to become a normal person again.The first few days I had some mild nausea which is a super common side effect but it wasn't terrible.
I shared all of this info with my friends so that they could be on the look out for any
negative reactions to my medicine and they could understand what I had been going through. I wanted them to know why I had stopped talking to them for a few months and I knew part of my recovery was going to be doing things with them again.
Cute story time: My doctor is actually the father of one of my close friends and he had suggested to her to have me, specifically, over to their house. I kinda think he wanted to check on me but also wanted to make sure that I was getting out and doing things again. She already had plans to invite me over to help make Christmas cookies so that made it pretty easy. While I was there I stayed for dinner with her family and her dad all but force fed me more slices of pizza. I thought it was very sweet and I knew it was because he knew how much weight I had lost and that I wasn't eating regularly when I was at school. Call it a win for Dr. Dad and a win for me.
The following days consisted of working a lot, getting together with my friends, taking walks outside, and slowly feeling better and better. I was doing well with the medicine I was taking and the psychologist I was seeing, but whenever I forgot to take my medicine for a few hours after I got up, all my symptoms came back. It was pretty drastic and jarring. Once (and only once) I forgot to take my medicine and went to work. After about a half an hour of being there I called my stepdad and asked him to bring my medicine because my anxiety and mental noise was crazy bad.
The first time back to the doctor we were both really happy with my progress. We rescheduled a checkup every month for a good few months. At the second or 3rd appointment though I told him I thought the medicine was definitely working but I didn't feel like it was enough. I felt like it could be better. If I didn't take it right when I woke up in the morning I started to feel worse and worse until I took it. Sometimes it wouldn't even last me till the next morning and I would be pretty upset at night before going to bed. He bumped my dosage and I've been on that amount ever since. I started getting better and better every day. I developed healthier habits and created stronger bonds with my friends and family. I took life one day at a time until all my symptoms went away completely. I was back to being a normal human again. I started dating, I got promoted at work, my friends and I were closer than ever, and I started planning for the future.
As far as my mental health goes now now, I'm doing great. Eventually I stopped going to the psychologist because I didn't feel I needed it any more. I've tried to cut my dosage back on my medicine to the original amount but every time I do I basically turn into a raging bitch after a few days. Its really interesting because I don't get any sadness or worrying like before, I just get even more impatient than I naturally am and I get super bitchy. When I take my medicine late now, I don't even realize until about halfway through the day when I can't figure out why I can't focus, then realize I never took my medicine.
I tried, again, to cut my medicine in half recently, and I have been doing it now for about 2 months. It's actually been going really well. It's amazing how when situations in your life change, it can affect you so much. I'm going to put this one up to the new job that I really enjoy.
So, long story short... If you aren't feeling like your old self and you're thinking about trying medicine but you're scared, that's normal. Push through and try it out if you and your doctor thinks it's right for you. There's a lot of different options these days. To me, the key is being as honest as you possibly can be with your doctor and the people who will support you. I can't underscore that enough.
Honestly, as I get older I find more and more people that are struggling on their own journey. More and more people who have varying degrees of anxiety or depression. I swear there was something in the water that they fed to us Millennials.
Know that if you're going through this too, that you aren't alone and if I can make it out, so can you.
My story continues at the point where I return home from my last semester at OU.
I came home with no real plans besides get help. Be in an environment surrounded by people who can help me and watch out for me. Lucky for me, this was as simple as moving back home. Its not always that easy for everyone, but I have a family who understands this journey. I told them what was happening with my health and my relationships and they assured me that they love and care for me and would do what they could to make sure I was doing alright. They encouraged me to do what I felt was needed to get through this.
Enter me: attempting, and failing, to schedule an appointment to see my doctor.
This process was TERRIFYING. I called the office at least 2 or 3 times telling them that I was having bad anxiety and wanted to schedule an appointment with my doctor. Now granted, my doctor is a very busy man, with a ton of patients, but each time I called they said it would be a few weeks before I could schedule something. I always passed because I couldn't wait that long. I kept calling and hoping he had a cancellation or something. My phone anxiety was UNREAL. Telling some person I didn't know, over the phone that I was depressed.... yeah that didn't really work. Well, after this happened a few times, I finally managed to say that I had depression and anxiety... I'm not sure if I just got the right person on the phone that day or if it was the depression that got their attention but this woman insisted I come in right away and even asked me if I was in need of immediate medical attention, and if I was I should call 911.
I went in to my appointment and answered all their questions about if I felt down, depressed or hopeless:not at all, a few days, more than half the days or nearly every day in the last week.
I did my best to answer all questions honestly without trying to make myself sound any more or less well off than I was.
As we've seen from the previous two blog posts I was pretty well depressed so my doctor recommended that I try medication since I had already been utilizing psychiatric services. He also recommended me a counselor at home that I could go to. Step one was to try a moderate dosage of Lexipro starting the next day.
Aside: If you aren't up to date on your psychiatric drugs, let me be the first to tell you that researchers have made a lot of strides in this area in the last 10 years. Teens and young adults are still at higher risk for bad side effects but that mostly comes with inconsistent dosage. So if you are on any kind of anti-anxiety/depression medicine it is absolutely imperative that you take it consistently! And if you have issues with that, tell your doctor! Don't lie to them because you are ashamed that you aren't taking your medicine consistently! There are other medicines that they can prescribe you that stay in your system longer so that you don't get the roller coaster effect if you forget to take your medicine or don't take it til later. In this situation, more than any other, you have to force yourself to be completely honest with your doctor so that you can get the best care possible.
Of course it is totally normal for medicines like this to not feel like they are working for a few weeks, so we scheduled a follow up appointment a month out with the condition that I wasn't having any negative side effects.
So, I woke up the next morning ready to tackle a new journey that might make me feel worse or would, hopefully, start making me feel better slowly. Honestly, neither of those was the case. The medicine I started taking that day made me feel completely different in under an hour. I'm not kidding you this stuff went to work right away! It is, to this day, the craziest thing I have ever experienced. Suddenly my head was quiet and didn't feel like it was buzzing constantly. This was especially weird because I didn't notice that was even a thing until it went away. The slow build up of what I can only describe as "mental noise" made it impossible to recognize as it got worse but incredibly jarring when it suddenly went away.
If you want some info on what mental noise is, this site has a really good description of what its like.
https://www.successconsciousness.com/mental-noise.htm
Everything listed there is something I experienced but also it wasn't always a tangible voice or thought. A lot of the time it felt more like 100 people in a room all talking at once to the point that you can't actually hear any one train of dialogue or thought but just the general buzzing chatter of the whole room. Have you ever seen a recording of a stage production where the audience is talking and the lights go off or the orchestra starts tuning and the chatter of the audience goes away pretty rapidly? That's exactly what this experience was like. When you're in the audience you don't realize the increasing volume of chatter as people get to their seats but when the lights go out, the noise you didn't even know was that loud suddenly goes away and you can hear the single voice of the person on stage.
That experience alone was enough for me to be completely bought in to the efficacy of this medicine.
Now I'm not going to say that the rest of my symptoms went away instantly but it was a pretty big improvement on all fronts. I finally felt like I was starting to become a normal person again.The first few days I had some mild nausea which is a super common side effect but it wasn't terrible.
I shared all of this info with my friends so that they could be on the look out for any
negative reactions to my medicine and they could understand what I had been going through. I wanted them to know why I had stopped talking to them for a few months and I knew part of my recovery was going to be doing things with them again.
Cute story time: My doctor is actually the father of one of my close friends and he had suggested to her to have me, specifically, over to their house. I kinda think he wanted to check on me but also wanted to make sure that I was getting out and doing things again. She already had plans to invite me over to help make Christmas cookies so that made it pretty easy. While I was there I stayed for dinner with her family and her dad all but force fed me more slices of pizza. I thought it was very sweet and I knew it was because he knew how much weight I had lost and that I wasn't eating regularly when I was at school. Call it a win for Dr. Dad and a win for me.
The following days consisted of working a lot, getting together with my friends, taking walks outside, and slowly feeling better and better. I was doing well with the medicine I was taking and the psychologist I was seeing, but whenever I forgot to take my medicine for a few hours after I got up, all my symptoms came back. It was pretty drastic and jarring. Once (and only once) I forgot to take my medicine and went to work. After about a half an hour of being there I called my stepdad and asked him to bring my medicine because my anxiety and mental noise was crazy bad.
The first time back to the doctor we were both really happy with my progress. We rescheduled a checkup every month for a good few months. At the second or 3rd appointment though I told him I thought the medicine was definitely working but I didn't feel like it was enough. I felt like it could be better. If I didn't take it right when I woke up in the morning I started to feel worse and worse until I took it. Sometimes it wouldn't even last me till the next morning and I would be pretty upset at night before going to bed. He bumped my dosage and I've been on that amount ever since. I started getting better and better every day. I developed healthier habits and created stronger bonds with my friends and family. I took life one day at a time until all my symptoms went away completely. I was back to being a normal human again. I started dating, I got promoted at work, my friends and I were closer than ever, and I started planning for the future.
I tried, again, to cut my medicine in half recently, and I have been doing it now for about 2 months. It's actually been going really well. It's amazing how when situations in your life change, it can affect you so much. I'm going to put this one up to the new job that I really enjoy.
So, long story short... If you aren't feeling like your old self and you're thinking about trying medicine but you're scared, that's normal. Push through and try it out if you and your doctor thinks it's right for you. There's a lot of different options these days. To me, the key is being as honest as you possibly can be with your doctor and the people who will support you. I can't underscore that enough.
Honestly, as I get older I find more and more people that are struggling on their own journey. More and more people who have varying degrees of anxiety or depression. I swear there was something in the water that they fed to us Millennials.
Know that if you're going through this too, that you aren't alone and if I can make it out, so can you.
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