About a month ago, I posted my “H is for Health” post. I was not feeling particularly positive at the time about my overall health, but I would say I’m seeing some minor AND major improvements. Stay with me, it’s a slow climb to the end.

My lower back has generally been behaving itself. My upper back on the right shoulder is a little stiffer than I would like, and I find it hard to make it release on my own. But despite that, I feel like I’m moving better generally. I was out at the store on the weekend, just picking up some stuff, and it is the 2nd or 3rd time in the last two weeks where I just felt myself moving well without a sense of trudging. It’s not all about my back, but more so just my torso.

I’m down 20 pounds in the last six months, and while that might have been a bit worrisome on its own, there’s a reason for it — and no, not particularly tied to things I’m doing well. My body didn’t like the weight and my diabetes was adjusting my internal chemistry for liquids and weight to adjust. Which also jacked my A1C number. I haven’t tested it in a while, things didn’t align for certain lab work timings, so almost two years. My 6.5/6.6 to 7.1/7.2 range just jumped to 10.2. Yeah, that needs to be addressed immediately, so first stop is bumping up my Metformin to adjust (I was on a low dose of 250mg per day, will eventually get to 1000mg for now, and 2000 if need be). My stomach may not like the increased dose to start, but I’ll get there. I also have a new auto-monitor to check blood more regularly which I’ll start this weekend. I feel like there’s a plan, and I haven’t been feeling the effects too much lately, except for increased urination and thirst.

My blood pressure has crept up in recent months, but it is the first number more so than the lower number, so nobody is worried about it too much. Still within manageable levels and if we fix the A1C, some of the other stuff will adjust. All good for now.

I have new prescriptions for my compression socks and liners, and I went to see a foot doctor (I can’t tell if he’s a chiropodist or a podiatrist), and they trimmed my toenails into a good form, we’ll monitor, and I found out why I wasn’t making any headway earlier. I was using a basic cream for athlete’s foot, but that isn’t what the problem is; I don’t know what it is instead, just that the cream won’t solve it. Equally, I was putting moisture on my feet like I was told, and that was apparently only making it worse, not better. If I use a moisturizer, the fungus gets worse; if I use a fungicide, my feet will get dried out and crack more. These are minor inconveniences in the overall scheme of things, some people go for years never bothering with any treatment, but I want to clear it up, so I needed a compounding pharmacy to give me an expensive cream that a) has the fungicide, b) has a moisturizer, and c) has an activation ingredient that lets both work at the same time with the right dosages rather than diluting each other. It took the pharmacy and the doctor two weeks to figure it out and get the right ingredients, and it will take about 2 months to clear it up. In the meantime, the doctor will monitor my toes and let me know if I need to do anything (probably not).

My CPAP is working great, but my sleep is messed up temporarily by a new drug that I’m taking. More on that in a minute. I’m still waiting to be contacted so I can get a new machine, but no news yet.

My hearing is still pending assessment, too many other things going on in the last month.

I went to the dentist on the 23rd of January, ready to go for oral sedation plus an IV. Except the new nurse said the guidelines don’t allow those two together. So they argued for two hours and I went home unserved. Fun times. Went back last week, everything is clarified, back to the old nurse, and I had it done. I was NOT out as much as I would have liked, and the amnesic effect did not happen like the previous time, but I did sleep through most of it in the end. Some bumps, some bruises to the ego, but done. Or half-done. Double root canal, multiple cavities, mouth is WAY better than it was, but I still need some crowns done. I’m curious to see if I can do that without sedation. I know, that doesn’t sound consistent with what I said before about my complete terror in the dental chair.

How much am I still me if I’m a better version of myself?

Time to talk about the major change. The stuff above? Peanuts. Background noise. Fluff almost.

My mental health has changed dramatically in the last six weeks. I mentioned previously that I started an antidepressant in January, called Escitalopram Oxalate. I was optimistic it could take the edge off my stress, which it has, but it is more than that. Much more.

Stepping back for a second, I had wondered going in if I would notice a difference. And my sister-in-law suggested that perhaps I might not notice at first myself, but that I could perhaps ask Jacob and Andrea if they noticed a difference. Jacob hasn’t really, but Andrea has. But I did too.

The first time was a discussion at work. I have a coworker who has “tone” issues, easily recognized by me as I’ve had the same problem in my career at times. I’m “better” but far from perfect. They were semi-unintentionally telling me that I wasn’t doing my job right, that another manager wasn’t doing their job right, and we should do it the way they thought it should be done. Not intentionally malicious, by the way. Just really terrible tone, and a hop, skip and a jump past the line of appropriateness. Normally, that would annoy the f*** out of me, and I would probably react harshly. Not over the top, but clearly with an edge in my voice. Nope. Didn’t interrupt, listened to their view, remained calm the whole time, and responded as if they hadn’t been totally over the line. No issue, didn’t phase me. And I even noticed myself that I wasn’t reacting. Almost like I was stepping outside myself to say, “Hey, dude, wtf? They’re being rude AF, and nothing???”. Weird.

That was a Thursday. On Saturday morning, I went to run some errands. First stop: Staples, to drop off a phone to be sent back to work for Andrea. Waited in line patiently, got to the front of the line, and the person serving me got pulled off to solve some extra problem, leaving me sitting waiting to be served for at least five minutes. Then I went to Shoppers for a prescription, which they couldn’t do, needed compounding, but I had to wait about 10 minutes to find that out, even though it was expected. I tried grabbing lunch at Swiss Chalet, but waited about 8 minutes to be seated only to be told they only had one server on, but it wouldn’t take any longer. That’s straight BS, and I pushed back, politely to say, no, sorry, that’s not true. I’ve been here before with limited servers, I don’t have 90 minutes for what I wanted to be a quick lunch. So I left. Grabbed some take out, went to the compounding pharmacy. Waited about 15 minutes to talk to the pharmacist who was on the phone with a customer who sounded like the customer from h*** who needed a lot of hand-holding, as we all do at times. Finished with them, headed home. It should have taken less than an hour, not including lunch. I was gone almost 2.5h, with barely a ripple for lunch from a drive-through. At no point in that trip was I impatient. Didn’t care. Take your time, I’m not in a rush. Cuz I wasn’t. Nothing phased me.

Fast-forward to the day with the dentist. Andrea and I were there for two hours while they tried to figure out what drugs they could give me. The nurse was trying to convince me to try just the IV, which I had done in December for a cleaning, and it was barely enough. She argued with me and tried to convince me to “try it and see” for almost 30 minutes while I calmly told her the answer was a flat no, not happening. She was arguing with everyone, not just me, but she literally had me in the chair telling me what I should do for about 30 minutes straight. Normally? I think I would have lasted about 5 minutes. Then I would have booked. If I’m the patient / customer and you’re not listening, I’m outta there. But I didn’t. I just calmly kept telling her, I get what you’re saying, but I know myself best, and that ain’t going to work for me. I barely made it through two weeks later with BOTH drugs; one wouldn’t have been close. But, more pointedly, I noticed I wasn’t going nuclear, and asked Andrea afterwards about it too. Did she notice it at the time? Yes, she had noticed, and agreed that I was completely unnaturally calm for me, even though she could tell I was really frustrated. Not “normal” me at all. (As an aside, after two hours, I went out into the waiting room, pulled my hoodie down over my head for 5-10 minutes so I could just shut out the world. I had reached my processing limit, when normally I would have been irate and booking it out of there.)

A better version of me, perhaps, at least for the patient and calm side.. The me I can be when the edge doesn’t take over. I’m not totally sold on that analysis yet.

For the technical side for a second, the drug category is SSRI — Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) which are considered the first thing you try, relatively safe, and non-addictive. They aren’t designed to treat an immediate problem, and take 4-8 weeks to fully take hold. I just happened to start seeing some benefits at the 3w mark. According to a Dr. Google/AI summary, the SSRIs “block the reabsorption of serotonin into neurons, and increased serotonin levels improve communication between brain cells, regulating mood and “turning down the volume” on anxious thoughts.” The med literature calls it induced apathy. In short, I just don’t care! 🙂

More seriously, I would describe it almost like I get to CHOOSE how to react to caring about something a bit more. There IS a downside. The edge that got toned down also took some of my internal edge away. Which means if I’m being a giant lazy ass, I don’t have the edge built in to force myself to do stuff. For example, I have a D&D group on Tuesdays, but my social introversion is low on energy at the moment with work, health, Jacob’s stuff, and planning retirement, so I’ve been unable to push through the block to join the group.

Other projects are going a bit better. I was worried it was making me apathetic across a broad group of hobbies (a legit risk to the SSRIs), but I did a bunch of stuff on my website and book reviews, a hyper focus session on the weekend, and all good. I’m still obsessing about stupid stuff, so I’m still me. 🙂

But the biggest example of a change was on this past weekend. Frequently, particularly in the winter, I dread going out to run errands. If I can pull up in front of a store and Andrea can go in while I wait, awesome. If I have to park and then trudge in my boots through the parking lot, go through the store, meh. Anyway, I did the dental surgery on Friday, was feeling better generally, even just cuz it was over and wasn’t a complete nightmare (not perfect, but livable) and had to pick up Andrea from the hair salon, then off to Shoppers for some prescription changes (I spend way too much time at the pharmacy!). We got to the store, and I didn’t even think about having Andrea go in. I just parked and said, “I’ve got it, be back soon”. Two prescriptions later, some stuff for Jacob and me, I’m heading back out and thinking a bit about me, my changes, my meds, etc. And something was different. My upper body was moving well. My brain was relatively quiet. I was ticking things off my to do list.

I realized that I was feeling happy. Not content, not mild joy or appreciative of things, not amused. My brain was chirping away, my feet weren’t trudging. I’m not sure I know this feeling well. Outside of big moments like weddings or births, or seeing Jacob enjoy seeing mountains in BC, I wouldn’t say happiness is the normal feeling. I feel lots of things all day long, maybe happy about certain things. But happy just to “be”? That’s relatively new. I don’t know if I’m describing it quite right. It feels like I’m saying my life sucks normally or something, but it’s not that at all. I am far from “absence of stress or care”, but the normal feeling that I’ve had for most of my adult life of carrying too much at times seems lifted. If grief is understood metaphorically as throwing a blanket over emotions, these meds are metaphorically doing the opposite. And if you asked me two months ago if I did get to this stage, I think I would have said I would have cried if I was feeling it. Instead, I was just bubbly. Weird.

I’m six weeks in, and feel like I’m finally able to catch sight of that better version of me that I’ve often dreamed of, set goals for, encouraged, pursued. Oh sure, the insomnia is kicking my butt along with initial dizziness and a host of other things, but I’ll figure it out. So far? It’s a success.

I’ve even had someone at work who I don’t know well comment that I seemed amazingly calm lately in the face of overwhelming change. Yep. It’s drugs. I’m on drugs.