Nine Months After Diagnosis
Three months ago, when last I wrote an entry in this journal (Six Months), I had just been put back on Celexa, with no mood stabilizer. Depression was my daily adversary. I was planning to call Dr. Meyer and tell him that my mood was not improving.
When I did speak to the doctor, he doubled the dosage of Celexa to 20 mg per day, while maintaining Trazodone, which I need to help me sleep, at 50 mg per night. As outlined in my article Bah, Humbug!, I made several "Winter Resolutions" to help myself get through the dark months of the year:
- Shop Online for Christmas - I did this.
- Be Prepared for Christmas by defusing predictable tension situations - I did this, too.
- Take My Meds faithfully - I did this for awhile, but since have slipped as far as the daily vitamin and fish oil supplements the doctor ordered.
- Walk daily - this didn't last once the weather turned really, really cold. I just hate walking on the treadmill!
- Don't Give In. I didn't give in.
I screamed a little, too - especially when my PC's manufacturer messed up the replacement order and took five days longer than necessary to send me the new hard drive (which was under warranty). The part was ready to ship on December 17th, but then it sat in their shipping department until the 22nd. In the meantime, I did a lot of reading.
Receiving the new drive on December 23rd meant that I couldn't devote all my time immediately to resurrecting my computer. There was this holiday in the way. But a miracle occurred ...
Christmas was pleasant!
I had not enjoyed a Christmas very much since the death of my fiance in December of 1992, and even less since my father's death in 1996. But this year was different. Some things were done differently that reduced stresses from prior years. And I was feeling better.
After Christmas, I got to work on the computer. It cost a small fortune to get the data recovered from the crashed drive (if you are reading this, and you do not back up frequently - DO IT!). I had to reinstall 95% of my programs. I got part way through this process and decided that the 3.2 GB hard drive they had sent me was just too small, even though I have a 6 GB slave drive, and it was time to get more storage. I bought a 13.6 GB drive - and started over AGAIN.
During all this time, I only came close to crying once - on the Tuesday when the Gateway representative told me my new hard drive had been ready to ship since Friday and she didn't know why it was still sitting there. All things considered, the fact that I never actually cried, or had hysterics, or found myself staring blankly at the TV without knowing what I was watching, was a tremendous improvement.
What I was NOT doing was losing any weight. In fact, I began to gain again, up to 180 pounds (remember, my ideal weight is 135 pounds or so). Walking in rotten winter weather just was not happening.
Then in early January we got a card from The Sergeant's Program addressed to "Resident," telling me to get my present-opening, cookie-munching butt out to exercise class. Procrastinator that I am, a few weeks passed before I got around to calling the number, and the first class had already started. The military-style approach appealed to me; the 6:15 a.m. starting time did NOT! After all, I am a night person. My sleep schedule had steadied down to a nice 2 a.m. to noon, and I liked it.
But the Sarge was a great salesman, and I wanted to be sold. He talked me into going for a fitness evaluation a few days later, at 7:15 a.m.
Getting up that early was a real strain, and so was the fitness test: modified push-ups, sit-ups, and an aerobics step test that was supposed to last three minutes, but had to stop after 90 seconds because my leg muscles were shuddering so much that I was going to lose my balance.
Next: How out of shape was I?
