When I arrived at Dr. Meyer's office on September 22, I found that Eric had left the practice and the study was now in the care of Mahir, the new Clinical Coordinator. He and the doctor took me through questionnaires and balance tests:
- Elevated mood? No
- Changes in sleep? No
- Irritability? Yes
- Easily startled? Yes
- Guilt feelings? No
- Worrying excessively? No
Over the next ten days I immersed myself in garden books, brainstorming gaily and writing voluminous notes. The cats' scratching tower arrived and I assembled it promptly. I paid the bills on time. I read another organizing book and actually made a start on cleaning up the disaster areas of the sunroom floor and office table. I made long lists of plants suitable for various areas of the yard, drew diagrams, sketched plant combinations. On October 1st I even went outside and did some cleanup in the front border, pulling and stacking dead stems ... and on the 2nd I realized I'd thrown my low back out. It was the first back pain I'd had in ten days. During that time I'd even felt the nefarious rib pop into place when it hadn't been hurting.
A single visit to the chiropractor took care of my back, but something was changing. On October 2nd I wrote, "So many products, so little energy." I began having trouble getting to sleep. On October 5th: "I'm crying too much over the books I'm reading." (These were A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'Engle - all books I had read 10-20 times before.)
Looking back, I think now that everything I was feeling during these two weeks was exaggerated. The amount of mental energy was extreme. The elation I felt about garden planning was overblown. I overreacted to the books. I didn't connect all this, at the time, to the questionnaire's phrasing of "elevated mood" because to me, "elevated mood" meant having physical energy as well. I did not recognize mild hypomania when it all happened sitting down, writing grandiose garden ideas that I'd never in the world have the strength to bring into being.
When I saw Dr. Meyer and Mahir on October 6th, I told them it felt as if the meds had changed, that I wasn't sleeping as well, about crying over the books. I must have complained about my foot hurting, because Dr. Meyer noticed that my ankle was swollen. The next thing I knew he was saying that my last EKG had a "depressed ST" and I should see my regular doctor right away.
I saw Dr. Lily the following day. She said the depressed ST was very subtle and ran another EKG in her office. This one showed a different, still subtle, deviation. I told her I was sure the chest pain I'd experienced over the past several months, which had just about gone away now anyway, was costochondritis; she was doubtful. In the end, she switched me to Vytorin from Zocor for high cholesterol and prescribed nitroglycerin tablets for possible angina. I thought it was all a hum and decided not to fill the latter prescription unless the pain came back.
Disaster was just a couple of days away - and my own health had nothing to do with it.
