Not my best week

So this week I'm fighting a sinus infection. This is amazing in many ways as I am fighting it, rather than just getting sicker and sicker which has been my body's response to stress for years. But I've had a sore throat, fever, drippy nose, and cough off and on at different times and yet none of it was enough to really say "I'm sick". I even cancelled with Dr. Mind because I am so tired and felt resting was more important. Plus I had to get dental work done today and I felt I could handle only one thing.

This is partly just because last week I didn't rest at all on Thursday and I worked a full day Saturday. I wore myself out. So I'm paying the price.

Then the dental visit hurt. I had 2 cracked fillings in adjacent teeth. One was deep and may need a crown. They rebuilt the tooth and made it so it doesn't touch the tooth above it much. It's really sore and swollen and feels bizarre this evening. I also was told that I may need a biteguard at my next visit as I've cracked 3 fillings in a year and am grinding my teeth. I'm going to call about that; if I have to get it I might as well do so since in another 6 months I could easily crack another one given the rate I've done in these teeth. And some intuition says that I'm going to need the crown. I don't know why, I just feel it. Crowns are extremely expensive and have to be replaced about every 10 years so I really don't want too many of them. Plus, getting them also hurts. If I understood right this tooth might not be as bad because the work today could be the base but I'm not sure of that.

And now the time is going to change, which always throws my bipolar self for a loop. I dread this so much. In a few months I'm going to be taking vacation in Phoenix, which is 3 hours different. I'm going to have to spend the entire week trying to keep on my time. I've been scared of travel outside of my time zone for years and have chosen not to try, but it's time to be trusting of my wellness.

On the plus side, next weekend is Dr. Brain time. And I am excited because I get to ask questions I never anticipated. For years, from the time it was experimentally positive, the goal for me was to get me stable and get a VNS. Eventually I asked we no longer talk about stable because all that was happening was I was getting worse.

Well, now I'm stable. Not only stable, I'm myself again. I'm a person I thought died 11 years ago. I can't even explain how it feels, only that all the years of being told if I waited a medication that helped me WOULD come out. Seroquel gave me a life; Seroquel XR gave me myself.

And already I'm on less medication. I've decreased from 650 mg of Seroquel last May to 300 mg now. And I'm great. Even the start of winter isn't bugging me and I always get depressed by now. I did have an increase in my antidepressant in September that maybe helped, but still this is a miracle.

So this time I'm going to ask some questions about the future. I want to know if I make it through the winter if I can start trying to go back to a more normal depakote level? (Mine is about 25-30 points above normal and I've never been ok without it there.) I'd like to just be on a lower dose enough to see if I can lose weight. I also want to know if the VNS is still an option for me, since I'm still considered treatment resistant and medication sensitive and would have tighter control if we weren't relying on my body to respond consistently to anything, as we know it won't (ie my antidepressant dose varies so much I can really take practically a PRN amount with permission).

I just keep thinking that I've met the criteria to maybe, maybe, maybe get off of some of the approximately 40 pills I take daily now (vitamins, etc. included).

Anyway, time for bed. I tried to stay up until 10, 9:52 is good enough. Hopefully I'll be asleep before the tylenol wears off.......