Thankful

I wish there were an auto-remind button we could push when we get frustrated.  I have been so frustrated and scared these last months, and all the work we've done to reduce my anxiety has kind of come undone.  Not that this is surprising, I finally realized; this has been an anxiety provoking year.  But I sometimes need a huge kick to remind me of how blessed I am.  Case in point: Dr. Brain made a significant point out of telling me t hat Dr. Mind is extremely important and necessary in keeping me calm, functional and focused.  (This after my missing a bunch because of being too medicated to get to him).  This time around even she has recommended continuing two appointments each week for a significant time.  Last night when I talked to her she told me that they had been staying in pretty constant touch through this.  Today he agreed and shared one of their recent conversations from this weekend about how back to work was going, and anxiety (apparently they've talked about this a lot.  Which is good; when we tackled it before it took that kind of collaboration because I need serious meds to manage learning to not worry so much.  She also told him what she'd told me, about how important he is to keeping me afloat.  I like it that they respect one another and that they are bothering to take time to collaborate while we go through a period that is rather unprecendented.

Then just to make it more apparent that I need to be thankful for those in my life I got a response from Dr. bdoy about a med reduction I am supposed to try sometime, had initiated and discovered I couldn't emotionally manage the 10 days to see if it was worth it.  I also was telling him that it was likely I'd be coming in with every minor thing causing a missed day of work for a while as I want to show proof that I am sick if it happens.  Then I said/realized, that of course we still don't even know how serious a cold is for me and my asthma.  He just said no problem, I have chronic conditions and that makes it different, and not to worry about the med thing until I was ready, and he's praying for me.  Really, how many doctors in a secular setting do that?  Or say it?

I slept all by myself (no extra meds) again last night.  This is so exciting.  I told Dr. Mind that the sleep thing is so big because the last I remember sleeping really well without pain or psych issues interfering would be June, and it is entirely likely I've had sleep disturbances on an ongoing basis since I got sick a year ago this week.  No wonder it feels like heaven to sleep.  And doing so on my usual pills is even better because it means I can, which means that I can relax about tolerance and use the sleeping pills occasionally if I have to.  Going from highly sensitive to valium (1.25 mg made me overlseep) to 10 mg not working well in the last few months has scared me as it's the most concrete example of tolerance I've ever encountered.  The only other time I really have developed to tolerance for something besides ambien and I don't know when that even was was to ativan and that was just weird.  I'd been on varying doses and occasionally none for years.  The first time I was in the hospital (coincidentally 2 years ago this week) I was taking ativan frequently although differently than usual as I was allowed to take 1 pill and if it didn't work a 2nd where the nurses refused to follow that and kept only giving it every 6 hours.  Three or four days into this I realized it wasn't working and the doctor changed me to klonopin which I seem to handle well although I"m not sure it's very effective after these recent months.

Anyway, starting to get sleepy again so I should get everything in place for konk-out time.  So exciting to KNOW I'm going to sleep........