It's August

this month is a big one. My new niece will be born and I'll sign the papers to seal the sale of my house. In theory those will be the same week. I'm not sure that the baby will not come sooner though and the house may be a little delayed. My niece is following the footsteps of her big sister and is breech. When my older niece was born there was a very difficult period when an external version was attempted and she went into distress, resulting in several days of hospitalization during which time they kept finding potentially scary things on the ultrasounds. By the time she was born we'd all been prepared for her to need NICU care at birth. Instead she was fine although she did have to have an MRI to rule out spina bifida and she had scans of her hips because of the particular breech position she was in. This time my sister tried some chiropractic techniques but is going to have a C-section when those didn't work. The problem is that she is carrying a large breech baby and is very, very uncomfortable and having frequent contractions while caring for a needy pre-schooler. The best thing would be for her to go into labor now so the baby would be delivered but without pressure on her cervix it's not likely. So I'll be going down at least once, probably twice next week to take care of my niece and hopefully let my sister rest. Resting is hard for her because she has work and graduate school things to do and she can't get comfortable so I think she chooses to work to distract herself except that doesn't help her handle the physical things that she has to manage. It's tough. The baby is due on the 23rd. I don't know when they'll schedule the C-section. My house sale has had a Thank God moment. I had a call from my title company that when I bought the house 10 years ago somehow the prior owner's mortgage wasn't recorded as paid off. The title company I used back then has gone under. They asked if I might have the closing papers and if there would be something in there that showed the mortgage was paid. By the grace of God I had kept the papers from my closing out. My realtor had asked me something that I'd needed to look up in there and I decided not to pack it. Otherwise we would have been forced to move all my furniture out of my storage unit then sort through to find potential boxes, open each potential box, sort for the folder, re-seal and repeat until it was found and then repack all the boxes in stacks and then put all the furniture back in the unit. So that will go out in the mail tomorrow and all will be well and it shouldn't delay anything but the potential is still there. Everything else is done, done, done and I should get an appraisal value soon. I should sign on the 19th. It's weird to dread a day in a week that will be happy. It's also weird to start making plans for all the things that still need to be brought home from the house. I'm starting to adjust to the Topamax. Dr. Body and I have emailed a bunch of times and decided that I will not increase until it really isn't causing sleepiness or fatigue. A little is ok but "I do nothing and am exhausted" isn't. Because I'm on such huge doses of other meds I am not going to try to do take a morning dose; there is just no way that I can take another dose of sedative 12 hours after the last and function at all. If it doesn't work we'll re-think, but for now that's the plan. I am on Neurontin only because we knew from a bad past experience that it is sedating and I needed sedating. So when I see Dr. Brain next I'll ask about getting off it and using the Topamax instead. In terms of mood stabilization both are weak mood stabilizers and really one weak mood stabilizer is probably as good as another, especially since we know that I need very high doses of really good mood stabilizers and so it's unlikely either will provide that benefit aside from helping me sleep. It's hard to think that it may take 4 months to reach a target dose of 100 mg but I've managed a lot of migraines without anything to help prevent them and from what I've read prevention starts at 50 mg. Any improvement is better than nothing and without Topamax I have exactly that so I'm not losing anything. And now I have to do my pillbox. There are few routine chores I hate as much as I hate pillbox night. I don't know why but I just hate it. I remember having a psychiatric patient once who was bipolar and had done well on her meds for many years but had gone off them during a hospitalization for lithium toxicity and while confused from that fell and broke her arm badly. She had occasional periods of confusion after being stabilized on a different med but was doing well enough to go home, something that almost never happened from that building. I was afraid she'd forget her meds sometimes so I set up a pill box with a piece of candy every day and sent home the candy for her to keep putting in every day for a couple of months. I don't need candy to TAKE pills, I just need it to fill the box. But since I'm not allowed chocolate right now it would be an empty treat anyway. Copyright 2006 www.masterofirony.blogspot.com