The Upside-downside to being Nutty(er than usual), or More Fun (Way!) with Math

I don’t know about you but I’m getting a bit bored with the whole anxiety/panic disorder topic.  Not to mention the whole anxiety/panic disorder thing (IT) itself.   Honestly, writing about IT has helped some.   Up until now, when IT has started to Thoroughly.  Piss. Me. Off.

Today’s status:  Still here, still have some of IT symptoms, dealing.  But I have a buttload of work to do before my vacation next week.  So the increase in my usually barely tolerable work stress is making life a bit more enjoyable.

Now, on to the Upside.  Which is a Downside.  But a good one, especially given the whole freaking point of this freaking year and this freaking blog.

Since August 1, I have lost

♦     18 pounds     ♦

(204 to 186 today).  My last published weight log showed my high point at 202 in March. That was not the eventual high point.

All of my not-so-hard work was paying off in the reverse.   Which was not the trend I wanted to publish, which is why I took down the weight log,  although I did continue doing and woe-is-me-ing weigh-ins March through July.

(Aside:  Rather than Outright Lie, I prefer to Withhold Comment.  Sort of like when a  friend asks me if they look (good or bad or smart or stupid) (doing or wearing or dating) (something or somebody).   I do not want to Lie but I do not want to tell the Truth, either.  So I WC, which is similar in concept to being PC,  but of course without the P.    Since I try not to do or say anything whatsoever that has the remotest chance of having the label P(olitical) attached to it)).  (I love parenthetical comments, as you know.  I think this wins the Most Parentheses Ever In One Paragraph In My Blog award.)  (But I am more in love with run-on sentences than anything, as you also know.)

And no, I do not think achieving the reverse of desired results had anything at all to do with  IT, the Thing I Am Tired Of  Writing About.  Being overweight does not cause me IT.   Being overweight  just Pisses. Me. Off.

Anyway, I told you I was feeling different and bits and pieces were rearranging and my underwear was getting large enough to hold both the Boob Section and the Other End.

I think that I get the biggest kick out of the fact that I have lost a good bit of weight while I am still on Paxil (holding at 10 mg, terrified to step down again until I get a better handle on things).

My formula appears to be:

<20 gr carbs (very little sugar/starch) +

>50 oz liquid +

(30 mins cardio 5-6 days/wk)

= – 18 (in 2 months).

Smug.  

Hell Hath Another No Fury* …

… like a claustro-socio-group hug-execuspeak-“now pick a person seated at your table as your partner for the next activity”-phobe trapped in a gigantic Hyatt Regency ballroom with no windows, seated smack dab in the middle of 600 other Company Conference lemmings all shouting at the same time at the tops of their lungs because they can’t be heard over recorded Adele belting out “Rolling in the Deep”  at concert-mega-decibel-belt, this choice of music I have no doubt chosen to elevate the Hip factor of the event, the chooser oblivious to the fact that Hip Company Conference has been, by the laws of physics or something, long ago rendered inexorably an Oxymoron of the Highest Order.

there are no words

Don’t get me wrong.  Adele is one of very few contemporary artists that I enjoy listening to. In fact, next to Bonnie Raitt she is my favorite female singer.  Not just because she can sing.  But also because she pulls off gorgeous-with-pudge so very beautifully.

TURN IT UP.

awesome performance.

How.  Ever. I know what you are up to, Company.   Don’t treat me like a moron and try to snake-charm me with Adele.   The message of this two day Leadership Conference is what the message always is:   Do More With Less.  You can call it New Company Culture, Agile and Nimble, Trusted and Trusting, WTFed and WTFing, whatever the F  you want to call it.  You didn’t need two days of me held captive in a hotel next to a freeway with sirens and too many people and too much noise and too much talking and not enough air and not getting my real work done and counting and recounting and splitting and resplitting my few remaining Xanax doses¹, that Safeway won’t auto-refill, because my nurse practitioner, who put zero refills on the Rx even though she wrote the Rx as “1/2 to 1 pill twice daily as needed”  and who “wants to see me” before she oks what she already f-ing prescribed, and who is getting fired btw, for that.

All you need to do, Company,  is say “Carol, Do More With Less.”   And I will try, since you are the Company and you hired me to work for you.

But working for you does not include attending conferences at which I cannot actually do my real work.  Particularly since I stepped down to 10 mg Paxil, where the roller tends to be on the downhill side of the coaster when I am not getting the peace and comfort I get from being stressed out by my real work.

The nutshell, which I know normal people usually do first:  I rendered myself inexorably AWOL for all but 90-stuck-in-ballroom-basket-case-minutes of the two-day conference.  I worked in my hotel room.  Or parked myself and my laptop inconspicuously in an out of the way sports bar with windows one floor above the gigantic ballroom and therefore out of clear view of the Conference Attendees Police, and worked there.  Also successfully AWOLed myself from the Dinner and Party-to-Follow segments of the Agenda, via Room Service.   Which was pretty good.

I thought I had Gotten Away With It too.  Until they unloaded us from the Company-provided bus after the ride home.  My luggage was not on the bus.  Because I didn’t put it on the bus.  I assumed that since there were courteous and friendly Luggage Dudes who took my luggage from me, carefully tagged it and carefully stored it in the Awaiting Bus Departure luggage area, there was an implied commitment on the part of the Luggage Dudes  that they would also carefully stow it on the bus for the trip home.  But, because I was AWOL, I missed an announcement during the Closing Ceremonies or whatever that had something to do with attendees putting their own luggage on the bus.

Thankfully, the bell captain found my forlorn forgotten bag in the Awaiting Bus Departure area and the concierge is shipping it to me.  At my expense.

The moral of this story:  If you go AWOL, you will have to do without your favorite moisturizer for a few days.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* previous Fury

¹  ala  Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marian Ravenwood (trapped with Indiana Jones in the Well of Souls, surrounded by thousands of poisonous snakes kept at bay only by a single torch on its last remaining sputters):  “Indy …  the fire is going …. OUT …”

If Living Well = Best Revenge, I’m going to need a bigger car

What prompted me to write yesterday’s post was a fairly severe episode of anxiety/panic yesterday morning.  Got through it of course, but sheesh.

Then a major meltdown during my riding lesson tonight.  The  lesson itself was nothing really out of the ordinary — I’m trying to get back some lost time learning how to jump and jumping for me is scary but I had been doing pretty well with my comeback.   Tonight a few canter strides over poles on the ground went a little rough, I pulled back in fear,  Mo got a little amped in response, and I lost it — I didn’t fall or get hurt or anything,  just got scared and broke down.  Eventually, with my trainer Alejandro’s  patience and encouragement, I composed myself, worked on something else, did okay with it, and finished the lesson. A few weeks ago, I would have just talked with him about what went wrong, and tried again, perhaps still a bit fearful but ammoed-up by his coaching  for the next attempt.

When I was first diagnosed with panic syndrome in the late 80s, then general anxiety disorder in the early 90s, I did not recognize any specific causes, such as triggering events or difficult circumstances or what-not.   Still don’t — definitive causes have remained a mystery.   The shrinks I have seen over the years theorize that I am a type of a Type A personality that needs to be continually building something to be happy and feel productive, needs a lot going on at once, and can handle all that cheerfully with ease, then get even more overloaded and still keep on truckin’.    The disorders are my chemistry’s rebellion when the all-that  finally gets to be too much.   What the shrinks have not been able to tell me is what the too-much point of the all-that is.  And after all-that-money I have indirectly invested in La-Z-Boy (Live Life Comfortably) to upscale the leather factor of my shrinks’ offices.  That I could have just spent directly on new leather sofas for my own living room so that my dogs can turn them into upscaled dog beds so that they can Live Life even more Comfortably than what the present ultra-shabby-crappy-ragged-cat-shredded-dog-smashed-chic decor can offer.

For years I have been telling people that Paxil saved my life.  Its symptom fix absolutely did make my living so very much better.   Of course, with my steps down in dosage, the symptoms are back with a vengeance.  And with each step down, they are more frequent and more determined in their quest for vengeance.

Is this what life off meds is just going to be like?  I am just going to be This Way from now on?

If that’s the case, ok, I say Bring It (I say that from the relative safety and peace and good coffee and dogs sleeping at my feet of my home office).    I am getting off Paxil and not going back on.

I have to find a good life without it,  in spite of  This.  Maybe I just have  to accept This as my constant companion.   Sort of like a nervous and jerky backseat driver who is always in my car, unleashing a continual screaming barrage of warnings and gasps and “Turn-HERE!”s and “Don’t-turn-THERE!”s and “Slow DOWN!”s and “Go FASTER!”s and  “LOOK-OUT!!“s … who refuses to get out the car even though they think I am such a bad driver, and won’t shut the fuck up and just let me drive.  And who may be pointing a gun at the back of my head besides.   If I could just stuff them in the trunk.  Or have a very large vehicle with many rows of back seats, sort of like a limo-cum-movie theater, and stick them way back in the farthest-back row so their shrieking can barely be heard.

Drawing this image of the unwanted screaming meemie lethal-weapon-toting passenger has given me some ideas …  Time to get out the toolbox and check the inventory …

10 is Not Enough

… 10 mg of Paxil, I mean.

Let’s begin with a review of the Paxil withdrawal symptoms I posted a while back — in Blue are the ones that I am currently experiencing off and on:

1. intense insomnia
2. extraordinarily vivid dreams.   This confuses me, given #1 above.  Unless this is extraordinarily vivid daydreams.  Which I have always had.  So, normal.   
3. extreme confusion during waking hours.  This one also confuses me.  WebMD or whoever you are — what other hours are there beside waking?  (see #1).   
4. intense fear of losing your sanity.  Fear, not so much.  Let’s call it Intense Acceptance.
5. steady feeling of existing outside of reality as you know it (referred to as depersonalization at times).  This is the one of the main things for me.  It would be the worst thing if there was no panic.  
6. memory and concentration problems.  I take this to mean lack of memory and/or concentration.  I have the opposite.   Over-memory and over-concentration.  Which are problems.  So which is it?  Again I am confused.  thinking about making #3 Blue too.
   
7. Panic Attacks (even if you never had one before).   This is the worst thing.
8. severe mood swings, esp. heightened irritability / anger.  This is the most annoying thing.  
9. suicidal thoughts (in extreme cases).  Not a chance.
10. an unconventional dizziness/ vertigo.  Yes. Like what you might feel when you are experiencing an earthquake.  A brief warning — something’s up — and then imbalance, rocking and rolling.  Very strange.   I am getting used to it.  And I can make it look like my normal penguin walking so people don’t think anything of it, except perhaps to wonder why I walk like a penguin.  See #12.
11. the feeling of shocks, similar to mild electric one, running the length of your body.  This goes with the above.  It is what they call the Paxil brain zaps and these come immediately before onset of the earthquakes. 
12. an unsteady gait.  This I have but I do not attribute it to withdrawal.  I attribute it to my walking like a penguin.    I walk like a penguin because the share of the medical community that I have available to me for treating my bad ankle is not actually treating the bad ankle, and is therefore a moron.
13. slurred speech.  Not Paxil withdrawal, but work-related due to conference call overload.  
14. headaches.  These I have always had.   I do not attribute headaches to withdrawal.  I attribute headaches to wearing my glasses on the top of my head instead of on the part of my head that contains my eyes.  Or wearing the wrong pair of glasses for the task at hand — short vision for reading, medium for computer, long for driving/riding.   Sometimes I choose wrong.  Because of the Murphy’s law of glasses.  The pair you need you cannot find when you need them.  You need them because you cannot see.   Therefore, in order to find them, you have to see them, and in order to do that you have to have already found them.  This and being left-handed are the two primary reasons why my actuarial life span is about 9 years shorter than average.      
15. profuse sweating, esp. at night.  Nope.  just profuse #1, esp. at night.
16. muscle cramps.  Yes but I think due more to penguin walking.  Or due to Mo when he decides to be taking a nap while I am trying to get a big canter from him.  This causes me to work my legs extra hard to floor Mo’s accelerator pedal, which causes my muscles to overwork and later cramp.  Or this could also be due to Mo when he decides to spook after he has gotten into the big canter, which usually ends up with me overworking my muscles by trying to hang on for dear life,  or by trying to get up after landing on my butt.  
17. blurred vision.  Yes but not withdrawal.  See #14.
18. breaking out in tears.  yes.  this is new since the step down to 10 mg.  
19. hypersensitivity to motion, sounds, smells.   Nope.
20. loss of appetite.  absolutely, significantly.  not entirely a bad thing because of my other goal.  
21. nausea.  especially in the morning.  
22. abdominal cramping, diarrhea.  Nope.
23. chills/ hot flashes.  I have noticed some brief chills.  But I think they come  from when I stand for long periods in front of my fridge with the freezer door open, staring inside and not deciding what to make for dinner, because of #20.  Otherwise I am and always have been too hot.  I am thinking this will change when I am no longer carrying extra heat-retaining blubber, like that of whales, the beached group of which I am an honorary member of  when I wear my dressage whites.    

The past week, since my step down to 10 mg, some of these have become more noticeable or frequent – breaking out it tears,  loss of appetite, brain zaps,  anxiety/panic episodes.

Now I’m sure  you already know what the drug Paxil and others in the SSRI class are believed to do … which is increase the extracellular level of the neurotransmitter serotonin by inhibiting its reuptake into the presynaptic cell, increasing the level of serotonin in the synaptic cleft available to bind to the postsynaptic receptor.   Withdrawing the SSRI decreases the extracellular level of serotonin.   Translation:  Both the SSRI itself and the withdrawal from it are f-ing with my head.

Which is really pissing off my brain.   So it is throwing all these temper tantrums, thinking it can wear me down and make me come off my high horse and just go back on the drug already.

Well, I don’t respond to temper tantrums.    If you think throwing a tantrum is going to have the effect of getting what you want from me, Brain, think again.

The Cosmos has nodded

Or, perhaps, the Atlas on my personal planet has indeed Shrugged.

(Aside begin:  I was very amused by the interest in/hysteria about Ayn Rand’s philosophy as reported in the media of late.  And, perhaps more cosmic timing, the movie The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal was on the other night.  Enjoyable, but over the top in many ways.  Just like Ayn Rand.  Aside end.)

Because, finally, after 238 days of mostly wishing sprinkled with some tiny flecks of actual hard work, one of my horse peeps Paula said to me the other day  “Carol!  You have lost weight, haven’t you?  You look fantastic!”  Paula is in her late 50s-early 60s, an engaging stick-person of a woman who rides second level dressage on her adorable 19 year old Leopard Appaloosa named Riot.  (If you are not a horse person, I don’t expect you to get much of that last part, just know that Paula is to be admired, and she and Riot are friendlies.)

Ok, so don’t go getting all excited.   I have not lost all that much yet and I know I do not look all that fantastic, really.  I am guessing 7-10 lbs.  I am guessing that range because of the way some of my clothes are fitting.  I am guessing, period, because I am not allowed to weigh myself until I have passed the first 8 weeks of the particular diet plan I am following.  I am guessing I am not allowed to weigh myself because I am one of those morons who gets discouraged and quits the plan and makes a big pot of rice when I don’t drop 5 pounds each day.

And on this particular day,  I was wearing this assymetrical-hemmed sweater thing that makes my belly disappear like magic.   I’m guessing it is made out of the same fabric that covered the fusilage of the now-retired F117a Stealth Fighter.  It is partly because of this fabric, and partly because of the angularity of the fusilage itself, that rendered the airplane invisible to the Bad Guys’ Radar.  At least while it was flying around.   (Another aside:  I do not know how good the Bad Guys’  radar is — could figure into it. )   (Another aside:  Years ago when I was still connected to the US Air Force,  I had the privilege of visiting one of these airplanes at a secret base somewhere in the Nevadan desert.   The fabric did not hide the airplane when it was just sitting in the hangar.  I discovered that because I was able to see it well enough to locate the cockpit and climb inside and pretend I was a fighter pilot until the Crew Chief who was showing me the plane started getting nervous.)

And yes, there really was a secret base in the Nevadan desert.  The coolest thing about that, for me at the time, was that it was completely overrun by wild horses.

Back to …. So, yes,  I do feel like the latest approach is working.  This latest approach has two key features:

[1]  Significant step down in my Paxil intake.  I think my body decided it was okay to start shedding fat when I got to the 20 mg point in my step-down (I started at 40 mg in June.  I got down to 20 mg a few weeks ago and just stepped down again to 10 mg a few days ago); and

[2]  NO SUGAR.  Less than 20 grams of carbs per day, total, and I do mean less than 20 grams.  Roughly equivalent to less than 5 tsp of sugar per day.  Or 1/4 cup of rice. Oh, come ON.  Which is roughly equivalent to no rice at all.

…both of which are keeping me pretty cranky about life in general … until of course I got the Nod.  That was pretty cool.  So today, when I made flan and key lime pie for my friend Alejandro’s birthday, I celebrated a little and ate a slice of flan. Oh well.  Back at it mañana.

(*shrug*)

Grace and flashlights

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”[1] 

I am a Christian, your run-of- the-mill nondenominational Protestant.  Not a religious fundamentalist.  My settling on this particular flavor years ago was greatly influenced by the writings of C.S. Lewis, an atheist who, in later life, converted  to Christianity.

The bottom line to my faith is that I believe I am a created being.

Some of my very best friends are also Christians of various flavors — Catholics, Protestants of various denominations, Mormons.   Some are Hindi, some Muslim.  Some are agnostics, some are atheists.  I don’t have any Buddhists on my planet that I know of but I would like some.  Because they put on really cool festivals with Taiko drumming.

My friends and I talk about our various beliefs or lack of, or we don’t.  It is not a big deal.  I do have very strong opinions about what Christianity is and what it is not, but I stay off my soapbox unless someone invites me to step on it.

I don’t like organized religion.  I don’t go to church very often.  I would like to find a church home, but every time I think I have found one and start to go regularly, something about the church pisses me off.  Which, I’m pretty sure, is not what God has in mind.

Church people can get too churchy for me.  Like being members of a special club.  If you are not in the club, or you don’t conform to the general mold, it is hard to get connected.  Like with any group, if you don’t fit within some of the traditions, or if you believe you have been charged with a special mission to Question Authority, as I do, then you tend to stay on the fringe. I sort of prefer the fringe.  Like high school — when I had friends in the Popular Crowd, but the thought of becoming a card-carrying member myself gave me the heebie jeebies.

I bring this up because I am in closer contact with God these days because of My Great Adventure into improving my mental and physical health.  It has been getting pretty rough at times, and I am not wired to depend on or seek comfort from people.  This is because [1]  people can’t usually do much to help solve these sorts of things;  and [2] some people, although super well-meaning, can be Morons.

I don’t feel better when people say things to try and make me feel better.  I feel better when the thing is solved or when I know I am on track for the solution.   I feel better when I have my own toolbox and know how to stock it and use the tools inside.  Words don’t help but action does.

God knows that when things are going pretty smoothly, I am too busy for him.  Like when you have a new boyfriend and you are too busy to respond to your ever faithful friend’s invites to lunch.  You are happy and life is good and you’d rather be with the boyfriend than the friend.   Nevertheless, this loyal friend remains always on stand by and ready for deployment to your side just when you need them.  So when the boyfriend turns out to be a Moron or, as in my most recent boyfriend episode, an abusive and violent drunk, the first thing you do is call your friend and see if they want to go to lunch.  And that good friend is of course always available, to rescue, or give advice or lend an ear.   Or just go shopping for earrings.

God is mostly that sort of friend to me.  (Except for the earrings part.  I don’t think He approves of my earring thing.  Or my handbag thing.  And many other things.)  He is always there, waiting to respond to my SOS.   That’s His job.  After all, He wired me in the first place and then put me here.  He is obligated to help me out and I challenge Him to that.

His answers always come.  They do not come with trumpets or choirs.  They come quietly, in whispers — yes, I know what you are going through … no, there is no avoiding this lesson … but nothing is impossible … just keep pedaling … live in this moment …don’t worry about a single, solitary thing … be joyful in spite of the circumstances … be thankful in all circumstances …

His answers also come in little sparkling bits of grace that get sprinkled around for me to see and experience.  These are tiny blessings and gifts He places in my path without me doing anything to earn them or deserve them  … encouraging words, beautiful sights, shared kindnesses …

…. “A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace.”[2]

And the darker it gets, the more grace He puts out there.  The trick is to be able to catch sight of the little sparkling bits in the midst of the dark.  So this adventure of mine seems to be a lot about how well I keep my toolbox stocked with flashlights.

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[1] Frederick Buechner, Now and Then:  A Memoir of Vocation

[2] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking

Circle your wagons, Cosmos, someone is on the warpath

I am Not Very Nice these days.  with Good Reason.  Day 22 on the no-sugar (20 grams or less net carbs per day) regime with a few days break here and there for special occasions.  Still treading water at 20 mg Paxil, which is half the dose that I had been maintaining for several years.  Over that time, my personality weather pattern had been Mostly Sunny, with a few clouds and some meteor showers of anxiety/panic now and then to keep things interesting.

The past few weeks I am very different.  I can get to the Mostly Sunny state frequently but I have to work at it.  There are more clouds and they come with thunder boomers.  Meteor showers are frequent but my tool box is keeping up.  I am way more excitable, on edge, aware.  Like there is danger around but I am not afraid.  I just need to be ready to pounce, or run.

At work, it is a real struggle to control my temper.  This is because of the morons.  I am noticing there are more morons than there were a few months ago.

Usually morons mostly just amuse me.  Now when I am on my multiple back to back conference calls all day, and the morons begin to speak , I smash the mute button on my phone so I can talk back to them with lots of insults and F words, a la “You just said that same f-ing  thing for the third f-ing time inside of 10 f-ing minutes, you f-ing mo-ron.”

These muted discussions I have with myself I try only to do when I am working from home.  When I am in the office, I put Scotch Magic brand tape over my mouth and a Post It note on my forehead that reads “Just Shoot Me.”.  I would put “Just F-ing Shoot Me” on the Post It posted on my forehead if I had a private office.  Which I don’t because all of the Mid-Level Manager offices are already occupied.  By Mid-Level Mo-rons.

But even in the privacy of my home office, my temper tantrums could be hazardous, since frequently I can have two conference calls going at the same time — I have one call going on the cell and the other on the land line.  My pretentious little blue tooth thing goes in my ear for the cell calls, and my land goes on speaker.  The hazardous duty part is when I forget which phone goes with which meeting, which phone I should speak into when I need to speak, and which one needs to be muted when I launch one of the shrieking tirades in homage  to the morons.

So is this the real me?  Is this how I was before I got disordered?  I don’t like this person much.  Except for the part that I have actually lost some pounds.  I am not allowed to weigh myself until 2 Oct, 8 weeks into the no-sugar thing.  Not a huge amount, somewhere between 5-10 is my guess, but I can tell from my clothes, and from the decreasing aches in my back and knees and from my increasing stamina for riding Mo.

I will go into the eating plan next time.

I’m sticking with it, the diet and the drug withdrawal, pissy attitude or not.  I figure this is how I learn to use the toolbox and become a regular person.  I want to take my next step down to 10 mg this weekend.

You can say a few prayers for the Morons if you like.

Paxil 20 – Patience 0

So far, I have weaned myself down by half — from 40 mg to 20 mg.

I am definitely feeling it since the drop to 20 mg 5 days go.  But nothing really horrible, honest.

My normally very very long patience fuse is basically gone.  I am very easily annoyed, wired up, quickly reaching peak irritability at little things.  Not really my normal self.  But the part that is still normal is that I remain very easily amused.

The irritability manifests mostly while I’m working — remember, won’t you, that I LOVE my job.  Really.  It is a great job.  I am helping my company implement Health Care Reform.  Politics aside, actually non-existent on my planet, this is very good work for someone like me … Federal and State laws, intense deadlines, really complex business and systems problems to solve, really smart and hard working people to collaborate with, a few morons to keep things interesting (and ANNOYING), working at home most of the time because I have too much to do to spend commute time to drive into the office.

Aside:  My workdays have been so intense that I have dispensed with proactive feeding of horses at home, which requires about 15 minutes — go find the hay cart, drag it to the hay barn, fill the cart with hay, deal with the annoying hay twine, drag the hay cart down to the pasture where the horses are, toss hay over the fence, fill the water troughs, chat with Pootie the Cat.  To save this 15 minutes that I typically don’t have when meetings start at 8 am and go to noon,   I have invented Horse Fast Food, which takes about 3 minutes:  Go to the barn gates, open them up and call the horses.  Wait for the first one in line to come through the gate.  This is usually Rainy, the Pork Butt sorrel mare center front in the photo below.  Point the lead horse to the hay barn.  The others will follow.  Voila.  Horse Fast Food.  Hours later go check on the horses.  For no reason.  Because there is Food, there is no need to go anywhere.

So let’s talk a bit about the Morons, since this is how my patience fuse got blown a few times this week.    These are people that have jobs in my company.  Mostly they are merely voices, since we do most of our work via telecom and Webex.  Some of these Morons are actually very intelligent people.  They just don’t do anything except speak a lot of words to demonstrate their intelligence.  I go into meetings with a mission, agenda, things that need to be accomplished so I can get Something Done and then get onto the next conference call.  Morons go into meetings to talk.  Some of them are academics — they know a lot of stuff, and they need to tell everyone what they know, all of the time.

Some are really Sales or PR folks deep down, they talk as a performance.  They “raise issues” and poke holes at things and speak the Execu-speak that they think makes them sound like they are VP material and if they keep speaking that way, eventually someone will promote them.

Some are merely auditory communicators — they have words stacked up in their esophagi like big long freeway traffic jams and they MUST speak each and every word in the order in which they have stacked it, without variation of any kind.  If you interrupt them, or in my language “So-and-so, there were too many words in what you just said. Could you restate more concisely?” , they raise their voices and backtrack, rewind and start over where they were five minutes ago.  I could really go truly psycho.  If this happens on a conference call,  I Mute and Multi-Task  — do something else while playing the phone meeting voices on low volume, sort of like the Relaxing Sounds of the Ocean that my clock radio has to help me fall asleep to.  That I still don’t fall asleep to since [1]  I don’t sleep in the room that has that clock radio in it,  since that is my bedroom and since Insomnia Galore, I can’t fall asleep in my bed and [2] also because of Insomnia Galore, relaxing sounds of the ocean are really annoying sounds of the ocean.

To finish up with the Morons:  I try to punish them for talking so much by giving them ACTION ITEMS.  These are tasks that the Morons need to complete.  This only works to the extent that I get the malicious glee from causing them to panic.  Since they usually don’t have to do anything other than produce words, like the balloon words that come out of the characters in comic strips, they get a bit weird about getting Action Items.

Aside:  Sandie will remember that we had a long philosophical, first year of college-age discussion, possibly under the influence, about what would happen if all of the words we spoke could be seen coming out of our mouths and floating into the air, like in comic strips.

Many other symptoms … head (brain/jaw) zaps (feelings of electrical shock); high energy/wired feeling; loss of appetite.  The loss of appetite is really strange.  I really don’t have desire to eat — I do, of course, but only when my stomach is screaming for something.   Pacing.  Racing thoughts but not like those that come with anxiety episodes.

I am still taking the Relaquil for the natural anxiety relief aspect.  I am convinced it is making a major difference.  I am dealing with all of these symptoms pretty well, and even the anxiety hits have been short and pretty easily managed.  And not to forget my major source of therapy — Mo the Horse — continues to be a huge help.  We are back to jumping again (bad ankle steadily improving) and so, the utter terror of jumping helps keep me calm and sane.

Ok, now that did sound a little nuts.

my newest adventure

I have launched Mission Paxil Withdrawal.

I am doing ok.  A little bit nuttier than usual but so far not bad.  I am still managing to live life normally.  Or normal for me.  Mostly.  I can still get in my car and drive places, manage brief visits to the grocery store (as long as the Grocery Store People don’t make any  mistakes, like allowing people to be in front of me when I am ready to check out.)   I can still work 60 hr weeks and ride Mo and knit while ignoring housework.  All is well. Mostly.

I started this on Jun 24 by dropping my 40 mg daily dose of Paxil to 35 mg.  Or so.  I say “or so” because at the time I decided to start cutting down my dose, I did not have a pill splitter to do the actual cutting.  So I used a kitchen knife to stab the pills and then crawled around the floor looking for the pieces that went flying everywhere.  Then I assembled the broken pieces and pill dust into little teeny baggies,  like the ones the local crystal meth dealers use for product packaging.  The reason I know this is because of Debbie the former tenant roommate-meth user-welfare mom and the inkling that Something Was Wrong With Her that caused me to illegally search her room while she was out, which revealed not only the teeny baggies but some glass pipes, some BBW porn magazines (?) and a couple of size 24 lace up corsets, one black and one red (??).  Then it dawned on me how a deadbeat welfare mom who couldn’t/wouldn’t hold down a regular job could come up with $400 in cash for rent.  But apparently she was not selling enough BBW porn photos to keep the rent coming on time so I politely asked her to move herself, her porn and her tweaker paraphenalia out of my home by putting a padlock on the front gate and telling her she could come back inside the house when [1] she had paid her rent and [2] I had arranged a civil standby with Sheriff to have a couple of deputies on hand in case she got ugly.  She eventually moved out.  Sort of.  I say sort of because she never paid her rent and therefore was never allowed back in the house, and was never heard from again.

But back to my legal baggies.  In order to come up with my new reduced dose out of the 40 mg debris, I eyeballed the little broken pieces and dust and made teeny little piles of 35 mg guesses and scraped the guesses into the teeny baggies.  This reminded me of a time in high school (Mom, don’t read this part) when somehow I knew someone who was selling marijuana and I helped him break a kilo down into lids (1 oz baggies) for sale.  These baggies were bigger, the sandwich size.

But back to my legal drugs.  When I take the Paxil debris, I mix it into a tsp of orange juice, like my mother used to do get me to take aspirin.  This was when I was a little kid and way before I smoked marijuana, or needed to buy my own groceries and legal drugs.

For those of you who do not have anxiety/panic disorder, or who have it but deal with it with other than an SSRI, here is the list of Paxil Withdrawal symptoms :

• intense insomnia
• extraordinarily vivid dreams
• extreme confusion during waking hours
• intense fear of losing your sanity
• steady feeling of existing outside of reality as you know it (referred to as depersonalization at times)
• memory and concentration problems
• Panic Attacks (even if you never had one before)
• severe mood swings, esp. heightened irritability / anger
• suicidal thoughts (in extreme cases)
• an unconventional dizziness/ vertigo
• the feeling of shocks, similar to mild electric one, running the length of your body
• an unsteady gait
• slurred speech
• headaches
• profuse sweating, esp. at night
• muscle cramps
• blurred vision
• breaking out in tears.
• hypersensitivity to motion, sounds, smells.
• decreased appetite
• nausea
• abdominal cramping, diarrhea
• loss of appetite
• chills/ hot flashes

Because dropping my dose of anxiety meds has the risk of causing these symptoms, which I cannot afford to get because I have to work and ride my horse and drive places and generally remain a Responsible Human Being,  I added a natural  supplement to my already full Drug Drawer.  It is called Relaquil, and it  contains  a bunch of herbal and mineral anxiety remedies – valerian,  passion flower, magnesium …  I found references to it on a Paxil Withdrawal website, so of course it must work.

I have to say that the first 2 weeks on 35 mg of Paxil and half of the daily recommended dose of Relaquil, I was having periods of not only not increased anxiety, but of near-well being.  Like the old me, circa 1977 or so.  Weird.  But good.  Sort of like how marijuana used to affect me, before I became an Adult and decided not to enjoy the euphoria and munchies anymore.

So with that success under my belt, this past weekend I dropped another 5 mg to 30 mg daily.   But this time i bought a pill splitter.  (Aside:  Yes I can get my psycho doc to prescribe the right size dose.  I just have all of these 40 mg pills to use up first).

I am keeping the Relaquil dose the same, will bump it up to the full recommended daily dose when I drop to 20 mg of Paxil.  This week I have had a couple incidents of flash irritation and some of the infamous Paxil Withdrawal Brain Zaps.  Otherwise no serious anxiety flare ups and no other symptoms.   I’m thinking I’ll stay here for another week or so and then drop to 25 mg/daily, which is when I expect the real fun to begin.

Miscellany since I am not quite with it

… fat, dumb, happy is apparently what I will be as long as I am dependent on Paxil for living most of the time in my top train.

I am not quite with it because I forgot to do my regular refill last week, so I did not have my meds for 3 days.  That means I started withdrawal almost immediately– Paxil has a very short life.  So the crazies started on Day 2 of  Unscheduled Cold Turkey.

And to compound things a bit,  I picked up the wrong bag of coffee for 3 days in a row and was dosing myself with 100% decaf.  So I was also on Unscheduled Cold Turkey from my second favorite addiction, caffeine.  So I was both crazy anxious and crazy comatose.   You can imagine my delight and relief  to discover yesterday morning that I had been using the wrong coffee.  And with the Rx refill safe in hand later that morning, and the little pink pill safe in mouth before I left the pharmacy parking lot, I am now almost as normal as I can ever get.  My endolphins are waking up and soon they will be jumping and splashing around again.

So, I am still looking into [1]  how to lose weight while still maintaining my relationship with my SSRI , since I prefer spending time not so wiggy;  and [2]  how to get off of my SSRI and still spend most of the time not so wiggy.

Neither [1] nor [2] appear doable at this point.  At least not quickly/easily/without the screaming meemies.

In the meantime I am paying a lot of attention to my eating.  Did another carb cut and have almost completely eliminated sugar.  I say almost completely eliminated because I am down to about 1 tsp of sugar mixed with 1 packet of Splenda for coffee.  No bread, pasta, flour.  No fruit.  No potatoes, corn, rice.

In other words, nothing to live for … except rib eye steak, bacon and kielbasa, spinach, kale and broccoli, eggs and tuna and broiled tomatoes, turkey slices with cream cheese, and all the salad (sans croutons) I want.  And cream for my coffee, not 1/2 and 1/2.

Except when I am in San Francisco and meet my sister for dinner on the first night of a three-day business trip.  This was the early part of last week, before I went self-imposed nuts.  I wanted to eat at Scoma’s, where one pasta dish is about four meals for me.  And the price of about 10 meals.  I splurged on the Pasta Diplomatica  (lobster, clams, shrimp, and scallops in a light wine/cream sauce) and had a Caesar salad to cancel out all the bad stuff, aka the pasta.  I did this splurge intentionally because it was Scoma’s on the Wharf  in San Francisco, dinner with my sister, and cab rides.  One of which was way fun since the cabbie was a New York City cabbie, so he knew how to bob and weave going crazy fast, slam on the brakes and yell at other drivers doing exactly the same things as he was.  I think his name was Joe.  Or Frank.  Or Vinnie.

I had a large amount of leftover seafood pasta after dinner and took it back to the hotel room and put it in the little fridge that came with my room.  The little fridge had all kinds of alcoholic beverages inside.  I guess if you are going to spend a lot of time in San Francisco’s Financial District, you have to learn how to drink, and then how to get drinks from honor bars.

Anyway, after the next day of a brutal all day series of business trip-ish meetings, I did not want to go out for dinner after work.  I was tired, for one thing.  And I didn’t know where to go to eat, except Scoma’s, and I had that already in the fridge.  So I asked the hotel front desk if the room service restaurant would zap my Scoma’s.    The answer was no, since the room service restaurant does not have a microwave.   Huh?  I guess microwaves are too white trash or something for San Francisco.  Also, so are  hotel rooms with windows that open.  Maybe they are afraid the hotel guests will hang their hand-washed underwear out the window, which would ruin the general ambience of the Financial District, which I’m sure you have guessed if you have never been there, is full of  the Big Business that the Little Guys complain about.  Unless you are one of Little Guys that is employed by one of the Big Businesses and then you have nothing to complain about since you can afford nice shoes.  Everyone I have seen in the San Francisco Financial District has nice shoes.    I don’t,  but I don’t care since I have nice handbags.

David the Wonderful Doorman said I could use the m-wave in the employee break room to zap my Scoma’s and he whisked me down to the basement to the employees’  lounge.  I think I was whisked down there because the employees are not allowed to have the hotel guests in the employees’  lounge.  Which looked like a room I need to use in my mystery/thriller novel, sort of like a basement morgue with exposed pipes and cinder block walls but with a microwave, fridge,  vending machine, OSHA notices on the walls, and a table where people can sit and eat.  In my mystery/thriller mind of course, the fridge held the corpse of a murder victim and the table held the autopsied corpse of another murder victim.

So I took the hot ready to eat  Scoma’s  back up to my hotel room.  Which was, incidentally, where I imagine at least one of the murders occurred.