I've been going to yoga 2x/week. I am starting to look forward to it! Who would have thought! I usually have to drag myself to just about everything I do- even if I wind up liking it. I am used to that little layer of depression making me not want to do just about anything. I go because I think I should, or the hope that maybe I will enjoy it, but not really expecting it. But I am so used to the battle, and I am having fewer of those battles with myself these days. And next week I am signed up for a Barre Amped class. I want to try that out.
I still didn't get myself into work this weekend. Well, what did I expect, a miracle? I had planned on going late afternoon- but that was when the depressed/anxious feeling started kicking in. It is happening every time I try to drop my Zyprexa dose, I start feeling really bad by mid-late afternoon. And klonopin strangely doesn't fix it. And so, even though I feel more out of it on the higher Zyprexa does, I am actually more productive on it. I had tried cutting down by a quarter of a pill last night again, but I'm not feeling good again. Just like last week.
And so I have been going back and forth over the past few days. I don't know which to try to wait out: the spacey feeling from the higher dose or the bad feelings late in the day at the lower dose. Obviously I'd rather be at the lower dose, but it is getting to the point that I almost don't care which. I just want a dose to be working and feel good on it.
It is really hard to make medication changes when you are working. Really hard. Withdrawal effects that I might otherwise be willing to put up with, even if while in bed under the covers, until they went away- now they make me panic. I don't know how long they will last. How will they affect my ability to get to work on Monday, to treat my clients, do my paperwork.
And I have been on disability, and I was always going on and off huge doses of meds- often in hospital- and had all of these side effects- but I didn't have to function. And I one time I got off of meds (including Zyprexa), I literally put myself into a coma to do so (not the intended purpose, that was to die). I overdosed on my mood stabilizers, it took me 3 days to come out of the coma, and I spend another week in a regualr medical bed, getting only ativan. I was surprisingly ok. I felt very alive, very sad, but that seemed quite appropriate to me. But I couldn't sleep. Without the zyprexa, even the ativan they were gving me that week before they transferred me to the psych hospital, I didn't sleep,
Unfortunately, I was not a voluntary patient (they didn't even give me that option). And they wanted to put me back on Zyprexa. I asked if this drug could be dropped from my regimen. The doctor said that to do that, I would have to stay longer. Now, I knew I wasn't so crazy that I could be kept there forever- but I wanted to be out before graduate school started up in a few weeks, I had a time table. But I did talk then down to a lower dose (partially by lying). They also had wanted to put me on the exact same meds that I had been on- that I had been so depressed and agitated on that I wanted to kill myelf on! So I had to convince them that my doctor was about to change my meds (I had figured out by then that he was unlikely to ever call), and get myself at least on some new things and not on the same drugs. Except for the Zyprexa.
I did get out in time to go back to school. And my voice, which had been damaged during the intubation process, came back just a couple of days before classes, I was so scared it was damaged for life. And even the bruises on my wrists and ankles from the restraints in the ICU started to recede just about right then. I was very lucky. And I finished my degree, double lucky.
But that was the coma method for getting off of Zyprexa. There has to be an easier way.
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