I actually slept last night!

Wow!  What an experience!  I actually slept last night!!!  Well, mostly, but still, I slept until my alarm went off and beyond!  Missed my alpine start to the climbing gym because of it, but I really need the sleep right now because of the medication transition I’m going through.  I haven’t been sleeping and, as with every other medication change I’ve undergone, I feel like I have a cold – achy, stuffy, lethargic, and exhausted with a pain behind my eyes and a slight headache.  I’m not thinking real straight right now, so I don’t think that anything besides bouldering is a good idea at the moment, anyway.  I’ll have to wait for the new prescription to be written and filled by my doctor so that I can increase the dose of the new medication and I’m on the lowest dose of the old medication for two days, yet, after today before I stop that medication.  I’m kind of worried about that, but it’ll go the way it’s going to go.  It’s miserable, no two ways about it, but hopefully this new medication that I’m titrating up on will be effective and not cause me to gain weight, but instead allow me to lose weight!  What a miracle that would be!!!  Even though I don’t feel completely rested right now, I’m thankful for the sleep that I got.  I tossed and turned a lot, as I remember, but I wasn’t up at 0130 hrs in the morning and unable to go back to sleep, at least!  I did have some really weird dreams.  They were turning nightmarish when my alarm went off.  I slept a half an hour past my alarm, which is set for 0500 hrs.  I had to take my meds, still, so I’m glad I woke up then.  I got some sleep!!!  My eyes don’t feel like they’re melting out of my head!!!  Hooah!!!

Now we have today ahead of us.  It’s supposed to be 100ºF today, with severe thunderstorms this afternoon.  The climbing gym’s open, and I could go climbing today, or biking before it rains and gets hot out.  I still feel like my brain is just sloshing around in a puddle of liquid inside my skull as far as the med changes go.  I feel light-headed sometimes, and my hypervigilance is spiked off the charts at times, too.  I have trouble thinking and a half an hour to an hour can pass without me having really moved from my position at the table, but it seems that much thought has occurred in that time with no results.  This medication transition isn’t fun.  It’s rough.  I always have to check myself against reality to make sure that everything’s matching up.  If it isn’t, I sit down and do something benign that doesn’t involve fast movement or sharp objects.  Right now, I feel too much, too intensely.  I told my doctor about that yesterday and that’s why he put in a prescription to raise the new medication dosage.  Some instrumental jazz was playing in a coffee shop yesterday and it was bringing up all kinds of extremely intense feelings in me.  That’s how I know that I’m feeling too intensely.  When the benign topic of discussion on Doctor Radio sparks immediate thoughts of destroying things, then it’s time to increase the medication dosage!  Sleep, or lack thereof, goes into that, too, though.

So, I have another week or two of medication transition to go – longer, depending on the speed of the VA filling and dispensing my medication – and hopefully plenty of climbing in there to mediate the feelings and effects of changing the chemicals in my brain!  I should be climbing right now, but I’m enjoying the quietness of my basement apartment pre-dawn and writing this post right now.  I’ll get to it!