think about direction, wonder why you haven't before

Thursday, 08/04/16, 10:33am

I am doing better today. Yesterday, although it went mostly well, was still more of a recovery day. Sometimes my episodes can require a full day to really recover.

I've kinda mentioned it before, but my treatment needs some work. I am going to therapy much more often than I had been. I'd really been pushing the time between appointments, some based on travel, some based on expense because our health insurance changed significantly this past year, some based on "I felt that I should be". I do this with therapy appointments and psychiatric appointments and it's not entirely a conscious choice that I make. It almost happens automatically. But now I'm consciously trying to stop that and making the therapy appointments at least weekly.

I've mentioned before, but I've started tracking my mood. Yesterday after discussing some ideas with my therapist and my sister, I created a Google Form for myself. It's a quick series of questions to gauge my mood as well as gather data on the circumstances (menstrual cycle, medications, exercise, etc). I can input a response on the form as often as I'd like, but this time, I'm not going to look at the data until I have a good amount of it. Looking at the tracker app on my phone has made me feel even more down, just seeing what feels like often low points.

I'm such a nerd. But I'm totally in love with this idea of tracking, gathering hard data with my illness to help improve my treatment.

Nasser has been researching the various medications out there for treating depression and anxiety, ongoing clinical trials, understanding more about "treatment resistant depression" and wondering if I have that. Because I've truly been wondering, am I really that different when I'm not on medication? Now, you may point out, I had a bit of a depression rut earlier this summer when I missed a third of one of my medications for about a week or so. But there were other things going on which may or may not have played a part as well.

I think that I probably need to be on medication, but I'm definitely wondering whether or not I'm on the right ones.

Let's talk about periods for a second. Skip the last paragraph if you can't handle it, although if you can't handle it, I'd invite you to push yourself out of that comfort zone and try to normalize menstrual cycles a little more. If you haven't read my rant on that, see here.

So the latest on my quest for hormone balance through my menstrual cycle is I'm on a high estrogen, some progesterone birth control pill (the second pill I'm trying), and so far, my body doesn't seem to want to follow the regulated cycle. What does that mean? I don't get my period when I'm supposed to on this pill. It's supposed to be during the placebo week, the last week of the pack. Mine comes a good week early, and it's lasting longer than my period used to without a pill. Sigh. I've decided to stay on this pill for a full 3 months to see if my body will take to it, but if it doesn't, I'm thinking of giving up this quest of finding the right birth control pill. Unless I find the right doctor to support me there. Seems like it might be difficult to find an ob/gyn who would be willing to work closely with me and my psychiatrist to figure out the right hormones for me.