....off the Record !!

It has come to my attention that what is going on NOW is just as important as what WAS going on. As I write each chapter, I am also in the reality of the NOW. I felt it might help anyone who would like to follow what my journey is like now –between WAS chapters, I will post some NOW chapters. WOW, that sentence structure tells you the state of my mind, LOL.

As I have told you from the beginning, transparency is one of the most critical factors when dealing with Mental Illness. Hiding in your pain and misery will only get you more pain and suffering. Despite my pattern of hiding behind my coping skills, I know that those poor skills will only help for so long. If you followed my Ketamine Journey, you already know that I felt I had found my miracle. That still is true to this day. But, and there always seems to be that insidious BUT, doesn't there?

I have reached that BUT and have some decisions to make once again. I did do one booster a couple weeks ago, and it did not seem to help much. I had gained a pretty much normal state of energy that I had not felt for many years. I could once again walk on my excruciating painful feet, and my other pain areas had become tolerable.

I was put on Cymbalta at the beginning of this year. I wanted to get off it. “I feel better now. I can do this myself, right?” It was doing no good anyway, so I thought, and I did not like the side effects. My missing psychiatrist (Dr. Pierson) is nowhere to be found, and finding a psychiatrist in this town is almost impossible. Do To COVID, most doctors are not taking new patients right now. Dr. Foster is not comfortable (not his lane) messing with psychiatric medications.

Getting off Cymbalta is not as easy as I thought it would be. The best advice I could find was from my Rheumatologist. Dr. Pickrill said just cut it in half for a couple weeks, and then you can just stop it. Oh, hell, that is easy. I can do that !! I did that, and I am not near as smart as I thought I was.

Then came that BUT that I have never been able to avoid. My intrusive thoughts of doom and gloom were worsening every day. The dilemma of having no bottom teeth yet (oh yea, there is that old money thing again) My feet feel like they may explode any minute. It is difficult to walk again. My desire to write and my concentration was leaving more and more every day. All my positive thoughts are giving in to negativity once again.

My booster 2 weeks ago cost me $450.00 (1 booster infusion). There is no insurance coverage for these treatments, and Social Security and ACE Hardware does not do the trick.

If I have learned nothing else throughout the years, if I do nothing, it will not end well; it never has. Now, I must practice all the things I am telling people they must do to overcome Depression, Anxiety, and Chronic Pain.

I had to reach out this morning to Dr. Foster and make the confession that my “know it all” attitude about an antidepressant probably is what has undone what the Ketamine had done. He is very kind and, without scolding me, told me that I needed to go back on the Cymbalta at least until some doctor finds it in their world to give me a shot.

Here I stand on the verge again, and I promise you that having to put myself out like this is not a pleasant thing for me to do. If I don’t, how could anyone who follows my journey ever find any light at the end of the tunnel? I believe with all my heart, there is that light, and I will find it to report to you that what I tell you is TRUTH.

This is my first posting of the NOW, and if I can muster my brain to finish the chapter of THEN I have been working on, it will be up soon.

“There may be no light at the end of the tunnel, but there's certainly enough air, enough oxygen for you to keep going. And you must keep going, because that is your duty.”

― Mani Ashwin