It’s been a bad few days, a very bad few days. A few days of abject despair and loneliness and Stanley knives and reading depressing fiction just to find a bit of empathy. A few days that culminated in me going to my routine check-up with the GP yesterday, sitting with my head in my hands for 10 minutes and coming out with a new prescription. A daily 15mg of mirtazapine to add to my 40mg of fluoxetine. To try to knock me out at night as well as improve my mood.
I collected the drugs and took the first one last night without much thought. It had the desired effect; I slept for almost 10 hours straight (albeit with a few weird and very lucid dreams). This morning, I could barely wake up; I felt spaced out and dozy right through till mid-afternoon. Then that sleepiness was replaced by mad, jaw-clenching rage at everything my children did or said. Even breathing was irritating.
Is this a side effect of the medication already? It’s listed as a potential, although is apparently rare. Of course, it’s quite possible that my children are annoying and I am super-ratty. But it’s made me think.
Do I need two medications?
Are things really that bad?
Yesterday, I’d have said yes. But today, I find myself trying to think objectively about how things are at the moment, and coming to the conclusion that actually, I’m not all that bad. Not two meds bad.
Over the past few months, there have been some crashing lows, but there have also been periods when I’ve felt good, when I’ve been able to laugh, sing, produce some decent work, go out for drinks and not be a total party pooper. That wasn’t the case when I was first diagnosed. For a fair few months, I existed with no ‘good’ whatsoever.
I think maybe the lows feel more intense now because there’s something to contrast them with, those good days where I can plough through a book in three hours or churn out a feature without doubting every punctuation mark or buy myself some new shoes just because. It’s the difference between light and dark when previously, it was all dark.
When I was right at the bottom of the pit, the lows all just merged into one great, cavernous bleakness. I didn’t get the sense of a really few bad days because they were all that bad.
Now, though, there are good days in between the bad ones, and they’ve become more frequent. It feels precarious, and the slide from okay to not okay scares the hell out of me, especially when not okay lasts for more than a day or two. Hence my little meltdown yesterday. But on reflection, looking at the situation dispassionately, I am a lot better than I was. Anti-depressants have made a huge difference to my state of mind. There is no way I can say they haven’t worked, even if they haven’t worked totally – and for that reason, adding in another drug seems unnecessary and uncomfortable.
A good night’s sleep is, without doubt, a blessing, but not if the medication leaves me in a fug for the best part of the next day.
The anger I have felt today has been awful, unreasonable. It’s not something I want to live with if I can choose not to.
I don’t want to increase the risk of side effects, having been ambushed by them when I first started on anti-depressants.
I don’t like the implication of being so mental that one drug alone can’t keep me in my box.
So, I find myself needing to make a decision. Do I take the new meds or stick with what I’m on at the moment? I’m leaning towards sticking. Had yesterday’s appointment been a week ago, I’d have told the GP that everything was pretty much okay and come out with a repeat prescription for the next six months. It just so happened that it came at the end of a run of bad days, including a furious row with my husband about self-harming which is still rumbling on.
Then again, things are obviously still not great, even if I’m on an upward spiral in general. I know that hiding in the summerhouse with a Stanley knife is not the behaviour of a sane person. Nor is looking so pathetic that I get spontaneous hugs at church.
It’s all a big dilemma and I really don’t know what to do.
Lucy's Depression Diary 