03/23/2009:

Trazodone

Well, I'm off the alcohol as of March 18th, 2009 and back on the 50mg dose of Trazodone I was prescribed nine months ago.

As I was told to experiment with the dosage, I found that half a tablet, 25mg, didn't do a thing, one tablet, 50mg, gets me tired and one and one-half tablets knocks me out. And as far as I can tell I'm not feeling any after affects from the Trazodone.

I can tell that I'm being knocked-out because I don't wake up four times each night to go to the restroom and I seem to wake up in the same position I remember falling asleep in.

I cannot believe they used to use Trazodone for an anti-depressant, when it makes a perfect sleeping pill.

04/06/2009:

The Pillow & the Pills

I discovered that I could actually sleep with a light pillow over the ear on the 'up' side of my head that is already resting on a pillow beneath it. Kind of like a Malamud-head sandwich eh? I do this because the noises sometimes emanating from the compartment above my own have the violence to rip me out of a lovely dream with Morgan Fairchild right when I'm beginning to paint her toenails bright red.

After three, 16 hour shifts in a row the other week, I found I had slept through either a carpet installation directly above my head in the apartment there, or an entire Guernsey cow being carved apart, by hand, with hacksaws, hammers, and knives, by a do it yourself butcher.

That would explain the blood dripping through the grill of the ceiling fan in my bathroom.

I reserve these pages for my alcohol, prescription, psychiatry, and sleep adventures and being so I deliver a re-cap of my recent traumas.

I have had a single beer, at lunch, at a Mexican-food place, with my daughter picking up the bill, since I entirely halted my consumption of alcohol on March 18th, 2009.

I'm still loading up on carbs before bedtime, sans the golden suds, and I continue to find sleep, even with my terazocin prostate-relieving potion, for longer than two hours, elusive.

Although I could fall asleep before the completion of two or three paragraphs in the book at my bedstand, the sojourn lasted less time than a 'director's-cut' of any movie.

Although I wasn't feeling as poorly as when I was practicing the ancient and arcane pre-bedtime Wisconsin ritual of carefully swilling ice-berg-cold, craft-made beers, followed by a Swanson's Hungry Man dinner, and ended with a dessert of Ben & Jerry's Heath Bar Crunch vanilla ice cream, I still was feeling less than good.

And I continued to discover myself spending more time in bed than the grandparents in the first Willy Wonka movie did. 11, 13 and even 15 hours, reading, trying to sleep, and sleeping. And pondering 'the drawer'.

As I noted in a previous column I stumbled upon the June 2008 prescription of trazodone that finally allowed me to sleep.

I can't believe this drug was once used as an anti-depressant. Because one pill, "taken with food" (not a hard dictate for me to follow) and three paragraphs into my bedtime reading, whether it be Va-Va-Voom: Red Hot Lesbian Erotica or Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, the book and booklight would fall to my chest and I would awake 6 or 8 hours later. Bliss.

And I would climb out of bed remembering normal dreams, not the unbelievably bizarre and peyote-like scenarios flooding my unconscious like an Iowa flood over the cornfields fertilized by highly-advertised sleep-aid Rozerem ™.

But still, while not continuing to plan my own demise to avoid the crushing emotional pain, life was providing no joy (other than that provided by my own sotto voce comments that caused me to laugh out loud) but I would venture, I felt as well as I used to feel when I was on Wellbutrin-XL ™ and under even more intense suicide-inducing physic stress.

(I just moved my Diet Coke can to the kitchen, and I thought to myself, "You know what's nice about diet soda drinks? You don't have to share them with the roaches." The insects have zero interest in Coke Zero. Imagine that.)

I went to Dr. Abimelech in January, and as I reported elsewhere, in my 25 year history with him (yea even through long periods of not having health insurance), I received my first ever call from his office to come in for a 'follow-up'.

So, on April Fools Day 2009, I again visited the medical tents of the good doctor. After being run through the usual battery of weight, temperature (do they have to take it anally?), blood pressure and heart rate, by his nurse, who would do fine working with dromedary camels, she snapped at me after she flipped through my charts, looked me in the eye and told me, "The follow-up was for January!"

While I contemplated stabbing the Abilify (aripipazole) ballpoint pen laying on the counter, deep into her right eye socket, outwardly I revealed only the blank-faced stare of yet another humble patient.

As Dr. A. went over my charts and my current list of ailments, without me mentioning that I feel about as happy as President Bill does when forced to spend an evening alone with Hillary, he mentioned that my thyroid reading of '3.6' concerned him, and if I was depressed all the time, it may be chemically induced.

So now I'm on prescription levothyroxine for my thyroid and three others pills. Of which, I could most likely dispense with two of them if I'd only lose about forty pounds.

04/14/2009:

Hypothyroidism

The first week on my 'thyroid' medicine (levothyroxine) found my heart experiencing a few episodes of rapid fluttering, and my hands seemed to shake more than usual (I guess my life's dream of being a 'hand model' are up-in-smoke now), and maybe a headache permanently lodged above my right eye socket, other than those, I don't have any complaints with my generic levothyroxine side-effects.

I state "maybe a headache" because the sleep-inducing trazodone is known for creating headaches, as is the thyroid med.

Good things  I have noticed though are, that I can simply no longer sleep forever. It's not that I can't get up and work for awhile and then take a nap, I can still do that, but I can no longer sleep for 12 or 15 hours straight. I just don't feel like staying in bed any longer. However, if I awoke and found Morgan Fairchild next to me, well, I'd fake it.

And this is the really scary part <grin>, when faced with an impossible situation, such as my finances, instead of thinking of sticking my head in the oven and turning the gas on (which wouldn't work anyway, because the oven is electric), I'm thinking of ways to make things better. I'm thinking of ways to make things work, rather than just giving up and waiting to be crushed by my troubles.

Dr. Drew and I both strongly believe that physical fitness and regular lifetime aerobic exercise are absolutely the best cure for most emotional problems.

I think the pharmaceuticals just allow our body to artificially become well enough to let us know how really good we would feel if we treated it right. And treating it right is work and deprivation.

04/23/2009:

Up the Voltage

Professor Hathaway:  "That's a wonderful story, Bodie. I noticed you've stopped stuttering."
Bodie:  "I've been giving myself shock treatments."
Professor Hathaway:  "Up the voltage."

Yesterday, after I visited the cataract doctor at the crack of dawn, I went into see Dr. Abimelech for a follow-up visit regarding my thyroid.

Since it's so long between my $20 co-pay visits, I had sent him a card updating him on my emotional progress a week or so ago and (as I'm sure he was attempting to figure out how to charge me a co-pay on mail I send him) he told me he had gotten my update.

He upped my Levothyroxine dosage by 25mcg to 75mcg once a day: taken on an empty stomach, and that's the hard part, not having my 22 ounces of coffee laden with whole milk and 5 Sweet & Lows shortly after I wake up. Being the new prescription is only $4.99 to fill at Osco-Albertsons, I'm fine with his revision.

He told me that he would keep upping the voltage, I mean dosage, until I stopped feeling better.

Picturing myself coming in next visit wearing tight patent leather tap shoes, while singing Broadway melodies and dancing like Martin Short, I asked him if that  was how we told it was working, by how I felt? He replied that there would also be blood tests.

We talked about the Freddie Mac executive who had committed suicide that morning (hey, how did I know he may have been murdered?) but I told him (from my perspective of being suicidal once too often--or, would it be 'not often enough'?) that the only reason someone would commit suicide would be that he was having hormonal imbalances, because IT IS NEVER THAT BAD.

That evening, after forcing myself to go out, while on my way to the bookstore, the only place I can actually afford to 'go out' to, I discovered that my three-year old Motorola Razr™ had stopped receiving signals.

Since it is my only 24 hour connection to the electronic realm, I was forced to immediately purchase a replacement LG phone from Gay-Bob at the Verizon store. He pried off the back and peeled out the battery and then told me the phone had gotten wet because (the normally green dot) the dot was red, while I stated that I knew for an absolute 100% fact the phone had not gotten wet, but had simply been riding in my hip pocket since the third in a row $24.95 cellphone belt-holder had broken on me.

He was an excellent salesman, and the first one ever, anywhere, to advise me not to pay extra for the insurance.

How did I afford the new phone? Well, I charged it and the blow-out-priced $4.95 belt pouch, to my soon-to-be-past-due account at Verizon. Plus, I got the cheapest phone that came with a $50 mail-in rebate.

Minutes later, I was browsing the medical aisle at the bookstore reading about hypothyroidism. I learned that my prescription of Levothyroxine causes the speeding up of my metabolism, (which would also explain my having to break out and dust off my shorter leather belt that holds up the pants I wear at work), and I also discovered why Safeway has Morton's salt without iodine:  because people undergoing treatment for their thyroid are advised not to ingest any added iodine.

While not yet feeling ambitious enough to file my last three years of income taxes, to demonstrate how well I am feeling, after tucking my Trazodone sleeping pill into my gut last night, (and then after hours of some very weird dreams about:  not having a seat on a passenger airliner--walking into a room of dozens of brides-to-be with their tops off--and being handed lunch sealed in two Ziploc® bags, one with cut green beans, which make me puke) I awoke at 6:54am, and found I could not return to sleep, as I had been doing for the past many years.

So I got up and typed this entry.

05/19/2009:

A couple of mornings ago (or was it nights?--with 80 hour work-weeks, who the hell knows?) I enjoyed a couple of beers inside my spacious 700 square foot compartment. Just two. A couple. (Not like when my father told the policeman--who had run a red light without lights and siren and T-boned and totaled my dad's car--that he'd only had a couple of beers, and of course, my pappy, being from Milwaukee, knew that he was talking about have a couple of pitchers of beer.)

Regardless, my alcohol parched tongue, I'm sure cracked like you see in those photos of dried out river beds, hungrily soaked up the loveliness of those of those two brews. The next day at work I paid for it. Ouch. I did not feel good.

On the next drinking session, I snapped down a pair of shots of scotch and I soon was scared as I felt my control slipping away as I was typing my replies to one of those never-ending "My friend, tell me about you and I'll tell you about me" surveys. They probably got some answers from me that night that they did not expect.

It's odd that I was worried about my mental control slipping away (I've got to put in 'mental' control else you might think I was peeing in my pants) because I normally drink to pry my brain from its 24-7 grip on all the problems of the world, and yet here, after two mahogany-brown snorts of whiskey, I was feeling uncomfortable because I knew I was no longer 100% in charge.

Not forgetting my 50mg of trazodone that same night, but forgetting clocking-in was less than six hours away, I again paid for my scotch sipping after I arrived at work.

Last night, this time with my next work period 14-plus hours away, I had a shoot-out between my 1.75L bargain basement blended Scotch and the .750ML single malt Scotch that was aged 10 years and priced well over $1.30 an ounce. (When you work 80 hour weeks you can afford some small luxuries.)

Big difference. The single malt was much smoother than the blended, sort of like if you can imagine drinking Mississippi River water versus that from a pristine Rocky Mountain stream. Sadly, to the uninitiated palate, they'd both taste like an ounce of Pine-Sol® with maybe a dropper full of ammonia squirted in.

And yes, last night I did skip the trazodone prescription even though the label says never to skip a dose, but sometimes one can simply be overmedicated, eh?

As far as my hypothyroidism goes, I take my 75mg of levothyroxine every day and feel probably as good as I can feel being 40 pounds overweight and in such poor physical shape. So, yes, I feel good.

Two nice things I've noticed since I started my hypothyroidism regimen: my fingers no longer get so dry and cracked that I have to put bandages on them like some leper in a Pacific island colony and my kidneys no longer hurt like I've just fallen off a Pony Express horse I'd ridden from Prescott to Tombstone Arizona.

05/31/2009:

Well, I've discovered, no, I've assembled, no, I've cultivated a taste for scotch whiskey. "Cul-ti-vated", doesn't that sound so sophisticated? In actuality it's no different from the bums cultivating their taste for Old English Malt liquor.

A budget buster for sure as the single malt variety of whiskey I've grown attached to (where the caramel-colored brew is concocted, aged and then bottled a decade or so later, from one batch of malted ingredients) runs almost two dollars per ounce. Where as my old favorite, Jose Cuervo Gold tequila-and-tooth-enamel-remover, can be gulped for a little more than seventy cents a snort.

In any case, with my 70-plus hour work weeks, I was able to afford a small bottle of the stuff, and with a 32-hour break in my labors staring me in the face, I decided to try some of the debilitating Scottish brew.

Before I knew it, while laboring on my internet pages, being the addict connoisseur, I am, I had lowered the level in the bottle considerably by slopping down almost a handful of ounces of the stuff.

Remembering, this  time, not to top off my binge imbibing with my every day 50mg dose of Trazodone, I floated off to fall on my bed to awake an uninterupted eight hours later, with Morgan Fairchild no longer by my side, and not feeling all that terrible. (Not sure about the Morgan Fairchild part.) A little shaky, a little on edge, but not drag-my-ass-horrible like last time I imbibed. I don't anticipate this becoming a regular event, but I am wondering if my hypothyroidism treatment has effected how my body metabolizes and responds to alcohol? In any case, booze continues to draw Dr.Malamud to it like Donald Trump is drawn to a television camera.

6/21/2009:

Several nights ago, as addicts will, I tempted Fate and consumed two jiggers of my bargain-basement blended whiskey from the very high class green plastic jug it came off the store shelf in, and four fingers worth of my expensive-as-penicillin-vaccine 10 year aged single malt scotch.

Not having attained the desired altitude, or was it attitude?, I broke out my two year old bottle of previously opened Grand Marnier and had a shot of its grossly deteriorated contents now tasting like a mix of mid-twentieth century cough and maple syrups.

The next morning, other than a little jitterness I felt none of the expected penalties due a fool like me.

Waving the red cape before the lowered and elegant curved horns of Fate once more, a couple of nights later I enjoyed another four shots of scotch at a single sitting, and used the whiskey's effects, rather than my prescription trazadone, to wheel me off to a dreamless solid six hours of sleep.

The normal jitters was the only retribution paid upon waking. Not an enjoyable feeling, but not all that horrible either, but not worth enduring for the meager trip from reality that the whiskey provided the night before. But somehow, 'the night before' rarely listens to 'the morning after.'

Driving the next day I hit a gradual dip in the road, but while the car went through it as normal with a quick "hump-thump", at the bottom of the dip, my body continued on past the asphalt beneath the car for a much longer and enjoyable roller-coaster like ride. Little did I realize that Fate was showing her hand.

That night, a "no-alcohol" night, I had a Red Baron pizza 5-cheese pizza, which I proceeded to bury with pepperoni from an outside source, resulting in both a burnt and soggy pizza. Regardless, I ate it, followed by my prescriptions of omeprazole and trazadone.

About five minutes later, laying on my bed, the mattress and I began to spin in a clock-wise manner. Grabbing what I could of the covers I held on and thought to myself, "This will be fun."

Within a very few turns I had decided it wasn't really that fun and as a matter of fact I was feeling nauseous and quite ill as I opened my eyes and by staring at my dresser bureau for an anchor point, slowed the carousel wheel that my bed had become to a stop.

But I could not get off as it spun and stopped and spun of its own accord until the almost-digested 5-cheese pizza came up and out into the garbage with four hearty heaves.

I missed almost two days (32 hours to me of pay), plus they hired some Will-Smith-looking character to snag the four days of overtime I'd been enjoying.

Feeling much like what I imagine a Zombie feels like, I trudged like an extra in The Dawn of the Dead through the next couple of days. I felt horrible. Until we are sick we don't realize how good it feels to be not sick.

Now, almost four days later, my life force is returning and I find myself laughing out loud and in public again at my own stupid jokes-- a sure indication my condition is in retreat.

The doctor's verdict? Dr. Abmimelech was at a conference in Tahiti, or was it Tucson?, so I saw his competent and quite nice far past Lane Bryant sized physician's assistant.

She determined that my allergies had caused severe pressure on my right eardrum and eustachian tube assembly throwing my balance mechanism out of whack which my roller coaster ride earlier in the week should have warned me was coming.

The cure? Sudafed and Meclizine (an over-the-counter motion sickness medication) every four to six hours for a few days.

Did my scotch sipping cause it? Who knows, but I don't think it helped anything.

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