(I am surprised that with nearly 2000 entries on this site I’ve never used the title A Little Bit of Life before)
Two bits of not so brilliant but they could be much worse news are in my life at the moment. I don’t think dominating my life is the right term but they are definitely big factors in everything right now. And not easy. Life is never easy.
I will start with the slightly easier one first – my powerchair is broken.
The easiest way to explain it is to say it has a broken castor. It’s more complicated than that because of the spider-trac but basically it’s not right and it’s manifesting in one of the castors (I’m not sure but I think they won’t need to replace the wheel to fix it).
It’s been niggling at me for at least a few weeks that it wasn’t right but when Mum looked she couldn’t see anything wrong with it and I wasn’t sure so I left it. But eventually I figured, it’s under warranty, get them out. And unfortunately it is broken. (the scary thing here is that I probably wouldn’t have called them out if I’d have had to pay a call out fee). I’ve been waiting 10 or so days for the part to come in which will hopefully be at some point next week. I’m told it’s fixable and it’s covered by the warranty. I’m also told the wheel is definitely not going to fall off and I can keep using it in the meantime (although I’ve chosen not to go to Reading today like I wanted to just in case). So it’s positive bad news. It does need to go into the workshop when they have the part though.
The second part of the news is that I went to the Drs last week to discuss my mental health and am now on Citalopram for depression and anxiety. I was last on antidepressants very briefly two years ago at which point I came off of them much sooner than I should have. I’ve decided to commit to at least a year of meds this time.
I said to her that a lot of the time previously it’s felt like depression was the bigger issue but as much as I am depressed now my anxiety feels much more prevalent. That’s why she gave me Citalopram as opposed to the Sertraline I’ve had most recently.
Citalopram was actually the first ever antidepressant I took in 2003 when I was diagnosed originally but I had to come off of it after a couple of weeks due to nausea. It had been getting better but my then GP said to try a new drug (I went onto Lofepramine for 18 months and then had several years on and off of Fluoxetine before trying Sertraline). My current GP has put me on a 50% dose for a few weeks and I’m only just a week in but I’ve had one terrible day for nausea and a day or two of feeling off. So it’s more positive than I hoped.
I won’t go into the ins and outs of how everything has been and all that. What I will say is that it suddenly feels so much harder to talk about mental health than it has done in previous years. A huge part of that is that a couple of people I’ve talked to about it have been really negative about it and my choosing to go on meds. And in one case gave me some unasked for advice that was potentially very dangerous (thankfully as this is not my first go with this I knew they were full of shit). I might blog more about that at some point soon ish as I’m hoping to get back to writing regularly but I think that’s all I’ve got to say for today.