Number One (originally written 2/13/2022)

Your Meds and You...and Everyone Else

            I got into a bit of an argument with my OT a few weeks back.

            Nothing major. No yelling, no intense words or fisticuffs, whatever fisticuffs are. But, she pointed out that it was in my goals to be…a little less assertive, and not to be too demanding. I think. I’m not so good at remembering what my goals are, hence why my therapists go over them about every month or two. Also not good at remembering time. I’ll get into that in a different post.

Now, before I go much further here, I guess I should explain that I have various therapies 3 full days per week. These therapies include Occupational Therapy (OT), Speech Therapy (ST), Recreational Therapy (RT) and Talk Therapy (and we’ll just call that one Therapy). It’s all done in one place, and they also offer Physical Therapy, but I graduated from PT about 2 years ago. The various therapists facilitate some of the RT groups. Just a bare bones explanation that will, again, hopefully become clearer over time.

            Anyway, the argument. It wasn’t a major talk. The way it went was, she sat in on Music Appreciation, and it was my OT session right after that. My OT is also the Theater Group facilitator.

            The talk was my OT nicely, but clearly, letting me know that I was contributing a bit too much, and that it was something I wanted to work on (you know, working on not being, well, kind of a bitch, at least in my own eyes–most people see me as a very nice person).  She told me it was about the theater group, which I get. I got a little overenthusiastic about the piece we were working on, and offered pointers. However, she is the facilitator, has more formal experience acting than I do, and knows what other people’s goals are. I was overstepping. I get what she was saying, now. That day though…whoa. I was really unhappy. She spoke to me right after Music Appreciation, so I thought she meant I was being difficult there, too. This upset me quite a bit, as I have an extremely extensive background in music (read: most of my college years were spent on it, and I used to perform regularly), particularly in singing, which is what we mainly work on in that group. It helps people to be more mindful of breathing well, of projecting, and of course, singing, which is fun for us. I had been working personally for quite some time on being less critical in that group in particular.

            In the interest of full disclosure, as well as the topic of this specific post, I should say that I also had not taken a couple of my meds for the past couple of days leading up to this. I take something to help me sleep and something to help with my depression. Neither one of those things are prescription meds, but they do go a long way toward making my day go much smoother, making my life feel much better. I periodically do this with non-prescription meds, and I don’t recommend it. It never goes particularly well. What will happen is, I’ll get irritated with the number of things I have to take, and kind of rebel, I guess. Then I realize that I feel like absolute garbage, and start taking them again.

            First of all, sleeping is mega important. True, I don’t sleep enough (historically speaking, this goes way back), but it’s super important that I do sleep for what I can, usually 6-7 hours per night. 10 hours is ideal, but I don’t usually have the time to sleep that long unless I’m on vacation. That’s why it’s important to take the sleep med, in order to fall asleep quicker, so I can get what I need to function

            If I don’t sleep well, the whole world just gets…harder. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I get more depressed. I also already operate with equilibrium issues most of the time due to the brain damage, and that gets worse as well. My temper gets shorter. All the things you’d expect, I suppose. Yet for me, it’s still such a huge surprise when I have these ill effects. Normal depression exacerbates the problems, because of course it does. Everything is just worse when you’re depressed, isn’t it? Nothing goes right, everything is more difficult, and when you start off with everything being difficult to begin with, well…in this case, a negative plus a negative does not equal a positive.

            Now, I know what I think you’re thinking. Why didn’t you just take your damned meds?! Well, there’s no simple answer. I used to get kind of irritated with people who only took their meds until they felt a bit better, then stopped. It’s a normal enough thing, right? “I feel better, so I must be better.” People do it every day.

            But, we’re not better. We’re only better because of the medicinal effect. Arguing that won’t change it. Meds are there for a reason. In my case, as I said, sleeping med to sleep and mood regulator to, duh, regulate mood, at least until I can get on another antidepressant.

It’s kind of like when you have a really bad cold, and you take cold medicine to get through your day successfully. You may feel better while on the cold med, but the cold is still there. You obviously feel less bad, right? But you’re not over the cold. When the med wears off, you have all the symptoms back full force, and all you can do is drag yourself to bed to sleep it off.

            A lot of meds are like that, and tons of people stop taking them, regardless of whether it’s mental illness or physical illness.

            Let’s think of this from a different angle, too. Something like…oh…let’s say blood pressure meds. I’m on those too. I take one rather strong BP med twice per day. It keeps my blood pressure and pulse low, on purpose, because my blood vessels really, really don’t like even slightly elevated blood pressure. While I’m a little more susceptible to being cold now, and have a bit less energy (maybe, hard to separate that out from the general feeling of being brain damaged), it keeps everything within safe parameters and I can go on with my life. I wouldn’t dream of skipping my BP med. So, why do I skip my mood regulator and sleep med? It makes no sense, plus it has a relatively similar effect: things go sideways, and fast.

            So, I had a rough day that day. Tears, more depression, the works. I beat the living crap out of a punching bag in Fitness. Wore myself right out. Which helped with the stress of the self-inflicted problems I had going on.

            I have since talked to my OT, of course, communication is important. She explained she was just talking about the Theater Group, and not Music Appreciation. Which made me feel quite a bit better, while still leaving me with the thought that I really needed to work on the whole know-it-all aspect of my personality. It’s not a cute look, and I want to fix it. 

Problem solved! Sort of. In a way. A bit.

This all led me to realize I could write about it. The blog is supposed to be about me, my family, and the struggles we have with my acquired brain injury. This is definitely a part of that, and I figured it could help people who experience similar things, or love and/or take care of people who have similar experiences, to read about someone else having problems. I hope it does!