Now for the not so awesome stuff. My meds are seriously screwing with me. I haven't slept in two weeks. Last night I only slept for two hours. I finally had a nervous breakdown when my husband got up. School starts in three weeks. I can't go back feeling like this. My heart pounds all day, my whole body is shaking, my head is foggy and dizzy and my eyes hurt and have a hard time focusing. This is not right. The RE told me that he does not want me taking Ativan during pregnancy but that he was fine with the Lexapro. So I have not been taking the Ativan because I am afraid of getting addicted to it (it is a controlled substance and it is easy to get addicted--I have in the past because I took one each morning upon waking. I managed to get off of it pretty easily but I was already taking my SSRIs for a long time at that point). I cut my Lexapro dose in half because I felt it was too much and it was most definitely screwing with me way too much. The problem is now I don't know what's happening--am I having withdrawals from that? From the Ativan? Do I have to just stop the Lexapro altogether? I am beyond frustrated because I feel like no one can help me. I just keep having bad reaction to antidepressants now--even after taking them for so many years!! Honestly, the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life was to wean off of them. My life has been hell ever since (for other reasons) and because of the fact that I've not been medicated I have not been coping with everything very well. I had such high hopes after leaving Mayo and am literally devastated that the treatment plan is going like this. I was doing great with the small increments until just over two weeks ago. I am now going to look for a psychiatrist who specializes in reproductive psychiatry and can help me with treatment now, during and after pregnancy. I am well aware that this all needs to be under control before I can start cycling with the RE so I am really hoping that we can figure something out. Fuck. It just never, ever stops or gets any easier, does it?.........
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So I just got back from seeing my psychiatric nurse practitioner and my therapist AND I also spoke on the phone with a psychiatric nurse at the Mayo Clinic. I was completely freaking out when I wrote the first half of this post this morning, so I am a bit more stable now. Everyone is in agreement that I am suffering from withdrawals, all of my own idiotic doing. My doctor at Mayo told me to slowly raise my dosage of Lexapro by 5 mgs at a time which I had been doing. But at 15 it started to get to be too much and by 20 (target dosage) it was ridiculous. I couldn't handle it (even though that is the dose I took for ten years before stopping it in 2012). So I called and she told me to take 15. But I'm an asshole and thought "I felt best when I was at 10" so I decided I was going to do that. Terrible. Then I just abruptly stopped the Ativan even though I know that it is addictive as I mentioned before--but I didn't think about any of this. I didn't think "I may just be having withdrawals" because I freaked out thinking that it was all affecting me the way everything else has this past year and I spiraled. This is what happens. So now I will stay on 10 mgs of Lexapro and hopefully continue on that permanently. I will resume the Ativan for now and taper off once the Lexapro has taken full effect. Now maybe I can get some goddamn sleep and stop trying to do everything myself. I need to remember that these doctors all know what they are talking about.
The End.
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