Friday 27 May 2016

Motivation and enthusiasm are low

Its been awhile...again. I have been finding writing more easy to put off, or rather less enthusiasm about doing it lately. I have started to think about doing a podcast as that (in my mind) could be done more ad hoc, or could even be organised if I was doing it with other people. 

I think for me as well. I have found myself listening to podcasts much more than I read blogs. So it is kind of matching up with what I'm interested in. 

Medication-wise I am still on the 40mg of citalopram, and should be having a medication review soon. Though I'm currently midway through a six week wait for my appointment with the GP. So I will have been taking this new dosage for around 12-13 weeks when I have my review. When I believe this is meant to happen after four weeks. 
I think for me the medication and dosage has worked well. While they do still happen, my negative thoughts as less frequent and less intense. However I have had multiple occasions where I start to have uncontrollable twitching in my right hand. Sometimes I have been able to gradually stop it quickly. Other times I kind of have to fight through it and it can last up to 7-8 minutes (I'm guessing here). I have been restrained by the person I'm with twice because I can't control the twitching and it starts to lead to more. Including being emotional and struggling to get free. Even starting to struggle to not hit myself.

I am not sure if this is the medication, I don't really think it is. Or whether it is related to a situation or conversation I am having at that time. I have been told that it can start when I talk about the future, which makes sense to me. The last time it started (I controlled it quickly because I knew it was coming) was watching a film where there was a line 'please help me' as a character fights for their consciousness and their mind (X Men Apocalypse) that gave me flashbacks to New Year and being out of control. So again this makes sense to me. I think because I have been able to make some sense of these twitching fits I feel much more relaxed about them. It's still a concern and very draining (I'm always very tired after), but I have been able to make sense of them so far and I have found comfort in that.  

Sunday 8 May 2016

Increased dosages and a mini episode

About five weeks ago now I had another appointment with my GP. At that time we reviewed my 10 weeks on citalopram, and took into account my current experiences. At this time my GP recommended that my citalopram dosage was increased from 20 to 40 mg. This seemed like a beneficial decision to me, while it's never going to be good to hear you probably need more medication, I felt the citalopram had been helping. It had decreased the intensity of my thoughts, but not the frequency of them. As such the increase in dosage made sense to me.
Since the increase in dosage I have generally felt less low so I think the increase has been beneficial and a good thing for me. 

It's kind of a good medication update which I think I may have mentioned in previous posts as well. However two weeks ago I had mini episode, which was the first one since January, so it was really scary, quite annoying, emotional and very tiring experience. 

The episode started with my foot shaking and then my leg. I'm not sure if my leg was actually shaking, or if my foot was moving so much that made my leg move. This was followed by a outpour of emotion, tears and eventually this led to me hitting myself. 
There was someone else with me in the evening, which I guess was helpful in terms of having someone to look out for me. But it also made me more emotional and more annoyed, because I didn't want to be like this in front of them. I think it was probably that frustration lead to me hitting myself. 
Having been restrained (not in a good way) and the moment passing, I began to carm down. Following that episode I still had a few shakes and twitches for the following 10 to 15 minutes, maybe a bit longer I'm not sure. 
Since then this hasn't happened again, which I think maybe because on the day there are quite a few things going on. So maybe an internal emotion or worry was the cause. Although that being said I hadn't been worrying about anything, in fact was looking forward to the day and I enjoyed it. So I'm just not sure really what happened, I think that's another reason why episodes like this are so scary. 

I will be making another appointment with my GP in a week or so and hopefully see how my increased dosage is going. I will also ask about this latest mini episode to see if there could be any other cause, or anything else I could do to help prevent this happening. Particularly given this is the first one since January. 

Hope everyone is well. Stay safe. 
Thanks for reading.