Backsliding with Chronic Illnesses

Today wasn't a good day.

I think I might have messed things up by forgetting my mood stabilizer last night. I'm supposed to take it with dinner, but since we normally eat dinner around 5pm, the pills are causing me to be drowsy by 9 or 10pm and I don't like it. So I decided I would experiment with taking them between 9 and 10pm to see when I start to feel sleepy. Taking them at 10pm seems to have them kicking in a little after midnight, so those nights I didn't fall asleep until after 1am. Next I was going to try 9pm, but my 10yo came in last night and was talking and talking. I completely forgot to take them until around 11:30pm.

I didn't start feeling sleepy until around 2am. Not sure when I actually fell asleep, but I got up at 8am which, weirdly enough, is late for me now. I've been getting up between 6:30 and 7am for days now until this morning.

I had one cup of coffee but have been dragging all day. I had planned to run some errands on my own since over the past week I've felt more alert. I thought I could handle driving myself around town, but by the time my husband got home from work, I was so sleepy and not feeling great.

I really thought the energy I had the last week or so--all of the cleaning and organizing--was because of the meds working. But what if there's some other explanation? What if I was just slightly manic and because my mood is normally so low, manic just looks normal? Now my anxiety is up worrying I'm going to go back to being fatigued all day long again.

I don't like it. I'm trying to stay calm, but internally, I'm freaking out. I can't go back to that life. I mean, I haven't done much the last couple of days but not because I'm so exhausted, I physically and mentally can't do things. I just didn't feel like doing anything besides knitting. Today I felt like I physically couldn't, not that I didn't want to.

I ended up setting another alarm on my phone to remind me to take my pills at 9pm. Hopefully that's all it was. I also changed the time I take my blood pressure meds to 10am instead of 11am since I get up so early now. I end up spending all morning waiting until I can take my meds before I go do something.

The plan for tomorrow was to stop at the bank then Dollar Tree for school stuff. Then we were going to go to Target to get a few things and probably Walmart and/or Costco for groceries. I thought about just going myself but now... I can't drive when I feel drowsy like this. Of course, that was the plan. Plan being the operative word. My husband just let me know those plans are on hold because he has to watch the baby while our daughter has a doctor's appointment. We obviously can't take him to the store with us and the 14yo doesn't like to babysit (she refuses to change diapers) so we either have to wait until she gets back from her appointment or go on Saturday. Ugh.

On a positive note, I did spend the morning updating my blog. I had been posting daily (mostly) about things going on during isolation but stopped back in July. I decided to write up a bunch of backdated entries to fill things in. I made a list of things I could post for just about every day of the last two months then posted the short, easy ones (stuff about crafts, birthdays and things with pictures). I might try sitting on the porch and doing some more in the morning. If I'm feeling okay.

I also spent way too much time making a new blog header and changing the theme because apparently the one I was using is no longer supported. Oh, and can I mention how much I hate WordPress' new block editor. It doesn't do any of the actual text layouts I used most often and creates extra steps to do things I did easily with the old one. HATE IT.