Every Day the Same

I always tell myself I'm going to post every day to my illness journal so people can see what it's really like to live with chronic illnesses, but it really is just posting the same thing over and over sometimes. And when that same thing is negative, it just feeds the negativity.

My depression and anxiety have not gotten better the last few weeks. If anything, they've slowly gotten worse. I'm barely functioning anymore. If I had to work outside of the house, I surely would have lost my job by now because I don't have the energy to do more than make coffee in the morning and trudge back up the stairs. And I've been sleeping later and later each day. My son has been home all week because of Covid protocols (he goes back on Monday) so I turned my alarm clock off. I just managed to get up before 8 this morning to get the trash out in time.

That might be because of my anxiety meds. I've nearly run out of the ones I normally take. I had some other ones I took for only a short time because they knocked me out for a full day after taking them. I've been taking a half of one around 9pm each night. They don't knock me out right away, but they do seem to squash the anxiety really well so that I can fall asleep and stay asleep. But just as when I took them years ago, the next day, I can barely get out of bed and spend the whole day groggy. Normally, the side effects wouldn't be worth it, but I'm trying to conserve the last few of the others for when I need them during the day. They don't work as well with canceling out the anxiety, but they don't make me fall asleep either. They do take the edge off of the physical symptoms I get with my anxiety (jitters, mainly).

Good news is my next doctor appointment is a week from today, so I should be able to get a refill of the anxiety meds (if I don't forget to ask my doctor--I do plan to write it down before the appointment) and probably up the dosage on my bipolar meds to hopefully get out of this funk.

On a related note, my husband has finally relented to get his Covid shot otherwise he's going to get fired. Obviously, as the main income in the family (the other being our 20-year-old son currently as our 21-year-old daughter isn't working right now), he can't get fired, so he's going to Rite Aid tomorrow to get the first shot. This has been giving me unknown amounts of anxiety since Covid existed. He and our oldest son are the hold-outs for the vaccine. My husband was refusing simply because they said he had to (a very toddler-reaction to being told what to do) and our son is just lazy and doesn't want to take twenty minutes of his day off to get the shot. I don't care why they're doing it as long as they finally get them so I don't have to worry so much about them getting sick (especially my son who has asthma).

That leaves just our 11-year-old son and 2-year-old grandson unvaccinated, and hopefully, they'll have the vaccine for 5-11-year-olds by the end of the month or early November which will cover our son who is in school full time and already had one exposure incident (literally the second day of school) and got pinged last week for a temperature which got him out of school for a week because I can't find an appointment to get him tested (he isn't sick at all).

I'm hoping once my husband and oldest son are vaccinated that some of this anxiety will ease up. I know it won't go away completely because there will always be something to worry about, but that really is a large part of what is making me anxious 24-7. Just getting my prescription refilled will probably help because knowing I'm running out of anxiety meds is causing me more anxiety. Ugh.

It's just more of the same every day which is so disheartening and adds to the depression. That's something I always try to explain to people about depression--it's like a self-sustaining circle that feeds into itself, offering few ways out as it drags you down. You start to get depressed and feeling down makes you more depressed which makes you more sad which makes you more depressed. It's hard to get free from that when everything about depression makes you more depressed.

I just need to hold on a little longer. Another week until my appointment then I'll be able to get my meds next Friday (probably), and hopefully, start feeling better the week after that. But I'm also nervous that if I got this used to this dosage this fast, how fast will I acclimate to the new dosage? And will I just need to try something else in a few months. That's how it's always been, and I'm running out of options it seems. That's a scary thought that feeds into the depression and anxiety.