New Provider Update

So I had my appointment with my new provider the other day.

She was nice enough and listened to what I was saying. It's weird going back to having a nurse monitor my meds after having a full MD on the case for the last two years. I'm back to having my provider need to consult supervisors to approve my meds and treatment which is a little annoying, but my choices were very limited.

The one difference between this provider and my previous ones is that she was more than willing to diagnose my social anxiety. Any other time I talked about it, the doctor or whoever just chalked it up to generalized anxiety disorder and left it at that. I do have GAD... now. But back in the day, it was mostly social anxiety. the GAD is much more recent even though I was officially diagnosed with it back in like 2014 or something.

Anyway, the appointment went rather long as we went over all of my past info and diagnosis. In the end, she confirmed the GAD (which is really bad now) and Bipolar II and added the social anxiety disorder.

As for my meds...

I've been taking Vraylar to stabilize my moods. I haven't have any side effects on it unlike Latuda which made me gain a ton of weight to the point I was up to 283lbs at one point. I couldn't do that anymore so we switched to the Vraylar which is a similar med but without as many side effects. In fact, my previous doctor said some people reported weight loss with it so bonus if that happened to me because I need to lose at least 100lbs.

During my last visit with my previous doctor, she upped the dosage to 3mg. I hadn't even realized how much it was helping me until I went to fill out all of the forms for the new provider and didn't need to check all the things for depression. My mood has been pretty stable without the gnawing depression that usually hangs over me every day of my life.

If it wasn't for the chronic fatigue zapping me of energy, I'd probably feel really good. Unfortunately, I don't have the energy to act on my good feelings which is sad, but I'll take what I can get. At least I don't feel so down about not being able to do as much.

The new provider agreed the Vrylar is working well for me so I'm staying on it. Then comes all the meds I take for my anxiety. In the end, she agreed to let me keep taking Ativan at night to help me sleep until we can figure out something better. I also stay on buspirone which I take twice a day but she's upping the dosage. And then she's starting me on something else to hopefully replace the Ativan at night. We'll see. I haven't been able to sleep in months without Ativan to calm my racing thoughts before bed.

I'm cautiously optimistic that this provider will work for me. I see her again in four weeks to see how the meds are working. Fingers crossed that the new med works well for me and that the next meeting goes just as well.