Tuesday's psych appointment went well.
I got a month's worth of Ambien CR to try out, since Lunesta hasn't really been up to snuff lately for me. My heretofore once-daily dose of Seroquel was quadrupled (!) from 200mg/day to 800mg/day: a 400mg dose when I get out of bed and another 400mg dose before bed. The horror stories I related to my psychiatrist about Wellbutrin were well heeded, and I was taken off it and the Celexa that accompanied it; instead I'm now back on Lexapro (40mg/day) and Adderall (30mg/day).
Apart from the fact that I still have, but slyly neglected to mention that I still have about sixty 30mg Adderall tablets left over, I was also given prescriptions for an additional two months of it, of sixty pills per month. Altogether that leaves me with very approximately 180 Adderall tablets. That's 1800mg (1.8 grams) of pure amphetamine (well, technically, it's 1.8 grams of "D-amphetamine salts"). I ought to get a fire safe to keep all this shit in, just in case I ever get robbed at home.
I told Herr Doktor Mark Townsend, M.D., my keeper of a psychiatrist about my fibromyalgia worries and he promptly produced not one, not two, but three referrals for three of the city's most highly-regarded neurologists, along with his own email address so I can let him know how my appointment(s) with them went, since my next psych appointment is scheduled for early December.
Though I've been a patient of his, on and off, since 2002, I think I can say with definite certainty that he's so far been the only male doctor I've ever really been impressed with. During my year-long sojourn in Nashville in 2003-04, I threw caution into the wind and took my mother's recommendation that I see her psychiatrist, one Doctor Colleen Somethingorother (whose surname I can't for the life of me remember). She, in turn, has been one of the few female doctors that I was thoroughly unimpressed with; she didn't seem to give much more than the slightest fuck about my well-being, prescribing me various antidepressants which only made me feel worse, and having a fairly large part in my addiction to Ambien. My most recent primary care physician, Doctor Fayne St. John, M.D. (internal medicine) at New Orleans' Ochsner Medical Campus, was another, as she more or less blew off all my concerns. You see, if given a choice I'll always choose a female doctor, regardless of why I need to see a doctor, just because I'm more comfortable around female doctors. Whew, I bet you saw that one coming a mile away. I think, now, regarding my mostly positive experiences with male doctors over the past couple of years, that I'll be dropping my gender prejudices when it comes to matters of illness, injury, and mysterious symptoms. However, I'll always prefer female dentists because by and large they tend to have smaller hands, and I have temporomandibular joint disorder (aka TMJD), while male dentists, what with their almost universally larger hands leave me in an infinite universe of TMJD pain. And this is a rather pertinent factor if I ever hope to get my shattered front teeth (suffered during a sleepwalking episode a few months ago, of which I have only the slightest memory of occuring) root canaled and crowned in the foreseeable future.
Tonight, I seem to be on the verge of a minor panic attack. The tell-tale paresthesia (tingling) in my face and hands is 99% of the time a precursor to a severe panic attack. That being the case, I think I might leave work slightly early, lest a panic attack should strike me while I'm driving home, which has happened a few times before. The only solution I've found to such a scenario in the past was to find a residential street, pull over, and wait until it passed. Since Hurricane Katrina taught me a stern lesson in carrying essential medications with me to work (which I neglected to do during the actual storm and as a result became very ill from SSRI and Xanax withdrawl), I've just taken 2mg Xanax, which is slowly but surely abating the panicky feelings.
Now, I guess I'll get a bit more work done, then head home and if the gods of slumber and strong sedatives smiles down upon me, I'll sleep all day.
And with that, I wish you all a happy Wednesday.