Nortriptyline updates

I’ve been at 30mg of nortriptyline for 6 days now, and I’m trying to figure out if this is how I felt on it before. Going through my nortriptyline tag I see that I actually was up to 40mg on my initial tapering, and after sitting there for a while I decided it wasn’t doing enough for my pain and that’s when I tapered down to 20. In one entry I complained that it wasn’t helping my sleep at all, and how it was making me constantly dizzy and tired and headachey.

This time around it’s definitely helping my sleep, and I’m not dizzy, although I am quite tired (despite actually getting a full 8 hours of sleep every night, for once!) and today I had a headache all day. Also plenty of nausea. But at least I got a nice long walk in.

My pain doctor (and psychiatrist) seem to want me to taper up pretty aggressively, but I’m going to take my time with this. Hopefully I’ll start to feel steady on 30mg before I have a long drive to and from Port Angeles. In, gosh, only two weeks!

That’s another thing, I’ve got basically no sense of time right now. I mean, worse than usual. But I need to be patient, both with this medication and with myself. Something needs to work for me, right?

Something I see in my older nortriptyline blog entries was that I was also trying magnesium supplements and those seemed to work for me, so maybe I should start taking those again. I think I stopped them because I’d blamed them for constipation but that turned out to be due to the gabapentin, I think? At least, the constipation remained (and got worse) for as long as I was on gabapentin, and cleared up immediately when I stopped that (and has stayed gone since then).

Meanwhile, my blood pressure is still all over the place. This morning I took a reading for the first time in a while and it was up to 150/96 (yikes!) but after drinking half a liter of water and taking the long walk it was down to 130. Right now it’s 149/97 but I’m also suspecting that I’m not actually wearing the cuff right or something else is wrong with the measurement because the previous readings were over 160 which is just… really unlikely. And if anything, nortriptyline is supposed to lower blood pressure.

But whatever. Things are going to work out eventually.

Travel plans

Meanwhile I’ve been hyperfocusing on planning how I’m going to drive out to Port Angeles. There are two routes I can take, one going via Bainbridge Island (taking the ferry) and one going via Tacoma (taking the long way around the sound). Both are absolutely equivalent in terms of time and total cost (factoring in my pay-by-the-mile insurance), not like I’m in a hurry and not like money matters (because work is paying for my whole vacation anyway! this company is pretty awesome) but I’m wondering which approach will be easier on me, mentally: driving through a weird under-construction part of town and navigating the uncertainty of how the ferry works as a driver, or having to drive down I-5 which can be kind of scary at times.

I’ve taken the ferry to Bainbridge several times before, but only as a foot or bicycle passenger. Taking a car onit seems pretty straightforward, and it’s a nice and relaxing bit of journey, but I worry that the car aspect will be less relaxing because of procedures and also the obligatory mad rush with everyone getting off of the ferry, as well as the weird stop-and-go while everyone gets on. Plus, I hear that the drive up from Tacoma is pretty nice, and it also takes me past some other towns I’ve had my eye on for a while (such as Bremerton and Port Orchard) which I might want to consider for future vacations or retirement-area potential.

So, I dunno, all things considered I’ll probably do the longer drive. I know I get a lot less anxious when I’ve been driving for a while, and am feeling the rhythm of the freeway and can just be alone with my music and my thoughts. And there’s less stuff to worry about in general. Plus, it’d be cool to drive over the Tacoma Narrows bridge (at least the one that exists now; the original one not so much).

Comments

Before commenting, please read the comment policy.

Avatars provided via Libravatar