More updates!

Comments
  • My resin printer arrived today. It was a bit obnoxious to get a working print and holy heck it’s a messy process even when it does work, but this’ll be fun to mess with. (Yes, I now have three 3D printers. Only the resin one is actually operable right now, but the Artillery Genius has some repair parts on th eway, at least.)
  • I accepted an offer on my condo. It’s a lot less than I was hoping for but it’s still plenty of money. When that sells I can start working on building out the studio, which is the linchpin for getting a bunch of my other house ambitions underway.
  • I’m having one heck of a fibro flare and this makes it very hard for me to actually focus on work. But also there’s a stress factor involved. Hopefully that all sorts itself out soon.
  • Because of the aforementioned flare I’m also not making much progress on getting my living room or kitchen in any sort of order. But I’m still slowly chipping away at that glacier.
  • Cannabis isn’t really helping with the fibro right now, either.

Melatonin experiments

Comments

Last night I came across a pop-science video about the link between ADHD and sleep disruptions, and it raised an interesting point: many of the ADHD symptoms are also symptoms of sleep deprivation, and the sleep disruption aspects of ADHD might actually be the underlying cause of many of them.

I’ve always had great difficulty with sleep, with trouble falling asleep at night but then being incredibly fatigued during the day. And I can’t help but wonder how many of my other issues are just plain due to crappy sleep. Maybe my chronic pain isn’t because of an underlying neurological cause, but is because I’m not properly sleeping and healing at night?

I’ve had three sleep studies at this point. The first in-home study vaguely diagnosed me with obstructive apnea, and is why I got a CPAP machine. The CPAP machine didn’t help at all, so a second study to rule out narcolepsy happened. Then the third one verified that CPAP doesn’t actually make a difference for me.

Anyway, one of the things mentioned in the video is that there’s been some success with treating some forms of childhood ADHD with time-release melatonin. So starting tonight I’m going to try taking time-release melatonin and see if that helps me any.

Read more…

Guanfacine and naltrexone updates

Comments

I’ve been on low-dose naltrexone for a whole month now, and I don’t think it’s really helping with my pain.

And I’ve been on guanfacine for two weeks, and while I’ve noticed a slight improvement in my focus (and a general lowering of my blood pressure, which is of course to be expected), holy cow am I drowsy all the time. Like, to the point of nodding off while sitting still or whatever. I hear that this effect goes away after a couple weeks, and I really hope it does soon, because even though I’m generally getting a full night’s sleep every night I still wake up exhausted and end up taking little mini-naps throughout the day. Heck, even while going grocery shopping I occasionally feel like I’m going to fall over.

On the plus side, caffeine doesn’t give me as big of a panic attack now (although I still feel a bit of one) so that’s at least filling in the gaps while I try to stay awake at work.

Bonus thing: yesterday I tried coating my glasses with soapy water (based on seeing an article in Glamour) and it actually works pretty well! The article suggests thoroughly cleaning them, but I just mixed a little bit of liquid hand soap with a glass of water and dunked my glasses in them and let them drain. It’d probably also work pretty well to dilute some dish soap and swap it on with a cotton swab or something.

Current state of affairs

Comments

I’ve been on Wellbutrin for a couple of weeks now and the effect has been interesting. I’m definitely finding it easier to focus on things like chores (and heck, my kitchen is the cleanest it’s been since the remodel got finished, and my dining room is well on its way to not being a disaster), but on the other hand it’s disrupting my sleep a lot and I end up feeling tired throughout the day. My dreams have also been way more intense.

Right now I’m feeling sick with my usual winter sinus crap, so I’m a bit wobbly and a lot nauseous.

Between the Wellbutrin and playing DDR my pain levels are a bit lower but still not amazing, and I’m still finding it easy to hit a fibro wall™. Tomorrow I have a followup with my pain doctor to try to finally get on low-dose naltrexone. I also have the next two weeks off from work and hopefully I won’t end up just working too hard on personal projects instead. (That said, I have a couple of creative output gift swaps with deadlines coming up that I really should start on at some point.)

Anwyay I guess I don’t have a lot else to say. Oh well.

Pain, music, and DDR

Comments

I’m fully off the nortriptyline and I haven’t had withdrawal side effects for several days now. On the other hand, my persistent fibro dizziness is back, and when I hit a wall with a pain flare I really feel it. I’d forgotten just how much more intense that was before nortriptyline. (Of course, while on nortriptyline it’s not like the end result was any different so I don’t feel like I’ve made a big mistake getting off of it.)

My pain doc recommended trying low-dose naltrexone, which is something my previous pain doc had scoffed at1, but anyway I’ve sent a message to my GP asking about getting on it, and if she can’t take care of that then maybe my psychiatrist can, or maybe the pain doc can (but unfortunately he’s really busy and appointments with him are booked to well over a month out at this point).

Read more…

Nortriptyline discontinuation complete?

Comments

The taper down to 10mg/day was a bit difficult, but the final discontinuation seems to have gone pretty smoothly. I suspect I could have actually discontinued sooner, and the withdrawal symptoms I was having ont he last few days of 10mg/day was specifically because I was toggling right around some threshold for things. But I’m glad I took it slow all the same, and in any case I feel like the worst is behind me at this point.

Read more…

Pain management and ADHD medication

Comments

I seem to be stuck in an annoying situation.

Short recap: I have both ADHD and fibromyalgia. These two conditions tend to have a lot of overlap (they are both thought to essentially be dopamine dysregulation issues), and both of them have a “let’s try different things out” treatment regimen.

Because of ADHD I have great difficulty in focusing on my work.

Because of fibromyalgia I have great difficulty in focusing on anything other than pain.

The medications which help me with fibromyalgia preclude me from being prescribed medications which help me with ADHD.

Read more…

Nortriptyline updates

Comments

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.

Read more…