Healthcare followup

Comments

Today I had a followup with my doctor after the cessation of gabapentin. My blood pressure is the lowest it’s been in years (118/75!) and she was really happy to see how much less stress I’m under. After discussing the current medication status we agree that I should stay on the nortriptyline for now, and she’s glad that physical therapy has been helping me a lot, as well as me getting better at mindfulness and other stress reduction things.

She also encouraged me to get going with a psychiatrist again so that I can possibly get back on Adderall or to try something else. I think before I do that I’ll see how well I tolerate caffeine. Which I’ve had a bit of over the past few days and it’s not been hecking me up at all, so this seems really promising.

Anyway she gave me a lot of words of encouragement and is also grateful that I’m taking such an active role in trying to make my own life better on multiple fronts. Hopefully this trajectory can continue.

Gonebapentin

Comments

Thursday night was my last dose of gabapentin; I am now off it entirely.

Today I mostly just napped a lot, and had occasional dizzy spells when I was active. I feel no different in terms of pain levels. My blood pressure seems to reliably hover around 120/80. Hopefully it’ll stay that way.

Between the physical therapy I’ve been doing and some lifestyle stress-reduction stuff I’m feeling pretty good. I need to just keep remembering to do my stretches and not let work affect me emotionally.

Medication conflagration

Comments

Gabapentin has been raising my blood pressure (and weight) pretty steadily since February, and it hasn’t actually been helping me with my pain issues. Back before I started on it my blood pressure was generally around 115/85, and as of last Thursday my rest blood pressure was 144/98. Which is, you know, pretty darn high.

So on Friday I decided to cut my dose from 200mg/day to 100mg/day, and see what that did to me.

Read more…

Gabapentin 300mg day 6

Comments

So on this, the 6th day of being at 3x daily gabapentin, I noticed that I haven’t been in severe agony all over for the first time in a while. I’m still feeling tendon pain in the parts that get chronically overused (especially my thumbs) but it’s not doing the usual radiating thing that turns into systemic pain all over.

On the minus side, after taking my afternoon dose I got incredibly nauseous which only really started to let up 7 hours later (which is, incidentally, the elimination half-life of gabapentin), and this is the worst the nausea’s been. I’d been getting somewhat nauseous from the doses before but as it builds up in my system it’s just been getting worse and worse.

So I sent a note to my doctor asking if there’s a better way of dealing with it (because I’ve been very unable to get stuff done for the last couple days and I have a lot of stuff that needs to get done!) and meanwhile decided to go back to 2x/daily.

Supposedly the nausea subsides after 2-3 weeks but I really can’t wait 2-3 weeks for that to happen right now. I have GeekGirlCon prep to do, I have a job interview down in Portland sometime in the next week or two (for a job I’d probably be staying in Seattle for but it’s Portland-based and this means I might have to go to Portland more often, oh the horror! no, not the comfy chair!), and I have AR stuff to do in the meantime.

Anyway. Hopefully this means there actually is some hope in sight, and I just need to find the right balance of things. Or maybe something else that helps to counteract the nausea while I’m still acclimating to the gabapentin.

Things I accomplished today

Comments

Oops I haven’t been posting to my blog as much lately. I’ve been kinda busy I guess?

So let’s see:

  1. Had a technical interview with Mozilla which went pretty well. I remember more about the fiddly low-level bits of C++ than I thought, even after not really doing anything in C++ for a few years (and purposefully avoiding the minefield-type stuff I was asked about)
  2. Received a bunch of custom enamel pins that I’ll be selling at GeekGirlCon and turned out fantastic (more on this closer to the show!)
  3. Also received my vendor packet omg this is really happening isn’t it
  4. Put down a deposit on a new kitchen (not that I’m that eager to go through a remodel process again but my kitchen has been literally falling apart due to the cheap stuff the previous owners put in, and this time around I’m just getting everything gutted and replaced which is turning out to be… easier?)
  5. Finally got my gabapentin dose up to the target of 3x a day, which had me pretty hecked up this evening and I left drawing group earlier than usual but folks were understanding at least, and also this is probably still placebo but I kinda feel like I’m in less pain finally?
  6. Hugged so many cats (well, okay, mostly just one cat, but I hugged her a lot of times)
  7. did a bloggy thing

Oh also happy 9/19/19, which is apparently the last palindrome date (for a particularly reductive definition of “date”) we’re gonna have for a long time.

Unless you count 2/22/22 which is technically a palindrome and actually will work the same way in most truncated date formats (including 22/22/2 and 22/2/22).

Things I need to accomplish at some point in the near future:

  • Pushl has gotten overcomplicated and also isn’t actually working quite right anymore and I need to open an issue to track how I think I’m going to fix one of the breakages
  • Make prints for GeekGirlCon
  • Get rid of a bunch of cardboard boxes and other trash-like substance
  • order new refrigerator, settle on final appliances and sink fixtures, do some short-term plumbing to make a transitional bit of that a bit easier
  • learn rust
  • fix the o key on my MP1 model01
  • maybe set up a new VPN now that I don’t have access to the university one anymore? for now I’m just using hide.me’s free tier

Read more…

Gabapentin adventures continue

Comments

I guess I haven’t posted a public update on my gabapentin experiment in a while. Yesterday I started taking it twice a day, 100mg each time. I also created a simple blood serum estimator more to satisfy curiosity than anything else; I don’t expect it to be all that useful for anyone although I’m thinking that at some point I’ll add the ability to plot graphs and maybe specify the times of days for the doses or something?

Anyway, taking it in the morning as well as the evening means that I get a nice surge of dizziness, which will supposedly pass eventually (and will get better when I get up to 3x a day). So far I’m not noticing any difference in my pain levels, and I kinda feel like my emotions might be a bit more intense? Last night I certainly had a bout of frustration with technology and drawing apps (I really want to work on comics again and I feel like my tools are actively getting in the way!) but I’m feeling much more even-keeled today at least. Drowsy a lot though.

This is certainly an interesting time for me to be experimenting with my neurochemistry, as I only have a few days left at my current job and am also trying to ramp up on some projects at the AR startup while also juggling an interview process with a well-known and generally-beloved non-profit corporation that I’d love to work at – and so far that’s been going really well! I just hope my brain has stabilized again by the next interview, which is yet to be scheduled. Anyway I’m waiting for that to happen before I go up to 3x100mg of gabapentin.

Oh also I’m finally making progress on redoing my kitchen, which is way overdue. The previous owners had done a really cheap, low-quality job of refurbishing it about 10 years ago, and it’s all been falling apart. I’m taking the opportunity to finally fix some long-standing issues with it, like a lack of storage (caused by a ripple effect from a way-too-large sink) and also switching to a smaller refrigerator and dishwasher (freeing up more storage space). Also going to finally get a new range, with such perfect timing since the oven in the existing one has finally given up the ghost for good. Unfortunately there’s only one range available that actually fits in the space (due to the odd venting configuration) and going with a different solution would require a lot of compromises and be way more expensive (due to the aforementioned odd venting situation), but still, I think everything will be better in the long run.

In any case, given that I’ll soon be working from home most of the time again, it’ll be good to have a space where I can enjoy cooking for myself again.

(I’m also looking forward to getting back in the habit of buying bulk produce and unbutchered meat at my favorite restaurant supplier. And probably doing more sous vide again!)

Gabapentin, day 1

Comments

So, yesterday I finally got my prescription for gabapentin/Neurontin, as another attempt at managing my fibro symptoms. Took my first dose at 9 PM, and felt very tired and dizzy by 11 PM. Then still managed to not fall asleep until around 3 AM (I was definitely wide awake at 2, and my smart bed thing says I didn’t fall asleep until 3 so that seems believable).

I slept pretty okay although I had vivid dreams about unpleasant stuff, as always seems to be the case when my neurochemistry is being tampered with.

Woke up at 8 AM, couldn’t actually peel myself out of bed until half past 9, and I felt wobbly/dizzy/tired all day.

Pain was okay in the morning, but at 2:40 PM or so I had a flareup. It cleared up with a snack, though, and I kinda-sorta managed to get some actual work done, ish.

Went home at 6, had dinner, not sure where the past two hours went but I’m really tired and sleepy right now and also flaring like a matroncopulator, and it’s time for my next dose. Maybe I’ll sleep better/longer tonight and feel better tomorrow.