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I’m finally feeling healthy for the first time in months

It’s Monday April 3rd, and my 37th birthday. In the time between the previous post and today, was the blogs third anniversary.

In the US, the average age a man lives to is 74.5 according to worlddata.info. Which means that today I’m officially middle aged. 🙃

I’ve been out from work for three weeks for medical leave. The diagnosis from my doctor was Seratonin Syndrome caused by medicines I was taking. However, after catching up with a blogger friend recently, I realized that it easily could have been due to Long COVID. (I am so tired of talking about and living with this disease. And this isn’t due to Post exertional malaise. Sorry, a lame long COVID joke.)

I’ve felt shitty since February when I increased my antidepressant as a suggestion from my doctor. Viibyrd an antidepressant was a medicine that I was taking for months to treat depression. I was on a low dose and only had minor side effects that I could deal with. While severe side effects are a risk with any medicine, and I experienced it with the very first medicine I took on this adult therapy journey, an ADD medicine called Vyvance, mist of the time it’s rare to experience severe side effects that could kill you. (What is with my body and medicines that start with “V”?) Well, I’m alive and recovering, not 100% yet, but I’m better. I’m well enough that I’m returning to work today.

This shit I was dealing with was so awful that it was incredibly hard to write during this time. Many days I was only able to write a short text message or two early in the morning because any more would cause an exertion, tension headache. Essential communication only. This was the case for writing by hand as well as I struggled to freewrite journal entries by hand. So, on top of the physical symptoms, I struggled with worse mental health.

I’m any case, I feel recovered. I will find out later today if the environmental triggers in the department I work in, were a factor or not. Before this leave, steps were taken at work to hopefully relieve these issues, but my body and doctor said it was time to rest.

Speaking of rest, I didn’t fall asleep last night. I laid in bed with my eyes closed but didn’t fall asleep. I went to bed at the usual time, listened to a couple different tracks on my Spotify sleep playlist…. But I couldn’t relax to fall asleep. Maybe I had an hour or two of dream less shut eye. The rest was me in bed trying to get comfortable, twisting and turning, attempting to find a comfortable spot to no avail. Maybe it’s the vampire light from the air purifier directly in view from my pillow at eye level which is a blue LED light. Maybe it’s because I woke up at 10 or 11am yesterday because I’ve had sleep problems the past month. Maybe it’s that second smaller serving of coffee I had at 1pm yesterday. Maybe it’s anxiety from having to return to work today. Or maybe it’s Murphy’s law. It’s 6:48am and I feel a headache coming on and I’m drowsy.

Well, I pulled myself together and managed to drive to work. Today might be long.

See y’all Thursday.

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• The Holy Grail & Lessons from Teeth
• A Series of Changes
• Chop wood, Carry Water
• Grey again
• Mary Jane’s Last Dance & Disappointment