Six weeks in and Prozac rises to the challenge!

Picture the scene.. Thursday afternoon and it occurs to me to check for messages on the works phone (difficult to remember since they changed the phone for one that doesn't light up when there's a missed call)... 5 new messages... work, work, work, little old lady asking if I'm there, same little old lady with same enquiry. Oh drat, when did she call? Phone mum. Phone rings and rings. Oh dear, not good, she doesn't leave the house. Phone again, she answers, phew. I find I am so far back in the doghouse there's also room for an obese rottweiler. It transpires that on Wednesday afternoon she put the electric kettle on the lit gas hob, went into the living room and didn't return to the kitchen until flames were leaping up the sides of the melting kettle. She tells me accusingly that she phoned work and I wasn't there (I was, until 8pm, just unlucky to be out of the office both times) and she phoned home and I wasn't there either.

It would not occur to mum to phone the emergency services in such a situation; kitchen on fire -phone fire service? Nope. Lose all feeling in your leg and fall to the floor - call an ambulance? Nope, Electricity goes off - call an electrician? Nope. You get the picture, whatever the problem, phone daughter half an hour away. Apparently since I'm not permanently attached to a phone 24/7, she is in imminent danger of collapsing and lying undetected for days, ie she "should not be living alone" (should be living with me).

Pre-Prozac this little scenario would have flooded me with anxiety, left me unable to respond satisfactorily to mum's needs and sent me home feeling totally stressed out and apprehensive about the next time I had to go round.

Dear reader, I was magnificent. I went round Thursday night and listened sympathetically, I commiserated over the blackened, misshapen mess that used to be the kettle, I marvelled at how clean mum had got the oven after the kettle had melted all over it. I did not let myself be drawn into the living arrangements issue but addressed other things that were bugging her, ie dead-headed the roses and took the cuttings home for disposal, hoovered the bedroom, hall and bathroom, cooked the tea and washed the pots afterwards and made sure she took her medication. I did not press the point, well not too much, when she refused to admit that this was the second kettle she'd incinerated (a few years ago she fell asleep while the aluminium kettle boiled dry and the bottom fell out); I remained cheerful throughout, even when she started on the "I only married your dad to get away from my domineering father" speech (I loved my dad and she made him miserable, what I'd really like to say is what goes around comes around).

She was in quite a good mood when I left. I love Prozac!

Tempting fate

Knew I shouldn't have mentioned improved sleep. 11pm bed. Fidget. Itch. Use relaxation technique. Settle. Itch. Slumber. Itch itch itch. Consider getting up to take my mind off it. Dog scratches at door. Get up and find it's after 2am. Make nettle and blackcurrant tea. Seek out blogs by other eczema sufferers. Surf the net. 3.26am and still not really comfortable. Resolve to discuss problem with doctor when I go to renew the Prozac in a couple of weeks' time. The computers at work are going off for 3 hours today, think I'll pop home for a power nap between 12 and 2 - at least I can make a dent in the 11 hours plus lieu time I'm owed!

On reflection.....

.....I could live with the new me. I'm sleeping much better and as a bonus I'm dreaming again. I suppose I should say I'm remembering dreams again as I may have been dreaming before the medication, but wasn't aware of it. However, I suspect that my quantity and quality of sleep was so poor, I didn't get any REM action. I'm definitely losing my stress head, little things like not being super sensitive to the way someone puts down a cup or clears their throat from which I used to determine what kind of mood they were in; finding mum's little digs at me wryly amusing rather than intensely annoying; not being defeated by the thought of all the housework I need to do but just getting on with it a task at a time and finding it easier to make potentially unpopular decisions like escaping from mum's when I'm ready instead of trying to guess when she'll be OK with it. The odd thing is that given I'm so much more relaxed than I've been in years, I don't understand why my eczema is still so bad; I thought that being stress-related, it would clear up as the Prozac took effect. If I could sort out my skin, I could lose the itching and life would be sooooooooooooooooooo much better!

underwhelmed

I'm a bit disappointed with this Prozac malarky. I thought I'd feel sparkier, livelier. Although the inner melancholy has disappeared and I don't seem to get as stressed by stuff (excellent example today - went to the wrong garage to pick husband up, leaving him standing in the rain for ages, but was I bovvered?), I feel flat but not in a negative way - just coasting through life. I suppose if the medication gets rid of the lows, it also gets rid of the highs. Or maybe this is how 'normal' people feel most of the time. I don't have a clear sense of me any more. It's as if through losing the misery, I've lost what defined me to myself, become less in some way. Difficult to get a handle on so I'll shut up now.

Big Brother epiphany

I've just discovered the secret to Rachel's indefatigable chirpiness.

Oops

I've just realised I forgot to take my medication yesterday. Doh. Never mind, I'm off to the pictures tonight and then off work for the next five days. Hope it stops raining so I can cut the grass, it's looking like a jungle in the garden. Suppose I'd better get dressed now!

Five week plateau

Hmm, found mum somewhat irksome tonight, am getting through the day ok at work but knackered by teatime and although sleeping much better, in fact at weekends I'm sleeping for England, am still occasionally being tortured by the nettle devils. On the plus side, I'm definitely more sociable than I've been for ages and I haven't put any weight back on although I'm a bit cheesed that it isn't coming off any quicker. Entirely my fault - far too sedentary. Ah well, onward and upward. Did you see what I did there?

Prozac - week 4 - the drugs DO work!

Yay! I no longer have to check and recheck short runs of numbers because I've forgotten what comes after the second digit, I can keep working efficiently all day long, I've been cheery at work and with mum and I'm starting to sleep normally. The oddest thing is I used to dread going to mum's all the time and now I don't really mind. I've even found myself spontaneously hugging and kissing her and she seems to have chilled out too. It's weird. I've spent all my remembered life not liking or feeling close to her and now I'm beginning to feel like I imagine daughters ought to feel about their mothers. I hope it stays like this, she's 88 and not in the best of health, it would be nice to think that in her last years we had a good relationship. We've even had a few touching moments, I fell asleep on her settee last Saturday and she put her dressing gown over me and yesterday as I was washing her hair in the shower, I got her to rest her hand on my shoulder so she felt steadier. Aah.

Now what I want to know is, is this the real me or is it the Prozac me? For as long as I can remember, going right back to childhood, I've felt a deep sadness and even anger at the core which I've masked with a lighthearted exterior. A friend once said to me accusingly, 'you always have to make a joke of everything' and it really hurt because it made me feel like such a shallow person. I don't remember any major traumas that might have caused such a coping mechanism. For years now my two favourite fantasies have been to be able to stop whatever I was doing and just curl up somewhere comfy and sleep, sleep, sleep or to swing a hefty punch/baseball bat/axe at the head of whoever was getting on my nerves. Now the inner well of melancholy has disappeared and I don't know what will happen next. Today I had a few skittish moments at work, not a good idea. It's a little unnerving.

Prozac week 3 - Getting there

I think I'm finally starting to see an improvement. Coping OK with mountain of tasks at work, not feeling 'flat', not getting too irritated by mum. On the down side, have started eating too much again and am still not getting a decent night's sleep most nights so am quite tired most of the time. Not sure what I did wrong yesterday but I seem to have lost one of the comments I published on a previous post, sorry Susan - nothing personal!

and tired out Tuesday

Elderly dog woke me up at 3, bloody itching kept me up till 4, fell back to sleep after the 7.30 alarm and didn't surface until 9 so for the second day running I didn't get to work until 10. Thank goodness for lieu time. Sooooo thick brained today, it's been really heavy going and I still feel 'flat'. Have taken an anti-histamine and some herbal sleep tablets so am hoping for a good night. Good night x

Weary weekend

Don't know why but I've been so tired this weekend. Should have been having fun at the festival - I look forward to it every year and beloved son came up to go round it with me but I felt very apathetic and could hardly drag myself there. Clearly the Prozac is still to make a significant impact, wish it would hurry up and bring me back to life. By the way, I've discovered I'm living next to an arboreal assassin - the chestnut tree in my front garden suddenly started to look very poorly with leaves withering, turning dark brown and dropping off. I had my suspicions...the tree probably casts quite a shadow on my neighbour's front lawn...so I investigated and found a hole bored into the trunk from my neighbour's side and a brown liquid spilling out from it! When I went to show my husband a few days later, a carefully whittled twig had been stuck into the hole! ! Honestly, there was no need for such underhand tactics, we've always lopped back our trees when asked to do so in the past. He's lucky I'm not the vindictive sort or there'd be an unfortunate accident in his fish pond.