Finding the Rhythm

I'm still trying to get oriented after last month's illness marathon. Between the strep, the ear infections, the stomach bug and all, the kids and I missed a total of three weeks of school and work. We're all pretty much caught up now, but it seems to take me a little longer than it used to, once upon a time. Trying to get all the plates spinning at the same time again takes some doing, and one of the greatest tragedies of my "damage" is that I always question myself, question if it's just life or something permanently flawed in my brain. I think it must be easier for other people, because they seem to manage more, or seem somehow more heroic in their pathos. Me? I just manage to deal.

I've been surfing a little on the Web, looking at other people's experiences with Effexor. This blog was interesting:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/youropinions.php?opinionid=19018&p=2'

I'm perpetually struck by the ongoing pharmaceutical cornucopia that these people have endured, and continue to endure. I suppose I'm lucky in that I don't have much choice anymore about expermenting. I can't even overindulge in chocolate anymore without having pretty immediate consequences (tremors, heart palpitations, moodiness). It promotes clean living, I suppose. I've notices I feel a lot less neurologically fragile when I'm eating a lot of salads and fresh fruit, less fatty and starchy things. And the yoga really is the best thing I've found to quell the occasional intense nights. Would that I could better manage other stressors in my life, but one can only do so much about other people and commitments. It's always a balancing act, isn't it?

Right now I'm having some interesting hormonal craziness... that is to say my cycle is all over the place. The Effexor Event wreaked merry havoc with all my other autonomic functions for a while, but that part of my life had achieved some equilibrium for a change, until recently. Bad ultrasound: Doctor O's talking biopsy, and my husband is freaking out (after all, his Mom died not two years ago from cancer "from the waist down"). I'm feeling strangely detached, sort of clinically wondering what would happen if I had to have surgery and couldn't take pain meds. After all, my last close encounter with Morphine was not a happy memory. Hopefully, it's just something like endometriosis, or I'm just getting old.

Just a reflective note on the causality of my Effexor experience, still fantasizing from time to time about a law suit (sigh). I know that much of the current dysfunction of my brain is caused by the overdose of the Zoloft which I took the day after my withdrawal symptoms kicked in. I know (I'll explain how later) that this caused me to develop a rather pronounced case of "Serotonin Syndrome." But it is significant, and ultimately definitive in my mind, that I never would have overdosed on the Zoloft if I hadn't had such and extreme psychological reaction the the Effexor withdrawals, which -- among other things -- seriously impaired my ability to accurately assess how much medication I ought to be taking. I still think it ought to have a black label. "Warning: withdrawals from this are so severe that you might want to die or kill someone if you stop taking it. Don't." Which of course would be bully for the company because then anyone who started taking it could never stop... endless dinero.