Embarassing

It's so embarrassing to reveal my weaknesses. I went to the doctor today and felt very ashamed to circle "yes" on questions about feeling anxiety and depression. The doctor was great though. I'm glad I looked for a different doctor. The doctor I saw last semester didn't even question me about my symptoms. He just wanted to prescribe a sleep drug with anti-depressant effects and move on to the next patient. I told this doctor that I was willing and eager to try anti-anxiety/anti-depressant drugs. I just want to be able sleep at night. I only had three hours of sleep last night and I feel horrible today. The doctor thought we should treat the anxiety/depression first and the sleep should follow. She prescribed the same medication that my husband is taking to control his acid reflux, and he doesn't experience any side effects of the drug. She said it would take about a month to build up in my system, so I'll take a fast acting drug for a month and then stop taking it once the first drug is working.

She also drew blood to test my thyroid. Apparently, changes in thyroid functioning can lead to increases in weight, irregular periods, and changes in mood. Even if the thyroid is not the problem, she thought the serotonin should stabilize at higher levels in 6 months to a year and I might not need the drugs after making it through these significant life changes.

I'm really hoping that this drug will help me get back to the person I am when I'm not anxious about teaching. Now that I'm definitely in this job for another year, I want to be able to function during the day and not live under a cloud of constant anxiety.

Insomnia....again

This is the first time I've had trouble sleeping in weeks. After meeting with a friend of mine from grad school a few weeks ago, my depression finally lifted. I started working on research and threw together new analyses of old data and two new research IRB proposals. However, I learned a few weeks ago that I did not get the First Year Experience Course Director position. At first, I felt fine about losing the position because I wasn't sure the position was right for me after learning more about it during the interviewing.

But now I'm changing my tune. Classes start this week, and I'm up in the middle of the night typing this because I can't sleep. I had trouble falling asleep and once I did fall asleep, I woke up a couple hours later with night sweats. I've been awake for the past two hours, and I'm dreading the idea that this semester might be a re-play of last semester, where I began experiencing sleep disturbances every night and was so fatigued during the day that I could barely managed to keep up with teaching and couldn't make any progress on research.

Then I started thinking horrible thoughts that I would rather die than experience that again. I had to get up because the thoughts made me cry, and I didn't want to disturb my husband. I'm beginning to think that maybe I should take those antianxiety or antidepressant pills that my doctor prescribed for my insomnia last semester. But, I wanted to try natural sleep remedies first. And maybe I should start seeing a therapist, too. My husband contacted our pastor a few weeks ago because I just randomly stayed home from work, and he got a recommendation for a counselor. But I didn't want to make an appointment because I thought I was doing better.

Clearly I'm not.