In Blackest Night – Mirtazapine Day 22

It’s been a while since my last Mirtazapine post.  Today marks the seventh day since my prescription was doubled.  So what changes have I noticed?

The pros:

• The palpitations have settled – I still have the odd few each day but it’s a lot better
• The ‘Mind Fog’ has been significantly reduced – again, it’s still there but nowhere near as bad as it was

The cons:

• My mood is vile – I can talk and act fine around others that I don’t spend much time with but at home I am awful
• Noise triggers – from the TV volume being up to the kids making all manner of noise, I feel like I’m in a packed cathedral with the noise bouncing off of every surface and resonating through my skull
• Speech – I still struggle to speak at a normal pace; although I can do it the words become hurdles that my tongue stumbles over creating an embarrassing amount of mistakes and new words
• Headaches – although the ‘fog’ seems better, the headaches are a big distraction causing me to lose focus
• Co-ordination – from my balance to my aim, I find movement and day-to-day activities to be very challenging; as I write this I can see the keys and I can see where my hands are but hitting the correct keys is an issue (surprised my backspace key still works)

Anger is the biggest problem – I am angry that I can’t do things as efficiently as I used to or should be able to.  I don’t know what to call it, but when I am moving things around or putting things away (shopping) I end up missing the shelf, dropping things, catching myself on corners/door handles or I end up accidentally slamming things because I can’t seem to judge pressure and distance so it sounds like I’m having a strop when I genuinely can’t help it.  My language, which is usually fairly choice, has been far worse.  I am swearing a lot more without realising and, combined with the aggression behind it, I seem to be some vehement monster.

A thought that occurred t0 me the other day (and I completely forgot about until now – my memory seems to be a lot worse now) is a way to get people to understand the noise aspect that fuels the anger/mood/concentration – you know when you’re in the middle of an argument or something important and someone just walks in mid-flow?  The agitation it causes and is then followed by the snarls of “Mind your fucking business”, or “Get the fuck out!”  That’s what it feels like – it’s like the noise is the argument etc. and if someone tries to talk to me that initial reaction of “I’m in the middle of something” kicks in and causes shitty automated responses.

I’ve tried to shy away from interacting with people because I don’t know what will come out or I just feel it to be very overwhelming.  It’s taken me about two weeks or so to reply to an e-mail from a friend because, at the time I noticed it in my inbox, I wasn’t feeling sociable at all and then kept putting it off.  I can’t explain why…but that’s it isn’t it?  There is no logical explanation for these behaviours.  When trying to break down the processes and explain them what comes out is the sound of an excuse.

I’ve not been napping throughout the day much – typically falling asleep in the bath and dozing off on the sofa in the evening.  But that’s not to say the tiredness isn’t there; I’ve found it increasingly difficult to keep my eyes open at times and a lot of the time it feels like I should sleep.  The neck/jaw pain has been on and off but seems to be coming back with a vengeance – I feel the need to sleep after taking painkillers in the hope that the pain is gone when I awake.  I think the anger and constant on-edge feeling to be the key players in the tiredness – all the mental activity making uop for the lack of physical activity.

Since doubling the meds I have found I am waking up with a super dry mouth and the sense that my morning breath is like shit.  At least my mouth ‘feels like it tastes of shit’.  A silly saying but it’s the only way I can describe it.

I have a follow up appointment with the Mental Health Team in just over a week and, in about three weeks, we-re planning on going to Scotland for a break away – the logic behind it is that I haven’t been back up since my Mum died and, in doing so, I may be able to get some closure and finally grieve.  I’m trying not to think too much about it as I don’t want to go up with such great expectations and come back feeling the same or worse because I failed.

As a means of trying to occupy my mind and spark some creativity, I have been writing over at Faux News as well as spending some time on the Nerdful Things blog.  I may not be very good, but at least I’m writing.  Baby steps and all that jazz.

I also made a pledge over at Time For Change, check them out and see how you can help.

Thanks for reading.

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Craig Stewart

Craig is a father to three daughters and works full time in the telecomms industry. He has a passion for comics, movies, TV shows, tech and games. Craig is a HUGE Batman fan and is a Playstation fanboy. He is also somewhat of a Kevin Smith fanboy too. Latest hyper-focus: Slogging through 2000AD and publishing a daily post as he makes his way through almost 50 years worth of comic books.

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