#health journal

3/29/2021

Bit the bullet today and finally made an appointment with my healthcare provider. The heart palpitations are back, and I can only hope it’s taken seriously this time around.

A bit of backstory, last year I decided to explore my options for ADHD treatment. I was diagnosed with inattentive-type when I was 8, was put on medication (Concerta), and after a few months was pulled off of it because of extreme weight loss due to the appetite suppressing side effects.

Cut ahead a few years to college, I get reevaluated, and yep, I’m still very ADHD. I decide to go to student health with my evaluation results, and give Vyvanse a go. I’m gonna go ahead and say it, that semester fucked up my entire college career, and led to my dropping out my senior year (1 ½ years after this.) I experienced weight loss, but it wasn’t as alarming because I needed to lose weight at the time. But the other side effects were…yikes. Dry mouth, extreme anxiety and paranoia (and when you’re paranoid, you don’t realize you’re paranoid, there’s something wrong with everyone else) which led to my losing my entire circle of friends at the time. I don’t blame them, but I wish someone said something. The straw that finally knocked me to my senses was when I developed extremely painful stomach cramps and digestive issues, and I passed out in a stairwell due to dehydration. I stopped taking that medication, and steered clear of ADHD meds for a good 5 years or so.

Well, last year was kinda the year from hell for me. I burned through two jobs because I wasn’t a very good fit for them- my attention to detail and time management issues were under a magnifying glass at these places. In an ideal world I would’ve bounced and found a better fit, but it was 2020, I live in a small town with an already lean job market, and I needed to pay rent. At my second job, I could tell I was struggling, so I decided to take advantage of my health insurance and go ahead and find a provider who would work with me on finding a fit for medication. We tried Ritalin, where it worked out initially, but after three months I started to develop heart palpitations. At 27.

We stop the Ritalin, get an EKG done, and they essentially went “possible left atrial enlargement because you’re fat, but nothing to see here” and left it at that. I was disappointed to not have a solid answer, but the palpitations petered out and it was pretty obvious Ritalin was the cause.

We decide to move on to Wellbutrin and give it a shot, because it’s actually an antidepressant am3d contains no methylphenidate. Things go great for 4 months, we go “hey cool!” And things were great. Until I was fired from my job, which provided my health insurance. And I got covid. And the palpitations came back.

I was in a pretty dark place at this point, so I did the irresponsible thing and stopped taking my meds on my own without telling my provider, or letting them know that hey, my heart is doing the thing again. But also keep in mind that I didn’t have insurance anymore, and actually still don’t. Because America is the greatest country in the world, amirite? The palpitations faded a bit, but not completely, I would get a tiny stutter every few weeks, but it wasn’t nearly as alarming as it *was*.

Except this last week. They’re back. The only things I’ve done different recently is start losing weight (something my provider reccomended ages ago, I only now got myself motivated to seriously do it, and I’m no longer in denial about it. This needs to happen. ) and having an occasional cup of tea or coffee in the morning to help me get going when I wake up at 6AM for work. I know it’s the coffee that setting it off, but…a single cup of coffee shouldn’t be giving me palpitations. That’s not normal. Taking a hot shower shouldn’t set off palpitations. Or bending down to pick up my cat.

It’s very frustrating, but I’m hoping that maybe they take me more seriously at this appointment on Wednesday. I’m also nervous because I know the tests that they might order could wipe out my savings plus some. The last EKG I had cost $85 with insurance, but without it would’ve run $800+. I have money in savings, but not enough to cover medical bills with no insurance. So I’m a bit nervous about what that’s going to look like. I did learn my lesson though, I have a relative who also has really weird responses to drugs, and I’ve accepted that the gene sequence responsible for that has skipped a generation and was passed on to me. I’m done with psychiatric drugs, they clearly don’t agree with me.

I’m still losing weight though, healthfully. It can only help things at this point. Down to 182.4 lbs as of today, I was at 187.2 when I started noom on March 17th, so nearly 5 lbs gone!

Feeling high anxiety, but we’ll just have to wait and see. “Keep calm and carry on.”

5 Grain blend, cucumber, red pepper, tomato, and feta.

Sauce is a bit of olive oil, a bit of feta brine, Greek seasoning, and a touch of lemon pepper.

This recipe was made by a friend of mine over Christmas holiday and I really enjoyed it, so I’m excited to be able to have it for lunch this upcoming week.

LUNCH! And breakfast, I don’t really eat breakfast on weekdays!

½ cucumber, whole yellow pepper, 3 laughing cow cheese with gluten free rice crackers, raspberries, a banana, a blood Orange, and a banana chocolate chip muffin.

Breakfast on a sunny fall Monday!

This week is hopefully going to be a good one, tonight I’m spending the night with my dear friend and fellow artist Ruby where hopefully we’ll make art and watch movies and have a really nice time!

Egg sandwich with yogurt and bran ✌

small flatbread wraps with lettuce, cheese and turkey pastrami for lunch with some peppers, Turkish apricots, yogurt and granola.

Today’s lunch was a good one but reminded me how much I really don’t love wraps or sandwiches unless they’re Donair

I got this yogurt in the states this weekend, I’m not used to weird American food flavours but I enjoyed this one!

I’ve been awake since 4am and tossing and turning all night before that…

Sleep and I have always had a hard time getting along. I adore sleep. The vivid dreams, the horrid nightmares, I love it all. For me however, it’s always been a delicate balance of medication, temperature, pillows, proper positioning, lights (I wear a sleep mask) and sounds (I have a fish tank in my room which has a filter running at all times).

It’s always been hard for me to get up in the mornings. I greatly dislike getting up before I’m ready to wake up naturally, and I love sleeping for as long as possible, which used to be a problem but isn’t as much of one anymore. I feel like sometimes I’m addicted to sleep, always chasing that perfect, restful night, which comes so so rarely…

Feeling Sick

Chronic nausea is something I have suffered from for about 11 years.

When I stopped being able to breathe, about 6 years ago, I was living in an apartment with two roommates. Over time my ability to…. well breathe was compromised so often that I ended up in the emergency room. Thinking I had developed some sort of lung issue or asthma of some sort I went in thinking I would find out and be cured- only to discover that the truth was I was having such intense panic at all times that my body had gone sort of into shock and wasn’t allowing me to breathe without other (usual) physical or emotional symptoms. The other thing they guessed was some sort of chronic heartburn causing me to be nauseous all the time, yet exacerbated by the stress of the panic.

After a while I got the breathing under control, a symptom that still comes in week or month long waves when my stress and anxiety levels reach their peak, but the nausea and heartburn is something that has always truly escaped me. When I started feeling this way I never thought it would go on for so long, yet looking back, obviously it has.

Being ill is never easy. It took me so long to understand how my body was reacting to my moods, emotions, and especially what I ate.

I do believe for myself everything is such a delicate balance- I walk a tightrope of medication, therapy, and diet to try to keep myself from falling off, but I fall often, and often hard.

Today I feel so incredibly sick. The nausea and bodily discomfort is so horribly intense that I will without a doubt have to sit propped up against a wall of pillows to sleep. I’ll have to make sure I stay far away from trigger foods for quite some time, and really put more work into reminding myself that I don’t like to feel this way.

Tomorrow I go back to work, to work on my art, my apprenticeship, and my career.

One like = one “good luck” for my work week

I’m no longer counting days, it’s getting weird and confusing and hard but September is Health Goth’s 3rd month.

Today I was sick and running a fever so I consumed a lot of water, as you should when you don’t feel well! I also had a nice fried egg sandwich with ham for breakfast and made some fajita pasta with pork for dinner.

I plan on meal prepping for my upcoming work week tomorrow so stay tuned for that!