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Barometric Pressure

Barometric Pressure

As the pressure drops
Like a stone from a tower
My health flops
By each minute and hour

I lock up
Slowing down
Drinking my death cup
I flounder and drown

Unable to function
Unable to comprehend
Unable to function
Unable to live

A robotic zombie
Floating along
Unstable and wonky
This is my song

A song of lostness
A song of worthlessness
A song of smallness
A song of nervousness

How long will this go on
This morbid journey
Until my symptoms are gone
And I am back in lifes tourney

Functioning normal
Thinking and talking
Not feeling abnormal
Functioning and walking

Living a normal life
A life of normality
No continuous strife
Just a life of vitality

Once again
I am patient and await
The barometric train
To steam forward reducing its weight

Arriving at my station
Which it always does
Creating a new period of gestation
And my symptoms fizz

I walk and wake from my stupor
As the train passes
Slowly reducing my stooper
Not slow and thick as molasses

But normal and bright
Clear headed
My symptoms in flight
Completely broken and shredded

Back in the living
Where life is good
Another season of thanksgiving
Living as I should

Barometric Pressure Nightmare

This is my latest book. It is personal. I suffer greatly when the barometric pressure drops.

When the atmospheric pressure drops, it influences my body. The swollen tissue presses against my joints, making them very painful and difficult to move. My arthritis in the ankle and right and left legs from knee and hip replacements and my eleven blood clots make it even worse when the barometric pressure changes. Blood flow is reduced due to constricted veins, which result in dizziness and confusion. When this happens, I become lethargic, not wanting to talk or socialize. This leads to me becoming grumpy and gruff.

Barometric Pressure Nightmare

Tools to Help me Live

I have struggled for years, and I have searched for tools to help me live better. I want tools to help me learn what triggers my symptoms and how to reset the triggers as quickly as possible.

I have had ongoing issues for years, and no physical defects can be found beyond repaired damage to knee and hips along with blood clots. I have fallen backward; my neck hurts, my head hurts, my eyes get stressed, my head goes blank, my body wobbles, and many other little nuisances. No one has given me solutions to these issues except to drug me up and to make me into a zombie. I don’t particularly appreciate living this way. If anything, this lifestyle drives anxiety and depression, which activates, compounds, and exaggerated my issues.

The diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) opens new avenues to explore, including Cognitive behavior Theory and Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). I am exploring these two tools, and I am seeking counselors to help me learn these tools and to apply them to my life.

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is based on several core principles, including:

1. Psychological problems are based, in part, on faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking.

2. Psychological problems are based, in part, on learned patterns of unhelpful behavior.

3. People suffering from psychological problems can learn better ways of coping with them, thereby relieving their symptoms and becoming more effective in their lives.

https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/cognitive-behavioral#

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Its main goals are to teach people how to live in the moment, develop healthy ways to cope with stress, regulate their emotions, and improve their relationships with others.

https://www.verywellmind.com/dialectical-behavior-therapy-1067402#citation-1

The Linehan Institute Behavioral Tech. What Is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)? 2017.

I plan to write more about my journey, trying to understand these tools and how they are working to make my life better. I will add posts about other tools that I use to help, including breathing exercises, writing, exercising, and yoga—also, a post here and there about God and his provision for me. These tools and exercises do not compete with God. To me, they are the fruit of God’s existence.

I hope they may help you if you have sprouts of anxiety or depression.

Have any of you had any experiences with CBT or DBT? Did it help?

Amitriptyline

Amitriptyline

Wow! Amitriptyline has reduced my symptoms by 99 percent. Good news, but the bad news it has diminished my ability to write, read, and concentrate by 100 percent. I am sleeping ten hours per day, and I am drugged up 3 hours per day. What a trade-off. Do you accept very few if any symptoms with limited to no reading and writing, or do you accept symptoms all day every day, but you can read and write?

bunch of white oval medication tablets and white medication capsules

On Amitriptyline, I am not falling backward, losing words, closing my eyes, wobbling left to right, less edgy, or unable to think, concentrate, or execute. I am more tolerable with fewer outbursts of emotions—definitely pluses and minuses there. I appear normal, just slower. I am not able to read, write, or read and perform plans like simple instructions. I am sleeping for eight to ten hours until eight in the morning, and I am drugged up 2 to 3 hours. I am very slow, and I do not have as much energy. I have not walked since I took medicine. I have no desire to walk. On Amitriptyline, I am not me. I am someone else.

I stopped taking Amitriptyline to see what would happen three days ago. Today, I can read, write, and I read directions on how to set up an SUV Tent. I am sleeping six to eight hours getting up at six in the morning feeling alive and not drugged up. I want to walk, and I did walk this morning. I wrote three simple blogs about COVID-19, camping, and Amitriptyline. I am edgier but excited about life.  I am very enthusiastic about life. At the same time, all my symptoms have returned – falling backward, wobbling, neck hurting, closing eyes, overwhelmed, lost words, cannot express myself, and underattack at times where I can not think or concentrate. These attacks last a few minutes and go away. I am less able to control my filters and to contain myself. This is important to try to live with people and to be sociable.

I will have to decide. What kind of life do I want to live? What will be my quality of life? What type of relationships do I want to have since Amitirptyline makes a difference in my emotional temperament?

I am sharing this because I have realized that people go through so many things in their lives that you may never know or understand. How one drug can change your life for the better but make you into someone who you are not or who you may not want to be.

I want prayers to make the right decisions on how to pursue my life. My problems are not life-threatening or a death sentence—a considerable inconvenience to living life normally. Do I change my personality on the drug to eliminate my unusual symptoms or live the best I can with the symptoms and keep being me?

Leave me a prayer or give me some feedback.

The Drug

The Drug
 
Amitriptyline
Is my drug
Not really crystalline
I think like a slug
 
So very very dragging
So very very hampered
So very very lagging
So very very hammered
 
I can not think
I can not write
I can not read
I can not understand
 
I can walk
I can talk
I can exercise
I can drive
 
A trade off
Lose the crazy woes
Do not unbelieve or scoff
Or live in the shadows
 
Easier to be alone
Easier to hideaway
Easier to be my own
Easier to live that way
 
Live in solitary
Or to fight the darkness
I am my adversary
What a starkness
 
To live in society
Amitriptyline is required
To end anxiety
A new life is desired
 
Slow with limited derailments
Sleep too much
Drugged but no aliments
Amitriptyline is a crutch
 
Last time 10 mg
Then 20 and 30 mg
Then 40 to 70 mg
All the way to 80 mg
 
In the end
It began shirking
No more dividends
And it quit working
 
Better for awhile
To have some assistance
A pleasant smile
And a healthy existence