Hawai'ian Shirt and Black Jeans

These past few days have found me relatively distracted, and I've been irresponsibly forgetting to take my psychiatric medication, namely lithium carbonate and gabapentin. The racing thoughts that keep my up at night, and often compel an early rise in the morning if I do manage to fall asleep, have done a good job of reminding me that I have to do better when it comes to popping my prescribed pills. Mental illness is like that, though. Every so often you manage to kid yourself into believing that medication is superfluous. It's not. Without it I become insanely withdrawn, very suicidal, prone to tears and irritable. I take so many damn medications; testosterone, levoxythyroxine, lithium, Neurontin, Zyprexa, Lexapro, lorazepam, cyanocobalamin injection, Zomig. I'm lucky to have the drugs I need, but it's still a hassle. The day will come when this soul-less lump of flesh will die and I won't need any fucking drugs then. I'm 35, and given the way I'm pounding my liver with all these drugs I shouldn't have too much time left. Probably more behind me than in front. That's what they call a tender mercy.

I had to get together some information from my telephone book thick medical record. I discovered an intake interview from Somerville Mental Health from about six years ago. Most of this stuff I'm taking with me to my grave, but some of it is amusing. Here's what the interviewer said about yours truly:

Patient presents at interview clean cut in Hawai'ian shirt and black jeans, has somewhat pressured speech, is anxious some of the time but mood changes to withdrawn and thoughtful rapidly. His affect is somewhat flat and complains of suicidal ideation, severe depression and has been isolating himself of late. His thought process is logical. Content is strongly guilt-centered and focused on severe self-blame that can lead to moments of paranoia. Concentration and memory seem to be good. Intelligence is very high, as is insight. Judgement, impulse control and reliability are good.

My favorite part is Section 10: Client Strengths and Coping Skills. It reads like this:

Client is likeable, very intelligent, creative, thoughtful, has a good sense of humor and is highly motivated to return to work and school. Suicidal ideation and a demonstrated creative inclination to act on feelings of profound self-hatred, including self-harm, make him a suicide risk in the near future.

It's true that this makes me look crazy, but that doesn't bother me. At least they say I'm not stupid! As for "motivated," I don't know about that. I guess it's true that I've always taken my "recovery" seriously. Back then I didn't know that it would only get slightly better. Slightly better, though, is better than nothing.

There's some other good stuff here in my medical record, but it's a little embarrassing. Even I have some scruples about sharing everything with you, dear readers. It's like how they release top secret documents many years later. Perhaps in five years I'll post what the psychiatric people are saying about me now.

The scariest part of my medical record was the notation surrounding my gastric surgery. When I read about how elaborate the procedure is and what they are doing to that poor patient, I get the willies. Then I realize it's me they're working on. Yeesh.

That's about all for right now. I want to mention to AC, however, that us Socialists have no problem with being called, "Commies." It's inaccurate, but not an insult. Actually, AC talked about a few things I want to write about, so I'll put that in the next post. I'm off!