Asneezia

After that flu I had in April, which I now believe was the Lyme flu, my spring allergies suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. I had just stocked up on Claritin to last through June, since I normally sneeze nonstop from February through June, literally. And I normally sneeze every day even in non-allergy season. Also, for the record, after the flu, I started getting a slimy oily face that would almost drip if I don't wash it every opportunity.

Not until I sneezed one day, sometime around October, did I realize I hadn't sneezed at all since April. And then, when I was taking Risperdal for psychotic-ness related to seizures, I started sneezing more. And my face was less oily for that duration.

Well, I miss my sneezing. I like sneezing. Sneezing is a sign of good health. They've connected allergies with traits like being left-handed, premature, good at math, smart, and okay, I might be making some of this up. It reduced my productivity during allergy season to 25% for the 75% sneezing and recovering in bed, but if the allergy trait made me 500% productive overall, I still came out ahead....

Apparently, people who are schizophrenic don't sneeze much:

A blow from the east - research in India on inability to sneeze, asneezia

Witch-hunting Psychos

I've come across several doctors who think they know it all and once they find out you are from a high-achieving family, especially an Asian-American family, they attribute all of your symptoms to that, including things like arthritis. It's especially annoying coming from white male doctors who the less they know about something (like Asian-Americans) the more they speak with firm conclusion. The logic here is totally the opposite of logic. One would have to assume that high achievement only comes about if there is a tremendous amount of pressure and stress, as if humans are naturally mediocre.

Actually, high achievers are usually high achievers because things come easy to them. In order to achieve less, oftentimes it would actually take more effort to not do what they can do. In addition, high achievers probably feel good about themselves. And really, who has more stress in the world, someone who is high-achieving or someone who is mediocre, competing for the same things?

***

I took a neuropsychiatric test a few months ago. As an example of how useless (and even harmful) they can be, one of my highest marks was histrionic. I picture someone flaunting their boobs popping out. Has anyone ever seen me with mine popping out (aside from a near mishap during Viennese Ball Opening Committee...)?

And the best part of the neuropsychiatric testing is the logic used when a patient disagrees with the assessment and denies having a problem attributed to them. Pretty much, denial is further evidence of the problem and consistent with the psychological theory. And more evidence of repressed emotions.

Well, gee, those kinds of theories always win! How clever. Whether a person proclaims innocence or guilt, they are guilty. And claiming innocence is further evidence of guilt. Also, everybody must have every infinite repressed emotion, since by definition they're repressed and hiding, some of them very very much. So it's useless to deny having repressed emotions since you can't prove that you don't have them.

And what if you take the test when you actually do have a physical thing causing physical pain? Like arthritis, or a broken leg. You'd be labelled psychosomatic for answers to all the pain questions.

Mind Germs

I just did about a half hour of work, which is basically enough time to skim through e-mail, and remember how to navigate stuff in Unix. That is an improvement from zero. Maybe the Seroquel I took last night helped. It's an anti-psychotic medication used to treat bipolar and schizophrenia, but also used for its side effect of somnolence to help people sleep.

There has been research showing that some anti-psychotic medications also have anti-viral properties. So perhaps they treat schizophrenia in part because of the anti-viral properties.

In my previous post, research on chronic fatigue is showing that at least some cases are caused by viruses. But it will be a while before old squareheads in the medical community open their minds. Actually the old squareheads will not open their minds, especially as they get older; it will take a generational change.

Many illnesses are caused by germs, including mental illnesses:

Mind Germs, Part 2

Do viruses serve any beneficial purpose in the world? At least for bacteria, some of them do, like for making yogurt, cheese, and populating the digestive tract. But then again, harmful bacteria don't seem to serve any purpose either.

More Brain Drugs

Chemicals push buttons on the brain. Maybe Lexapro is serotonin poisoning to someone who perhaps doesn't have too little serotonin. One half-dose apparently made my muscles twitch every few seconds all day, brought back mini-seizures, and warped my mind. I was agitated and felt like I couldn't sit still for more than five minutes, yet at the same time it didn't help the fatigue but being agitated and twitching all day makes fatigue even worse, so I was crawling back to bed after five minutes up. I got the urge to look up how people overdose on drugs, a thought that has never crossed my mind before, but luckily my brain had enough unwarped brain cells left to make myself not do that. Then I briefly got thet sensation that I was floating out of my body thinking of myself as a third person. It apparently had no effect on the depression/happiness dimension.

That was a nasty experiment. Wonder what my doctor will offer up next. Maybe just maybe fatigue is not the same as depression. Diet and exercise are probably better than brain drugs in most cases for depression. A friend gets cravings for beer and dark chocolate when she gets her monthly depression. Apparently it works. Really really dark chocolate.

Sometimes I get a craving for Martinelli's sparkling apple juice when my brain is feeling warped lately. A Google search on apples and health says that apples contain lots of stuff good for the brain. Maybe I had such a healthy brain until last year because I drank so much TreeTop apple juice as a kid. Really, several times a day.

Brain Drugs

With my recent increased unhiding of my blog, though not deanonymized, I wonder if I should go back and check all my prior posts for anything inappropriate. Well, if it's so secret, then why is it in a public blog? I don't know, there's something about keeping a journal for the self yet sharing it with anyone who wants to read it. Keeping it anonymous probably doesn't work either, since there has been at least one person who has come up to me and said, "Hey, I found your blog!" Googling dance topics of course.

Whether or not to share with coworkers is another question. That, I haven't come to any conclusion on yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of them already found it, since I have left links around from other pages temporarily in the past.

Well, earlier this week, I was even less functional. Maybe it was the SAM-e supplement I tried, which left me a total zombie the next day and lingering effects for several more days. Not like the "zombie" people use casually to describe being spaced out, but like literally staring at the same spot in front of me for half an hour and not realizing it for half an hour, and this occurring for the whole day.

So if it's supposed to be like an anti-depressant, I wonder what the Lexapro will do. I finally called my doctor and said I was willing to try it. Still doubtful, but at this point, I'm willing to try almost anything. He asked me if I was going to do anything special this weekend like hang out or something. I was thinking, where has he been? Um, I've been saying that I have trouble just sitting up long enough to eat lunch, and barely get through eating and showering each day. I don't know of anyone who has been that depressed that they are really physically incapacitated to this degree. I told the doctor I didn't feel depressed, at least not very. He said it didn't matter. If anything is making me depressed, it's the fact that I can barely eat and shower. So, chicken, egg? And maybe doctors should think more when a patient complains of physical symptoms.

Since weaning off the Clonazepam, I actually don't feel as depressed, and have less of the "I'm in a war zone" waves going through my body. I think that was actually making me feel suicidal. I never thought I'd ever have that experience of feeling in my life. In response to my concerns about anti-depressants causing suicidal tendencies, the doctor said, well, Clonazepam can make one suicidal too. Well, I guess he's right! Anyway, I seem to have gotten through the seizure-like activity, though occasionally bright lights and loud phone rings make my muscles twitch.

Mobic samples helped with the joint and muscle pain, and eased some of the muscle spasms, which eased some of the feelings of "anxiety". I think skeletal-muscular disorders can lead to psychiatric symptoms, and vice-versa. I can't remember the researcher and author of a book on Emotions that we were supposed to get from my sophomore seminar on the psychology of emotions. But basically, physically making an expression and innervating those muscles can cause one to feel the emotion associated with it.

On the other hand, I remember after the first Waltz Week, I was feeling like I was waltzing on happy drugs for literally the entire six months afterwards, even more than usual. Not that I needed happy drugs before.

Precious

If you have a normal or relatively normal brain, it's probably impossible to imagine what it's like when a brain goes haywire. Probably the hardest thing to get through, among the multitude of symptoms I have, is the wacked-out brain stuff. I keep trying to explain to the doctor that one can actually feel the difference between when psychiatric symptoms are physiological or psychological in origin. Of course, they tend not to believe so, because any time they can't see or figure out the physical cause of a problem, they dump it into the psychological or psychosomatic category. I'll have more to say about this and medical testing later. At this point, I'd say that things that actually have a psychological basis are easier to deal with, because there is actually something you can work on to fix, aside from taking a drug.

Aside from the weird excruciatingly painful anxiety panic type feelings that come out of nowhere, some depression, I can also now proudly claim to have been psychotic and briefly taken anti-psychotic medication often used for schizophrenia patients. Anyway, I'm now more able to feel for the mentally ill, including those who are suicidal, homeless, and criminals.

So the voice that occasionally deranged inside my head actually sounds like the hobbit creature, I realized. And then I realized he actually has voices that fight in his mind too. Then I came across this:

A Precious Case from Middle Earth

Anyway, I think the frequency, length, and quality of my blogging will correlate with how well I'm doing. This is 5-10%. I could have more to say, but I'd probably wear myself out.