Written Wednesday morning:

Even though I’m tired I want to document my discussion with a nurse at the makers of Amberen while it’s still fresh in my mind. I had mild anxiety throughout most of my day and then it got really bad. Sleepytime tea, Ibuprofen, emotional tapping… nothing was helping. Nothing. It would start to seem like it was backing off but then I would have waves of anxiety going through my chest. No racing heart, though.

I was sitting at my desk when I casually glanced at the box of Amberen sitting on it and the toll-free number written on the box. So I called and pressed the option for speaking to a nurse and told her that Amberen has relieved all my perimenopausal symptoms except for anxiety. She was surprised, saying that that’s usually the first symptom people find relief from. Then she said she suspected the cause of my anxiety may not be the hormonal fluctuations. This is when I told her that I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and put on Levothyroxine 4 years ago. She asked me if my thyroid levels could be off and I told her they were a little high because if I take enough medication to get my numbers normal, I have epic levels of anxiety. She then said I could be sensitive to the medication. I told her that’s exactly what my gut feeling has always told me and that I never had a problem with anxiety until I was put on anything above 50 mcg. I told her that my doctor told me it was the same stuff our bodies made anyway and she didn’t think it was the medication. At that point, she laughed and said they love to say that because that’s what they’re advocating; that medication. Also, she admitted that she wasn’t a doctor and was sure my doctor would disagree with her but that my doctor was welcome to call them anytime. She also pointed out that while it may be the same stuff our bodies make, it’s still a synthetic version and so the body can react to it differently. The more I thought about this the more it made sense because no matter what great kinds of chemicals we may come up with, nothing can replace the real thing. It’s like baby formula. It can’t quite duplicate breast milk, can it?

She said I should really advocate for myself and get the issue addressed once and for all if I think the medication could be the problem. Oh, I definitely plan to advocate, all right. I’ve had enough of this fucking bullshit cycle year after year. Not saying I don’t have flareups or peri, but I think if I never had to go on this medication in the first place, I would find that I had little to no anxiety from the peri. Just the timing and the intensity of this shit is enough to indicate it’s tied to the medication. It wasn’t until they raised my dose that I started having these problems and it just seems way too intense to be on the peri. I need to be cut back or put on something else. I wasn’t on 50 mcgs for long and while it’s possible I could still have a problem on that after a while if I’m that sensitive to the synthetic version, I don’t think I would. Yes, my TSH will be in the teens on 50s, but before I was diagnosed and medicated it was in the 30s and I didn’t have anxiety. I tell you, it’s the meds. Another thing that points to the meds is that in the summer of 2016, the doctor told me I still had good estrogen. Well, if perimenopausal anxiety is caused by falling estrogen levels, then why have I been anxious since 2014? I was showing some symptoms then like some hot flashes, sleep disturbances, and periods that were becoming irregular. Tom says there are more hormones involved than just estrogen and I know this is true, so maybe I did really go into peri while I still had good estrogen. Sure felt like it started coming on around 2014.

Then she asked if I was waiting 4 hours to take the Amberen, which confirmed that she really knew what she was talking about because most people don’t know that you should wait 4 hours after the medication before you take even something like Amberen. Nothing should ever be taken with Levothyroxine except for painkillers and only if necessary.

I’m definitely going to start skipping doses more often to ward off the anxiety from setting in in the first place. I think the only reason I was doing better last fall was that I had gotten so fed up with the anxiety last summer that I started skipping every other day for two or three weeks and it took a while for my levels to build back up when I started taking it more often. I don’t want to do anything extreme and quit the medication altogether because my body still needs this hormone. There’s no need to be so black-and-white about it. All I’m saying is that I can’t take 75 or more anymore. It’s simply too much for my body no matter what anyone says and no matter what their fucking numbers say. Furthermore, the only way to find out for sure if I’m right is to actually lower the damn dose for a good 6 months or so and see how I do. If I’m still anxious then I’ll have no problem with admitting and accepting that I was wrong, and then take it from there. I can’t keep suffering like this year after year. It’s too much for me. Sooner or later it’s going to drive me to do something stupid if it doesn’t let up and I don’t want that either. It is a horrible, HORRIBLE way to live. It’s scary as hell. They say our gut feeling is usually correct. If my gut feeling says it’s on the medication, then it probably is, with or without flare-ups and perimenopause in the picture. Maybe in a few years I can tolerate this dose without issue, but I don’t think so. I just want to worry about right now anyway, not what might be the case in a few years. And right now I can’t tolerate this dose and it needs to be lowered or some other alternative needs to be implemented.

There is absolutely nothing going on in my life that should make me even remotely stressed out let alone anxious as hell. I may be annoyed by noise and other little nuisances like that in life, but there is absolutely no reason I should feel this way. Well, I’ve had enough! When my life was shitty prior to 2012 and I was stressing over money and our day-to-day survival, I STILL didn’t feel this way. Go into my pre-2014 journals and see how often you can find the word “anxiety.”

I forgot that I got Benadryl to act as the new Lorazepam but I might not have had the guts to take it had I remembered it. That’s the thing about anxiety… Everything becomes scary.

Tom thinks the peri is causing flareups because I still had anxiety the other day after a couple of skips, but that’s the thing about Levothyroxine… It takes months to leave the body. The shit’s still in my system. But I do get better overall when I back off.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother living. I could ask my doctor for a Lorazepam refill, down it all, and never wake up again just to have to deal with one long-term crisis after another for the rest of my life as I’ve always done. Believe me, it’s a tempting idea at times. I don’t need this shit and Tom doesn’t need it either. I almost wish I could ditch doctors altogether. I went to them 4 years ago and all they’ve done is make me worse. The foot doctor did get rid of my ingrown toenail, and my GYN helped me if only a little, but otherwise they made me worse, not better.

IDK, maybe there is something up there and this is its way of saying hey, I made you hypo for a reason, and this is the way it’s forcing me to be the hypo I was meant to be. But then why can others tolerate this drug without any issues? Why is it always me that has to have the problems? Being hypo is very annoying but it didn’t kill me, and if worst comes to worst and that’s what I have to be again, it won’t kill me this time around either. But you know what? I’d rather something - anything - kill me than let me live to suffer. Can’t take thyroid meds, can’t take statins… I get it, God. You want me to suffer. But it’s my life and my body and I say no more! I’m done with this shit and if death is the only way to stop the suffering, so be it. First I’m going to start with hoping a lower dosage is the answer. If not, I’ll decide what to do then. But I’m not going to keep suffering on and off year after year from what ranges from a horrible sense of irrational unease to downright terror. Hell, I even called Tom and told him about my chat with the nurse.

My own sister and nieces have been ghosting me and I wonder why. They’ve been pulling a Maliheh on me more and more. I’ve asked Tammy several times what the tests were for and what the results were when she told me on the 25th of last month that she was having a bunch of tests done, and she’s completely blown off my Facebook messages as well as the email I sent and the message I tagged her in on my wall. So what’s up? Because I’m not a God fan? Won’t forgive certain family members? Wish they would either tell me to fuck off or just tell me what the hell’s really going on.

Anyway, the rain kept it quiet yesterday but then we had a little bit of a dry spell in which the planes promptly began to make up for lost time. We’ve got to be in a flight path.

Took the 6 citrus teas over to next-door, and later slept shittily. Yes, something is always determined to fuck with my sleep. If it isn’t traffic, it’s something else. This time around it was ferociously loud thunder and then Alexa rebooting.

Aly had that Novasure procedure done yesterday and there were issues with her blood pressure, so she had to go to the hospital for a while. She said she was so sorry she wasn’t there for me after seeing my tweet about the anxiety, but I told her I know she’s there for me even when she can’t be.

Going through journals reminded me to check jail inmates again for the first time in a while, as I think I recently mentioned. When I found that Jailhouse Kim was in yet again for what’s got to be at least the fourth time, I couldn’t resist fucking with her so I sent her a letter saying that her friend contacted me on Facebook and asked that I send her a little “inspiration.” Yeah, go ahead, God, if you exist, and punish me. You make me suffer when I behave so why not for sending someone a letter that is no doubt going to shock them and make them wonder who the hell I am, even if she may have a good idea. I reminded her that she chose crime over her kids because I know it will really get to her, and while I appreciated the help she gave me to break me into jail life, I always resented her as well. She would be correct if she said I wouldn’t have the guts to say that to her face in person. Not with commissary and visitation to lose I wouldn’t. I also asked her what life with Jodi Arias was like, pointed out how much she must love prison if she keeps going back to it, mentioned some inmates I used to know (some of whom are there), and said a few weird things to keep her guessing and wondering. I wish I had an invisible camera embedded in the letter so I could see and hear her reaction when she gets and reads it. LOL

Even though I didn’t do anything illegal, I didn’t put a return address on and I didn’t leave any physical evidence, although I did address it by hand. I wonder if she got and saved my first letter? That way she can compare handwriting if she wants to. Kim may be a loser who would rather be in prison than deal with the real world, but she is intelligent. I wonder if she wonders if I’ll write her every time she’s hauled into prison. Yeah, maybe, haha.

I also wonder if she sees Rosa but I doubt it. I think Rosa is in something called the Santa Cruz Unit. The beggar is in the Lumley Unit. Pretty sure that’s where Jodi is.

Last night I dreamed I pierced my nose six times with these little tiny studded earrings, LOL. I did a group of three on the right lower side of my nose and then I somehow managed to do another group of three on the upper left side of my nose toward my eye. As I studied all the little studs in the mirror, I wondered if I should mention it to Tom when he got home or see how long it would take him to notice. Then I thought he might be worried that some were “too close to my brain.”