Life!

I haven’t posted for a while because I haven’t been spending much time lying in bed with my laptop. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not? We’ve been spending evenings doing things instead, like watching Downton Abbey from the start, playing a ridiculous computer game called Overcooked, and trying to protect my poor plants from Very Hungry Caterpillars 😟. Also, with working from home, I suppose I just don’t have quite as much interest in spending my free time at home on my own with a computer.

I’m still reducing my Citalopram but very, very slowly. I went down to 15mg (from 20) by alternating 20 and 15mg doses then kept it on 15 for a while. That seemed OK, so now I’m going down to 10 by alternating 15 and 10mg. It seems to be working because I don’t notice any withdrawal issues apart from occasionally being a bit irritable. I’m not entirely sure how I expect to feel when I’m off them; will I continue feeling how I’ve felt for the past few months, or will anxiety start creeping back? Although I started on them because I was having trouble with life circumstances which have now passed, the truth is that I’ve always had more anxiety than was healthy or desirable, and it’s only been in the later part of my life I’ve really understood that it was a medical issue that was treatable.

Maybe the medication and all the counselling I went through will have reshaped my brain and my thought patterns enough that that’s no longer who I am. I won’t know until I’m off the medication, but it’s possible that in a few months I’ll want to go back on it. We’ll see.

When I was prescribed the last set, the Doctor put it on repeat and I think she said that I’d need to go back for an appointment after two issues. Confusingly, the app has still shown it as being available for me to request, so I have tried it… but it doesn’t tell me when it’s ready. It just says “you can collect it from your pharmacy in 48 hours, your GP will contact you if there’s a problem”. And tomorrow morning it’ll be 48 hours. I’ll probably give it a few more days. I don’t need them for a few weeks anyway, I just wanted to figure out if I need to arrange an appointment or not.

In other medical news, I have something called a fixed retainer on the back of my teeth (a brace, basically), which I’ve had for many years, since I had my actual braces removed. Every few years the glue comes off on one of the teeth and I have to go to the orthodontist, who charges me £40 for the thirty seconds it takes him to glue it back on. He always remembers me though.

JUST MY LUCK that while dental care is severely disrupted due to COVID that my retainer happens to break. It’s not that the glue has come off, it’s that the wire is in two pieces. This has never happened before! I keep catching my tongue on the pointy ends. Then some food gets jammed underneath the end of it, which is very uncomfortable. I phoned them up last week and they said they’d put me on the emergency waiting list… but that’s probably quite a long list when they’ve got patients who are months overdue for brace adjustments. The receptionist advised me to try filing it down with a nail file if it causes me problems. How I’m supposed to get a nail file on something behind my front top teeth I am not quite sure… It’s not really causing problems though, it’s just a bit annoying.