If You Didn't Think I Was Crazy Before...

My husband is gone and I feel much better.

Wait, let me rephrase that. I feel much better than I did yesterday even though my husband has gone out of town. Yesterday and last night and this morning I was a nervous wreck.

His trip to Louisiana wasn’t really the reason I was choking on a huge wad of anxiety. No, he’s gone on trips before and I’ve handled it fine ever since I started participating in the medicating of our society. I was all, “Bye honey, come back soon!” But this newfound independence was really because nothing made me anxious. Things that once would have had me huddled in the corner hugging my knees into my chest and whispering, “I want my mommy,” after I said yes to drugs, caused me to say (and mean) things like, “It will all work out okay.” And then stop in disbelief because did that just come out of my mouth? Am I an optimistic person now?

And I liked it. I really, really liked how I felt—normal! Maybe for the first time in my life!—and as far as I was concerned, you’d have to pry my pill bottle from my cold dead hands.

So things in Casa Hairlinefracture were going along swimmingly, when my loving husband gave me the gift of permanent b!rth c*ntr0l (I’m thinking I might get spam if I spell that correctly.) So anyway, the time came for me to stop taking what I was taking, and I did…and I felt a little weird but not too bad, until this week, when—oh my God, I had sleeping problems and anxiety and buckets of tears and the desire to lock myself up in a cabin in the woods. Just like when I was first diagnosed, which terrified me. Because if I know one thing, I know I never want to go back to that bad place in my mind ever again. Never ever ever.

My doctor said he’d up my dose of Anti-D’s if things didn’t improve and until then to use the medicine that helps me calm down enough to sleep if I need to. Other than that, you’re fine! Thanks for the copay!

I didn’t feel fine. I knew what he was saying was right—he didn’t need to change anything based on one day of anxiety after months of tranquility—but I would’ve liked a little more sympathy.

Which I got from my sweet friends and my husband. I tried hard to stay rational—thanking God that I was at least not curled in the fetal position with my mouth in a silent scream—and formulate a plan.

I called my OB-GYN’s office today and asked for their perspective. “So, when your patients have a really tough time when they go off the pill, what do you suggest?

“Putting you back on it,” she said.* That way I don’t have to change my other medication yet, she explained. If the sudden drop in hormones affects me badly, it’s better to be on the pill to control it. Plus she was very nice and sympathetic. Hooray for good nurses!

So there is a plan. It may not be perfect, but now I am not anxious, and that is definitely a good thing. Even with my husband out of town, I feel more like the optimistic person I’d started to become. I like that girl. I want her to stick around.

*If anyone points out to my husband that he underwent a surgery that many men fear just so I could go back on synthetic hormones, I will HUNT YOU DOWN and KILL YOU. Because happy pills or not, I would not be a good woman to live with if there was any kind of chance that I might get pregnant again. Right now the poor man just wants me to do whatever will make me feel better again.