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Depression
Oct. 26th, 2022 02:55 pmI'm having trouble with depression again.
The doctor who prescribes my HRT has offered to renew my anti-depressant prescription the last times I've visited. I really appreciate that, since the GP I've been seeing is pretty awful.
After telling her about the fire last time, she asked if I wanted to increase the dose. I declined. I was on a higher dose while I was in the Netherlands, and for some time before that. When I stopped taking it after moving to Canada (mostly because I was too depressed to deal with figuring out how to renew it), I had a span of a month or so when I was feeling better than I had in several years. I thought maybe it had been the wrong medicine for me. But then I had a depressive crash that matched the up span: I was more depressed than I'd been in several years and was worried I would not be able to deal with school when it started again in the Fall.
I went to the GP to see about getting on Bupropion again. He wouldn't prescribe the dose I was on before, but he did give me a lower dose. That seemed to make a huge difference. However, starting that again coincided with starting a lot of transition stuff and it's hard to know what contributed to an improvement and in what proportion.
Anyway, I said no to the higher dose because I was scared of what happened the last time I was on a higher dose and got really depressed anyway. On top of that, life feels so very unstable right now and anything that threatens some kind of stability makes me fearful and anxious. I didn't want to change something as significant as psychiatric medicine dosage on top of that.
But yesterday and today I've been realizing that the depression is pretty bad again. I'm in the state where no kind of entertainment is entertaining, and none of the basic tasks of daily living feel worth doing. If I had a psychiatrist I could work with for medication management then I'd be more willing to try changing things, but seeing a psychiatrist without health coverage is prohibitively expensive. The Canadian medical system is far superior to the US one in terms of accessibility, but it's not perfect.
I have exactly one thing that I'm actively enjoying doing lately. A few days ago, Miriam and I started playing Stardew Valley together in the evenings. I've enjoyed the time together every time, even if I need a little self-convincing to sit down and do it.
This post wasn't going to be this long. I was just going to say that the depression is pretty bad right now. But I think I may be just about incapable of saying things like that without context, and context for the context, and it all kind of snowballs. I still feel like I'm not adequately describing the situation.
The doctor who prescribes my HRT has offered to renew my anti-depressant prescription the last times I've visited. I really appreciate that, since the GP I've been seeing is pretty awful.
After telling her about the fire last time, she asked if I wanted to increase the dose. I declined. I was on a higher dose while I was in the Netherlands, and for some time before that. When I stopped taking it after moving to Canada (mostly because I was too depressed to deal with figuring out how to renew it), I had a span of a month or so when I was feeling better than I had in several years. I thought maybe it had been the wrong medicine for me. But then I had a depressive crash that matched the up span: I was more depressed than I'd been in several years and was worried I would not be able to deal with school when it started again in the Fall.
I went to the GP to see about getting on Bupropion again. He wouldn't prescribe the dose I was on before, but he did give me a lower dose. That seemed to make a huge difference. However, starting that again coincided with starting a lot of transition stuff and it's hard to know what contributed to an improvement and in what proportion.
Anyway, I said no to the higher dose because I was scared of what happened the last time I was on a higher dose and got really depressed anyway. On top of that, life feels so very unstable right now and anything that threatens some kind of stability makes me fearful and anxious. I didn't want to change something as significant as psychiatric medicine dosage on top of that.
But yesterday and today I've been realizing that the depression is pretty bad again. I'm in the state where no kind of entertainment is entertaining, and none of the basic tasks of daily living feel worth doing. If I had a psychiatrist I could work with for medication management then I'd be more willing to try changing things, but seeing a psychiatrist without health coverage is prohibitively expensive. The Canadian medical system is far superior to the US one in terms of accessibility, but it's not perfect.
I have exactly one thing that I'm actively enjoying doing lately. A few days ago, Miriam and I started playing Stardew Valley together in the evenings. I've enjoyed the time together every time, even if I need a little self-convincing to sit down and do it.
This post wasn't going to be this long. I was just going to say that the depression is pretty bad right now. But I think I may be just about incapable of saying things like that without context, and context for the context, and it all kind of snowballs. I still feel like I'm not adequately describing the situation.
