I’ve been waiting for a prior authorization from my psychiatrist to go through with my insurance company for a couple of weeks now, on a medicine called Provigil. It’s a drug that is used to promote wakefulness in adults who have certain sleep disorders, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and things of that nature. It is also been used to help treat depression and several other things as well, I believe. Though it has traits of an amphetamine, it is not one. It’s an expensive drug and I did not expect the prior authorization to go through, I figured they’d deny it and we’d have to appeal it and go through all that nonsense.
The reason I thought that, was because I had already been through that battle once, a few years back with my old primary care physician. She tried like hell to get me on this medication and that damn insurance turned her down every effin time. I mean she jumped through hoops trying to get me on this medication and getting the proof or enough proof that I needed it and would benefit from it. In the end, I never did end up getting approved.
So anyway, I was standing in the kitchen yesterday and my husband walked up and tossed me a piece of mail. It was from my insurance company, I get stuff from them all the time, and I won’t lie, I don’t open most of my mail, it sits, unopened, indefinitely for the most part, unless it’s a bill or something else “important”. I’m sure I probably miss some stuff that I should be reading, but nevertheless, my unopened mail piles grow and then turn into boxes of unopened and opened mail along with receipts, and we start over again. Whew!!! LOL I went a little off the trail there for a second, but as I was saying, I was holding this piece of mail from the insurance company, and I went to throw it up on the counter and something caught my eye, I can’t remember what it said, ‘approval’ maybe, but it was enough to make me think of my prior authorization and open it. Sure enough, it was a letter stating that they had approved my prior authorization for Provigil and that it was now covered for me to take for a year, before I’m up for revaluation!!! Woo hoo!! Truly, thank you God!!!!<3
So I finally got approved for it, so I can try it and see if it makes a difference and helps me so that I’m not so tired and sleeping all the time; and also I can see if it helps with the depression at all. It’d be so nice if it helped with both. My only fear is that my body will become tolerant to it too quickly and it will no longer work like it did in the beginning, or like it should. My body does that with medications, all kinds of medications, even things like antibiotics and crap, it’s nuts. I did it to myself though, ruined my body by being an addict, this is just one of the results of being a recovering addict. I pretty much rewired everything in my brain, it’s hard to get that back, if you even can, and I don’t think you’ll ever get all of it. There I go being Negative Nancy again though, God, it’s terrible, like I just set myself up for failure and disappointment with my thoughts and words!! I don’t wanna be that person.
What I’m really hoping, is that this Provigil, in addition to the two antidepressants I’m on, the mood stabilizer, and the anti anxiety medication, will finally make a difference I can actually feel. I wanted to write, ‘lol’ back there just now, after I said, “What I’m really hoping is that this Provigil in addition to the two antidepressants I’m on…..” and so on, because I realized how funny and crazy that really sounds…. maybe not to you or anyone else, but to me it does, if only because it’s my life and I’m thinking to myself, “Look at you, do you hear all those medications you’re on? What in the hell happened here? You’re a headcase. It always comes back to this, it seems like no matter what it always comes back to the “mental illnesses” that I deal with and it’s like it’s a never ending battle, I just thought, how funny the predictability of all this is and what a nut I felt like after listing off all those different types of meds I’m on. I’m giving it a shot though, because why the hell shouldn’t I really, I mean, anything within reason is worth a shot if it might make you feel better.
I’ll give all these medications a chance to work together in my system to see if together they make a difference that not only I can feel, but that can be seen by those close to me hopefully too. I know it takes time for everything to get into your system, everything has a different saturation point, so I think it’s probably best that I give it at least two months, if not three, before deciding whether or not it’s all making any difference or not. I’d like to try to keep a med journal, lol, but for me that’s like, I don’t even know, lol. Let’s just say I don’t do well on commitment to those sorts of things. Hell, one of my biggest problems with all this depression and medication crap is, I have a really hard time remembering to take my morning doses of my medications!!!! I am almost thirty years old, and I still cannot take my medications like an adult.
For years now I’ve struggled with taking my medications in the morning. Night meds have never been a problem, I always take my night meds and there’s nothing “good” in my night meds either, lol, just to be clear. I’ve tried all kinds of different things to get myself to take my meds in the morning. I have a sign that hangs from the cupboard right in front of my face that says, ” Take Your A.M. Meds!!”….. I don’t even notice it most days. My meds sit on “my” counter, the one I go to to roll my cigarettes, use my computer, everything, it’s like my central location. They’re right there next to me basically, and yet for a long time, morning after morning I did not take them, or only took them one day here, miss a day, then take them again the next day, miss two days, take them two days, like that. In the last year and a half I have been more conscious about taking my morning meds and somehow making sure I do it. While I haven’t been great at it, I’m still better than I was, and in the last I’d say month, since I got out of the psychiatric ward, I’ve been taking them way more consistently, because instead of not taking them because it’s “too late” in the day now, I’ve been taking them no matter what time I remember, as long as it’s not past like 2 p.m., because I don’t want them too close to my night meds. I figure even if I’m not taking them at the same time everyday, at least I’m taking them and they’re getting into my system so they can start to work hopefully.
I’ll continue to work on taking my medications every morning like I’m supposed to. I don’t think it’s about finding a way to remind myself, because I’ve set alarms on my phone, taped up the sign, set them right next to me, and I still don’t take them like I’m supposed to. I feel like I’m a fucking idiot, like I’m defective, like what the fuck is wrong with me. Why don’t I just take my meds in the morning, like any other “normal” person would do? Whatever the reason is, I know I can get this right and start taking them every single day until it becomes so familiar that I could do it in your sleep, until it becomes as familiar as breathing each day. The damnedest thing is, if someone reminds me or tells me basically, to go take my meds, I take them right away, without hesitation. My husband sometimes tries to help me by reminding me, but he forgets too. A few friends have said they’d call me every morning, and they did, for a little while, but eventually it ended. And that’s okay, for all of them, because really it’s not their responsibility. It was nice of all of them to try and help me. I do appreciate it, but it’s not someone else’s job to see to it that I take my meds each morning, although I must admit, it sure makes it a lot easier. I’m going to have to do this on my own somehow though, I have to.
I saw my therapist today and one of the things we talked about was ECT (electroconvulsive) therapy, to help alleviate and possibly eliminate this depression. It’s actually something I’ve thought about a lot over the last few years, and looked into online some too, I’m the one who brought it up to my therapist. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to think it sounded like a totally crazy idea at all, in fact he talked very positively about it and even gave me a brief account of a patient of his who underwent treatment not too long ago and seems to be doing great now, much better. He did talk about the possibility of some short term memory loss, and I brought up my concern with him about long term memory loss. I told him about a friend I have who underwent ECT treatment sometime in the last ten years, and he seems to have lost a lot of his long term memory, like his memories of certain things. My therapist didn’t really have much to say on that, like he wasn’t really sure, but I’ll look into it more closely. Anyway, we talked about it and decided that since I’ve been on what seems like almost every psych med there is out there, all to little or no avail for one reason or the other, it’s not a bad idea to talk to my psychiatrist about it when I see him at the beginning of May. So that’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to talk to him about ECT and see what his perspective on it is, and whether or not he thinks it would benefit me in particular. We shall see what he has to say!
For me, everyday the struggle is real, just as I know it is for a whole lot of people out there, so many people that have it WAY worse than what I could ever dream of having it, and so I try to be thankful that I don’t have it like that and I’ve got it the way it is, even if that’s less than ideal to me. I do a lot of things to myself I think, or I make them worse at least, blow them out of proportion, or think things that aren’t true or real – just paranoid thoughts in my head because of the way my life has been. It’s like I sabotage everything good in my life eventually, including relatioships, and I don’t even realize I’m doing it or by the time I do, it’s too late. I am living in this misery, depression, sadness, and anger, along with a list of other emotions, and I’m trying to figure out how to fix it, how to get out of it, knowing that I put myself in it, so it starts with me. I’m the one who had to change all this, no one else can do it for me, I’ve always know that, The problem is that it is so damn hard. Getting out of this pit I’m in, it feels impossible to climb out of most days. It’s like I’m barely dragging on. But I don’t want to be this way, so I must do something to change it, and this is where the battle starts, conflicting thoughts. I want life to be one way, but I don’t want to do the work to change it. I’m still going at it though, I haven’t given up so far.
I think that’s enough rambling for me for one night, lol. I’m never sure if I actually have a point when I’m writing, I just kind of get that blank screen in front of me and it’s like my mind says, “AndGo!!” really fast, lol, and I’m off and writing. Thoughts spilling out on top of one another, my mind going ninety miles an hour. I’m sure some of you can probably see my “free” form writing style in my posts, lol. Thanks for baring with me folks!! 🙂
In My Words 