Zero hour approaches

It is October 31st, also known as Nano Eve. I had a slight moment of panic and crisis. I had some ideas down for the direction that I wanted to head for my story. Then a few days ago I lost my path a bit and started thinking about something else. It seems though that this morning in the quiet and peace of the early morning hours I was able to go back to the short notes I had and solidify my focus into the story I was already mentally developing. So I have my basis. I had my Fiance check over some of my notes and she thought it was a good start that I just had to go into more details. That works for me because what I had was just the lay out and back story that my mind needs to get going and discover from there. The working title is going to be “The Shadow’s Thread”. It is going to be a fantasy novel based in a land where magic has been practically extinguished. Children born with what is dubbed the shadow upon them are executed. A tyrannical government controls the common lands. The story starts in a small town with an odd stranger coming into the village at the time of harvest. The stranger has a message for the young man that the story revolves around. Events take off quickly from there.

I will be posting some excerpts as I go and giving updates on the progress. I am excited and a bit anxious. Wish me luck on that front 🙂

———

As my personal life and mental health go things are slightly improved, if only for the fact that I have some hope in the direction that things are going. After all of the frustrations and being told to go here and then there and then back again I was finally able to see my family doctor. She knew my history and knew the struggles that I have gone through my whole life. I filled her in with some of what has worked in the past and she agreed that it was a good mix of meds. She started me on some small doses of anxiety and mood stabilizer meds and once those have some time to work she is going to start me on an anti depressant as well. I have definitely been going through an adjustment time. The anxiety is still pretty bad but it is better than it was. I am however a little foggy from the seroquel which helps me sleep. I know I will adjust though. I am glad I have something to start with until I can see an actual specialist. I see my family doctor again in a week. It was definitely a relief to get someone who would actually listen.

Well, off to work I go. I will surely give an update tomorrow how my first day of writing for Nano goes.

Dan

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Frustration

I wanted to write a post about what my thoughts were for my novel that I am going to attempt during Nano, but the events of yesterday occupy my mind. So a week and a half ago I went to the doctor because I have been having a tough time catching my breath. This was actually the sole purpose of this visit. Once there though the curtain of denial quickly fell away from my mind. I have been suffering pretty bad mood swings up and down. The worse feeling though now is the anxiety that has tried to take over my life. Anyways the doctor ran some tests, ekg, blood work and the like and found nothing. We talked a bit more and in the end she put me on a bipolar/antidepressant, Lamictal. I asked if there was anything they could do for the anxiety and not being able to get restful sleep and she said she did not want to till I saw a psychiatrist. So she gave me a referral. I left feeling a little bit of despair because my worst symptom right now was not going to be helped.

I got home and had serious thoughts of not doing anything because it seemed I was not being believed. Despite this I did call and made an appointment. The soonest I could get in was a week and a half away. Even with this though I was happy that I was going to be able to see someone who could help me. Now I just had to wait and make it until then.

Through out the week+ things kept getting worse. I was having moments of breaking down with little reason. This even happening at work. I was having more and more occurrences of not being able to take a deep breath. Going out into public, like say to the store, was starting to be a terrible experience. I do not know how to adequately explain it except that it feels like you are in a tunnel at the bottom of the see. There is pressure and you feel like you are weak and might pass out. Talking begins to speed up and you feel jittery.

At work things were and are getting pretty bad. I have to try to do breathing exercises to calm myself down, with little effect. Trying to do simple things I feel like I am freezing up and try to process a million things in my head when I know what the next step is. If there is confrontation I seem to be shutting down and my chest begins to hurt. Just recently my neck and jaw are locking up and the pain that cause is multiplied since I have to talk quite a bit for my job.

Needless to say things have not been improving. So yesterday arrived. Little sleep the night before with a work meeting bright and early and my doctor’s appointment to follow. I got through the meeting, despite being shaky and knocking things over. The drive to my appointment, an hour plus away, felt longer than it should have. A few times I felt like pulling over and letting my fiance drive. My symptoms were getting worse but I was still looking forward that I might get some relief.

Arriving at the behavioral health clinic I had some odd recollections of the past and what I have been through previously. I registered and filled out some more of the paperwork and questionnaires that they had for me. The person I was meeting with came and got me and lead me to her office. She went through all the surveys and information I had provided and asked me for more details, my symptoms, thoughts and feelings. We went over my history, the fact that I had been struggling with this for years.

Near the end when she began to lay out the plan my heart began to sink. She was not a psychiatrist. She was not a doctor. She was just a handler, her job to find out what I needed and then refer me to a course of action. The wait list to see a psychiatrist…50 DAYS! 50 days. I am going to leave the office with absolutely nothing to help me. I had no idea that I was not going to see a doctor that day. The practitioner who referred me did not let me know of the wait. The person who made the appointment did not mention anything about what the first appointment would be. I felt wrung out and passed along. The handler tells me then that I have to go back to my family physician for any medications in the mean time. I told her that they sent me here.

I have never been more upset or let down by a situation in my life when it comes to health care. This system is about as bad as it can be, especially when handling people who are having issues that are effecting there lives in very real ways. Debilitating, disparaging ways.

So I have an appointment tomorrow and I am hoping, begging that I am not let down again. I just want some help and not to be passed along again.

Dan

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NaNo or Not

After a little bit of struggling with my creative faculties I think I have a good start to a story that I would like to write. I was trying to see if I could creatively come up with a decent sci fi story but I just could not do it. SciFi is my favorite genre to read but apparently my mind does not want to cooperate with writing in such a field. I tend to always want to go back to Fantasy and Adventure stories. Coming of age and young heroes put to task, taken from their once simple lives. In this my mind finally came up with something I think I can use. I was able to think up a decent back story and an opening seen. With the way that I write this is usually all I need. I am a discovery writer. Usually I come up with an idea and some characters and a little back story in my head and then I let the story take me where it will. This is an exciting way to write but can also be a challenge. For me the biggest challenge is bringing everything together at the end.

The dilemma that I am having is whether I want to do NaNo in the traditional sense where one has to complete 50,000 words in a month or if I just want to write at my own pace. My dream has always been to be a published author and to be able to make a living off of what I can create. Maybe I should take this as an attempt to reach this goal and work more ardently at crafting a well rounded novel. I have a few days to decide as NaNoWriMo starts on November 1st. One thing is for certain, I am definitely excited to write again since I have not in a good while.

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Too long left untended

It has been a long time since I have ventured onto wordpress. It took me a few attempts to remember my login and password but I made it on after a few attempts and accidentally sending a reset email to whoever uses dbahr as their login. As I figured out that my login was danbahr. Maybe though this is something I still need. A good way to get some things off of my mind and to share some of my creativity when I feel like it. 

It has been almost a year and a half since I was last on this site. Amazing to me and kind of depressing to see my lack of commitment to something that I enjoyed doing. I gave a quick glance to my site statistics and the funny thing was that my site had its busiest viewing day in august of this year. 400 plus views and that was a year+ removed from my last post. Well I hope that my checking back in here is not a temporary  endeavor. I hope that I an keep it up again and let this be my catharsis again.

Life has seen its ups and downs as is the norm. An up was that in august of this years I passed my three year anniversary staying sober. Something that I never thought I could attain. I feel pretty strong in my resolve to stay off the sauce but it is always a fear or worry that is in the back of my mind. The funny thing is that the fear of letting my family and friends down is probably one of my greatest motivators. Add that to the fact that I would not be able to live with myself if I made that mistake and went back.

One of the downs seems to be looming over my head. I feel a dark cloud is shadowing my path and I need some help that I let go of a few years ago. Over the past few weeks I have had issues every day with not being able to catch my breath or breath deeply. I went the classic “guy” route and let it go for far too long before finally succumbing to the pleas and demands of my friends and family to go into the doctor. I did so and made an appointment with my family doctor, well not actually my family doctor as she is far to busy and over booked to be seen on short notice. Anyways it was one of the nurse practitioners that work at the clinic I go to. I let her know what I was experiencing. I said I was wondering if it was asthma or something else with my longs. She promptly did some tests, checked my breathing, did an ekg, drew some blood. In the end they could not find anything. Everything came back normal. So upon her looking at my medical history and the pharmacopia of medications I was on previously she decided it was most likely anxiety. She asked me why I stopped taking all the meds I was previously and I said because at the time my insurance ended. I realized going into the appointment that anxiety was a possibility. My fiance had said as much as I was calling and making the appointment. 

When my life was at its lowest point I was diagnosed as being manic depressive with social anxiety disorder. Or something along those lines. I cannot remember exactly. Just means that my moods can go up and down and I can have some issues with anxiety, sometimes rather large issues. I was on bipolar meds(2 different types), anti depressants, a pill that helped boost the other pills, anxiety meds and meds to help me sleep. It was an interesting mix and definitely something I do not want to fully go back on. I was a walking zombie. Tremors and all. I was definitely not myself on all of these meds, but it did get me through the worst of what I was going through. In hind sight it was not the best decision to quit all of these cold turkey. I went through a week of hell but have made some strides on my own. Now I realize my own will power is not enough.

So anyways the doctor(you know what I mean) prescribed Lamictal, a mood stabilizer mainly for bipolar disorder. Upon hearing this and that this was the decision and knowing that it was most likely anxiety I was not happy and felt even more depressed. Depressed because I knew that this was not going to be the short term fix that I need at this time. My issue may have been opening up about my past and telling the doc why I checked myself into a psych ward. She did not want to prescribe me any sedative and in her tone I realized that she thought I was either a pill seeker or would do something risky with these meds. The first thought that went through my head was that I am not a damn pill seeker. I have not been to a doctor in over 2 1/2 years. That is not the normal pill seeker type. I have not drank in over 3 years. I have not done drugs(the hardest I have ever done was some hash and marijuana in college) in over 8 years. My second thought was this. If you think I was going to do something stupid and off myself with these pills you have got to be kidding. With the copious amounts of prescribed meds I was on previously I could have ended my life a few times over if I wanted to. 

With these thoughts in my mind I took the referral to a behavioral specialist, psychiatrist, and my prescription for lamictal and left. I left realizing there would be no short term relief and I would continue to suffer. I had the immediate urge to just break down into tears. I had the immediate urge to just toss the phone number away and go on suffering and hope it would go away. I had the anxiety of having to go to another doctor and explain my issues all over again and hope I was not looked down upon. Despite all of this I did call and make an appointment. At the time the earliest was a week and a half away so now I have to tough it out for a little bit longer.

I have suffered with something like this my whole life. Depression, anxiety and manic swings. It can be as little as having issues breathing properly, to my heart racing in public situations, like going to the grocery store. It can be the unseen anchor that makes it nearly impossible to break free and get out of the house from time to time. It can be the feeling of being in a tunnel under water with the weight of a thousand oceans sitting on top of me. It can be my mind going into overdrive right as I am laying my head upon a pillow making sleep all but impossible. It can be a small event that brings me nearly to tears and sometimes all the way there. It can be absolutely debilitating.

I definitely need some help and I have the tools around me to get it. I have decent insurance that makes seeing a mental health specialist practical and affordable. I have family around me that mostly support me. Especially my Dad and my Brother. My father knows what anxiety and depression can do and he understands what I am going through. He has also been there for me no matter what, no questions asked. He has saved me on more than one occasion  My brother is my best friend and he has been there to see me through the worst of it and make sure I had a good footing before trying to heal on my own again. I also have a good woman by my side who is supportive. I love her and want to be better able to support her as well. 

I think for now this is more than enough for one post. I hope to use this more often. I do not have the energy to go back and check this for errors so I hope it is readable. I think the writing is another tool that helps me not stagnate inside my own head. I plan on competing in NaNoWriMo again this year. The National Novel Writing Month. I just need to come up with a good story. It is a good way to occupy my mind.

Anyways. Good Night WordPress and Facebook Friends.

Dan

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