Ok,
So I'm on this regimen of pills that I swear, you'd look at and think I was on chemo or an HIV cycle, fro chrissakes. I mean, something SERIOUS. I'm just a little blue now and then and I've got fucking 5 or six different prescriptions and all the various rules and regulations that go along with that many goddam pills.
This pill has to be taken in the AM before breakfast.
This pill needs to be taken in the AM with breakfast.
Take ONE of these pills in the AM with breakfast, and the other one and a half before bed.
Take this pill with food, but not breakfast.
Take this pill and that pill at night. And the latter nonly id you feel like you might have trouble sleeping.
Jesus H, right?
And if you don't know, I was on kind of an all-natural kick before this all went down. I wanted chemicals as far away from my body as possible. I was a burt's bees consumer, a free-range egg buyer, an organic milk drinker. I'd be that asshole in the supermarket checking the back of any and all products to make sure I wasn't buying partially-hydrogenated crap and high-fructose corn syrup. Seriously. Geave up meat largely because of the insane chemicals, bought unbleached flour, buy as natural as possible as allowed by the fucking fda.
And her I am dependent on a slew of chemical concoctions to make me balanced and well and less-than-suicidal.
Well.
At first I told myself: Suck it up. Mental illness is a real illness. You take your thyroid pill and don't blink, because the medical doctor told you you need it. So take these pills the therapists are telling you you need.
However.
The other day, sitting in the Nurse's office at my Therapy place (the nurse is the one who prescribes the drugs), I decide to get all 'educated consumer' on her, and say:
"This isn't an immediate concern, I simply want to be informed; Out of curiosity, what would happen with taking all these pills should I get pregnant? Again, it isn't an immediate concern, but in the next few--"
"If you're thinking about getting pregnant you have to stop taking these pills immediately." she says, her face grim.
"Oh... really?" I ask, trying to look perfectly blase about it. Trying to look only mildly curious.
"Yes." She replies firmly. "Mood stabilizers are not safe for fetuses." She tells me. and further elaborates: "In fact, if you were to get pregnant while on these pills you would have to get an abortion."
Ho.Ly.Fuck.
"Holy God." I say, before I can act cool.
"Yes." She agress. "It's incredibly important that oyu not get pregnant while on these drugs." She thinks for a moment. "What we recommend is that whatever birthcontrol you use now, that you double up. So if you're on the pill, you should also use condoms..."
Eeek. So if we practice the pull-out method?
I follow up with some practical questions about coming off the medication in anticipation of trying to conceive, with questions about how people are medicated while pregnant if mood stabilizers are off the table, and then I take the prescription for more thalidamide, thank her, and depart cool as a cucumber.
But all the way home all I can imagine (of course, have we met?) are worst-case scenarios.
I am not pro-life, politically, but I am awfully romantic, and the thought of aborting a child concieved with the man I love makes me sick, guilty, and miserable. I've wanted a child (chilren) with him for more than a decade, and it is touch-and-go already with whether we will even be able to have any (i mean, nearly 15 years of the pull out method and nary a pregnancy? ummmm...). So to think that I might conceive and then have to abort because of some mood stabilizers that would turn my fetus into a monster?
Yeah. that visit did a number on me.
So aaron comes home to find me on the couch, all numb and comatose-like, and asks what's going on.
I tell him.
He isn't as perturbed.
Which, of course, vexes me.
"Look," He says, "You're getting all worked up about a hypothetical situation that is incredibly unlikely to happen." He reminds me that we've never concieved, so why do I all of a sudden think that we will now?
"Because that's how life works!" I tell him, doom-and-gloom.
"No." He tell me. "That's the way people who don't understand odds THINK that life works."
He is certain in his law of averages, and I am certain in my superstition.
I know, I KNOW, it would kill me to have to get an abortion at this point in my life.
An then, oh god forbid, what if something should go wrong and we can't ever have children and that was my one chance???? (yeah, this is how my brain works. I'm my very own soap opera plot line) How could I live with myself?
I couldn't.
So now I'm thinking very seriously about going in to my appointment this week and letting them know that I'm not comfortable with this approach to my treatment. That I'm interested in trying a less toxic approach to leveling me out. Maybe just therapy with the thyroid pills and see what happens.
But I can't help wondering if my irish catholic is rearing it's irrational, stubborn head. Immune to therapy and all that. I mean, if this was, say, an issue with my kidneys, would I be balking at taking medicine? Is this really about thalidomide babies, or is it because I haven't really convinced myself that mental illness is really a medical issue and not self-indulgent bullshit?
And will my ADD medicine mutate my babies too? Sigh.
The only bright spot about this was this discourse:
"What, so you think somehow magically we're going to have sex tonight and get pregnant??"
"No, I'm concerned that we already are!"
"We never have before!"
"Yeah, but there was cum everywhere last night!"
"There's always cum everywhere..."
"What if a sperm crawled up my leg and swam up to my egg?!?!"
"Listen, if a sperm did that, then he is super sperm, and he can withstand the toxic chemicals. He'll be all set."
"And maybe even shoot web?!?!?"
"Yeah. We'll have a superhero baby."
"Yeah!! . . . . . . . . . .But not if we abort him!"
"Jesus...." *Aggravated sigh**
So I'm on this regimen of pills that I swear, you'd look at and think I was on chemo or an HIV cycle, fro chrissakes. I mean, something SERIOUS. I'm just a little blue now and then and I've got fucking 5 or six different prescriptions and all the various rules and regulations that go along with that many goddam pills.
This pill has to be taken in the AM before breakfast.
This pill needs to be taken in the AM with breakfast.
Take ONE of these pills in the AM with breakfast, and the other one and a half before bed.
Take this pill with food, but not breakfast.
Take this pill and that pill at night. And the latter nonly id you feel like you might have trouble sleeping.
Jesus H, right?
And if you don't know, I was on kind of an all-natural kick before this all went down. I wanted chemicals as far away from my body as possible. I was a burt's bees consumer, a free-range egg buyer, an organic milk drinker. I'd be that asshole in the supermarket checking the back of any and all products to make sure I wasn't buying partially-hydrogenated crap and high-fructose corn syrup. Seriously. Geave up meat largely because of the insane chemicals, bought unbleached flour, buy as natural as possible as allowed by the fucking fda.
And her I am dependent on a slew of chemical concoctions to make me balanced and well and less-than-suicidal.
Well.
At first I told myself: Suck it up. Mental illness is a real illness. You take your thyroid pill and don't blink, because the medical doctor told you you need it. So take these pills the therapists are telling you you need.
However.
The other day, sitting in the Nurse's office at my Therapy place (the nurse is the one who prescribes the drugs), I decide to get all 'educated consumer' on her, and say:
"This isn't an immediate concern, I simply want to be informed; Out of curiosity, what would happen with taking all these pills should I get pregnant? Again, it isn't an immediate concern, but in the next few--"
"If you're thinking about getting pregnant you have to stop taking these pills immediately." she says, her face grim.
"Oh... really?" I ask, trying to look perfectly blase about it. Trying to look only mildly curious.
"Yes." She replies firmly. "Mood stabilizers are not safe for fetuses." She tells me. and further elaborates: "In fact, if you were to get pregnant while on these pills you would have to get an abortion."
Ho.Ly.Fuck.
"Holy God." I say, before I can act cool.
"Yes." She agress. "It's incredibly important that oyu not get pregnant while on these drugs." She thinks for a moment. "What we recommend is that whatever birthcontrol you use now, that you double up. So if you're on the pill, you should also use condoms..."
Eeek. So if we practice the pull-out method?
I follow up with some practical questions about coming off the medication in anticipation of trying to conceive, with questions about how people are medicated while pregnant if mood stabilizers are off the table, and then I take the prescription for more thalidamide, thank her, and depart cool as a cucumber.
But all the way home all I can imagine (of course, have we met?) are worst-case scenarios.
I am not pro-life, politically, but I am awfully romantic, and the thought of aborting a child concieved with the man I love makes me sick, guilty, and miserable. I've wanted a child (chilren) with him for more than a decade, and it is touch-and-go already with whether we will even be able to have any (i mean, nearly 15 years of the pull out method and nary a pregnancy? ummmm...). So to think that I might conceive and then have to abort because of some mood stabilizers that would turn my fetus into a monster?
Yeah. that visit did a number on me.
So aaron comes home to find me on the couch, all numb and comatose-like, and asks what's going on.
I tell him.
He isn't as perturbed.
Which, of course, vexes me.
"Look," He says, "You're getting all worked up about a hypothetical situation that is incredibly unlikely to happen." He reminds me that we've never concieved, so why do I all of a sudden think that we will now?
"Because that's how life works!" I tell him, doom-and-gloom.
"No." He tell me. "That's the way people who don't understand odds THINK that life works."
He is certain in his law of averages, and I am certain in my superstition.
I know, I KNOW, it would kill me to have to get an abortion at this point in my life.
An then, oh god forbid, what if something should go wrong and we can't ever have children and that was my one chance???? (yeah, this is how my brain works. I'm my very own soap opera plot line) How could I live with myself?
I couldn't.
So now I'm thinking very seriously about going in to my appointment this week and letting them know that I'm not comfortable with this approach to my treatment. That I'm interested in trying a less toxic approach to leveling me out. Maybe just therapy with the thyroid pills and see what happens.
But I can't help wondering if my irish catholic is rearing it's irrational, stubborn head. Immune to therapy and all that. I mean, if this was, say, an issue with my kidneys, would I be balking at taking medicine? Is this really about thalidomide babies, or is it because I haven't really convinced myself that mental illness is really a medical issue and not self-indulgent bullshit?
And will my ADD medicine mutate my babies too? Sigh.
The only bright spot about this was this discourse:
"What, so you think somehow magically we're going to have sex tonight and get pregnant??"
"No, I'm concerned that we already are!"
"We never have before!"
"Yeah, but there was cum everywhere last night!"
"There's always cum everywhere..."
"What if a sperm crawled up my leg and swam up to my egg?!?!"
"Listen, if a sperm did that, then he is super sperm, and he can withstand the toxic chemicals. He'll be all set."
"And maybe even shoot web?!?!?"
"Yeah. We'll have a superhero baby."
"Yeah!! . . . . . . . . . .But not if we abort him!"
"Jesus...." *Aggravated sigh**
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