Personal Update – Looking Up

As per usual, it’s been a while since my last post. I had my SSI hearing a couple weeks ago now, and this one seems to have gone in my favor, according to my attorney. The ALJ (administrative law judge) consulted a new medical expert, who gave me two marked residual functioning limitations, which meets the SSA’s eligibility criteria for SSI, and then she said she didn’t need the vocational expert or my testimony and dismissed everyone. My attorney says that means I won. I’m just waiting for the decision to come in the mail now.

Things are honestly looking up. Along with the SSI hearing, my total and permanent disability (TPD) discharge for my student loans was accepted, meaning I don’t have to worry about paying back my student loans for my two failed college years – as long as I follow their rules. Which I tried to view, but for some reason my phone won’t load the paperwork, but I assume I just can’t take out more loans or maybe even attend school for a few years, which isn’t going to happen anyway, so I’m not too worried about all of that. I wish I could go back to school. I love learning and gaining knowledge and doing research. But that’s not realistic for me, at least not right now, and probably won’t be for quite a while, if ever. I have a friend who’s on SSI who just started attending college though, as she felt stable enough to try it at this point in her life, so maybe that’ll happen for me too. Who knows?

The weather is getting nicer here in Missoula. Not that this winter was harsh – quite the opposite, in fact. We’ve barely had any snow in the valley this entire season, and it’s only stuck around for a few days the few times it snowed. I’m a little worried about what this means for fire season, but according to things I’ve seen, we’ve had precipitation (around the average annual amount) in the mountains, just not in the valley proper, so maybe it won’t be so bad.

I hope it won’t be, at least, because I’m trying to take my dog out on more walks over the last week. I have a 3-mile loop that I do along the river and through the University’s campus, and I think if I can just keep doing that, it will help me mentally and physically. Physically I’m down a couple pounds since I started walking most days, which is a plus, and my therapist insists that getting outside and getting in the sunlight and fresh air will help my mental more too. I don’t know about all of that, because being in public makes me a little anxious, but there’s probably an element of truth to it, so I’m going to try to keep up with it.

I wish I knew why being in public made me so anxious. I assume it’s related to PTSD, just being around unfamiliar strangers and stuff, or perhaps the paranoia from my schizoaffective disorder. Before I was on a bunch of antipsychotics, I would feel like people were all looking at me, and that always made me uncomfortable. I don’t really feel like everyone’s looking at me anymore, but I can’t help but get a little overwhelmed the longer I’m out and about. It helps having someone familiar with me, even my dog, though my dog is also kind of anxious in public.

As for medications… I think from my last post, we’ve raised my haloperidol (Haldol) to 8mg daily and my venlafaxine ER (Effexor extended release) to 37.5mg daily. At one point I was on 50mg venlafaxine ER, but that caused me to cycle, so we stopped it. I got depressed, so we had to restart it at 25mg, and I needed an extra boost, but since 50mg is too much we went a step lower and are trying 37.5mg. I’ve totally stopped gabapentin and get occasional nerve blocks for occipital neuralgia headaches, but I haven’t needed the shots again yet since I got the first ones in October. I’ve had a few headaches since then, mostly in the last two weeks, so it might be getting time for another nerve block, but I’m trying to get a feel for how often I need those shots. My doctor said some people only need them twice a year, some people never need them again, etc.. So we’ll see if my headaches come back at all. The recent ones have mostly responded to Tylenol.

I’m still on lithium. My nephrologist wants me off lithium. They claim I had a GFR test result of 58 (I think? Maybe 60?) a year prior to my latest 51, but when I looked back at my test results, I’ve seen as low as 50 as early as 2022, which is I believe before I even started taking lithium. I have labs coming up at the end of this week, but I’m going to have to talk to my nephrologist about this stuff and figure out if I really need to get off lithium or if I’m fine with being on it as long as I drink my water. I’m on a hot streak of drinking all my water every day for the last three weeks or so.

I think that’s about it for now. I should update this sooner than later – I feel bad for neglecting my blog so much. Not that I think a lot of people read it, but I don’t care. It’s good for me, I think, to write this process out and document all this stuff.