So I stopped taking the horrible, horrible Strattera, even though my student psychiatrist told me to keep taking it. How bizarre that someone would tell a patient to take something that was making her feel completely crazy and horrible? I mean my issue is ADD. There’s no reason to make me insane to try and fix my ADD. Strattera was giving me endless bizarre goosebumps, depression, social anxiety and a miserable combination of fatigue and insomnia. She told me to keep taking it . Luckily I have been doing the crazy med thing for about 20 years and know my body and brain well enough to know that if it is freaking out on a medication that it is not a good thing to continue that medication. There are medications out there that will help you and not make you insane or torture you at the same time. So I dug out my old bottle of modafinil instead and started taking tiny doses of that a couple of mornings ago. I have taken modafinil in the past (about a year ago) but had to stop because of really awful tension headaches that would form in the back of my neck and even jaw. That was the only side effect. Everything else about it was amazing for me. With that memory floating about after realizing how horrible Strattera was for me and how I wished I could take the ADD medication that actually worked wonders, I googled how to stop the modafinil headache and actually found an article that had some really good tips. It was mostly about hydration but I decided to take it seriously and while I’ve been taking the modafinil, I have also been drinking large amounts water with salt and lemon in it. The salt is so that my body will actually hold onto the water and not just pee it all out. And so far, on day two of the modafinil, I have not even had a trace of a headache. This morning when I woke up I didn’t have that morning dread of...how am I ever going to get out of bed? It was about 6:45 AM. I realized I could get up. So I just did. I cleaned up the kitchen while listening to the news on the radio, and then some classical music. Then get this, I made some fresh squeezed orange juice out of the oranges that would have otherwise rotted on the counter.
Things are going OK for the 15-year-old daughter. We have been pretty good about sticking to the keto, or more accurately, the modified Atkins diet for her. But we went to the mall yesterday to get her a sweet 16 dress for her birthday party coming up in a month. The girls got hungry and so we ended up getting some Asian food at the food court. The meal obviously had sugar in it and she doesn’t do well with sugar and it is not keto. So it only took about 15 minutes for her to feel the effects of the sugar and to kind of go from being bright and clear and open and happy to foggy and sensory. So last night we were very careful to make sure that dinner was keto for everyone. And hopefully we will be able to keep that going for longer for her.
