Darkoshi

ffs. I'm feeling as irritable and easily-angered right now as I was last year (was it a whole year ago?) when I was taking those generic Wellbutrin pills.

Not only do I have to do my own job, I have to scan in files for my mother, and have to give her instructions on how to insert jpg files into a Word document in order to save them in PDF format, but then she doesn't catch on fast enough and the VPN is too slow so I can't see her screen anymore, so I end up telling her it'll be faster to do it myself and send her the files. Except that my Word doesn't have PDF as one of the save options, so I have to send her the Word files for her to open and do a Save-as on.

One and a half fucking hours that I should have been working on my own fucking job, not hers.

I stopped taking the budeprion (generic Wellbutrin) pills after 3 weeks. They seemed to be making my mood even worse than usual, in addition to the frequent onsets of anger and rage and other side-effects.

I did a websearch and found that there are a lot of claims that the generic Wellbutrin, especially the one manufactured by Teva (which is the kind I have), doesn't work like the regular Wellbutrin.

My next appointment is in a few days, and now I'm undecided as to what to do. Should I ask for a prescription for the non-generic Wellbutrin, and give it a try? If so, I should do it now, since it sounds like my insurance may have a "mandatory generic" program starting next year, meaning that they won't cover any of the extra cost for the non-generic drugs. But I dread having the Wellbutrin affect me the same way the budeprion did. And I'm tired of taking pills. They don't seem to work, and they give me unpleasant side-effects. The Pristiq seemed the best of the lot, but it only really made me feel hyper, not really better. But even it made my vision blurrier than normal, and made my pupils stay dilated somewhat. So I don't want to go back on it either.

It's discouraging thinking about how the pills don't make me feel better.

And it's discouraging that my lower back pain keeps getting worse, and I don't know what to do about it.

And I don't have the time nor enough motivation to do the exercises I used to do.

On the bright side however, I haven't had any unexplained swellings this last month. Not even when I punched both fists into the rug last week - my hands only got a little bit swollen for a short time period from that, as would be expected. The knuckles are still slightly achy.

Damn. I broke my favorite screwdriver because the instructions on the magnetic doorstop didn't say how to get the pieces apart. It screws in! Why couldn't they just say that in the instructions, so you don't assume that it must snap in somehow, and that you therefore need to snap it out! Making me cry over my broken screwdriver! My poor little screwdriver!!!

I'm feeling more emotional than I did the last 2 months. Not sure if it's the Wellbutrin, or the lack of Lexapro and Pristiq. I don't remember any of the stress-related fits of anger while on the other meds. But I had a temper flare-up yesterday at work due to something that shouldn't have been a big deal, and I decided I needed to go on a walk to cool down... ended up at the fitness center and did some stretching to relax and calm myself. Today I had a flare-up of anger again, because of something on the computer not working right. Once I get over the anger, I'm ok again and can logically think of how to deal with the problem. But during those flare-ups, I want to yell and hit and break things. Watching the season premiere of Ugly Betty yesterday seemed to affect me more emotionally than usual too.

I gave in a little while ago and took some loratadine. Being drowsy has got to be better than constantly sneezing and having to blow my nose.

I got quite sick to my stomach last night. The most likely culprit seems the prickly pears. I guess that ends my adventure with wild cactus fruit. It's a pity; the violet pink juicy juice was so pretty. I'd like to have a carpet that color for my bedroom. I will look up whether I can find any good-quality hot pink carpets for sale.

I seem to be a tad more impulsive than usual of late. I wonder if it is due to the Pristiq.

I'm staying home from work today due to still feeling achy and feverish when I woke up this morning. But I'm working from home, off and on. I'm never quite sure where the boundary lies between being too sick to work or not. I'm not in bed delirious with a high fever. I'm up and about; a bit slower than usual, but still up and about. So I guess I should be working. The only food that seems slightly appetizing at the moment is dry toasted white bread; that indicates I'm still sick. I feel like replacing the phone outlet*; that indicates that I'm healthy enough to work. If I'm up to replacing a phone outlet (as well as up to writing an LJ post), surely I'm up to working; therefore I should be working and not replacing a phone outlet. Sigh.

*When the telephone repair person came to replace the ancient phone box with a new one which has a test jack, apparently he also replaced one of the inside phone outlets. (He came while I was on my Germany trip, so I wasn't able to watch what he did.)(Maybe that was his excuse for charging the $100, when replacing the box was supposed to be done for free - I'm fairly sure that the phone line problem I had after that storm was due to the wiring in the ancient box, not due to any problem with the wiring in the outlets.) Yesterday while testing all the phone outlets in the house, troubleshooting where the static on my line comes from, I noticed that the phone jack in that new outlet was full of goopy glue. So much so that it is hard plugging the phone into the jack. After trying unsuccessfully to get the goopy glue out yesterday, I decided it would be easier to just replace the whole outlet. So not only was I charged $100 in what seems an unfair manner, but the person messed up one of my outlets, so I have to go thru the trouble of replacing it again myself! It doesn't seem worth the trouble to complain to the phone company and to try to get them to come and fix their mistake without charging me again. I also don't trust their competence much at this point. (Squirting so much goopy glue in the outlet that it filled up the jack! Jeesh! Why did they even need to put any glue in there??)

But the static in the line is there even when using the test jack, which indicates that problem is on their end of the wiring. So I'll have to call them out again to fix that, unless it's a simple problem with the ground wire which I might be able to figure out myself, when it stops raining and dries up enough outside for me to go and take a look.

I've been on Lexapro for nearly 2 weeks now. I take it before bed. It made me drowsy the first few days, but not anymore. Since the drowsiness subsided, I haven't noticed any other mental/mood effects, positive or negative. I have been feeling unpleasant tightness in the muscles below my ribcage since last week, but only on work days. It's either due to stress, or a combination of stress and the Lexapro (never experienced this before last week which is why I suspect the latter). On the other hand, my legs are feeling flexible in a good and normal way such as they haven't felt for several years!

I checked the ingredients of some common anti-depressants, and some of them don't have gelatin or lactose.
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