July wasn’t much better than June.
A few irritating things happened that were basically just wrenches in my production.
The first was that I started Lexapro in June to help combat anxiety. Well, it did somewhat help combat anxiety, but it also had a side effect of making me just not give a fuck about anything. Seriously, I pissed entire days away just sitting around playing video games. Not even like new or exciting games, but games where I just felt like I was grinding. I wasn’t so much enjoying myself as I was just not having a problem with spending twelve hours largely doing the same thing. It also gave me kind of a flat affect, which in other words means emotional blunting. I found myself being sapped of empathy and just caring in general. I at least immediately recognized this as a problem and as a result, as soon as I was able, got off the Lexapro. I won’t indict Lexapro, as I don’t indict psych meds in general, just because it affected me poorly. It might be a miracle cure for other people. But now I know that it is not for me. Not giving a shit is way too high a price, and on top of that, it didn’t even help with my anxiety much. So I got off of that and pretty quickly started caring again.
The second thing: my headaches. I got looked at and my doc ultimately determined that I must be having rebound headaches. What that is is when you take painkillers for too long. They can actually do the opposite of what they are supposed to do and give you more headaches. He injected me with steroids and a rebound-free painkiller and had me stay off any and all other painkillers for a week. Although I think this did help somewhat, as some of my problems were almost certainly rebound headaches (I’d been taking painkillers almost every day for a month at that point, which, you know, don’t do that), that didn’t solve the problem. However, I think the problem was accidentally solved by the third thing that happened.
A few weeks ago, I got hit with a fucking monster tooth infection. THAT. SHIT. HURT. I ended up grabbing some Orajel, the kind you squeeze onto your finger and rub all up on your gums. Basically, it’s a numbing agent meant to give you relief. Well, it gave relief all right. I used the shit out of it all that Saturday, and at about 5AM Sunday morning, it abruptly occurred to me that maybe there’s an upper limit on how much Orajel you can safely use. I looked at the tube, it said four times a day. I had probably used the fucking shit TWENTY times in the last fifteen hours. I am a dumbshit sometime. I looked up what the possible damage could be and it can FUCKING KILL YOU if you use too much! There’s something in Orajel that, if too much gets into your system, it can deplete your tissue of oxygen and you can die. Well I immediately stopped using it for all of Sunday, however, as Sunday went into Monday, I was woken up by pain and decided to use it one more time.
When I woke up Monday, I felt like shit and was pretty terrified that I’d taken that last step and poisoned myself. I went to an UrgentCare and got looked at. Thankfully, I hadn’t poisoned myself. It was just that the tooth infection had become an abscessed tooth, and it had finally broken into my overall system instead of being confined to the tooth area. They gave me some powerful antibiotics and sent me home. I think this was a blessing in disguise because a theory I had developed about my headaches were that they were actually some kind of sinus problem, because the headache I kept having was specifically in my forehead, around my sinus. Ever since I started taking the antibiotics, I noticed that the specific headache I’d been having had finally gone away!
So as of right now, I’m pretty good. I’m still recovering from the tooth thing, (cheek still hurts from where the abscess was), and I still have a headache here or there, but they’re just normal headaches either caused from sleeping too much or leftover tooth pain. And I give a shit about things again! I’ve also managed to finally get my sleep schedule back under control. I’m going to sleep at a reasonable time and actually falling asleep within half an hour of laying down, instead of just laying there for fucking hours, and I’m waking up at a reasonable time. Also getting a bit of consistent exercise in at the start of each day. So August is looking good!
Unfortunately, as a result of all this shit, I didn’t get much work done on The DOOM Chronicles. The good news is that there’s just one more chapter left to go in this Part. Once it’s done, I’m pausing The DOOM Chronicles and going back to The Will To Live. I ultimately decided that starting a new fan fic wasn’t the right move, and instead I’m just going to focus on finishing what I have started for now.