Smoke and Pills

This week has been a strange one, full of unusual circumstances and ups and downs.

My thumb was feeling much better, and I started crafting again only to have it regress. This time the pain is over more of my hand and shooting up to my elbow, and the other hand is starting to hurt. I'm not sure what's happening at this point.

I'm back on an old medication that worked well before but I went off it due to side effects that turned out not to be the medication. I'm taking it again, and it's going well. I'm having no side effects, no bad reactions, and only positive results. My symptoms are easing, I'm sleeping better, and my stress levels are lowering. I can't accurately express what a relief this is.

Unfortunately, I've been having nightmares again. PTSD nightmares are a whole other level of fear. The technical term for them is night terrors. Some people scream and yell while they're having them, but I don't. If rated on a scale of one to ten, the fear of a regular nightmare would be a three or four, and a PTSD nightmare would be a fifteen.

I had four nightmares in three days, and on the third day, I almost had a flashback. It would have been my first in almost three years. That was last Sunday. I'm not having them as often in the last week, but enough that I need to discuss restarting another medication with my doctor. The blood pressure medication Prazosin has the side effect of making the person not remember their dreams. At the right dose, it's like I'm not dreaming at all. A miracle drug for people that have frequent night terrors.

Much of the west coast of the United States is on fire. There are dozens of wildfires over California, Oregon, and Washington. I live in Western Washington, and the smoke engulfed us late last week. It was thick enough that it looked like fog, sometimes thin, almost like mist, and sometimes so thick, I couldn't see more than a dozen yards from my window. But we got rain on Friday, and the smoke has cleared. We can open the windows again, and I can go outside without fear of breathing problems.

The week has been up and down, but my easing bipolar symptoms and insomnia has dominated the week as a major positive in my life.

Photo Credit: 

"Bedroom" by winnond

"Red Smoke Abstract Background" by Nat Stocker

"Asian Woman in Pink Raincoat Enjoying the Rain in the Garden" by Feelart