I don’t feel depressed, but my behavior for most of this week suggests that I might have slid toward that direction. There was an overall lack of interest in just about everything – except the most important, unavoidable things this week: the scheduled appointments. I didn’t mark my mood as such, but I’m still concerned. I’m just making a note of it here at the top. Believe it or not, identifying and recording my moods is new for me. The migraine and food tracking stuff isn’t and is probably why I’m lazy with it. I’m seeing now though it is all interconnected and I probably shouldn’t be so lazy with it but I’ll be damned if I sit there and count calories on top of everything else. I’m surprised I didn’t trigger a migraine this week. I’m eating more and sleeping better so I’m guessing that must be what made the difference.
Mood Score Key:
Sliding Hypomania = 1 ~ Hypomania = 2 ~ Mania = 3 ~ Baseline (My Normal) = 0
Sliding Depression = -1 ~ Depression = -2 ~ Severe Depression = -3 ~ M = Mixed State
Energy Score Key:
Low = -1 ~ Normal = 0 ~ High = 1
Irritation Score Key:
None = 0 ~ Mild = 1 ~ Moderate = 2 ~ Severe = 3
Anxiety Score Key:
None = 0 ~ Mild = 1 ~ Moderate = 2 ~ Severe = 3
Migraine Score Key:
None = 0 ~ Mild = 1 ~ Moderate = 2 ~ Severe = 3 ~ Extreme = 4 ~ Aura Present = A
Sleep Quality Score Key:
Bad = -1 ~ Normal = 0 ~ Great = 1
Special Notes for the Week
Menses Start Date: ~
Weigh-In at Med Clinic: ~
Sunday ~ January 15, 2016
Mood: 0 ~ Energy: 0 ~ Irritation: 0 ~ Anxiety: 0 ~ Migraine: 0
Hours of Sleep: bed at 10pm night before, up at 6am – 8 hours total
Sleep Quality: 0
Exercise Activity: ~ Exercise Time:
Meds Taken
- 75mg Topamax @ 8:30am
- 75mg Topamax @ 7pm
Meals
- 4 cups of coffee
- 2 12oz. cans of Dr. Pepper
- 3 snack bags of chips
- cookies
- 2 Slices of Turkey Pot Pie
Notes
- Dad plans to buy a jonny ring for the toilet so he can tear it out and get to the pipes underneath it and hopefully unclog it today – I anticipate an ugly day
Monday ~ January 16, 2016
Mood: 0 ~ Energy: 0 ~ Irritation: 0 ~ Anxiety: 0 ~ Migraine: 0
Hours of Sleep: forgot to document, bleh
Sleep Quality: 0
Exercise Activity: ~ Exercise Time:
Meds Taken
- 75mg Topamax @ 7:30am
- 75mg Topamax @ 7pm
Meals
- 4 cups of coffee
- 2 12oz. cans of Dr. Pepper
- 4 snack bags of chips
- cookies
- leftover turkey pot pie
Notes
Tuesday ~ January 17, 2016
Mood: 0 ~ Energy: 0 ~ Irritation: 0 ~ Anxiety: 0 ~ Migraine: 0
Hours of Sleep: forgot to document
Sleep Quality: 0
Exercise Activity: ~ Exercise Time:
Meds Taken
- I think I forgot to take them, but I’m not sure – my med box isn’t set up this week
Meals
- don’t know, I ate – I know that
Notes
- I think I totally blew off documenting anything for the day
Wednesday ~ January 18, 2016
Mood: 0 ~ Energy: -1 ~ Irritation: 0 ~ Anxiety: 0 ~ Migraine: 0
Hours of Sleep: bed at 9 pm the night before but Mom set off the fire alarm at 11pm I think it was filling the wood stove and then she took it upon herself to shut my light off on me when I switched from Little Bear’s room to mine – seriously? I pay the light bill too, up at 6am
Sleep Quality: 0
Exercise Activity: ~ Exercise Time:
Meds Taken
- forgot meds – really need to get the med box set up again
Meals
- 2 cups of coffee
- 1 large coffee from gas station
- 3 snack bags of chips
- 2 slices of homemade pizza – a cheese and a bacon cheeseburger
Notes
- Little Bear’s dental appointment to be fitted for spacers – some reason I’m ridiculously tired, but at least I have somewhat enjoyed spending time (or trying to spend time) with the boys
- dental appointment went exceptionally well – got impressions of his teeth on the first shot and fitted the spacers rings with no fuss – hardest part was getting to not talk during any of it – total fail the not talking part that was, but okay at least he wasn’t fighting
- Dad for some reason decided to cook homemade pizza on my night to cook – I guess he felt doing leftovers on Monday wasn’t good enough to make up for making me cook last Saturday because they were fighting? I don’t know. He made everyone’s favorite too: Cheese, Pepperoni, Bacon Cheeseburger, and Sausage. His thick fluffy crust really is to die for.
Thursday ~ January 19, 2016
Mood: 0 ~ Energy: 0 ~ Irritation: 0 ~ Anxiety: 0 ~ Migraine: 0
Hours of Sleep: bed at 9pm night before, was woken up at 11pm by my mother policing the boys and again she shut off my light even though now I was awake (like wtf?), back to bed at I have no idea, up at 6am – no idea on total hours
Sleep Quality: 0
Exercise Activity: ~ Exercise Time:
Meds Taken
- 75mg Topamax @ 7am
- 75mg Topamax @ 7pm
- Probiotic blend capsule (so 60mg Vit. C, 500mg Cranberry, 79mg probiotic blend)
Meals
- 1 large coffee from gas station
- 3 12oz. cans of Dr. Pepper
- 2 snack bags of chips
- 2 leftover slices of pizza
Notes
- seriously fuck this shit with the boys getting back up and sneaking out of bed after I fall asleep when I’ve sent them all to bed
- the morning routine is too crammed as well and isn’t working for me at all – either I need to wake up earlier in the morning or I need to remove things from my visual checklist because things are getting skipped and/or forgotten these past few days
- as it is I’m only making it to the afternoon routine – after that it’s blown off
- told Scholar Owl that he needs to get back into a fixed routine as well, we lost a month thanks to moving, I asked him how he felt about a weekly meeting together on Saturday to go over his work and put stuff in the portfolio this way I know how he’s doing and whether or not he needs new material when he needs it, he thought it was a good idea so we’ll see
- Little Bear’s second round of neuropsych screening appointment
- The neuropsych appointment pissed me off today, she released him with the letter for the school listing the testing done and it didn’t include the Dyslexia screening and I asked about that. She tried to tell me that they don’t really have one for that and tries to tell me that the school does those screenings and that’s when I told her the school told me that they can’t because it’s a medical diagnosis and that they and her told me THREE times that they would be screening him for it. So she takes him back in for a quick screening for that? Really? And of course she comes out saying it’s inconclusive and that he’ll need to be rescreened again in a year or two and that if I try to rescreen him elsewhere I probably won’t get different results. BUT she doesn’t change the letter. So if she really screened him and if it was documented that she had screened him for dyslexia then she just fucked me via insurance because you can’t tell me that a proper screening for dyslexia happened in 15 minutes. I was there when my husband was rescreened for that. It took a fucking hour for his assessment. There is no way she could have properly screened a 7 year old for dyslexia in less than an hour, never mind in 15 minutes. I had better get full documentation of all the screenings in February during the determination appointment. And I’ll be fucking ripped if she tries to slap ADHD on him when he’s already been screened for that multiple times.
Friday ~ January 20, 2016
Mood: 0 ~ Energy: 0 ~ Irritation: 0 ~ Anxiety: 0 ~ Migraine: 0
Hours of Sleep: bed at 11pm night before, up at 6am – 7 hours total
Sleep Quality: 0
Exercise Activity: ~ Exercise Time:
Meds Taken
- 75mg Topamax @ 7am
- 75mg Topamax @ 7pm
- Probiotic Blend Capsule
Meals
- 3 12oz. cans Dr. Pepper
- 2 cups of Coffee
- 3 snack bags of chips
- 1 slice of leftover pizza
Notes
- watched the swearing in of President Trump with Scholar Owl and my parents on TV
Saturday ~ January 21, 2016
Mood: 0 ~ Energy: 0 ~ Irritation: 0 ~ Anxiety: 0 ~ Migraine: 0
Hours of Sleep: passed out after 2am hanging out with Scholar Owl playing video games, up at 7am
Sleep Quality: 0
Exercise Activity: ~ Exercise Time:
Meds Taken
- 75mg Topamax @ 7am
- 75mg Topamax @ 7pm
- Probiotic Blend Capsule
Meals
- 2 12oz. cans Dr. Pepper
- 1 cups of Coffee
- 2 snack bags of chips
- 2 steaks, potato puffs, green beans
Notes
- set up the med boxes for me and Little Bear
Oh, my! I think I have to move you in here so you’ll eat real food!
I need to improve the nutritional quality of my diet. I swear know better than this!
We all have those pop and chips kind of days but you can’t eat like that all the time! Can you do some freezer meals? That way you just have to thaw and heat.
I live at my parents’ house and we take turns cooking. I promise good meals are prepared here on a regular basis. The problem is up until recently I haven’t had an appetite to speak of thanks to the med I take. I just doubled checked and this is the only week like this. Most weeks I’m consuming next to nothing. We live on a veggie farm and even then we can easily spend $600 on groceries for what we haven’t canned in the fall. Everyone here knows how to cook from scratch. My dad makes amazing bread so it’s not from a lack of available food. I think I went through a sodium craving of some kind.
That could well be it! I can cook a really healthy meal then, later in the evening, really want something salty! And please send your dad here to teach me how to make better bread!
I can ask him but if I remember correctly he said the biggest thing is to correct the flour for the humidity for where you are at because it absorbs moisture. So you kind of need to tinker with your recipes if you are measuring by volume. If you measure by weight I think it corrects for you on its own because dry flour weights less.
Thank you!
I’m more concerned with what could have triggered the craving to be honest.
Good point. I’ve identified some eating triggers I have but I, in spite of knowing them, I still tend to eat anyway.
Well I missed my meds a few days this week so I’m wondering if that’s what caused it. And for me usually high sodium foods also mean high calorie foods so I’m wondering if that’s why where my appetite has been suppressed. Think of how a camel drinks water – sort of stocking up. I really ought to pick up a multivitamin while taking this med.
A multivitamin is definitely a good idea. And some foods make you feel so full that you don’t want anything else. Carbonated drinks and carbs will do that. I usually get reminded by pain to take my meds but there have been a couple of times I forgot because I wasn’t feeling terrible. We have to watch ourselves with meds!
The snack bags I have are a net weight of 1oz. each. The most I ate on any given day was 3oz. in net weight of chips. That’s still less than the average American in chip consumption. None of this food was eaten in one sitting. This is how bad the appetite issue is and why I’m considering getting the multivitamin.
Wow! That’s a lot less than I was thinking. It doesn’t really explain the appetite. I hope a good multivitamin helps! I should probably get back on one too!
Topamax does that I’m afraid. Before that I was on Abilify which does the exact opposite and I pushed close to 200 pounds. As of today I hit 149.4 pounds according to my dad’s scale and this is with no diet plan. The loss has slowed down some, only 2 pounds since my last med clinic appointment in October, but I’m still losing. So really any calories at this point is good. Ideally what I should be doing – a trick I learned from working in nursing homes – is adding whole fat milk and real butter to everything I can to boost calorie count while focusing on protein and veggies. If I wanted to be savvy it would be vegan protein because the milk and butter fat is already high in saturated fats.
Don’t feel bad, I had to double check the net weights on the snack bags to make sure. Like I said I’ve gotten really lazy on documenting the food because I’ve been doing it for so long. I should get in the habit of putting more detail where I’m posting it online now so people know exactly what I’m talking about and why I worry or don’t worry about certain things. See at first I thought you were concerned about the what I was eating but then I realized it was the volume you were concerned about as well. Right now my question will be how much am I eating and I haven’t been writing down volumes, I’ve only been writing down the what. Sorry about that.
I’m struggling with trying to put weight on my husband after his chemo and radiation while trying to lose weight myself. I physically can’t cook two different meals and I use a lot of high-calorie foods to try to get him back up to a reasonable weight. It will help when the weather breaks and I can get out more!
Chemo is harsh on the body. I hope he is doing well.
The treatments destroyed his saliva glands, and most of his sense of taste (but that’s slowly returning). It left him with neuropathy so playing his guitar is really tough for him as is walking without losing his balance. In that we’re the same. But he had a CT scan and he’s free of the cancer so far!
It’s good that his cancer is in remission, but it sucks that the chemo did so much damage as a price. It’s better than dying though.
He said if it comes back he won’t go through treatment again. I hate the idea but, having seen what he went through, I understand.
Oh that’s hard to hear someone say. 🙁 I have witnessed an aunt and a cousin go through it. Neither of them made it. So I think I understand how you feel. I won’t make someone go through that but if they choose to do it then I will support that choice. Personally I have no idea what I would choose. I guess I would depend on my odds and age – along with the age of my children. I hope I will never have to choose.
I already told my doctor that, having been Mr. C’s caregiver and seeing what he went through, I would not seek treatment except for palliative care.