Sunday, May 22, 2005

What is wrong with me?

This title is like opening a can of worms. But, specifically, I'm mostly talking about fatigue. Every time I begin to start to get back into a routine, something throws me off. Ever since the trip to San Diego, I've been all screwed up. Basically, the 2 weeks before San Diego, I worked my ass off in lab. The next week, I was in San Diego. The next week, I worked my ass off in lab and had a committee meeting. I spent the rest of that week recovering. So, by May 16th I had decided it was time to get back into a normal schedule.
It was going okay until a protein purification kept me in lab until 1:30 a.m. Thursday morning. Is that why I've been so tired? How long does it take to recover from a busy day or a few busy weeks? I mean, c'mon! Get with the program, already!
I have been addicted to lab. It's good, but I can't do anything else. I get in there, and I don't want to leave. This has never happened. Normally, I can delegate life and work a little better than this. Balance, anyone?
So I come home on Friday and feel this overwhelming exhaustion come over me. I lie down, just for a minute, I promise. Jason and I were looking forward to a run, maybe renting some movies. I doze off at 7:30. Okay, fine. But then, I don't wake up until 9:30 a.m. the following morning. What the f...? After cleaning litterboxes at home, and volunteering at the House Rabbit Society and cleaning 16 more bunny cages and pens, I return home at 5:30 p.m., and nap again until 8:30 p.m. I slept last night, no problem, for about 9 hours. After a great pancake, watermelon, and coffee breakfast, I fell asleep on the couch with the t.v. blasting for another 5 hours.
Now, I'm up. I don't feel tired. But this is just weird. What is wrong with me? I don't feel the events in my life justify this amount of fatigue. Am I just being lazy? Why am I having such a hard time fighting this? Is it the antidepressants? If so, why now? I've been on them for 3 or 4 months; I would have expected side effects earlier. This is just simply unacceptable to me. The high levels of energy I normally possess allow me to do everything I want to do. How can I get my energy back?

1 comment:

Rachel said...

I do see a therapist for mild generalized anxiety and depression. I have had wonderful results with a combination of Lexapro and Wellbutrin with almost no side effects. However, do the recent increase in stress in my life (from an already high-stress baseline), my dose of Lexapro was increased slightly. Now that I'm doing so well, I was thinking of tapering down to the original dose. (from 15 to 10 mg).