On Remeron for a Reason

I don't think I've written a whole lot about Remeron (my anti-depressant) on here. The thing goes somewhat unappreciated, maybe because there isn't anything to complain about. It doesn't give me any side effects so I mostly stopped noticing it was there. Or, maybe, my memory is simply bad enough that I've forgotten I'm on any meds anymore. But every time I manage to run out of it, I realize just how much help it is.

A neurologist several years ago put me on it because I was both depressed (had been for years) and needed extra help getting to sleep (as you all understand). I tried the generic first and it worked awesome. I felt like a new person. I was suddenly able to have hope for the future again and became usefully optimistic. I figured out how to smile. But then the side effects started- my muscles started to hurt. At first I thought I'd just pulled something, until I noticed it was happening to a bunch of muscles and would rotate around and change which ones it affected for no apparent reason. I tried staying on it but by the end of a month I was in constant pain. I felt so good otherwise that my doctor put me on the brand name instead and, just like we were hoping, it worked- no muscle pain, but all the good effects were still there.

When I got off of Xyrem a year ago, I stayed on Remeron, and I was glad I did. I didn't know how glad until the first time I ran out. I switched from the mail order system to picking it up from pharmacies because we kept moving, and with my memory you can imagine what would happen literally every month. I would get down to five tablets and start thinking I should refill it. I'd remember every night since I take it before bed, but forget by the morning. I wouldn't write myself a note until I was down to two, then finally make it to a pharmacy in the middle of nowhere, where they would have the generic or nothing at all and have to order it, and this would always happen to fall on a Friday somehow, so then I would have to wait until Monday and not take it for one or two nights.

The first time this happened, I was expecting to feel depressed. Instead, sleeping just got ten times harder. My dreams got more persistent, intense and disturbing. I did notice a drop in my mood but I was more concerned about the lack of sleep. On a good day I'm petty discombobulated, but without Remeron I get even more out of it and confused.

You would think, with such a big difference, I would learn after the first few times, but no. I keep running out. I think I've remembered twice out of the last ten or so times. I finally (now that we're settled again) switched it back to mail order, three months at a time, so it will no longer be up to my extremely efficient brain. But not in time to avoid it happening again this past weekend, of course. The first night I didn't have any, I just stayed up. My husband and I drank lots of caffeine, ate tons of cookies (Uqi's chocolate chip!!) and watched Stargate Atlantis. Between that and playing cards we managed to stay awake until around 2AM. My ploy sort of worked that night. I got up around 8 or 9 as usual so that I mostly skipped the dreaming phase that gets so much worse without Remeron.

I was feeling pretty smug (though more sleep deprived than usual) when I went to pick up my Remeron yesterday, until they told me that it hadn't come in and they couldn't get it until today. Feeling exasperated with myself for getting in this situation to begin with, I didn't try anything fancy last night, just got in bed and really wished that I hadn't.

I was looking at star charts like in Stargate SG-1 (which we started rewatching yesterday) when somebody came in with some fried chicken in a plastic bag and told me I was supposed to deliver it to this Buddhist monk. Apparently she lived at the top of this really steep hill even though we were supposedly in my extremely flat hometown. Actually it was more like a small mountain, with these crazy round boulders making it up. So I'm really hungry, climbing this weird mountain, sort of light-headed and trying to determine if a) the chicken is gluten-free and b) if it's okay to eat somebody else's lunch. I poke at the chicken and it seems GF so I try a piece. It's not tasty but it isn't poisonous either, so I keep eating it. I get up to this temple on this mountain and deliver the chicken and this monk lady is asking me all these really philosophical questions about stuff. I'm mostly just confused but sort of happy because the stuff she's talking about is interesting, but in the course of that I forget to deliver the chicken and just keep eating it. Then she sends me on my way and I'm wandering around my aunt's house seeing everything she's recently remodeled. Then a bunch of my cousins are there and we're taking my great aunt to see a newly flooded area of the city. It was clearly a highway before, but now the ocean is there, and a couple of highway bridges are acting like piers. We walk out on them, talking, and I'm telling them the whole city is going to be flooded soon.

So, this dream's not too bad, you're probably thinking. Well, then I feel pain in my mouth on the inside of my bottom lip. I get all annoyed thinking it's probably just something I accidentally bit as I was eating all the GF fried chicken. It's bleeding a lot and the blood tastes metallic like blood does. I start trying to find somewhere to spit it out because it tastes disgusting. It starts welling up more and more and gets all over my hands as I try to hold it inside my mouth. I find a dirty sink in an art class and spit the blood out into it, but it keeps coming and the texture turns really globby and clotted. The texture disgusts me even more and I just keep spitting it out, hoping it will stop. It tastes horrible and I feel nauseous.

It slows down a little, thankfully, but it tastes worse and worse, almost like rotting. In the sink, blood is mixed with old acrylic paint that many students have washed off of brushes. It makes a horrible, bloodstained rainbow.

Needless to say, I got up right away and went for the caffeine. I'm never under-appreciating my antidepressant again (until, you know, I forget about this whole thing in the next five minutes).

Confusing the Heck Out of Normal People

Well, our wedding went great, lots of people showed up and it was generally awesome. (Apparently the disasters stayed in the planning and once we got to Omaha, it was all fine.) Then, for our honeymoon we drove down to visit my hometown and then back up, slowly. All in all, it was a good break from real life, except for all the people thinking my husband is my wife because we hadn't told them about the whole trans thing yet. But we survived and even had a good time, talking or just being for all those hours of driving.

Some time on the last day, as we were heading up Illinois for five hours, we started tallying up everything we have to change our names on. The list ended up somewhat overwhelming. I had changed my last name and J had changed his first and middle via the marriage, and between us, all sorts of IDs, insurance things, and bank accounts were now outdated. So, as soon as we got home and minorly settled (as in, boxes piled everywhere in the downstairs of my in-laws' house instead of in the car and basement) we set out to start the process.

Our first stop was the DMV to update J's drivers' license and get me a non-driver ID to replace mine. The first person we managed to confuse was the information desk guy. We explained how we had changed our names due to marriage and needed new licenses in this state since we had moved. He was like, sure, and then we handed him our shiny marriage certificate. He blinked at it multiple times to make sure he was reading it right. Then he looked at J and back down at the proof that my husband has changed his name from a very feminine name to a male name. He asked us again just to make sure, then shrugged it off and got it set up.

Then desk guy explained that I need proof of residency in the state to get my new license, and I asked if it was the same for a non-driver ID. He said it was and then said quickly, "...but then you won't be able to drive!" And I was like, "yeah." And he was like, "You know you can't keep the license from the previous state if you do that, and you'll give up the right to drive." He went from skeptical to really confused when I said lightly, "yeah, I know." I didn't explain to him that I hadn't driven in two years and if I did, that it would be really dangerous and not worth the energy required anyhow. I mean, I look perfectly normal and I'm only 25.

So with that desk guy, we started our official Body Count, aka how many government officials we had confused so far: Me: 1, J: 1. We decided to keep score because really, how is it not hilarious? Plus, we're interested in who can raise the most eyebrows: the 25-year-old disabled girl or the guy getting a sex change. Who will win??

Next it was getting J's new photo, which I sadly missed because I was in the bathroom, but apparently it was really funny. The guy doing the photos for people was this really outgoing, chatty fellow who looked like somebody's friendly grandfather. Apparently he was super awkward trying to figure out how to address J, who hasn't yet started testosterone (next week!) and has a feminine-looking face, but dresses, talks and acts very male. So I missed that, and didn't get a shot at confusing that guy since I have to wait on my ID until I bring in proof of my address. That made the Body Count J: 2.

We sat and waited until we got called to finish the process, which was done by a strict-sounding and annoyed woman who decided to be suspicious at first rather than confused. She triple-checked that J wanted his whole name changed and was pretty short with us, but it was most likely just the long line. Then we were just waiting on it to get printed out, now with the score as J: 3, Me: 1. Finally, photo dude waves us over to avoid calling out J's new name which obviously weirds him out, lol. Sniggering, we left.

Our other stop of the day was the closest social security office. This time, we only spoke to one person who did both of ours. He was younger than the DMV people, or maybe just less easily ruffled, because when he saw J's old and new names, he only paused for slightly longer than normal in between sentences. We decided that didn't count, though, because it didn't even make him awkward. I got my second score of the day, however, when he asked me for my social security number and it took me ten minutes of close-eyed concentration to come up with this number I know very well and use pretty often. It probably didn't help that I was swaying off balance and speaking really vaguely since I had forgotten to bring a snack and was looking and feeling light-headed. He looked really worried about me and surprised, even after I came up with the number and managed to actually remember my mom's maiden name, etc, without missing a beat. So after those two stops, the score stands as Me: 2, J: 3. I'm optimistic, though, since I haven't gotten a chance at two of the three DMV counter people yet, that I may win. It's not every day a perfectly ordinary-looking young person trades in their right to drive, after all. But who knows. The sex change may win in the end. XD

Me vs. Giant Piles of Stuff Everywhere = Disaster

Life lesson #1 learned in the past two months: moving four times in two months is a Bad Plan. Let me chart this out for you:

Step 1: Rental house in Iowa to RV park in Minnesota in order to escape sewage leak making us ill (half of houseful of stuff into RV, half into parents' house in Wisconsin). Two humans, two cats, two dogs, six potted plants.

Step 2: After job ends, drive RV back to Wisconsin, thinking we can live in the driveway until we can move into the downstairs of the house (which involves major work because we have to move my in-laws upstairs so we can be downstairs and I can therefore vaguely function in theory without expending all of my energy going up and down stairs).

Step 3: We find out there isn't enough power for air conditioning in the RV, and it's 95. I attempt to live in the RV anyway. but keep having to use the guest room upstairs because my dogs are overheating. The cats had to move inside immediately. Meanwhile, my fiance is driving a friend around the country for an entire week, which means it's me going up and down stairs trying to keep everyone alive and quickly burning out.

Step 4: While living with my dogs in the RV when it finally cools off enough, I find myself getting really sick with cold-like symptoms. My fiance gets back, roadtrip done, and it occurs to me that I feel worst while in the RV, which, because of lack of running water, we haven't been able to clean or empty the tanks of for two weeks. And so we move completely into the upstairs guest room, severely limiting what I can do.

The Result: I only have two or three roundtrips every day on the stairs before I'm unable to muster the energy to go up or down anymore, which means I have to think carefully to plan everything and my fiance has to do almost all the work taking dogs outside or cooking (formerly jobs I was proud I could do). Meanwhile, when we're upstairs the dogs are unhappy and have to be crated because we're living in a maze of box piles and it isn't safe for them to roam. When we're downstairs, the cats stand on the stairs and meow piteously the entire time we aren't up with them until everyone in the house wants to commit kitty murder. The result of this is two constantly stressed out and puking cats, my dachshund having diarrhea and needing no less than four bathroom breaks during the night, which my fiance has to do because I can't go up or down at all at night or I will fall on my face. I keep running out of food because I can't keep track of what we have since I can't go in the kitchen whenever I want to, I can't keep anything clean because a) everyone's throwing up and b) there are piles of laundry everywhere and boxes and everything I need is always on the other goddamned floor. When I'm downstairs, there's access to the outside for dogs so I can actually take care of my dachshund's needs, but there's nowhere for me to lie down. Meanwhile, I'm ill, my fiance is having a tough period and is emotionally a wreck (he hates them more and more as time goes by), we're discussing hormone treatment and arranging lots of doctor's appointments as we're trying to help my mother-in-law very slowly move ten years worth of stuff upstairs while trying to get my father-in-law to at least think about moving the furniture sometime this century, and it's still like everyone except me is dragging their feet. Which, if switching the house around had been my idea, I could understand- I never would have asked to take over the master bedroom because even if I need it, it's their house, they get first dibs, no question from me. But my in-laws, the ones dragging their feet because something is always coming up, were the ones who convinced me that it would be good to live on the first floor, leaving me in this ungodly in-between state. And over all I'm glad they did, because it will make my life possible instead of physically impossible. In theory, even the animals will like it better. If, you know, they can keep any food down for the next month as nothing continues to happen, I keep getting stuck on floors, my fiance has to do everything and I have to try to live in a giant forest of boxes with all of my stuff spread out over three different floors, waiting.

Life Explosion

Well, life is settling back down again finally. We were able to borrow J's family's RV for this last month he's working at the high school here, and finally got moved into it and out of the hotel. The entire saga had us moving us and our pets no less than seven times in and out of hotels, our broken rental house (which our landlord kept trying to get fixed) and finally into the RV just a few days ago. Our stuff from the house is packed in boxes ready to be moved back to Wisconsin, where we're going to flee as soon as school ends and J is done teaching.

The RV, while crammed full of stuff and animals, at least doesn't smell like sewage and affect my sensitive immune system. It is also less area to keep clean than the house, though the one thing that was nice about the hotel was the fact that I didn't need to clean anything. This was a good thing because I've been completely flattened from exhaustion. Between the stress, parents poking us constantly and needing to keep everyone updated, the lack of fresh food (thank God for GF frozen dinners or I would have been even more screwed), long hours in the car and keeping everyone healthy and safe through the upheaval, it must have been the longest three weeks in existence. Various things forced me to do too much (like my fiance getting really sick for two days, during which I had to take care of him and even drive to Walmart once) and then it would take even longer than it normally would for me to recover.

In the middle of all of this, we had planned months earlier to go visit J's parents over Easter weekend seven hours away in Wisconsin. My parents were even flying up from Texas, as we wanted our parents to get to know each other better (they had only met once at graduation). The afternoon we were going to leave, we found out that the sewage situation was still not fixed when someone came to disinfect the drained basement and discovered new flooding. So we left, hoping to bring the RV back with us after the weekend was over.

Despite us being exhausted and feeling down on life, the visit with our parents went well and I was relieved at how relaxed my parents were. We had good long talks and caught up, my parents got to meet the horses and our big dog, who they had only seen pictures of before, and reunite with my dachshund, who they adore. We drove them around to show them the area and had dinner a couple of times. It was really good.

I don't know if I mentioned it yet, but my fiance got called in to talk to his boss, the principal, a couple of weeks ago in the middle of all this mess, to find out that he's not getting hired back next year. The principal said a few pretty critical things that had my fiance's confidence in his teaching pretty well shot through for awhile. The most aggravating part is that most of the man's argument is based on something one of the administrators messed up and blamed on J. What really got my fiance, though, was the word "unprofessional". He has to be female for work, but gets paralyzed by anxiety and depression if he dresses too female, so he has to go pretty androgynous and we suspect that's part of the principal's problem. The only thing is that J hasn't come out at work and doesn't plan to, and we have no proof of actual discrimination based on J not looking "female enough". It's just a vague suspicion that I have. At any rate, we just want to get out of that town. After the house problems, all the drama at the school and feeling like we can't go out without seeing lots of people who know J as female, we really just wanted to leave anyway.

For the summer we already had plans to return to J's parents' house to help his mom with taking care of the horses and to allow his parents to go on vacation. We've applied all over the country for English teacher positions, but we know we may not get anything for this next year. If we don't, it'll be a long stay with my in-laws again. I would love that except that the stairs there make my life extremely difficult. Honestly, we aren't sure what to do in J's career next. I hear a lot of transpeople have to switch careers in order to get free of their past life as the wrong gender, and in a career as conservative as public school teaching we aren't sure transitioning would be well-accepted. My man is very sensitive about how people think of him and I worry for him. We've been thinking about how to get his birth certificate changed, but that won't fix his reference letters (which refer to him as female), his social security number, or his college transcripts, which are all things schools look at when considering you. Also, the fact that we don't know what state we're going to be in doesn't help us come up with a clear plan of action as every state seems to have a different process for something as seemingly simple as changing your name. It's very bewildering and we aren't sure where to go from here.

Another thing that has us wondering is whether or not I'm going to have health insurance next year after my 26th birthday, when my dad's company stops being willing to cover me. We had thought, as we are getting married in July and assumed we would be in Iowa next year, that I could be on J's insurance which would at least help. But, if we move to any state where gay marriage isn't recognized or at least converted to a civil union (like Illinois), we aren't married anymore and I potentially lose the ability to have health insurance through my spouse. I've finally decided to try to get on disability because we need the income (my parents are still buying all of our food) as well as insurance, but that can take years and multiple rejections. Transitioning to a straight couple might turn out to be faster.

The good news is that (I think) I should have a pretty strong case. I've never been able to work even part-time, and my mom found a form that allows me to really go into detail about what is difficult for me. As soon as I finish it, I'm going to post it here, as I think it's useful for anyone researching narcolepsy, looking for something to relate to, or for anyone to fill out to use with their application. I started it wondering if I'm really "disabled", but by halfway through I realized that was silly. Hopefully, I can convince the government of this fact.

It's too gorgeous a day to not live in an RV. The first truly warm day we've had in awhile, with the sun shining, and despite everything I'm thankful to be here. I'm thankful to be anywhere.

Somehow Surviving a Week of Total Insanity

Too tired to write... in... sentences...

1) Moved out of house to escape sewage leak and into a Super 8
2) Accomplished above at 10 PM with four animals
3) And with tons of GF frozen food and leftovers
4) Which ran out after 3 days and required me to eat steadily stranger things and rely almost entirely on a loaf of GF bread and lunchmeat from Walmart
5) Checked house every day to drop off laundry and were subjected to the horrible smell increasing until the cleanup people got there finally
6) Watched my fiance come down with horrible flu-like withdrawal symptoms from getting off of his anti-depressant too quickly
7) Nursed fiance back to health over three days while taking care of 4 animals in a hotel, one of which is a dachshund having serious back problems that require extra work
8) Drove to Walmart for emergency supplies and to the house for similar
9) Accomplished the above without crashing into anything despite sleep attacks and being exhausted, not having driven at all in months
10) Moved everyone and everything back into the still slightly off-smelling house to get away from the hotel
11) Had disappointing therapy appointment over the phone
12) Did three loads of laundry and washed giant pile of dishes (using water boiled on the stove because the water heater is still off)
13) Hoping we don't have to move out again while they bleach the basement
14) Called Mom to vent about above and started crying because it's just that insane
15) Now only awake because of blasting Britney Spears

RV Living

Want a new way to save energy? Try downsizing your floor space. :D

Before we relocated for my girlfriend's job in August, we were living at her parents' place, a lovely two story house with a pretty large upstairs that we had completely to ourselves. When I moved in, I put myself in charge of keeping the two large bedrooms, connecting bathroom, two walk-in closets, stairs and loft area clean. Being a genetic neat-freak who actually enjoys things like sweeping and dusting made this part of my life fun rather than a chore, so most of the time I didn't actually mind. That doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge however- we had two dogs and two cats upstairs with us, constantly shedding hair, plus my girlfriend who is like a tornado on the weekends. She likes to collect her things in what we refer to as "chaos piles", and anything within ten feet of one is in danger of getting sucked into the vortex, to disappear for days or weeks until I have time to go in and put things away. So while cleaning that place was fun, it wasn't easy, and sometimes it would get nasty if I was sick or busy or just plain tired for a couple of days in a row.

Then, in the span of a week, the whole situation changed. She interviewed and got an offer a week before the school year was going to start and we found ourselves scrambling, trying to find someplace to live in a state neither of us had ever even directly visited, in a small town with nothing posted online. We ended up borrowing the family RV and living at a campground for the first month while we looked for a place to rent via word of mouth. We took the dogs with us but had to leave the cats in the care of the in-laws for lack of space.

I have to admit I was skeptical of the whole RV thing at first. After all, the last experience I had had with an RV was camping on the beach with grandparents when I was little in a very cramped, old and only partially functional one (if I remember correctly, the shower didn't work at all). But this thing was pretty fancy, with a separate bedroom, a pretty nice little kitchen and comfortable furniture. And I came to appreciate the lack of space- I got so much more art and relaxing done, simply because I had hardly anything I was supposed to keep clean. Because of the close quarters I got to know my girlfriend's dog a lot better and we really developed a bond. The dogs also liked the campground because there was always so much to smell, and walks were positive challenges for both of them because of other dogs and children. I gained so much confidence walking them there. It was so easy to just go outside with only three stairs instead of a whole flight in my way.

It was pretty interesting to watch our neighbors come and go, even after just a night sometimes. I thought having so many people parked so close would be harrowing, but instead it was just fun to watch their interactions. Everyone was really relaxed for the most part- after all, they were on vacation- and just having a good time. There were a couple of boisterous weekends around Labor Day that were a bit much, but expected. Once I even saw an RV hotel. o.O I didn't even know those existed. It was like a bus and had a bus full of people inside it.

I also really liked having a ridiculously tiny kitchen. I didn't have to walk to get to anything, lol- you just reach up and there it is. And I loved the fact that we could easily open the place up- it was mostly windows- and we were practically outside. In August the weather was right up my alley, even though in September it got a tad chilly sometimes, but the RV's air conitioning and heating worked really well and quickly. Another advantage to small living spaces.

Even so, we were all getting ready for a change when the time came to move out. The weather was turning chilly and the campground was going to close for the year by the time we had arranged to rent our house. The dogs played victory fetch in our new large living room and celebrated having a yard all their own to claim. We humans were excited by the prospect of having the ability to actually fit a whole meal's worth of pots on the stove at once. A couple of months after we moved in, my in-laws came to visit and brought the cats with them, so our family was reunited. And I do like our house. Sometimes, though, I miss the RV (like when the entire house needs vacuuming XD), and I would live in one again without hesitation.