Tonight’s the Night

And it will happen again, and again. I know, it’s a little melodramatic of me to apply the opening lines of Dexter to my life, but what can I say? I’m a melodramatic kind of girl. Anyway, it is the night before my first day of work, and I’m trying to stay up until 3 AM, which is harder now that I am medicated/on my depressed cycle, but since work doesn’t start until 3 PM I figure I should try to make sure that I have time to in wind after work, and still have enough time in the morning to get ready at a leisurely pace. Anyway, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, since I’m sure some of you are wondering what happened with the ID’s, and how the medications are affecting me.

I had to wait until Tuesday to go to the social security office, and the DLD (drivers license division), since Monday was Labor Day, and both of them were closed. Because of this I spent most of Monday in a tizzy, worrying that Tuesday would be too late for my new job to accept the ID’s and I’d be out of work again before I even started this one. I also worried that the social security office wouldn’t give me my social security card because my birth certificate was slightly damaged, and that the DLD would refuse my W2’s as proof of my social security number. Needless to say, it was not a pleasant night.

The next day my worst fears were realized as the social security office turned me away because I didn’t have a valid ID card, or medical records that proved I am who I say I am. My husband almost lost his cool as we were talking to the guy, because he’s very protective of my rights, and he felt that the system was unjustly jerking me around, but we left quickly, to try our luck at the DLD. They were much more accommodating, I not only got through the door, but they accepted my documents without complaint and printed me off a temporary ID.

Now I assumed that we were heading back to the S.S.O., but you know what they say about assuming, and my husband drove over to my work building instead. I’ll spare you the gory details of my freak out, but I will say that it wasn’t very pretty and I’m ashamed of my behavior. As it turns out, I was worried over nothing, as they took my ID’s, did a drug test, and had me fill out three or four documents that said I was ok with them preforming a background check on me. Then they handed me a packet, told me to come fifteen minutes early to my first shift, and sent me on my way.

After that, we headed over to our local pharmacy to see how much my prescriptions were going to cost. My husband had applied for Medicaid and food stamps a week or two ago, which we were approved for (and will probably go away now that I have a job…) and so I presented my card for the pharmacist to run. He did, but there was a mix up with one of the two meds. It seems that Medicaid has a very specific procedure for billing the Seroquel, one that my psychologist didn’t follow, and he put in for the brand name, so that one medication alone rang up at $1000.

We went home without either of my meds that night, feeling discouraged and a little perturbed by the huge amount of money that we might have to pay to get me on the medications that I was supposed to be on, and knowing that no matter how much I needed them there was no way we could afford it. We talked to my dad about loaning us some extra money, which he was able to do, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to cover the Seroquel.

Fortunately my husband doesn’t have the same issues with calling people on the phone that I have, and he was able to get everything sorted out the next day. When we went to pick up the pills this time they were both generics, and each only cost $3. Yay! And that meant I had enough of the loaned money to go to therapy. Double yay!

The first night I took the Seroquel, it made me feel drunk and sleepy. I can definitely see why they recommend that you don’t drink alcohol while your taking it. It knocked me out in a little over half an hour, and I slept like a rock for ten hours. I have to say, it doesn’t scare me like I worried it might. I’ve had sleep aids take me down hard before, and once when I took melatonin I thought I was dying.

I haven’t really noticed a difference in my mood since I started it, or in my anxiety, which I was told it would help with. I’m still depressed. I still feel like tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my miserable life. I still wish I didn’t have to go, even though the negative balance in our bank account is eating at me. I even still think about ending it all, although it has gotten less frequent and I’ve been able to convince myself that I don’t really want to die, I just want to stop feeling my feelings.

Speaking of feelings, in therapy this week we got the EMDR therapy to work, which is super awesome, and combined with my emergency dose of medication (an extra 25 mg of Seroquel if I start freaking out) it should hopefully help keep me sane. I won’t go into it here, but if I have time this week I may write a “Let’s Talk About” post about my experience and how the therapy works, etc.

Anyway, apart from a dry run or two to gauge when I should be going to bed/getting up, that’s all the exciting stuff that happened this week. Hopefully I’ll have time to write more often, but I will keep writing at least one post per week, and if you comment or email me I will of course respond asap. Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope you all have a wonderful week! And for those of you in Texas and Florida, and anyone else who may be affected by the hurricanes, my thoughts are with you. Stay safe out there, ok?