My *Anti-Depressant Fiasco

*I can’t publicly name the name of the drug that fucked me up since it’s one of the provisions of my settlement, so will leave it as Anti-D.

This is a section out of my journal entry today.  Earlier this week I literally and unintentionally induced ‘flashback’ episodes in and out of therapy that really got me back in touch with the horror of that whole experience.  It was frightening to re-experience sections of it to say the least.

JH when we were up in Tahoe you mentioned something about wondering what else had gone on with me.  I know you knew about the Anti-D episode, but this might make it a little clearer as to how severe it was.  This is just a snapshot…

I was up in Montana and I started wigging out.  I was driving and felt distressed and so out of it.  I stopped for beef jerky because I felt so impaired.  I was not in my right mind.  I almost flagged down a cop because I was so impaired.  Everything was so off.  I couldn’t see right.  I was almost in another state of mind.  I was distressed to levels I can’t even describe. 

After a disastrous weekend I got to the airport to fly home and I felt like I couldn’t regulate my body temperature.  I would sit there feeling like I needed to get home and deal with myself there in this condition.  I was dead on my feet.  I felt like I was going to die.  Every fifteen or so minutes I would weakly walk to the water fountain and take a sip.  It was so unbelievably bad.  I must have looked like a person withdrawing from heroin.  It was insane.

At Athenian and prostrate on the floor.  On my back.  Falling through the floor feeling like I was truly at risk of death.  I couldn’t focus my eyes to see myself in the mirror.  I called the advice nurse.  They said they sometimes see this.  But this?…

I look back on everything and its so overwhelming to think about.  To think about how brutal the Anti-D thing was.  How incredibly long and arduous it all was. 

Montana.  Athenian going to hell.  In classroom with my head on the desk and kids confused.  Being in the back bedroom and trying to ride on the exercise bike for fifteen minutes and sweat even though I am destroyed in a way I can’t even describe.  I look around and my vision is all distorted.  I remember viewing as if the dimensions weren’t correct.  Months go by…

In  utter physical distress, weakness, and disorientation.  Steve flying out.  Us going to his woman friend’s place.  I can’t even take it but I’m going along with it all.  I am in my car.  Barely able to get out to go inside to her place that she left unlocked for us for whatever reason.  I am grabbing kitchen counters, tables, back of couches to stable myself while trying not to make it look visible.  We stop off at McDonald’s because low blood sugar will make it even worse.  Worse as if my eyes will flutter into the back of my head.  That’s how it feels.

We do drive-through of course because there is no way I could go inside.  We drive off.  I have a quarter pounder and chocolate shake.  We begin going over the San Rafael bridge.  I find that I’m getting sick and can’t react quick enough.  I throw up all inside the car.  This brings on a torrent of laughter from Steve and myself because its so horrific and so pathetic.  We are crying we are laughing so hard and my car is just covered.  We head to a gas station to wash it out and of course Steve somehow breaks the water pressure device which has water shooting in the air like an overturned fire hydrant.  Which of course has us doubled over and me continuing to gag through tears.

And driving down to San Diego.  Feel like I might lose consciousness as we are caught in traffic around San Luis Obispo on the highway due to a fire or accident or something.  It’s near 100 degrees and I can’t take much more.   We eventually make it out of there.

Being down in San Diego.  Steve stepping up and taking care of me.  Cooking salmon and sweet potatoes.  I shave my head bald prepping up/stepping up the battle that is taking place.  He is all positive trying to get me going.  It’s been two and a half months. 

We go down to the beach.  I can only take fifteen minutes or so.  I walk back the half mile home, fully prepared to lay out on someone’s lawn to rest.  It’s all too brutal.  Try once to play tennis.  Predictably lasts only a few minutes.  Steve and I laugh about it later about how balls were whizzing past me as I was teeter-tottering on my feet.  He assures me that I will be fine.

Frank and Mark come back.  Didn’t realize the extent of what was wrong.  I don’t remember their reactions. 

School starts up soon.  It’s been two or three months.  I ask for an extension because of the illness.  I am set to work at the VA hospital working for the homeless.  My supervisor is really nice.  He allows the delay of a week or two on my word that I should be ready to go after.

I start orientation.  I force myself to look normal.  I walk with the group. I am so disoriented and dead on my feet.  Amazing looking back that I willed myself through that.  Even got a physical.  Was throwing up into the nurse’s trash can.  Told her what was happening (and a doctor).  They both shook their head at their own disgust with SSRIs.  They both tell me how sorry they are.

I try to go to school.  My sister flew down to stay with me a week and to see her friends and old professor.  She drives me to school.  We have to stop a few times while I throw up in bushes.  I am so weak.  So distressed.  So disoriented.

Walking on campus.  Alienated from my body.  Just walking to class is too much.  I get inside.  See familiar faces.  I plaster on my smile and force past it all.  The lights are brutal.  The hum from the lights is brutal.  I am talkative and animated to a degree because I am pushing so hard and it is a sheer battle.

It’s a joke.  This condition isn’t receding quickly enough, if at all.  Am I permanently damaged?  No one has the answer.  

I have to drop out…or go part time at least.  I quit my internship.  I am disgusted by that action.  I drop all but two classes.  I tell both my teachers what is going on.   I see a former teacher in a coffee shop.  I was one of his top students.  He sees that something is wrong.  “My God”, as I tell him what I’m dealing with.

I miss a ton of class but I still pull off good grades.  I even make a speech in one of my classes regarding SSRIs even though it was an enormous deviation from the assignment.  The deviation fortunately gets overlooked grade wise.

It was all too much.  At the end of winter term I head down to the dean of our program and tell her what is going on.  I inform her that I’m too sick to continue on.  I sign the appropriate forms and am assured that I can comeback when I am ready. I walk out slightly relieved and largely defeated.  I’m sure I was choked up to some degree…to whatever degree I could feel emotions in such a numbed out body.

Living on school loans and watching the months painfully being pulled off the calendar.  Pushing and forcing for my own survival.  Roommates forget that I am dealing with it 24/7 as I am reminded by them when I have my moments of needing help.  Help as Frank and Mark and I would get in Frank’s car and head to Mission Trails to get me out of the house.  Me with my head out of the window in total silence.  Just staring at new scenery.

We would get to Mission Trails where a year ago I was here bouncing off rocks, running up an almost vertical incline with a body that literally almost never tired.

I walk up fifteen feet and just crash on a rock in the sun.  So appreciative to have my friends saving my ass in this moment.

Still surfing.  I would go out every few days.  Horrifically weak, but would wade out after throwing up for fifteen minutes, catch a wave or two and head in.  That was it.  Would head home and sit in the bathtub with five inches of water in it in case I passed out.  Didn’t want to expire in such patheticness. 

Emotions weren’t allowed.  I had to survive.  I had to assume one day I would be fine.  Or not.  If not, then my life was over.  I was dead and was killed by something so seemingly harmless.  Something I was assured over and over by the doctor when I asked that this was indeed harmless. 

BN

-Man.  Oh man, oh man, oh man.  You couple all that JH with the underlying undealt with stuff from my early years and you have a man down for a very extended count.  It freaks me out to re-feel the extent of what happened.

And you my boy…  Even though I was worlds better physically by the time I met you, I was a man ready to emotionally crash, but through all our absurdity and laughter you enabled me to make me drag my sorry ass through the rest of that school year and with a smile on my face.  Grateful for that.