It all started a few months ago when I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. I’ve always had normal blood pressure and put the recent heightened levels down to the move from England to Wales during lockdown.
Whatever the cause my new GP was alarmed when it showed no signs of improving and prescribed medication to treat it.
She also took me off HRT as the risk of stroke or a heart attack was a worry.
My blood pressure has remained obstinately high, and my GP has continued to fiddle around with my medication leading to some nasty side effects. Added to this, being off HRT, has meant my menopause symptoms have re-emerged with the worse being the brain fog where my mind has slowed down to a snail’s pace and is no longer in sync with my mouth (not the best trait for a speaker!).
With all this going on I have been feeling physically unwell and weak for weeks now. Nothing you could attribute to an illness but its unremitting at the moment and is making anything I try to do a much bigger chore than would otherwise be the case. I have done my best to try helping by making a lot of changes with my diet and lifestyle as I hate taking pharmaceuticals but, as yet, nothing seems to be working.
To try and offset some of the worst of my debilitating menopause symptoms my new GP also prescribed Prozac which, so she claimed, would clear up my brain fog problems. She knew from my records that I have PTSD already but, in hindsight, I am not sure that she truly understands the ramifications of managing a PTSD sufferer.
Prozac is an anti-depressant known as an SSRI and, had my brain been working better, I should have questioned its efficacy for my menopause symptoms more as I was not depressed. In years gone past I was put on another SSRI called Seroxat which sent me completely loopy, precipitated self-harming behaviour and suicidal tendencies.
After 5 days being on Prozac I could recognise some of these tendencies coming back.
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The combination of being physically low, mentally confused and unstable were to lead to an experience I have never encountered before.
At first I wasn’t sure what was happening. My hands and legs suddenly felt numb and distant to me, and I wobbled around trying to regain my balance before giving up and sitting heavily down on the ground, unable to get back up.
Utter exhaustion flooded every pore of my body. Every muscle, joint and sinew hurt. My head throbbed and threatened to explode, my eyes bulged and lost focus. Nausea swept over like a wave, and I began to sob uncontrollably sending rivulets of hot, frustrated and furious tears down my cheeks.
Eventually managing to crawl into bed, fully clothed, I pulled the duvet over my head and wished everything away. ‘Perhaps, if I don’t move and stay very, very still it will all go away’ was the only thought swishing around in the washing machine that my brain had become.
All my tasks, responsibilities and commitments circled around with the insistent throbbing noise of a spin cycle. Only problem with this washing programme was there didn’t seem to be a timer to tell me how long it would be before it was due to finish.
It still wasn’t depression which I am well acquainted with – this felt different. It was if I was metaphorically being punched, kicked and beaten, both physically and mentally, with no option but to curl up and try to weather the assault. My eyes saw everything like a heavily fractured mirror, the broken shards were still in the frame, but the reflection was distorted, disjointed and a clear picture was impossible.
48 hours later, still physically immobile, having not slept, washed or eaten nor marked the passing of day into night and back again, I vaguely realised I had to do something otherwise the dark chasm I felt I was staring into would swallow me whole, never to be seen again. Problem was my thoughts were so muddled I couldn’t work out what to do for the best.
Reaching for my phone I managed to send 2 texts. One to my psychologist ‘can’t function – need help’ and the other to a relative along the same lines. My relative, who lives about 4 hours away, jumped in his car and came to stay to help where he could. My psychologist quickly arranged virtual sessions with me to find out what was happening. Within 24 hours of my texts they were both in my corner ready to piece me back together again with my psychologist diagnosing that I had come very close to a complete and total nervous breakdown.
My psychologist immediately took me off the Prozac stating, given my history and my PTSD, SSRIs were obviously not a medication group that does me any favours, they do quite the opposite. I’ll just have to cope with my menopause symptoms until we can get my blood pressure under control and it’s safe for me to restart HRT.
The two of them also sat me down and slowly got me to unburden myself as to everything that is going on in my life. Personal and workwise we have listed out every single thing I am directly involved with, am committed to, feel responsible for or need to contend with. The list is enormous! As my psychologist put it ‘a small team of people would find it almost impossible to cope with all that let alone 1 person’.
And so, with their help, its time for me to slow things down, take stock and re-evaluate. I am going to have to withdraw from some things, defer others and make some fundamental changes to my entire life structure moving forward. It will take time, I’ve already been warned that I’m ‘brittle’ and it could take 3-6 months to recover, so the professional support will have to remain in place for the foreseeable future. However the upshot will be, if I get it right, I should never again be in the position of reaching my extreme limits.