Slept Thru The Weekend

I accomplished 6 things since 5 pm Fri (this is 1 a.m. Tuesday)  I read a cozy mystery, As the Pig Turns by M. C. Beaton, when the wind died down to a dull roar I went outside and picked up dog poop,  I cooked a roast in the crock pot, cleaned the bathroom, picked up & vacuumed the living room, and I slept, and slept and slept.  The wind has blown like crazy all weekend, gusts up to 60 mph---when it blows and blows ---I just checked and it is blowing 24 mph now---it gets very weary---and I don't even have to be out in it.  I am up now because the wind was howling, woke up Zoe who started barking and woke me up.  She is now snoring next to me and I am not.  When it is so windy it often pushes me into the depression hell hole.  Does my daughter as well. Something about the barometric pressure changes.  When I am in the depression hell hole I just want to sleep, like 12 hours, get up for 3 or so and go back to bed for another 8.   In addition, I have something else going on.  I just am so cold I shiver off and on throughout the day.  My daughter wants me to go to a Dr but 1) I can't afford it and 2) I don't think they would have a clue as to what is wrong with me.  I have always told people I only had one hot flash... it started in 1999 and hasn't stopped yet.  Well, now I can say it stopped.  I have always kept my thermostat between 66 & 68 in the winter and been nice and cozy at that temperature.   (When the kids lived at home that was a little chilly for them but I would tell them the blankets are paid for, the heat is not, so wrap up in a blanket)  The past two weeks I have bumped it up to 70 (even though today it was 69 outside) and I am freezing.  I have spent more hours than not this weekend in bed, under a heavy blanket and even heavier comforter and still have spells where I just shiver.  My daughter and her beagle were here Sat. and I was asleep under 3 blankets on the couch and started shivering so violently in my sleep she said her beagle jumped up next to me to see what I was doing.    Both of my daughters came for lunch today and I while they were here I just had to go to bed and burrow under the covers shivering. I think I have just caught a bug of some kind.  Casey wonders if I am anemic since being cold is so odd for me but I don't think so.  I would imagine if anything it is that my thyroid medication is all wrong again. Actually I am thinking this just comes under the heading of "it's always something" and hoping it goes away soon.  Next Monday I get to see the psychiatrist again and I know she will bump up my dosage of antidepressant.  Hallelujah!  Will not come a moment too soon.    I will ask her if it could be a side effect of the medication I am on, but since it didn't start until after I had been on the medication for 2 months that doesn't make any sense.    When you have major depressive disorder, my diagnosis, other than bi-polar because I have bouts of mania as well, along with anxiety and agoraphobia (yeah, I hit the mental health jackpot and got more than one)  your brain chemicals are just all messed up.  Exercise can help by releasing the feel good hormones but sometimes that is not enough, or while in the depression hell hole, coming up with the energy to exercise enough for it to work is just impossible.  When I first started seeing a psychiatrist decades ago it took probably 2 years to find a combination of drugs that worked for me, and then to fine tune the dosage.  Then those drugs stopped working and we had to do it all over again.  That is how it is for just about everyone I have ever met (like at support groups) that has serious depression...every one is different and what works for one person won't for someone else.  There is not a test to tell you what you need, it is just trial and error over and extended period of time.  For adults some drugs take 6 weeks to get in your system enough that you can see what they are going to do and you have to start at low dosages and work your way up---it is not an easy thing to treat. I took that same combination for oh, I am guessing 10 years at least, until in late 2009 it just stopped working for me. That happens.  I never missed a dose but I got so sick, so suicidal, I was afraid of myself and eventually got to the point where I could not stop crying, thus my hospitalization.  That has been 21 months ago and we having been trying to find a different drug or drug combination to get me back to being a functioning human again.  I hate it.  This newest drug, I started November 1st, stopped the continual bawling over anything that evoked the slightest emotion in me but as far as helping me out of the depression hell hole... well, not yet... just sort of holding my head above water.  I am hoping my Dr will increase the dosage and that will do it.  I think this is the 3rd drug/drug combo we have tried since I got out of the hospital.  My daughter has tried every drug out there for a mood stabilizer, antidepressant, anxiety and either she has taken them to the point they no longer work or they don't work to begin with.  Her psychiatrist has told her there is nothing else he can try so she is on a drug that helps the best (not much).  That is scary.