Cold

[vaneramos]

NeoCitran brought easy relief to sore throat at bedtime on Monday, but threw off my sleep pattern. At 5:30 I woke suddenly without hope of resettling.

Last night I tried double Advil, unfortunately I didn't go to bed until 2:30. At 6:30 I was awakened by intense pain in my face and a feeling of dread. Sinusitis has been my scourge.

A nice side effect of the antidepressant Remeron, which improves my sleep, has been an immune system boost. Last winter I only caught one brief cold.

This morning I thought luck had run out. I went and poured a hot bath.

Steam immediately cleared my passages, relieving both pain and anxiety. It must have been a temporary interaction of sick membranes with dry furnace air. All I have left this afternoon is negligible congestion.

I'm not used to four hours of sleep a night. How I used to survive that way for months at a time, I hate to remember. Two bad nights is enough. Hopefully no cold medicine will be indicated this evening.

I don't even feel worn down yet. In fact I used that early morning energy to finish knitting a pair of slippers and clean house.

Comments

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Most of the benefit I've experienced from the drug seems a direct result of regularly sleeping seven or eight hours a night. For most of my adolescent and adult life I managed on five, but when anything upset me I would go weeks or months never getting more than three hours. I'm glad that's over.

Without a doubt, diet and exercise are equally important. I'm working on those. The one downside of Remeron is that I put on 15 pounds, but for now that's outweighed by the benefits.

boosted immune function

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

I'm betting (at leat in part) on the proper sleep pattern too, although there must be more to it than that; possibly lack of sleep contributes to general feeling of ickiness as well as lowering resistance to whatever bugs are going around.

How did the slippers turn out?

Re: boosted immune function

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Not sleeping well clearly contributes to anxiety or depression, which in turn lead to not sleeping well. Remeron seems to break the vicious circle, which has given me a chance to work on some of the other causes of anxiety.

Re: slippers. The final stitching together is a bit sloppy, but considering this is my first non-scarf knitting project, I'm pleased. The first one was a royal pain, getting the hang of knitting with a double thread on 4½ mm needles (sorry, I don't know how that translates into American sizes). I made lots of mistakes and I had a terrible time trying to correct anything. I started last winter and quickly gave up. Working on a ribbed scarf over the summer gave me more experience counting stitches with more forgiving yarn. So I felt confident to try the slipper again. First try, I misinterpretted the instructions and made it too long, so I had to undo and redo several days's work. Very frustrating. But after all that, the second slipper was a breeze, and I finished it without a hitch. I'll post a photo later today.

knitting, metric and living in an archaic country

[queenmomcat.livejournal.com]

Doing up the seams, and having it come out looking at least OK still plagues me. 'm hoping the knitting group members will eventually be able to help me with that. And yes, knitters more experienced than I end up ripping projects back/up when they realize they've goofed.

I think a 4.5 mm needle is about a U.S. 6, just in case you end up needing to communicate with other U.S. knitters, but most ought to be able to figure out roughly the size of the needles if you just mention the metric measurements. (I think the 'archaic' system in Great Britain runs the other way--large numbers=skinny needles, but would be delighted to hear from knitters who know otherwise. Just to make things even more maddening, needle sizes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Fun, huh?)

[mhkrabat.livejournal.com]

Chicken soup wouldn't hurt either!;^)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've practically cleared the cupboard of canned and dried soup. Yesterday I made some yummy mushroom soup. Lunch today was leftover ginger beet soup from the freezer, very salubrious. It's been a week of soup, soup, soup, and I don't mind at all.

[mattycub.livejournal.com]

I hope you feel better soon, Van. *hugs*

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

It does feel like I'm on the mend. Thanks Matt. Hugs always help.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, I seem to be one of those cases for which the Prozac-Zoloft-Paxil types don't work very well, but for which Remeron seems to work. Actually I started taking it 18 months ago to treat anxiety. I didn't notice any direct change in my moods, but the nice thing about Remeron is I'm sleeping well for the first time in my life. It doesn't give me a feeling of dullness the way Paxil did. I just take my dose at 10 p.m. and two hours later I'm ready to knock out for eight hours. Over the long term this has given me the energy and willpower to start addressing the bigger underlying problems. The last few months I have experienced less free-floating anxiety, and haven't had a fullblown panic attack since June. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I can honestly say I'm more at peace with myself than I've ever been, which is a pretty optimistic foundation to work from. I feel that taking Remeron has contributed significantly. It's certainly better than Paxil, which took the edge off despair but left me in a kind of fog for five years.

[tbone1961.livejournal.com]

hope you're feeling better soon. i'm going on 2 weeks with mine. someone at work here said he knew a buddy his that this hung on for 6 weeks!!!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Arg, sorry to hear that. Mine's definitely on the way out today. Yay!