"As the rich rise in social esteem, the virtuous sink....the natural end of democracy is despotism."

-- Plato

We had to do two diagnostic test blocks before proceeding to the permanent ablation. Some kind of procedural requirement. After the first one, when the raging pain on the right side was gone for a while, I noticed the pain on the left side. Apparently, the other was drowning it out. So when I went back, he did both sides, and I spent a night and a day freer of pain than I can remember, or could have imagined was possible. I also slept much better. I hadn't fully realized how frequently I wake up and have to shift positions to try to relieve the pain in my neck. 

With both sides muted, I felt a strange pain in my shoulder, but it felt muscular: I think maybe I've had it clenched for 26 years.

The prospect of feeling this way permanently is exciting. And a little bit scary, which is weird. I guess it's similar to how people feel when they're getting out of prison after a long time, or leaving their beds after a very long illness. 

As I suspected might be the case, the supplements' effectiveness declined over time. I got a brief window of experiencing what it was like to feel normal, and then it began to fade away. 

I spoke with my psych doctor about it, and he said that the receptors which the supplemented neurotransmitters target lose their sensitivity with continued exposure. 

So I went back on antidepressants. First I tried the prozac again, along with the other things. I felt a bit better, but the same old side-effects came back. So I tried something new, a different kind of SSRI. I felt better again, without most of the problems the prozac caused. But then after a while, I started having a whole different set of problems: migraines, tremors, motor dysfunction (dropping things, clumsiness, and things like that), feeling like I couldn't think clearly, like I was dumber, and worst of all serious anhedonia, that is, complete inability to experience any enjoyment or pleasure in anything at all. Although I still seem to be able to experience feelings of the other sort. 

I went back to him, and he said that this drug, while increasing seratonin, can inhibit dopamine. Which explains the anhedonia, as well as the motor things, as Parkinson's has to do with low dopamine. 

So we added another medication, a selective dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Right now I'm waiting for it to kick in: it's supposed to take 6-8 weeks for full effect. I feel a little better, but not nearly what I experienced at the beginning with those supplements. At the moment I'm mostly feeling emotionless zombie nothingness with random spells of profound melancholy and intense sadness. And sometimes of anger--not rage, but cold, hard hate. And every once in a while a fairly good day. 

These tides of emotion are probably an effect of the medications--the side effects of the one and the introduction of the other. My therapist says it's part of the continued process of working through the stages of grief. Or rather, griefs. She's probably right. Most likely it's a mix of the two.

I finally got my back treatments started--same thing I had in my lower back some years ago, just before I lost all that weight, bought the house in the woods, planted the garden, went hiking, and all that. They insert a needle into the base of the nerve by the spine, and send an electric pulse through it to kill the nerve. At that time, the lower back pain was the most debilitating. I was going to go back for the upper back and neck pain, but one thing happened and then another, and I never did. But now that pain has become so bad that I almost just can't do anything at all. 

The first appointment, he did a diagnostic test block in the area which is the most problematic--injected a numbing agent into it to see if we had the right spot. And I experienced an entire day free of that particular pain for the first time in 26 years. It was incredible. So I'm going back for the permanent block, which doesn't take effect immediately like the diagnostic one, because it takes a while for the nerve to die. Then we have to repeat the process in other areas until we've got them all. I might end up with no feeling in most of my back and neck, but that's okay with me.

I'm hoping that this combination of meds will work, and that I'll have a longer-lasting experience of feeling better, emotionally, and that the back treatments will be as effective as the previous one was. I planned it all to start now, in the hope that by spring I'll be able to start hiking and getting back in shape. If all that comes together, then I might actually be able to begin to find a way to live again.

The price of houses is beginning to come down, but I haven't really started looking yet. I have to go back a number of times for the back treatments, they're rather painful, and I'm supposed to take it easy for a while after each one. So I don't want to have to deal with house-hunting, the purchase process, or most of all, moving, until that's done. Hopefully the prices will continue to fall in the meantime as well. 

 

Yes, I can. It's this "notice", and the bias, censorship, and propaganda that underlies it.

Silencing dissent is the halfway marker on the road to totalitarianism and tyranny.