I have had a nice couple of weeks since my last post. I have been to the gym, Monday to Friday, as I set out to do and I have done some cooking. The brown rice and vegetables was a bit of a hit, so I have been researching for more roasted or sautéed vegetable recipes like that. I'm still working on my diet. I have found, since I started this Latuda, that some old favorites in food are now utterly repulsive to me. I had to throw out a salad I made with the usually very nice Makoto Japanese salad dressing on it. I just hated it for some reason. And I made a savory tart with pear and bleu cheese and thyme, which is usually delicious, and that totally grossed me out. So I'm staying with the vegetables and brown rice. I like this urge for healthy. I bought Maldon salt, herbes de provence, and some other seasonings and I will have a summer of healthy good food. Hopefully I will drop some weight. I have lost about eight pounds so far, but have much more to go. But I will try the slow and steady route for as long as I can, hopefully making it a permanent life change. The medicine makes me stiff and arthritic I have noticed, but my physical routine is modest, just 30 minutes on the treadmill and 7 minutes on the elliptical, with 3 sets of 10 on the arm weights. It's a far cry from 20 years ago, when I would take 2 fitness classes in a row, led by some local boxers, and cycle home, after running in the morning and swimming at lunch. I find the hardest thing about schizophrenia for me now is the depression. I took to my bed for two years before I finally got Disability. I still have episodes and those I handle by going to bed too. The Latuda is some help with the depression and works well with my Wellbutrin, but I need more Latuda I think. My doctor doesn't want to take me off the Haldol, although she said she might reduce it a little. This makes me nervous, becoming a concoction instead of a healthy person. That is the trouble with aging and schizophrenia, one just perpetually medicates. That requires some rethinking on the part of the patient. Adjusting to being 50 is weird and a little hard. I understand my parents more now. I understand a lot of people more now. I was a very healthy health nut in my adult years, and now I'm somewhat in need of repair. And I'm not going to bounce back like I did when I was 30. I have had to try and accommodate that. Which is hard. But, I smoke and such, which I'm trying to quit. I went to my old university town with a friend yesterday as a special treat, and I noticed how far gone I am now. Tattoo, pills, smoking... It's not pretty as they say, lol. I have really hit the pavement pretty hard. I miss my ex-husband a lot. He has a way of making me laugh and making me - and others - feel loved and appreciated. We met there after he graduated from Cambridge. He was in Chicago doing some training programs with Arthur Anderson and he decided to quit and use his visa to come and visit us in Chapel Hill. For me it was love at first sight. We were married within the year, and had a wonderful time together doing lots of exciting, grown-up things. I was pretty devastated when schizophrenia hit. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was bad. And permanent, somehow. So without explaining, I asked for a divorce. It was awful, the end of everything I ever loved. But when it works, the Latuda can put a sparkle on things. I just never forget it's a drug.
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I wrote quite a nice post last week but it was lost in translation. I didn't have the energy to try and write it again. I guess I should write in Word first then copy and paste, but that is not as fun for me as writing off the cuff here, for some reason. I was saying that I was wondering to a friend in Jerusalem about the preponderance of stories in the Bible in which a person heard voices or saw visions. He tipped me to the book by Julian Jaynes, 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'. According to what I can gather, Jaynes believes that early man was largely schizophrenic, relying on voices and visions rather than conscious thought. He thinks a series of catastrophes brought consciousness to the human race. I ordered it from Amazon for about 4 dollars. It seems like an interesting read. I have had quite a week, I am now on 60mgs of Latuda and also my regular 4mgs of Haldol. At first I was like an animal at the vet's, completely afraid of all the drugs. But as the week progressed the Latuda kicked in and I began to have more thoughts at once, a happier mood and less of an appetite. I have though, had a problem with stiff muscles, for which I do not want another drug. I'm going to try and work with it if I can. I have made one solitary trip to the gym, two days ago and I had quite a good workout - sweaty and invigorating. I want to keep this up if I can. I have taken the weekend off to allow for sore muscles and general moodiness. Ideally I would go Monday to Friday, with the weekends off. We'll see how it goes. I also have bought some things to cook, I'm trying to resuscitate that side of me. I hope it doesn't go to waste. It's just that this Latuda is quite a jolt compared to the Haldol and I am not used to so much mental activity after six years on Haldol. I notice that it was easy to maintain calm with Haldol - with not much going on and no-one to see I felt a bit of a success with my Buddhist reading. But as might be predicted this surge of energy from Latuda has meant that I have a lot more conscious work to do, in order to keep up my studies with Pema Chodron. I have started a daily correspondence with a friend in Vancouver and we are quite different - she is conservative and I am liberal. I don't really have a lot of mental muscle right now with all the drugs and so on, but I'm always on my toes about my attitude toward this new friend. I don't want to do what I would have done when I was young and 'normal', that is to simply gravitate elsewhere. I don't have that luxury anymore. And it's good practice for me to try and keep the ball in the air with my right leaning friend. It's part of why I like Pema Chodron so much. Schizophrenia is the kind of thunderbolt that can engender 'enlightenment', which I am not really reaching for. I just want to clear my mind and have peace with my friends and family. I want to learn to live with schizophrenia in such a way that it is no longer my enemy, but my friend. I don't know what my future holds at all, but I feel better with the dharma talks Chodron gives in her books. I have said it before, I am not a Buddhist. That is still true. I am just a schizophrenic trying to organize my thoughts.
I have been wondering about the preponderance of stories in the Bible
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