Dreams and Things

It's Friday of week ten of if the Hepatitis C treatment which means that it is now winding down until week eleven begins on Sunday. It's 11:00AM and I've been awake for a little over an hour. My chores are complete and I have nothing to do, which is so often the case now these days. I am bored and a little blue. I spent the afternoon and early evening at my mother-in-law's apartment yesterday. I chatted with her alone together until my wife showed up with our grandson who she was to babysit until the early evening until his mother came to pick him up. My chat with my mother-in-law was quiet and cheerful but the dynamic changed radically as the four-year-old entered the apartment. I lost my desire to talk and felt myself clamming up as I do when faced with sensory overload. Nevertheless, I was able to more or less watch the television news. The national news was interrupted constantly by others seeking my attention or a general uproar in the apartment. I was disappoi...

It's my sixth anniversary with my wife today and she was surprised by the 123Greetings card I sent her. She had forgotten our anniversary with all the hassle in her life which I understand completely. It thrilled her and I felt a warm glow, too. All in all a nice way to begin the day. My sleep has been a living hell lately, for weeks it seems. Here's a capsule of what it's like: I go to sleep at around 10:00PM after setting the clock for 2:00AM when I need to wake up for my nighttime medication. All is well until the alarm sounds. Then it's time to sit up and eat the small snack I have set out for myself earlier in the night and that is required by the Victrelis. My wife usually gets up with me and helps me attain something of a sitting position. I am like a limp noodle. I have absolutely no strength in my back. This process takes about five to ten minutes. I choke down my snack and after washing the rest of it down with a shaky hand on my water glass my wife hand...

[I'm coming back to this the day after I wrote it in order to place a little perspective om the original post.] I wonder if I shouldn't refer in part to week seven but I'll stick with week eight for the time being. I'm tired as I write this and my hands are clumsy. I took three Klonopin tablets and two sub-lingual Zyprexa tablets last night. I think I may be hung over from that experience. I wanted to be numb. Excluded from reality. I've done this before with excellent results. The first time I took two Klonopins, one Zyprexa and one Valium. I excluded the Valium last night I that's why I don't think my results were as satisfactory. I took a Klonopin just a few minutes ago. Hopefully it will calm me down. I am full of inchoate anger and depression about my life. I want to be numb again. I might do this anyway. I can't stand being me right now. My life has become meaningless. I do nothing that I can hold forth as an achievement. I watch television...

The Interferon is beginning to take a toll on me emotionally. The listed side effects are depression and irritability. As I write this on Wednesday morning the fourteenth of December I am recovering from what has hitherto been the worst rage of my treatment. It occurred yesterday and became so intense I was unable to think clearly. It started obnoxiously enough. I decided to read my wife's CD's into iTunes. This was part of a project I set out for myself to rebuild my iTunes library which is missing several albums. I got about half way and in doing so discovered that there were many in the box that were unreadable. I tossed these into the garbage as I proceeded. Otherwise I kept plowing through her CD collection until I had almost reached half of them. I mentioned to her that several of the CD's were unreadable  and that I had subsequently tossed them. She became very worried that I was throwing away some CD's she was saving, including an autographed one. I hadn...

It's Thursday 12/1/11 and I have recovered from a depression. I woke up yesterday feeling more or less OK. But as the day progressed I began to feel more depressed. I didn't recognize it at first. I almost never get depressed for any reason. But a sense of despair and lethargy slowly settled upon me as the day progressed. My day started out in a mundane way as usual. I woke up and shaved and showered. I went to therapy at 11:00AM as usual. I was unusually groggy. I think I may have taken too much sleep medication the night before. I felt like I was dragging my feet but my wife and I managed to get into the car early to drive me to therapy. Psychoanalysis was pretty boring, I guess. I spent the entire time talking about the effects of the Interferon and in particular how it had affected me the previous Monday. My wife tends to approach my struggles with a "can do" attitude. In other words, what can we do at the moment to solve the problem at hand. She doesn't...

I took my Sunday shot of Interferon on 11/28/11 and had some problems adjusting to its aftermath on Monday, the following day. My day started in a mundane way. I woke up early and shaved but felt a little tired and so returned to bed. I overslept until 10:00AM and had to rush to take a shower before my therapy session at 11:00AM. My wife drove me to therapy as usual. My psychiatrist has advised me to avoid  riding public transport because of the exposure to various colds and other illnesses that my weakened immune system make make me susceptible to. I arrived in time to get a latte from Peet's before my session began. I was very groggy and unable to delve into anything particularly deep during therapy. The medium latte from Peet's across the street wasn't enough to wake me up, alas. So therapy was a jumble of disconnected small discussions which were nevertheless satisfying because I unloaded about several small things. As always, I was a trifle annoyed and not having...

It's 7:00 in the morning and I am dead tired. I can barely type and my motivation for making this entry is very low indeed. Nevertheless I want to chronicle my experiences during the treatment of my Hepatitis C treatment. It is Sunday and I am now entering into week three of what will probably be 48 weeks of treatment. I have already completed week one and two of the treatment. It did not occur to me to write about these until this morning. But I can catch up anyway. The treatment has hitherto consisted of a weekly injection of Interferon (PegIntron) and daily doses of Ribavirin. I take the Ribavirin twice a day: once in the morning and once in the evening. The injection I take Sunday evenings. A new drug, Victrelis, will be introduced into the mix on or after week four (I'm not yet sure). I'll be taking those capsules three times a day every eight hours. Timing is everything with the Victrelis. It must be taken in a rigid time frame and with a meal or light snack. Th...