Posts by electricdriver78

Paul Lopez49 said:Heights, though it’s really just when I’m on bridges or standing on high balconies... when I'm cruising at a few thousand feet in an airplane looking out the window, everything seems perfectly fine.
Kind of a weird one 🙄 😁

I feel the exact same way

plus I’ve got those phobias too, you know, spiders, snakes, and all that kind of stuff...

jadesailor14 said:And then it’s just like those scenes in American movies where the whole family gathers around to watch 🤣

Ugh, honestly—that sounds absolutely awful to me...

I mean, imagine her lying there on the table giving birth while the mom, the grandma, and all the neighbors are just crowded in the room chatting away...

I’d probably just toss them all outside...

The only person who should be there is the husband if he really wants to be—actually, it might be better if he is there, since I can't exactly be held responsible for my actions when I'm in total pain 😬...

Justin Fox said:If everyone just got their flu shots, we could probably wipe the whole thing out, but there’s always that certain group of people who think they know better than the doctors... 👎

not really—since the flu virus keeps mutating

every single year, so you're basically just getting vaccinated against whatever specific strain is circling around at the moment anyway

coastaldriver4 said:... coming out of my nose 😁

So... I’ve got a bit of an issue lately. Every morning when I wake up, my nose feels super congested, and when I go to blow it, 😁 there's always some blood there...
It wouldn't be such a big deal if it wasn't happening more and more often. It doesn't hurt at all, I don't have any congestion issues otherwise 😁, and I'm not even on any medication right now.
I'm just wondering what could be causing this? Maybe stress, a lingering cold, nerves, or just the dry weather?
And does anyone know how I can make it stop or what might help clear it up? 🙂

It’s been so long since I’ve started a new thread that I actually forgot how this works... 😁

for me, it was definitely allergies combined with the air being really dry in my bedroom while I sleep...

I honestly think I’ll be getting my shot this year for sure

A few years back, I caught a nasty flu and it nearly wrecked my kidneys—I didn't pee for three whole days and by the end, my urine was turning brown... not to mention I was in this total haze the entire time, with a fever that just kept climbing through the ceiling...

I ended up dropping 9 pounds in just seven days, and it took me two full months to finally feel like myself again

So yeah, I really don't need a repeat of that experience

I actually meant to get it last year too, but I somehow missed the window and by then it was already too late

Megan Morales5 said:it's tough.. 😢 even though some women wouldn't even complain if their husbands showed these symptoms 😉 electricdriver78 was on birth control before, but she stopped because... how can I even put this... she just couldn't handle the reality when she first started, and if she were to take them again, she says it feels just like being stuck in a rut 🙄 I mostly feel for my dad; I have my own life and we don't live together anymore, but he doesn't even recognize the woman he's loved his whole life. I guess it helps knowing your family is going through the same thing, as strange as that sounds... it means people truly understand you. It’s honestly a miracle your dad managed to stay physically healthy without getting hit by one of those common illnesses that attack your immune system from lack of sleep. You're right, my mom is definitely old school—I don't know how old your folks are, but she was born in 1949, so she's old enough to tune out certain things but still too young to just give up entirely...

man.. such a nasty situation

mine are only about 52 and 53, but they act "old" in certain ways

I honestly don't know how he hasn't gotten sick yet

he had some polyps in his colon that had to be removed—thankfully it wasn't cancer... but they told him he needs regular checkups because you never know, plus his thyroid was acting totally haywire so he had to take that radioactive iodine treatment

luckily they warned him that all this stress isn't helping him at all
it probably played a part in everything too—I don't know how much of that is actually true, but I'm glad they gave him a scare

I can only imagine how hard it is for your dad to watch the woman he loves struggle like that... 😢

Megan Morales5 said:It honestly surprises me how people just take these kinds of medications without even bothering to figure out what they’re actually treating.😕 Isn't that a little irresponsible?

Anyway, how can you tell when it's the right time to stop? When you say 15 months isn't really enough...

electricdriver78, thanks for getting back to me. It’s exactly like my mom... she was always such a put-together woman, you know, hitting the salon three times a week and always perfectly dressed from head to toe...😁 but now I'll find her late in the afternoon, still in her morning robe and unshaven, just staring at the TV for hours without even really seeing it... she used to be so vibrant and active, too. And you just can't get through to her... her mood swings are just so sudden and intense. While she was on the medication, everything seemed fine—she even picked up a new hobby and bought all this gear for it, but now it's just sitting in a corner gathering dust. She went on one trip and had more energy than the whole group combined... I guess when those high-energy people finally hit a wall, they just crash completely...😢

I feel so bad that things are this way...

She probably needs therapy—if she won't take pills, would she be open to seeing a counselor?

You have to stay persistent...

My dad (and my mom and sister too, though they've been in treatment for a while, just like me) has PTSD, but for him, the symptoms looked like this: work, work, and just constant work...

It became almost manic; he was working nearly 80 hours a week and only sleeping about three hours a night...

all just so he wouldn't have to think about anything, especially what we went through during the war...

For ten years, he wouldn't hear a word about therapy—telling us, "I'm not crazy, why would you want to drag me to a psychiatrist or any of that nonsense... I don't have nightmares like you three, I don't have flashbacks..."

He was old school... but the three of us were relentless. My mom talked to her own doctor and therapist and explained exactly how he was acting, and they both told her he HAD to slow down—otherwise, he was going to drop dead one day. No one can work that much with that little rest... you just eventually hit a breaking point...

Now, Dad sees a psychiatrist and takes his meds, works less, rests more, and isn't so on edge... he actually laughs and enjoys life again...

It took us ten years to make him realize there's no shame in asking for help...

I know it's incredibly tough dealing with "old school" types... but just keep trying...

don't give up...

Megan Morales5 said:electricdriver78, thanks for explaining that, it makes things a bit clearer regarding what she went through... I was wondering though, how do you say "anxiety" in English?

What’s the actual difference between anxiety and depression, specifically when it comes to the symptoms?...

Honestly, props to you for pushing through, those symptoms sound incredibly tough to deal with...

There’s definitely a good reason to get back into therapy—it's all about what's going on up there in your head...

Anxiety is just "anxiety" in English...

As for the symptoms, they probably vary from person to person, but I think there are some core traits that stay the same...

For me personally, depression feels like constant irritability, having zero motivation to even get out of bed in the morning, everything just looks dark and hopeless, nothing seems to have any purpose, I tend to overeat, and I just feel like crying constantly...

Then there's anxiety—which for me usually pops up after a long bout of depression, often triggered by stress, where I just feel this restlessness I can't quite explain and this nervous feeling like something terrible is about to happen... for me, it's usually the fear that someone close to me will fall ill with some horrible terminal disease, and then I start cleaning or grooming obsessively just to try and soothe that feeling... it becomes a sort of OCD...

So yeah, that's the short version of it...

Megan Morales5 said:Exactly. It’s the worst feeling when you're taking medication without even understanding why you were prescribed it in the first place...

Regarding the topic, my mother was on an antidepressant (Prozac) for a year, and during her first attempt to stop, she couldn't quite shake it, though her doctor thinks the dependency wasn't physical so much as psychological. Basically, if they had just given her sugar pills that looked identical, she probably wouldn't have even realized she had stopped taking anything 😉
With her second attempt at tapering off, they spent a few months after that episode, starting with half doses, then moving to a quarter dose, then just every other day... so yeah, coming off them is a really slow process...

electricdriver78, those headaches you had briefly after stopping the antidepressants—was that a physical reaction or more of a psychological one? Of course, you felt the pain physically, but was the cause actually a lack of certain chemicals in your system, or just the panic of realizing you were off the meds?

When did your old symptoms start creeping back in? And how are you managing through it all? Do you have any advice on how I might be able to help my mother through this...

those headaches, the nausea, and the absolute worst part—that sensation like an electric shock hitting your brain—it's all a chemical reaction from the lack of serotonin re-uptake inhibitors... because once I stopped, everything went right back to how it used to be regarding the chemical imbalance, where serotonin isn't being transmitted enough through the nervous system...

Even my doctor told me exactly what it would feel like so I wouldn't freak out...

those sensations, like little electrical shocks, are honestly terrifying if you aren't expecting them... I couldn't even drive that week because I was so scared I'd get into an accident...

I decided to taper off on purpose, at my own request... so I started looking into techniques to help me beforehand... I mostly stuck to Pilates and gardening... but the episodes still happen—especially my obsessive-compulsive urge to clean and scrub everything (at least the kitchen is sparkling 😁 )... I think my symptoms started showing up almost immediately after I stopped the meds...

meditation helps some people... the most important thing is finding an outlet for the anxiety... dealing with depression is harder... it helps a lot if you have someone by your side who recognizes the symptoms and can support you, whether it's just talking or doing an activity to distract you... but even that doesn't always work... my husband helps a ton, but even he can't always fix it... sometimes he just has to let me withdraw into myself... I'm thinking about starting psychotherapy again... it helped me before... but sometimes those sessions stir up old ghosts and leave you feeling totally wrecked for the rest of the week...

but if none of that works, maybe it's worth considering going back to therapy? (assuming there isn't a medical reason not to, of course)...

I don't think you should view it like a drug addiction... with drugs, things only ever go downhill...

the way I see it is this: when I stopped taking them, I didn't think, "Oh no, look how addicted I am to these pills"...

I thought, "Wow, look how much these medications were actually helping me" (you often don't even notice how much they help until you stop taking them)...

restlesshound77 said:Thanks, electricdriver78!
It’s a little scary right now, though, dealing with the nausea and those headaches... 😲
My breakdown was triggered by some very specific things in my life, and since those factors
aren't really there anymore—because I spent all that time slowly working through them and getting everything
in order...
I learned so much about myself during that time, and I finally managed to tackle the hardest part,
which is actually changing who you are at your core...

And honestly, I don't think any antidepressant can truly save you from depression
unless you decide to step up, put in the work, and really try to better yourself...

👍 I'm really happy for you...

hopefully you won't have to deal with this kind of thing ever again...

For me, it hasn't just been depression, but anxiety, PTSD, and OCD too

so things have been a bit more complicated... but I'm getting through it somehow...

don't let it scare you... just take it one day at a time...

the worst thing you can do is try to quit cold turkey, because then all those symptoms just hit you ten times harder...

I recently tapered off my Effexor...

The way I did it was by slowly lowering the dose bit by bit, and then once you hit that tiny minimum dose after maybe two or three weeks, you just take that little amount every other day for another couple of weeks before finally stopping altogether... though your doctor will walk you through the whole process

Once I finally quit that last little bit, I dealt with nausea, brain zaps, and this weird sensation like mild electric shocks in my head—it lasted about a week and a half before everything finally settled down

Just a little heads-up—you might feel totally fine while you're on the medication, but once you step away from it, a lot of those old symptoms can come rushing back

A lot of my symptoms definitely returned, but I decided to push through it because we're trying to have a baby soon... who knows what happens after that, but I’ll probably end up back on medication eventually

Antidepressants aren't like antibiotics where you just take them and the infection goes away

They really work by balancing out hormones and chemical processes in your brain, and everything feels steady as long as you're taking them, but it's so common for all those symptoms to return once you stop, since the chemistry just drifts right back to how it was before you started the therapy

jadesailor14 said:You just get used to it eventually, kind of like how you learn to live with a rough patch at work...

I actually gave acupuncture a shot once. The needle pricks aren't even that bad. And if you're really squeamish about needles—which I was, because even though I wasn't scared of anything before giving birth, now just seeing one makes me jumpy for no reason—there’s also laser acupuncture.
It didn't do much for me, but honestly, I probably need a whole new head...
My vision is pretty blurry and I have this weird ocular drift that only feels right when I'm looking at things like birds, which I'm not a huge fan of...
Between staring at my computer screen for at least eight hours at the office and then more once I get home...
And my sinuses being completely shot. Plus a few other things.
So my migraine is likely just a combination of everything hitting at once...

My oldest daughter deals with frequent headaches too. Her doctor found some narrowing in her carotid artery, so the pain comes from poor circulation...
Maybe you should get your arteries checked out, too...

I finally got an appointment with an internist—my doctor wants to run every test imaginable... I guess we'll see—sometimes he even brings in med students to stare at patients like they're specimens under a microscope...

I actually found a website that had a perfect picture of what I was hallucinating for those twenty minutes on this page, if you scroll down to the image with the black background labeled Fig 3—that was exactly what I saw... it wasn't quite that dark in front of my eyes, but those zig-zag lines were dancing in my field of vision for a good twenty minutes...

urbanseal6 said:I've been dealing with this since I was a teenager...
I always used to worry I was actually going blind because losing your vision for about twenty minutes is terrifying, and then the headache hits and it’s just brutal.
Back in high school, I saw an eye doctor who told me it was just a classic migraine, and she suggested that when it happens, I should just lock myself in a dark room and lie down... but since I'm rarely home when it strikes, I usually just have to suffer through it and wait for my sight to come back.
I never really went looking for answers, so hearing that there's actually a name for this and that others go through it makes me feel a little better.
electricdriver78, are you on birth control?
For me, it used to happen almost every week when I was taking them, but ever since I stopped, it's become super rare... mostly just when I'm out at the beach in the sun or if I spend too much time staring at my computer without giving my eyes a break.
Hang in there, girl... 😉

urbanseal6 - honestly, I didn't even realize this was a thing until it hit me...

When it first happened, I actually thought I was having a stroke—all the symptoms felt identical, and my blood pressure was up to 160 over 80... which is scary enough considering my family history is full of heart disease and a couple of strokes at young ages, so that's why I panicked...

I haven't been on birth control for maybe ten months now...

I've had migraines since puberty, but never with those weird eye symptoms before...

Maybe acupuncture could help if things get desperate, but I am deathly afraid of needles... believe it or not, I once asked my dentist if he could do a root canal without numbing me just because I'm so terrified of those big needles...

He just laughed and asked if I'd ever actually had a root canal before... 😁

Next time I go in for a checkup, I'll ask about what dosage I can take... but I was reading about aura migraines yesterday and they recommend the same stuff as regular ones—dark room, silence, rest, and whatever pain reliever works for you, which is pretty much my go-to...

But that pain... it feels like someone is literally drilling into my skull...

At least they did some brain scans, so now I can show my husband the proof that his wife actually has a functioning brain... though whether or not that's true is debatable...
😁

Oh jadesailor14, could it really be like that? 😲 - that sounds absolutely awful...

rustymoose54 said:I think it’s okay to take some Tylenol to help ease the pain, just be careful with the dosage.

I went through something pretty similar after my blood sugar crashed once, and honestly, I don't know how I'd manage the headache without something for the pain, it was just awful...

How much can I safely take?

I have another follow-up appointment at the clinic in a few days, but if this hits me before then...

They actually gave me an injection for the pain yesterday—otherwise, I probably would've just passed out...

I’m not even sure if there’s a specific term for this in American English, but I actually got diagnosed with it yesterday

On top of the "standard" migraine I've dealt with for years, after running some scans and tests following an episode, they told me it's actually a migraine with aura

The symptoms were pretty wild—this bright light totally blocked my vision in my right eye for about 20 minutes, and then this sharp, stabbing pain hit the left side of my head along with a super stiff neck... the headache finally cleared up this morning, but my neck is still feeling really tight

At first, I was terrified it might be a stroke, but after all the testing, they concluded it was just the migraine

Man, the pain is just unreal!!!

Does anyone else here deal with migraines with aura, and how do you manage them—like, what triggers it for you or what helps take the edge off...

I haven't been taking any painkillers, and I can't really use standard migraine meds right now because we're trying to conceive...

it doesn't really help at all

I’ve lost my cool with my boss a few times now—but somehow I’m still standing and everything's fine... so it hasn't actually done anything to lower my stress levels...👎

velvetwolf92 said:My recommended zone, or rather my carb-protein-fat ratio, is 40:30:30.

I don't know the exact numbers by heart, but I did some math, and if I actually ate that little food, I'd be starving...
If I eat enough meat to feel full—say about five or six ounces—then I’d have to eat a massive amount of leafy greens, like spinach or kale, and consume way more fats too. At least a tablespoon of olive oil with lunch and dinner, plus seeds, olives, cheese, bacon, and all that...

Another thing is that eating five meals a day just doesn't work for me, so I'd rather just cram everything into three bigger meals.

And then there's the issue of limited food choices because of this yeast thing I'm dealing with, so I don't really have much variety left.

Plus, I don't even need the zone for weight loss, just to maintain my current weight.

I'm trying to blend the zone approach with a Mediterranean diet and certain food pairings.

If you're just looking to maintain your weight, you don't necessarily have to stick to those strict portions and end up feeling hungry...

but trying to squeeze everything into just three meals might be the hardest part of it all.

And regarding that yeast issue—is that something in your stomach?

My husband spent ten years being "treated" for yeast infections when it turned out it wasn't even that, but just tiny lesions in his esophagus...

He suffered for years thinking it was always about what he ate or drank...

now he just takes some acid reflux medication and feels like a new man, honestly he can't believe it's all gone...

You should really double-check that diagnosis...

Those esophageal issues are easily missed unless you get an endoscopy, so doctors often just write it off as a yeast problem, even though there isn't much medical proof that yeast causes those specific stomach issues...

Kenneth Hernandez67 said:I was actually flipping through my sister's old cookbooks and realized that's pretty much how we've always prepared meals at home... we didn't even know about the cafeteria zone until recently 😉

It's true though—that’s definitely how we used to eat back in the day, but that feels like a lifetime ago

Between the war years and those first few years after moving here when even fresh fruit felt like a luxury, I think I had almost forgotten how to do it all... 😁

Kenneth Hernandez67 said:Regarding using your palm or thumb for measurements, I’d honestly suggest just weighing everything at first... since I haven't actually seen a 100-gram serving of meat that fits in a normal palm, unless it's maybe just a single slice of turkey deli meat...

I'm with you on this one...

I used to stick strictly to the zone diet and ended up dropping a little over 15 pounds in a month, but I had to weigh absolutely everything because I was eating about 11 blocks a day...

Now I've gotten the hang of it and I just eyeball my 30-40-30 ratios without bothering with the scale anymore...

I'm not really gaining weight, but I'm not losing any either...

The best part about being in the zone is that I still have plenty of energy for my runs...

Anthony Harris14 said:I guess that’s just part of his charm...😬
not saying we should hang him, but he could definitely show a little humility...😵

Oh, please—someone needs to give him a hard time for acting like he actually earned that accreditation...😁

Honestly, those women already have enough on their plates dealing with infertility struggles without him being such a jerk to them...

With an attitude like that, he can take his degree and shove it...🙂