Oh dear.. It’s 12:44 am and I am awake and thinking…

Late nights, wide awake, always lead me into researching conspiracy theories.

I can’t help it. Well, I probably could. If I hadn’t been reading about conspiracy theories, then I’d be playing Spore. And face it, right now, with nothing to occupy my brain, conspiracy theories provide far more entertainment.

I did learn something pretty interesting though. Apparently, according to a Zogby poll, 41% of New Yorkers believe that the government knew that 9/11 was going to happen and chose to allow it to. Which brings me to: So many people that I know believe that 9/11 did not just happen. Despite the 9/11 Commission, etc. Despite that all, people (myself included) believe that it was orchestrated, in some way. Yet it’s something that people never really talk about, unless you happen to be really odd like me and ask acquaintances very random questions (“Hey Chiquita Banana, what do you think about September 11th?”)

This goes beyond people that are convinced that Hitler only had one testicle. Like, normal people believe that there is something still untold about September 11th. But it’s over. I guess they had the 9/11 commission in order to create an end to it, like “See people, this is what happened, you believe otherwise, you’re nuts. And that’s that.”

Well, it’s 12:50, and I’m not saying anything important, but then again I don’t ever. BUT, usually I am not rambling as badly as I am now. So. Spore beckons.

And I almost forgot.

I just realized that the incidences of depression in people taking felbatol were much higher than other drugs.

I’m trying to describe the differences of risk between felbatol and the placebo but I;m getting really confused..

Okay. I don’t know where I got 18 from but I guess I was looking at a different medication and drew it from there. Furhter investigation required.

However, as an add-on therapy, there were 8 instances of depression (out of 114 subjects). In the placebo, there were none (which honestly surprises me).

Now. Why is this so horrible?

Because, as I think I’ve said, I seem to be at a juncture where my choice lies between felbatol and zonegran. Zonegran made me miserable in the sense that I lived in a fog. It was as if my brain was dulled at all angles. So, I have the choice of being more depressed than usual and between taking zonegran whihc makes me stupid.

Researching this bit into felbatol, I found an article: Suicide Risk from 11 Epilepsy Drugs (http://www.rxlist.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=86873)

The 11 medications that they quote (from the FDA) as increasing a suicide risk (minimal) are as follows: carbamazepine (Carbatrol, Equetro, Tegretol/XR), felbatol, neurontin, lamictal, keppra, trileptal, lyrica, gabitril, topamax, depakote, and zonegran.

For shits and giggles, lets go through this list and see what I’ve taken and what it did to me – or didn’t do. Unfortunately, my mom has most of this information because i jsut don’t remember. This was in high school, and those were the most intensive years as to changing medications often because they didn’t work or had unbearable side effects.

Carbamazepine. I took this in the Tegretol form, and I took it for a long time. I think that I took Depakote and Tegretol together. I think. What did it do to me… I honestly don’t remember.

Felbatol. My current situation.

Neurontin. I took this, but I don’t remember why it didn’t work. Maybe it did, and it was just a side effect issue.

Lamictal. HAH! I have been on this for so long! Including right now. Holy fuck. First of all, I find this unbelievable because lamictal is often prescribed to bipolar people. And it has an incidence of an increased risk of suicide? Incredible! I’ve been on this for at least 8 years. …Truly, it’s a wonder drug in seizure control…..

Keppra. Aha! I know why i’m not taking this anymore. And that is because I was talking to my mom about Keppra, and it’s manufacturers (UCB), earlier this very day. It wasn’t strong enough. To quote my mom: “We blew through that in about a week, it did nothing for you.”

Trileptal. I think this is one of the very few that I haven’t tried. I think.

Lyrica. This is a really new drug, and I remember being so excited when it came out. For naught. It wouldn’t help my type of seizures. My dad takes it for his diabetic nerve pain.

Gabitril. I definitely took this. I have no idea what went wrong.

Topamax. Took this for at least a few months, in addition to depakote at some point. Don’t remember what happened.

Depakote. Oh, I remember this. This made me sleep for two years of my life. My schedule would be as follows: Wake up in the morning (be dragged out of bed by my mom or sister). Go to school. Attempt to stay awake in class. Sleep in nurse’s office during gym, studies, and lunch. Sleep through Bioethics. Go home. Go to sleep on blue leather couch with dog. My mom would wake me up for dinner. After dinner: Go to bed. Repeat the next day.

Zonegran. It worked, but I switched to felbatol because I felt as if I was so fogged down.

But, all in all, the most memorable anticonvulsant I’ve ever been on is Zarontin. This one was special. It made me believe – feel – that there were bugs in my hair. I washed and washed it. My sister picked through it to attempt to assure me that there was nothing there. But I felt them. I also had no balance. This ended in hospitalization. How did this happen? Well, at this point, we had all been through quite a few anticonvulsants. Before one would be discarded as not working, the dose would be upped. And upped. And upped. Zarontin wasn’t working, and we were really running out of options. This was upped.. and upped.. and upped. Annnnnd I went toxic from this.

It was at this point when I sort of had two neurologists. My first one, who was specifically pediatric neurology, who now only deals with ADD/ADHD, referred me to the other one when the pediatric guy was out of ideas. I remember them arguing bitterly about this incident in the hospital hallway. The non pediatric guy said something to insinuate that I liked being in the hospital. What the fuck? Are you kidding me? Whereupon, pediatric guy went off the deep end and no-holds-barred blamed him for my being there.

Why, out of all possible memories, do I remember this? The fact that someone would think that being in the hospital is something I enjoyed is so incredibly insulting. I heard him say it. I’ll never forget it.

A worst day ever.

Today was a really bad day.

Its one thing to realize that you are failing and watch yourself deteriorate, but it’s another thing entirely to have other people realize it too. I had my work evaluation today. I usually only received very good’s and outstandings. This year, I received… acceptable. Which is totally unacceptable.

And very upsetting. I wish that things didn’t happen this way. I feel like I’m losing my mind. Haven’t heard back from Alper’s office yet. I want to get this taken care of very soon. As in, like, tomorrow.

During my evaluation I just burst into tears and started sobbing, literally. God. In retrospect I realize that a lot of what I said did not make any sense whatsoever. I attempted to tell them about the biological cycle of depression but it didn’t come across very well. I’m not sure what to do. Do I email them apologizing? Sweep it under the rug? The reason why I’m concerned is because I don’t want them to think that it was some sort of sympathy thing; I was attempting to explain why there were such strange gaps in my work performance this year. And failed.

What makes it completely, utterly worse is that I honestly have nobody to talk about it with. Sanjay just doesn’t understand. It’s like lacks any kind of empathy. I told him that I felt like I was losing my mind and memory, and he asked me what about mnemomics and something else (I don’t remember).

Mnemonics won’t help you when you don’t realize you are forgetting something. Besides, what I was looking for was comfort. I have repeatedlly told him that I don’t want him to offer suggestions or try to fix things, because the suggestions that he gives are really insulting. I feel like he really minimized what has been happening to me by suggesting that mnemomics would fix it. It shows such a lack of understanding. I have begged him and begged him to just understand but the only thing he does is try to fix it. He CANT fix it, and just fuck! He doesn’t ask questions if he doesn’t understand what I mean.

My mom.. she is helpful. At least she listens. My sister.. well, she’s in North Carolina. Kelly was busy tonight – I wanted to hang out with her – and there was no way in hell i was going to interrupt her plans.

All of this leads me to going into near hysterics in front of people I don’t know very well, certainly not well enough to be spilling all of this out. What interest do they actually have? If someone started blathering on to me about this kind of thing, that I didnt know very well… well, I don’t know what I’d think.

I called my (normal) shrink for an appointment. He hasn’t called back, and he usually does in the same day. I’m starting to wonder if the whole putting me off for two weeks was an attempt to not get me to come back anymore, because during our sessions I seem completely normal.

Sigh.

leave of absence?

God, life sucks. As in, very badly.

THings are very circular for me right now, this horrible cycle. I have no motivation. I don’t do things that I need to do regularly:

-Feed my fish. They get fed maybe every other day.
-Refill fish tanks from the water that evaporates during the week. Sunday is usually Fish Day where I refill, shake the ickies that sometimes accumulate on the plants, etc.
-Take my medicine. Generally does not happen on the weekends. Fortunatley at work I have a set routine. I go into work, take everything, and an alarm on my computer tells me to take my 1:30 dose of felbatol. But the weekend… forget about it.
-Clean.
-Shower. I maybe take a shower once a week nowadays.
-Brush my teeth.

All of these things happen because I am very unhappy. I continue to do these things because I am very unhappy, and this prevents me from being happy. My lack of medication on the weekends generaly causes me to be more prone to or have a seizure on Monday. Big seizures, in general, trigger another severe bout of depression because of where my seizures, at least originate from. The seat of depression and the focal point of my seizures are in the same lobe of the brain. I have a large electrical disruption, and this causes a disruption in the release and capture of serotonin.

My depression is the result of my job. God, I hate it. It is so fucking boring. Every day I go in and am ready to kill myself. I make no money at it.

I am trying to put in applications to teach, but I just can’t get it together. It just seems too hard, needing too much drive. The applications are ridiculously easy, though. Fuck.

If I don’t get my applications in, this will cause further depression as I will be mired at the same job for even longer.

I should call for my transcripts tomorrow.

Due to all of this, I’m thinking about a leave of absence from work, which I am entitled to under the FMLA. I would hopefully get many things taken care of. The rise in seizures and memory issues is due to my depression because of my lack of adherence to my medication. So that’s what I really need to get fixed. Not sure whether it’d be inpatient or outpatient.

Because I have no motivation and I hate to talk about health stuff at work, my mom is calling NYU for me and seeing if Alper 1) takes my insurance 2) would be willing to negotiate a lesser price due to my very small income. I guess I’d go in for evaluation and it would be determined what the best cause of action for me would be.

I hate my therapist. Not Alper. The one that I supposedly see every week. He has no time for me, but I knew this going in. He squeezes me in when there are cancellations. But I cant do that. It’s not enough. It’s been two weeks. LAst time we sppent most of the time arguing about the nature of anger. I don’t think he gets how depressed I am. the problem is, since he’s new, we got mired down in talking about my family and haven’t been talking about the immediate issues. I wonder if he is under the impression that nothing is reallly wrong and is brushing me off.

My sister is coming to stay with me for Thanksgiving. My apartment is a real mess. I intended to clean over the weekend, but it didnt happen. I just couldn’t do it. I considered calling a cleaning service but that seemed very expensive. So, my place is going to be messy and my sister is going to help me clean on Wednesday night.

Another thing that makes me more depressed is playing video games. I’ve been playing a lot of Spore recently. Generally using the computer in general makes me more dperessed.

Oh, life.

Warm ups

Tonight I am going to write at least one rough draft for my various applications.

I’ve decided that a half hour of writing about the topics I intend to address in the statement is a good use of my time. This way, I’ll be all ready to write yet won’t waste a half hour trying to start writing. So.

Why do I want to teach? Why do I want to teach in a high-need school?

I’m tired of doing meaningless shit at work. Who does it benefit? What am I contributing? Sure, I’m helping to give a rather defunct company good representation. And everyone deserves a good defense. But, come on. Asbestos litigation is such a machine. I am not *really* doing anything that benefits anyone. One could argue that I help the plaintiffs when I process settlements, and that when I reject one for processing that I am saving the company money that they can give to someone who is very sick. No.

I want to do something that benefits society at large. And what better way to do that than to help the next generation? Especially the underclass. Studies show that the economic divide grows every year. And generally, those who are poor are black or new immigrants to the US. The government has already shown that they view black people as worthless. As it stands, they have such stereotypes to go up against. The stereotypes may be true for some people – no matter who you’re stereotyping, there are some people in a group who fit the category to the T. But the government is also perpetuating that stereotype by having such an abysmal education system.

Back to what I’m  supposed to write about. Yes, we have one of the worst public education systems in industrialized countries. Asia is going to take us over (my bets are on China, although I used to think Japan) because they value education. One guy that I was emailing about teaching in Korea was telling me how different it was to teach in Korea rather than the US because teachers are actually respected. Imagine that!

So, the economic divide between the rich and poor is continually widening. You can argue that the recession will help since it’ll make more rich white people less rich. But it hurts everyone, so I’m not really sure it’s an accurate statement.

Okay, keep on topic now. I want to teach in a high need school because in a situation where there is great need, there is the opportunity to make the greatest impact. As I’ve said, black people have been thrown away by the government. That’s not fair. It’s not right that in cities and poor places that the only good education to be had is at either private schools or public schools. And, in NYC, how you are assigned to a public school is very iffy. For the younger grades, for elementary school, it depends on where you live. But once you hit high school, it’s a lottery. There are some good public high schools – but not nearly as many good public high schools are there are crappy ones.

Teenagers have such problems, too. Laura teaches, and used to teach in NYC. Her kids were so bad. There was such a range of problems. You had kids who were so short, seemingly stunted from a diet that lacked proper nutrients when they were growing. Kids in gangs, dealing drugs. Kids with such behavioral problems. Girls who were pregnant! My god. Homes in which kids were severely beaten.

On the other hand, you had the kids who wanted to succeed, but were hampered by the resources offered them. I remember my sister telling me about this one boy whose family emigrated from Haiti. He was brilliant. He wanted to be a doctor.

And then there were the kids who just didn’t care. Laura used to tell me about all the phone calls home she used to make to their parents, or whoever was their legal guardian. The parents worked, and worked, and worked. They would be pissed off if their kid didn’t turn in homework or did something really horrible (but, if it’s really horrible, then it’d be the dean’s office that dealt with them). Sometimes she would hesitate to make a phone call since she felt as if the kid would be beaten. Or didn’t show up for class. It’s not the parents that are encouraging a lackadaisical attitude towards school. If not them, then who? Is it just because the parents aren’t around because they work so much? Is it society? But how is it cool to do nothing with your life? Hmm. I wonder what the correlation between a bad schoolwork ethic and gangs are, and the correlation between gangs and parent/guardian presence.

So why on earth would I want to take on these kids? Because I want to teach high school. Everyone wants to teach kids when theyre cute and in elementary school. But these kids have such problem, it seems as if everyone, especially the federal government, has given up on them. Granted, there are programs, like paying kids some amount of money for good grades (a program that didn’t encourage kids to get better grades, it was recently shown, but hey, they tried. Well, try something else now.). But there’s nothing for high schoolers like Head Start. How can a high schooler get into a gifted & talented school if they lack the education yet possess the innate intelligence? I mean, once you have a  shitty education, youre done for. But I don’t think these kids should be thrown away, first because they are human, also because the creation of an underclass is extremely detrimental to democracy. If this trend continues, then we will have an even larger group of people who are disenfranchised. Look at it this way: what do people who the system has failed – what reason do they have to take an interest in the system?

Plus, I’m tired of pushing papers and doing useless shit. I was such an idealist in college it was rather sickening. I’ve always wanted to “do something.” Well, fuck. This is a way for me to “do something” and have it actually make a difference. Where there is great need, even the smallest bit of help can alleviate that need (have I said that?)

Hmm. Covered why i want to teach/high need. Strengths, skills, qualities.

I like to thinnk that I possess fortitude/perserverance (ha), where did my list go…. okay, other skills/traits/strengths/qualities include empathy, good planning and organizational skills, comfortable speaking in front of a crowd, creative, able to look at things from many angles.

Now, I have to provide an example for this, so I will chooooooooseeee…… organizational skills, because that’s easiest, blah blah blah, organized the Washinngton crap at work as well as the attorneys who worked on it, kept track of all the data, blah blah blah. Creativity – relevant so I can prepare lessons that aren’t boring and present material in a way that will hopefully keep kids’ attention.. able to look at things at many angles – able to see things from the student’s point of view (although i may not necessarily act on their point of view – homework is hommework), and being able to see thingns from many angles will encourage more conversation about history/social studies as I won’t shut down their ideas/thoughts if they aren’t the norm. Unless they can’t provide a good reason for thinnking what they are, I mean, any thhought is legit when it comes to academia if you can give substance as to why you are thinking that way. Um. Strength, which (heh, play the epilepsy card) will assist me in dealing with potentially rambunctious kids.

Okay. That’s a good warmup! I have to rememebr to do this when I start writing other personal statements; this certainly greased the wheel.

A good shrink is hard to come by, and other healthcare woes.

Why is it so damn hard to find a good shrink?

The one I have now is fine. He’s nothing fabulous or anything. We spent most of the session last time arguing over the nature of anger and whether or not it constituted an own emotion on its own.

That is NOT a good use of my time.

Plus, he has no appointments in the next two weeks. I only get an appointment when he has extra time. And this is NOT a time in my life where I caan go several weeks without therapy.

God.

A good psychaitrist is even harder to find. Forget that I’d prefer a woman.

The open enrollment period for benefits is coming up. We’re losing Oxford and instead are getting BCBS. Shoot me now. Oxford’s copays for specialists were $20. For the cheaper BCBS plans, it’s $45.. unless I want to shell out $160 every month so I only pay $25 or something for a specialist.

Life is unfair in the respect. The only doctors I see are specialists: neurologists, psychologists. Yet they don’t count!

i’m not making you read this.

I’m not making you read this. Remember that.

I realized a few days ago that all I seemed to do was bitch and moan to Mister Friend. I felt bad, because I have been doing a TON of bitching lately. So, rather than continue to make him miserable by telling him about my misery, I decided that I needed another outlet. I had several choices. I could keep a journal by hand, but whenever I’ve started that I’ve always become frustrated because I think much faster than I write. Forutnately, I type much faster than I write. But the problem with keeping a journal in wordpad is that it wasn’t cathartic at all. I wasn’t talking to anyone. Nobody was listening.

I can justify writing a blog because who knows, I might be telling someone something. There’s no way to be sure.  But, it sure is better than keeping a stupidass wordpad journal or something.

So. Why am I miserable? Fortunately, amazingly, right now, at this very moment – I am not! I am not happy, either, but I am not UNhappy, and that is very rare. I’m not going to ruin the mood by blathering on about my misery.