Medication Mixup and Minimalist Memorabilia

Okay, so I’ve been having some bad days here in Berlin. Yesterday I broke down crying at the cafe, unable to think of what to write about, or else just unable to motivate, it’s hard to say. I felt like my brain was stuck in a pile of mud. I kept spacing out and feeling like I needed to lie down. Finally, I downed my coffee and we walked home, my husband just as exasperated as I was. Once there, he drew the curtains, turned on the fan, and let me decompress on the bed while he tried to continue working at the kitchen table. I watched 3 and a half hours of YouTube, and the time just flew by. I didn’t feel rested at all afterwards, just like I couldn’t keep up with life.

I’ve been stressed out by everything lately. Waking up, I’m dreading exercise. At the cafe, I’m stressed about the heat- it’s in the 90s today- and in the afternoon, I’m already stressed about the evening routine. Will I be able to concentrate enough to watch movies or TV? Will I eat the right foods for dinner? Will I be able to get through the time between dinner and my bedtime snack? Will I be able to fall asleep before the akathisia from my meds sets in? And then in the morning it all starts over again. My routine starts to close in on me sometimes and I feel like I’m just scraping by. Last night as I was trying to calm down and relax, I thought I’d take my bedtime anti-anxiety medication a bit early. I opened my pill case and looked for the little blue pill. I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. All these nights I’ve been struggling to fall asleep, struggling to stay asleep, and it never occurred to me that I might have forgotten that little blue pill.

I dole out my pills once a week into 3 pill cases: morning, afternoon, and bedtime. The bedtime pills and vitamins are quite a fistful, so it’s easy for me to overlook something like that. I’m very methodical in how I dole them out, opening each bottle and replacing it into the clear plastic zipper pouch in which I keep all the bottles. But putting anti-anxiety medication into the pill case is new (I used to just keep the bottle by the bed). I don’t remember doing it either time I filled the pills since being in Berlin, and I’m not even sure I did it with the original set of pills I left home with. That means that there have been at least two (maybe three) weeks with some days without any anti-anxiety medication, and other days where I only took it in the early hours of the morning to fall back asleep. And so I wonder how many of these “bad days” can be attributed to this little mixup. I’ve been on this medication for years now, taking it at bedtime for at least a year, so this could have really been throwing things out of whack. I’m hopeful that putting it back in will at least help make nighttime less stressful, if not help balance me out throughout the day.

And once again I’m reminded that just when you’re blaming yourself or your circumstances for your misery, it’s a good idea to check your meds. There are all kinds of symptoms of chemical problems that we really think must be behavioral. I was questioning my routine, questioning the timing of every little move I make, blaming my husband for “jinxing” me, and it never occurred to me that there might be a chemical problem.

The last time I had a medication-induced problem was when I was suffering from akathisia at night, after taking my Latuda. Experimentation proved that the horrible climbing-the-walls feeling of akathisia was indeed from the surge of Latuda soon after taking it. Now I take it right before bed (with the 350 calorie snack it requires). Problem solved.

Another example of this has to do with exercise. I still absolutely loathe exercising, despite having been doing it 6 days a week since the start of the year. My endurance seems to be at a standstill. Usually if I’m exercising regularly, I can run for at least a half hour at a stretch, and if I’m on the treadmill, I alternate between a slow speed of 4.3 and a high speed of 5.3. This regime seems so far away right now, despite my religious consistency with walking and running. Currently, I’m only doing 10 minutes of running and 10 minutes of walking on cardio days, and that seems a real struggle. I keep complaining to my husband about it, but I have yet to find a solution. And then the other day, he read an article in The New York Times that talked about Metformin and an experiment that suggested it might interfere with increasing aerobic endurance. I’m on Metformin, as a preventative for diabetes since my weight was so high. Now that I’m down 30 pounds, I might be able to come off of it, and that might solve this exercise problem. We shall see. All I’m saying is, when experiencing any symptoms, it’s worth checking your meds.

There have been random “good days” interspersed with the bad: two days ago we went to the Alte Nationalgalerie (an art museum). I was able to wander through the museum, walk the distance to “Museum Island” from the subway, and have a pleasant coffee in a secluded courtyard cafe on the way home. It’s the kind of day that makes you superstitious- what did I do today and how can I replicate it exactly so I will have another good day?

At the museum gift shop, we bought some souvenirs. Partly due to my minimalist tendencies and partly due to a lack of luggage space, we’ve rarely brought much home from Europe. I have a couple of pieces of jewelry and one dress from Paris, but our only other allowance for souvenirs has been postcards, especially postcards from art museums. They usually have postcards of memorable pieces at the gift shop, and it’s nice to have a picture of something beautiful or meaningful that we saw on our trip. A lot of minimalists shun souvenirs, and for the most part, I do too. But postcards are small, flat, easy to store or display, and inexpensive. My husband looks through the box of them every time he starts a new design for an opera set, and I like to keep a few on binder clips hung on nails in the wall in my office, swapping them out periodically. This time, we bought nine postcards, not for sending, just for us. Buying only postcards on trips is a good rule of thumb if you’re going minimalist but can’t let souvenirs go altogether. Personally, I need help remembering trips since my memory is pretty poor, but I still don’t want to clutter up our house with magnets and keychains and mini Eiffel Towers. Memorabilia and sentimental items are always the hardest to get rid of when you’re decluttering, so it’s best to nip the problem in the bud and just not buy the stuff. Or else keep it to small things, a small number of things, things that are extremely useful, or even better, just photos.