Day 51: Antidepressants: Grateful Ladies, Cymbalta, & Muscadines

TODAY'S INSPIRATION

A friend is one

who believes in you when

you have ceased

to believe in yourself

--Anonymous

Inspirational Song

I'm Yours

Jason Mraz

Climbing Out of Depression

Thank you to everyone who reached out to me during my dark time. It really means more to me than you can realize. I hate that I have these periods. But I do.

I did see my doctor for a physical on Thursday and he is switching my antidepressant from Lexapro to Cymbalta. I go through a transitional phase for 10 days before I get on the full Cymbalta dose. Then I'll see my doctor again in 6 weeks to see how it's going. I feel hopeful.

My doctor is also checking my hormone levels (more my mom's idea than his).

My blood pressure was 118/84 (85 on the bottom is prehypertension so we're watching that) and my weight was--get this--one pound less than last year's physical. Yeesh.

Getting Old
I must be getting old because at my physical I had my first EKG (normal) and my first lung X-ray (normal). Plus, I am definitely noticing vision changes. . . but not enough to get new glasses yet.

But after being around 8 older women on Sat at my mom's, getting old doesn't seem too bad. One of Mom's friends there was 80 and she was in ripping good shape. Nicely dressed, spry, carrying in folding chairs from the back of her Grand Marquis.

Serving Others

Mom asked me to come help her make her table look nice for a luncheon for her friends. She really has no business hosting a luncheon for 10. She can't afford it and it's too much on her. She has a lot of pain and recent reduced mobility from osteoarthritis and spinal stenosis plus fibromyalgia. But she worked for 2 weeks ahead and I took off Friday to help her select the right tablecloth, set up the card table, clean off her buffet, and select and place dishes (we had to mix and match) and place decorations. And of course we had to cook.

We kept it simple, but not lite. We served 3 kinds of olives, a modified Casear salad (added grape tomatoes and a bit of crumbled bacon), a brunch artichoke casserole (from Southern Living), and pesto, goat cheese, and sun dried tomato quiche. Another woman brought a 3 bean salad and another brought grape salad (grapes with a sweetened sour cream mixture and covered in crushed pecans).

For dessert (I stayed out of this) Mom served 3 homemade cakes: upside down peach pecan, blueberry peach pound cake, and peach pound cake; 2 kinds of ice cream: vanilla and mint chocolate chip; and home made whipped cream.

We served sweet tea and unsweetened tea both with slices of lemon and oranges (the women oohed and aahed over those!).

Lucky for me my sweet niece came and helped me serve and clean. And you'd have thought we gave those ladies $1000 each--they were so grateful and thanked us over and over. Some of them even clapped for us! I can't imagine a daughter who would say no to helping her mom on such a request, but I guess it's done. Sad. It was easy happiness making.

More Southern Comforts

While Mom & I were out we stopped at a roadside stand and I bought muscadines and scuppernongs. Do you know them?

They are like the Southern versions of a concord grape. But they are larger and the skin is tougher and they aren't sold still on the stem. The muscadines are the darker ones. They have unusual and deliciously sweet insides.

The best part of being a mom's is often getting up earlier than her and going into her room and crawling in bed next to her. Her skin is always warm and soft. She looks smaller and smaller to me under the blankets. She can drive me crazy, she can get me down with her negativity, but NO ONE loves me like my Mama and no one knows me like she does. We always laugh. I always sleep more soundly at Mama's.

The best part of coming home was this morning with Yeats. It was my day to get up with her (that was not the best part) and it wasn't yet light out. So after she'd come back in, I turned on soft lights in the family room and turned the radio on NPR and laid on the couch, hoping to get some more snooze time.

Yeats took a running start and LEAPT on my side. All 50 lbs of her. OOMPH. I pulled her off me and she turned to come back up and swooshed a piece of newspaper off the coffee table with her tail.

Then, she leapt on me again, this time putting her feet on the back of couch and barking--startled by the noise that SHE had made herself! Silly dog.

Tomorrow it's back to work, back to counting calories, and backing out of this dark state--at least for this month, I hope.

Thank you all again, my friends.