Didn’t I say in one of my previous posts before resuming nortriptyline that I’d try and figure out how to keep writing despite my drug-numbed creativity? I think I did. If not a post, then at least I tried to make that committment to myself.

Yet… here I am almost a week later and I haven’t written anything. Worse yet, I haven’t even thought of writing anything. And, again, in other respects I’m more productive and functional than I am without this particular drug. I clean! I cook! I can focus at work!

I saw my doctor last week. While it was for HRT/hormone related business, we ended up tweaking my headache meds to.

The short of it: I’m quitting HRT for now. Main reason: my insurance won’t cover anymore patches and I don’t want to go back to injections and pills are not advisable bc of my fatty liver. So I’m off of spiro (and back onto finesteride to ensure that I keep all my hair). Of course… my insurance doesn’t cover finesteride so I have to pay out of pocket for that. Which sucks and I could probably fight with my insurance company over it, I just…. don’t have the energy. Especially not when I (for the first time in many years) can actually afford to pay for it (no abusing my ‘begging for money’ privilege!).

I’m currently wearing my last patch now. So. Come wednesday, we are going to see a resurgence of testosterone to my system. That’ll be interesting. I really really hope that I don’t break out. My skin has been so much clearer on estrogen than T. Its one of my favourite things. Then again… I’ll be back to having easy orgasms and that’s cool. It’ll also be a test to see how my body hair is after all the lasering I’ve done. Mood-wise, I don’t expect it to be all that different. I didn’t mark a real difference with estrogen.

Anyway. I told my doctor that gabapentin wasn’t doing much so I’d started nortriptyline again. He said, “why not both?” (insert gif of those guys from el dorado). So he up’ed my dose of gabapenting to 300mg. So for headaches, I’m taking 300mg of gabapenting three times a day (bleh) and 75mg of nortriptyline. I think by tomorrow I’ll be on the maximum so we’ll see how my headaches are then.

So far… I’ve had a headache pretty much every single day.

Honestly? I think a part of me wants them not to work so I can simply take fewer medications. The list I’m using right now seems absurd. Here’s the list:

• Fluvoxamine 100mg/day
• Bupropion xl 300mg/day
• Lorazepam SL 0.5mg (as needed)
• Fenofibrate 145mg/day
• nortriptyline 75mg/day
• gabapentin 3x300mg/day
• Cetirizine 10mg/day
• Ranitidine 75mg/day
• finesteride 1mg/day
• Pataday (as needed)
• Omnaris (daily)

If the headache meds don’t work, I can cut two out (I’m hoping that increasing my ssri dosage might yeild the same result as nortriptyline). But it really looks like I’m aiming for better living through chemistry. Lol.

I’m going to try a month on this regiment and see how it goes. If no real change to headaches (or the change isn’t substantive enough) I might just elect to deal with the pain.