Dance junkie, new meds, joy

I received and Xbox and all the toys to play Dance Dance Revolution for my birthday from Doug, Raven, and Derek. While I'll never be anywhere near on par with the Japanese 6 year olds that can rock out on it, I'm still having and aching-legged-don't-know-when-to-quit blast at it.

I went to a long overdue doctor's appointment Wednesday. My Doctor is incredibly cool, and actually really listens to me. I think, if he were not my Dr. he'd be a cool person to know -- actually I'm sure he and my husband would get along remarkably well. Regardless, I rarely have good news coming back from appointment. Since I've mostly kicked the smoking habit since my last physical, it's time to start seriously looking at weight loss. Keeping up the cardio wit DDR would be good, but I have to adjust my diet (moderately high cholesterol) and my blood pressure (a tad high). However before those things can be addressed we have to rule out that I don't have a sleeping disorder (which would affect the blood pressure) and before I have to do the whole sleep-study thing, I am on allergy meds for a month to see if that works, instead. I've got some kind of pressure back around the eustacian tubes that's making my ears itch like crazy.

Oh, and he prescribed Cymbalta for me because apparently, big suprise here folks, I'm clinically depressed and have been for some time. I'm not sure how I feel about really accepting that -- but it finally came down to survival, and I had to address it because I simply was not functional. It'll take a month to fully work, if it does, so maybe there will be a remarkable difference. Maybe not. If it does, then I start looking for a counselor. I hope that I can find a way around being permanently medicated (particularly since I'd have to come off to have kids and nurse). I'm suprised at his choice of meds, though, Cymbalta is a seritonin AND norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. Seritonin is a mood hormone but norepinephrine is a pain regulating hormone. The shorts story is sometimes nerves tell the brain that they're in pain even when there's no actual stimuli for pain. Maybe the lining of the nerve has worn away from malnutriton (poor circulation of blood and lymph) and a condition occurs call neuropathy. This happens to many diabetics. This med is also approved to treat neuropathy. Hrmph. The web site says it's for the general aches and pains that often accompany depression (which makes sense, even though I'd never put them together) -- the only thing is that I don't like to take any kind of painkiller if I can help it at all. But I'm willing to try it -- could link back to the sleep thing -- it may help me sleep better which is overall better for my physical and mental health.

I do know that I wrote my first poems in a long time yesterday, even though they sucked. Part of me has avoided this for a long, long, time because I was afraid I'd lose my creativity. Then, I'd become so bad, that I lost all my creativity and passion except for the occasional outburst. Hell, I wasn't even enjoying food anymore -- that's when I knew it was bad. But wouldn't it be funny if I got it all back and the thing that I though spawned a lot of my creativity was exactly the thing that stymied it?

Just a thought. An experiment. Oh, and the allergy meds -- I hadn't realized it, but my sense of smell had diminished a lot. I smelled the outdoors yesterday and was ready to get drunk on it. Even if I don't totally approve, they're working. I just need to see if I can find an effective holistic approach down the road some.

Okay, enough boring medical bullcrap. Here's a really cute picture of Jonas, Angie's kid. I think this photo just captures joy as it should be.