A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late November, 2000
Wednesday, November 22, 2000
7 PM. Soon after 9 PM, I fell into a delicious, dream-filled sleep that lasted eight hours. It was the best night I had in nearly two weeks.
Listening to the news this morning, I heard that the Florida Supreme Court ruled last night that the recounts must be finished by Sunday at 5 PM. That looked like a victory for Gore, but in Miami-Dade County they stopped the recount, saying there wasn’t enough time.
Bush filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Cheney had a mild heart attack (reported only after they’d put a stent in to unblock an artery).
Meanwhile, with car sales slumping and the Nasdaq tumbling, it looks more and more like a recession will start next year. And Israel and the Arabs seem close to war again.
Gore should just happily hand over the presidency to Bush. The good times of the Clinton era are ending.
While eating breakfast, I began to feel nauseated but soon realized it was from panic or anxiety. An hour later, I felt good enough to exercise and go to school. My ASU classes went well as I basically taught out of the text, ad-libbing where possible.
Home at noon, I missed another phone call from Alice – and by the time I called, she must have already left for Boston to spend the holiday there with Peter.
I spoke to Sat Darshan, who wasn’t sure when they would let her office shut down early for the day. She still has hopes that Gore will pull off the election. His popular vote lead has increased to about 320,000.
I got to Dr. Mitchell’s office at 1:30 PM for my 2 PM appointment, but he still had not seen his 1 PM appointment and the other patients told me he always runs very late.
So I went home and came back at 2:40 PM, but he didn’t take me till 3:15 PM. On the other hand, he kept me till 4:40 PM.
Dr. Mitchell is a grey-bearded crackpot, but I like him. He has definite ideas about nutrition and says I need fewer carbs and more fat, thinks soy is unsafe to eat and that caffeine is fine for me once I find the level I’m comfortable with.
He also said I need to find the level of Paxil that works. It’s possible I get the jitters because 20 mg. is too much for me. Dr. Mitchell said to stop taking it at night because it may be causing insomnia.
He gave me a sample of 30 mg. of Paxil and said I might want to experiment with cutting it in half and just taking 15 mg.
Dr. Mitchell said it’s possible that I need only 10 mg. because as a panic disorder person, I may need very little of the drug to keep me from being depressed and not so much that I get the jitters.
He also prescribed something to help me sleep. I picked up that prescription, trazodone, at Albertsons tonight, but I want to check the drug out on the Internet before I take it. He warned me that it could cause priapism in one out of a thousand cases.
Dr. Mitchell has a Ph.D. in chemistry, which is probably more typical of a psychiatrist in 2000 than it used to be.
We’ve come a far away from Dr. Lipton, with whom I had my first appointment the day after Thanksgiving in 1966, 34 years ago.
After all, Dr. Lipton got his M.D. from NYU in 1918 or something, and in the 1960s, when the Freudian model overshadowed everything else, almost nothing was known about brain chemistry.
What I like about Dr. Mitchell is his eccentricity. He told me anyone who thought less of me because I was gay was “definitely mentally ill.”
I liked that his question to me was “How many books have you written?” and not “Have you written any books?”
He also told me that he considered my two wisdom tooth extractions as surgery.
I didn’t always follow his logic, especially when he spoke about chemistry, but I found him fascinating. I’ll see him again in four weeks.
I got stuck in really bad Thanksgiving Eve rush hour traffic even though Dr. Mitchell’s office is so close to my house that I probably could have walked home in twenty minutes.
I took 10 mg. of Paxil with dinner and then went out to buy a clip lamp at Target (one of mine has broken) and pick up the prescription I’d brought in earlier at Albertsons.
It’s a mild evening, and of course with Thanksgiving tomorrow, it really feels like the holidays. I’ve spent the last couple of Christmases here in the Valley, so it seems familiar.
Since I started feeling a bit better, I’m also more positive about living in Arizona. Maybe I’ll enjoy my graduate classes at ASU next term. We’ll see.
I got a phone message from a Mesa Community College English professor who needs to observe me teaching my class – but he said he’ll be out of town next week.
Thursday, November 23, 2000
6 PM. I just returned from Thanksgiving dinner with my family.
I arrived early this afternoon and sat around the kitchen table with my parents and watched as Mom cooked lasagna, a new kind that bakes and does not need to be pre-boiled.
She was afraid that she screwed it up (she neglected to read the instructions), but it was fine, as were the candied sweet potatoes and the mixed vegetables.
The others had a Cabernet Sauvignon they found too dry – usually they drink a cheaper wine – while I stuck to caffeine-free diet soda.
Since nobody else was about to do it, I said I was thankful we’re all together and “that none of us is dead” – including China and the bunny.
It hasn’t been the greatest year, but Marc did get out of his mandatory 24 hours in jail for his DUI this morning. He was alone in the cell most of the night, and it was cold and he couldn’t sleep and the blanket they gave him made him itch. It must have been pretty horrible.
When Marc said they’d asked him if he ever tried to commit suicide, I said, “I was asked that yesterday, too.” (I responded by telling Dr. Mitchell, “Not yet, but today might be the day.”) They took Marc’s belt away even though he said no.
As for me, I felt better once I got to my parents’ house In Apache Junction. Before that, I wasn’t doing that great.
The drug Dr. Mitchell gave me to help me sleep is the antidepressant trazodone (Desyrel), which also blocks the reuptake of serotonin but works on another receptor as well.
I was a bit afraid of the side effects, and perhaps it made me a little queasy. In any case, it did not help me sleep and I was up nearly all night, sleeping only a little from 9 PM to 10:30 PM and from about 2 AM to 3:30 AM.
I had a dream and awoke with a strong erection, and for a little while I was panicked about priapism, but I needn’t have worried. Still, I felt relieved when it finally went down.
Maybe I need more than 50 mg. of the drug to make me drowsy. Dr. Mitchell said some people need much larger doses.
Also, I took only 10 mg. of Paxil last night when my body was used to getting 20 mg. each night.
After 3:30 AM, I didn’t get back to sleep and I was palm-sweaty and a little trembly. It’s hard to know how to separate my anxiety from the depression to the anxiety caused by Paxil’s serotonin effects.
All morning I was jittery and didn’t feel very well, but I did exercise and I spent an hour catching up with my email to friends like Teresa, Tom and Mark Bernstein. I also looked for information on trazodone.
By 11 AM, I felt I had to take an Ativan even though I don’t know if I should have, given the other drugs in my system.
I don’t like being a human pharmacy, but I guess that I will need to take drugs for a while. And of course I relied on Triavil all those years, so it’s not as if I’m new to the idea that I need an antidepressant to keep me on an even keel.
But I just wish I could find the level of the drugs where I felt better. I guess I have to be patient.
Marc said he never had any side effects from Paxil but also never got any positive effects until he got up to 30 mg. on the fourth week of treatment. But Marc is nowhere as sensitive to caffeine as I am.
After dinner in Apache Junction, we watched tapes of Politically Incorrect – some of which I’d seen because I’m usually awake at midnight with ABC on.
It was just about becoming nighttime as I drove home on the Superstition Freeway, though there was a hint of red off by the mountains to the south. Arizona really is beautiful.
Jonathan had gone to the Botanic Gardens today and came back at 4 PM. Since he is a member, he was able to give me passes to the gardens and the zoo.
Last Thanksgiving I had a frozen dinner by myself in Davie, but I didn’t really mind. Still, I guess by now I accept that Phoenix is home. I’ve been here continuously for over four months.
I shouldn’t blame Arizona for my depression. The stress of the move and the changes in my life triggered it, but it could have happened elsewhere.
Wednesday, November 29, 2000
8 PM. I guess a day when my worst physical complaint is my tendonitis can’t be too bad. Since I wore those new shoes last Friday, I’ve been having some pain, but today is the worst.
It’s possible my orthotics have worn down and need to be altered or replaced. More expenses! But I’m not going to worry about it now.
After awakening at 2 AM, I don’t think I ever got back to sleep, and I sort of felt a little of that depressed feeling in the pit of my stomach. But maybe I’m looking too hard for it.
Today I was hardly jittery at all. Sat Darshan and I spoke several times. Last night her father got worse, and his blood sugar is up to 400. If the insulin doesn’t kick in, he’s not going to make it. Because his quality of life is so bad, Sat Darshan has signed a form so that he won’t be taken to a hospital.
Still, Sat Darshan said, “I don’t think I’m prepared for him to die.”
“You can never be prepared for that,” I told her.
It’s odd that Sat Darshan’s father and Josh’s mother both seem close to death at the same time. I can’t imagine two children who are more devoted to their ailing elderly parents than Sat Darshan and Josh.
It’s hard to hope that two old people who have been having such a horrible day-to-day existence pull through, but for my friends’ sake, I hope they do.
I got to school at 8:30 AM and had my students do their peer evaluations as I commented on some of their essays.
I’ve made attendance on Friday optional for those who want conferences; I told the others that I would send them comments if they email me their essays,
I’m going to do peer review tomorrow with the MCC class. Although they think they’re handing in their final drafts, I’m going to have them review their papers first.
When I’m observed at MCC next Tuesday, I will have a workshop with their essays. (I made one copy of four different essays.)
I don’t give a shit about my adjunct work. I might have avoided this depression if I tried to do something else for a living or just remained on unemployment insurance.
Of course, I’m always aware that my students shouldn’t suffer because of my attitude, so I try to help the ones who want help. I’ll go out of my way for those people, but not for most of my students, who don’t give a shit, either.
Back home at noon, I was walking to the mailbox when I saw the cat and got her (I think it’s a her) to follow me into the house, which she loved.
Then we went outside into the little patio in the back and I brought her food and water. But after I had lunch, I let her back in the house although that could have been a mistake.
Keeping the door open certainly was, because tonight I found my first giant cockroach. (Do they call them palmetto bugs here?)
I don’t know if this cat has fleas or ticks, but I didn’t like when she got under my bed. It was hard to get her outside again.
It hit 76° today so I stayed out, too, reading the Times for a couple of hours. The cat stayed near me and finally jumped into my lap and began licking my hand and arm the way China sometimes does. I petted her, and she closed her eyes, looking relaxed.
It’s probably good therapy for me to be close to some mammal, feeling her heartbeat. But at 4:30 PM, I lured her outside with a little ice cream.
Both Mom and Sat Darshan have suggested that I adopt the cat, but I don’t think I want to make a commitment just now. We’ll see if she comes back. Tomorrow I’ll be out a lot and I don’t really want her in the house.
It would be nice to sleep better tonight, but I wasn’t tired during the day today and somehow I’ll get through tomorrow.
This is the last week of my full load of eight different classes.
Thursday, November 30, 2000
2 PM. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish writing this with the cat here. She might jump on the bed – oh, she just did, but I got her to go away and just lie nearby for a while.
Tonight I have my Arizona Media Law class, and I’m a little nervous about getting through it.
The cat keeps trying to get the pen away from me, so I’ve moved to the table where she can’t reach it. I just hope she doesn’t have ticks or I’m in big trouble.
Right now I’m very gassy and not feeling too well. I just had a little diarrhea (sort of), so I took an anti-diarrheal pill after calling the Albertsons pharmacist, who told me it should not be a problem mixed with my prescriptions.
Last night I woke up again around 1:30 AM and was unable to get back to sleep. Worse, that depressed-anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach seems like it’s coming back, though it tends to go away after a while.
This morning I had my English 101 students at MCC pair up and do peer review of their essays. A lot of the students came to class late today. I told them I’ll be observed and evaluated on Tuesday and asked them to please come on time then.
After class, I xeroxed three papers for our writing workshop next week. Now that the revised papers are due next Thursday, I won’t have to grade papers this weekend.
John told me that the faculty associates at ASU aren’t notified about teaching in the spring until January – at least that was his experience last year. As I told Susan at our 11 AM appointment, I don’t really care if ASU’s Writing Program wants me back.
Susan said she can get a few more appointments out of my HMO – so I’ve got one for next week. Seeing a psychologist has made me feel better because I have someone to talk to about my treatment.
Susan said she is glad I found Dr. Mitchell okay because some of her clients hated him. I told her that basically he seemed to leave my dosage up to me, but I will call him if I decide to stop taking the trazodone.
Susan gave me suggestions for books on relaxation techniques and guided visualizations on tape. Those sound like good ideas to deal with the kind of shakiness and sweatiness I’m dealing with right now.
I’ve just taken a few deep breaths – another of Susan’s suggestions – which probably can help as well.
I haven’t done much today, and my foot still hurts. I’ve read only a little of today’s New York Times.
Feeling drowsy after lunch, I lay down for about 90 minutes. The cat lay next to me. I told Susan about the cat and my other efforts to connect with life here in Arizona.
Sat Darshan and I spoke briefly. She had become quite ill during the night. Apparently, she’s got a bad sinus infection and is constantly spewing out green stuff. She told me she was leaving work early to pick up two prescriptions her doctor phoned in.
Because she felt so ill, Sat Darshan wasn’t going to the nursing home today. Her father survived the night and his blood sugar came down, but he’s having trouble breathing. At a hospital, they probably could help him more, of course, but Sat Darshan doesn’t want him to go to one.
Anyway, I’m going to stop here and try to relax before class.
I guess I’m concerned about slipping back, but I’m under treatment now and I think I may be starting to respond to the Paxil, though the side effects are not pleasant.
We just have to find the right medication at a dosage that will work for me. I need to have faith that we will.