Right there with you.
@mietze Meds might still help. Your neurochemistry is in overdrive which means it's either not producing/producing too much of what you need, and meds can temporarily assist with that. It's worth asking, and seeing as medications improve on a regular basis, your doctor may have something for you.
"If you stand for nothing Burr, what will you fall for?"
-- Hamilton: An American Musical
@Cupcake Seconding this. There are unexpected things that turn out to be surprisingly helpful. I take a generic cymbalta that is like a swiss army knife of helpful, and it made an enormous difference. (Depression, anxiety, and it helps with the chronic back pain, omg, yay team.) I didn't expect it to help as much as it did. I'm probably still alive because of it.
Right now, our insurance has been extended through the end of this month, and we're crossing our fingers I can get a refill before it does. (Weird timing on three month scrips and when you can refill them, augh.) We have refills left... but refills on insurance, $35; refills without? $850+. No way we could swing that, but. I mention this because: ask now if you can spare a moment to look into it.
@surreality said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
generic cymbalta
Have you checked GoodRx? I just looked on a whim for 180 60mg capsules it's anywhere from $30-40 with their coupons compared to $700 cash
Edit: I always check GoodRx for meds even with insurance. It doesn't apply to the deducatble if you use it but I've found that 3/4 the time it's cheaper to go with the GoodRx coupon than insurance.
@WildBaboons said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:
Edit: I always check GoodRx for meds even with insurance. It doesn't apply to the deducatble if you use it but I've found that 3/4 the time it's cheaper to go with the GoodRx coupon than insurance.
Seconded.
I have great insurance. But, y'know, fuck big pharm, get them dealz, homez.
@WildBaboons All the 
If it came to that, we were going to be looking there -- and it is so appreciated. Thank you. I'd been seeing their commercials and considering them with no small amount of interest.
We're hoping we can refill this before the insurance expires; when I had it month to month, I could only refill it up to two weeks early, but we're not sure if the three months at a time has the same window. (If it's 2 weeks, that'll be past the date our insurance may kerpoof, if it's different or scaled to the three months, it will be fine. Verrrrrrry narrow window in there and it's argh. It's like FOUR DAYS or something over if it's 2 weeks still, which is the most nnngh thing ever.)
On Friday, I spent the evening in the ER with probably the worst kind of chest pain I have experienced in my life (I actually was 90 percent sure that I was a goner). I did not have a heart attack or stroke, nor does it look like I had anything minor previously, and do not have the markers for a potential upcoming one, nor did I have an aortic dissection (what they were actually worried about) So that's good, ruled out all the Actual Emergency stuff. I do have a follow up appointment with cardiology though, and there were some other bloodwork results that were off that my primary care doctor wants to revisit (one of those things that could be an indicator of Bad Things or nothing) soon, especially since I have had such a pretty life-changing problem with severe fatigue over the last few months that I had thought was more psychological in origin (and it very well may be, though if that was a panic attack it's unlike any other I've experienced, I'm open to the idea that's all it was). It feels weird and fucked up to visit the hospital period right now, and even worse to take up time when what I experienced was not an emergency emergency, but I'm also kind of not looking forward to further visits in the hospital complex. Not that I would have enjoyed them BEFORE the age of Covid19, but. Also, I really wish that more people would listen to "Hey, I know I'm a bad stick, you might need to get your best vein-whisperer in here and/or the ultrasound attachment that lets you find/place IVs" before they'd ripped up both my arms. It's been 3 days and they're only now not aching.
But mostly I wish that this stupid ass fatigue would go away. I can be okay and then within 10 minutes once whatever that invisible limit is reached I literally feel like I have mere minutes to crawl into bed before I am out cold for awhile. It hasn't yet happened dangerously (at work, during driving where I'm more than 15 minutes from home, though it's started in both before). It's aggravating, I'm sad and worried about it of course, but I at least have Real Doctor visits set up now to find out more instead of just assuming it's just a part of stress I have to deal with.
@mietze Oh man this sounds scary. I hope the chest thing doesn't recur. Fingers crossed for you. 
The fatigue sounds similar to the fatigue I deal with when I'm in an "active" episode of my heart stuff, which is heavily exacerbated by stress. If they don't land on it naturally, bring up coronary artery spasms for your doctors to look into.
@mietze Could be your gall bladder. The pain it causes would normally be on the right side.
@mietze Seconding the 'please have them check your gall bladder' advice. Don't just worry if it's pain on the right; it is very easy for something to temporarily block and back up into the liver; doubly true if you get liver stones. (If you have mysteriously amazing cholesterol levels, you might have liver stones.) That'll show up as pain on the left, and it feels centered in the chest about on level with the back of the bottom left shoulder blade.
It rather feels like someone grabbed your innards and tried to turn them inside-out from mid-chest. It can go slow or fast -- so hours of throbbity ache hell, or sometimes a huge burst from out of nowhere of 'OMGWTF MY ENTRAILS WANT TO BE EXTRAILS' that's shorter lived but 'I can't breathe this suddenly hurts so badly and I'm dizzy and ready to faint' sudden onset.
If this sounds familiar, please please please have them check gall bladder and liver.
I hate being reminded of why I loathe going to a doctor that I don't know/didn't vet prior to going in.
But at least everything still looks good on the ekg/other tests, so that's something!
Making a post here... and immediately wanting to delete it because I feel it's overshare and my stomach just dropped to my feet in hindsight. Totally mentally healthy over here. Just don't pull back the curtain, right?
FWIW, my panic attacks were normal for 7 years before they began to involve crushing chest pain and shortness of breath. So it may just be that--but I'd still explore the options everyone is talking about.
It has been a brutal week, and it has been difficult to get through it.
I remind myself it's not over yet, and there's still a few days left to go.
I remind myself that everyone's weeks are somewhere on the continuum of 'sorta crap <-> completely devastating', and further remind myself that even when everything's pretty rosy out there, it's more likely that people will make cracks about how I should kill myself than anything else if I reach out to anyone.
And then I'll wonder if I should, because the point of being anywhere at all for any reason remains absent.
Now I'll shut up, because this is just like any other week, now that I think about it.
Oh fucking well.
@surreality Sounds like you need to find better people to reach out to, because anybody making cracks about that needs to be whacked upside the head. Hoping you find some support in these rough times.
Watching penguins cheers me up. Here's my favorite penguin web cam in case you like it too: Penguins
Ack. We put an offer in on a townhouse simply because both of us walked out going, "That would be the perfect place to raise kids."
(Money is a HUGE anxiety trigger for me, so I'm like, excuse me, I will just be over here hyperventilating. Thanks.)
I WANT to go learn how to do the day to day care of my quadriplegic older brother. I've wanted this for a while and stuff (like the pandemic gdi) keeps pushing it back. So I said, "fuck it, I am coming down this weekend because I have literally nothing better to do right now."
However. I do not wish to PACK for this.
I'm sitting here, writing a vision for our local area, asking people to believe we can build a community using a building our council have abandoned. This is a massive piece of work, unpaid and possibly to fail...
I finally have a copy of the first tabletop book I ever worked on. Here's a link to pics.
