For Love

I've turned into an enormous green rage monster.

But don't worry.  It's totally normal (or something).  If you're going off of an SSRI.

Holy buckets, Batman, this week has been hard.

First off, everyone in our house, including my sweet husband, has been sick this week.  Me, both kids, and Landon (the sweetie-pie I get to watch three mornings a week)

This is like, the longest cold bug--EVER.  But this one took mom out for the count.  On day two of this beast, Peter took me to the clinic where we were blessed to find out I have a double ear infection and a sinus infection.  So 10 days of amoxicillin for me.  The kids got little more than a runny nose, thank goodness, but literally for the first few days all I wanted to do was sleep.  So I did.  Peter took a day off work so that he could stay home with our babies whilst I slept the hours away in a Nyquil-induced stupor.  Isn't he the best?!?  I mean, really!  He took time off of work to watch our kids

so that I could
just.
be.
sick.

And not have to be super-mom and sick at the same time.

I've come to appreciate my husband more and more with each passing year we've been married.  While so many other husbands would and do make up all kinds of (REALLY LEGIT) reasons not to stay home when their spouse is sick....my hubby and a least one other (hats off to YOU, Ryan!  You rock so hard for how you took care of your lady this week!) doesn't. They see a need.  They are capable of meeting that need.  So they meet it.  Simple as that.  Husbands...you could learn a thing or two from my man!  Suck it up and take care of your people.  Even if you work at church!  God first.  Family second.  Ministry....job...etc...third.  Okay, off the soap box.  I promise this post actually has to do with Hannah...even if it takes me down a few bleary-eyed and stumbling rabbit trails first.

Secondly, the week before I got sick I finished weaning off of my anti-depressant (prescribed after I had my little man for post partum depression).  I figured this would be pretty similar to all the other times I've weaned off of anti-depressants.  Yes, there have been  several.  But this particular anti-depressant was in a family of meds I'd never taken before.  A seratonin re-uptake inhibitor.  Apparently, this medication is made by the Devil himself.

Here are the side effects one might experience when one comes off of an SSRI:

Insomnia
Extreme fatigue
Severe stomach pains and cramping
Headaches (read, your head feels like it's going to explode)
Dizziness
Vertigo
Nausea
Vomiting
Numbness in fingers and arms
Blurred vision
Cognitive impairment (you get real stupid and drooley)
and Episodic rage  (see also, the enormous green rage monster thing)

Okay, so before I realized these things that were happening to me were caused by going off of my medication, I thought I was dying!  For real.  I thought this was it.  Jesus was taking me home via a brain aneurysm or something!  It was AWFUL!  Plus being sick on top of it!

I'm so glad I had enough brain cells at my disposal to Google "Going off an SSRI".  It calmed my panic over brain aneurysm.  Like, whew!  I'm not dying...I'm just going threw withdrawals   I do NOT envy drug addicts when they go off their drugs and try to get clean...because more than once I thought, "okay, I cannot handle this ...I'm going to go back on it.  This is crazy!"

And I very well may have.  If I hadn't had something so bright and promising waiting for me at the end of my withdrawal tunnel (or potentially waiting for me.)  See, China doesn't allow anyone who has taken anti-depressants two years prior to their trying to adopt to adopt from their country.  I'm off of it now... because I don't want anything as silly as me being on a medication for postpartum depression when I'm not even postpartum any more, be the reason we can't bring Hannah home.  I had talked to my nurse practitioner last fall about going off of it then because why stay on something when you don't need it, right?  But at her behest, I stayed on it until spring.  Man!  I wish I would have told her no...I wish I'd have gone off of it then!  Our chances of being able to adopt Hannah would be so much better now if I hadn't just rolled over and stayed on the meds an extra half a year.  But I'm off them now.  By the time Peter turns 29.5 next  year in February, I will have been off of the anti-depressant for nearly a year.  China requires two years "clean" but I've heard of families getting wavers for this!  If Hannah is mean to be ours, please, please, Lord...let there be a waiver in our future!

The moral of the story is this:  Fight like crazy for the one you love.  Do whatever it takes.  Take the vertigo, nausea, numbness and rage and remember, Jesus went through all that and horrors above and beyond what anyone can imagine for us...HIS beloved.  Hannah, you are our beloved...and I would go through the medication withdrawals every month for you.  You're worth my discomfort.  Your life is worth it.
















Oh the things we do for love