Month: March 2015

Experiencing side effects of new a drug

On By Michel McDonaldIn HealthLeave a comment

Hydroxyzine

I’ve been having trouble sleeping for a long time. Sleeping pills are useless because I’ll take them at 11pm or Midnight and I’m still up until 3 to 5am, and even then I’m still not tired. I blogged about my chronic insomnia the other day, well, I hadn’t started taking the new meds yet, and now I have.

So this is what it says on Google…

image

The doctor prescribed this medication to me because it is non-addictive. I have allergies, but this is not why I am taking it, but perhaps it will help where the claritin hasn’t helped. I am taking this for insomnia, but it doesn’t say that in this description, but it does say one of the possible side effects is Somnolence, which I am definitely experiencing, so if he gave it to me for that side effect to help me sleep, then it’s working.

I’m sorry, but let’s be real with one another right now. I’m having trouble concentrating. I’ve hit the backspace button about 100 times already deleting whole sentences and paragraphs because I just can’t seem to word anything right, or correctly, or… ugh… I find that I am typing, then I stop and stare at the monitor for a few minutes trying to think of what next to say, but it’s like I’m lost, like what am I doing right now? It took me like 10 minutes to even start the first sentence. Another side effect? I’ve been walking at a snails pace throughout the house like I’m doped up. I was watching The Originals on the CW and was falling asleep throughout. It’s a good thing I recorded it on the DVR because I’ll definitely have to watch it again when I can stay awake.

I haven’t been experiencing headaches, but one feels like it is coming on. One other thing I’ve been experiencing is pain in my arms and shoulder. I’ve had this pain caused from the way I sit while playing video games with my PS4 game controller, but the pain hasn’t been bothering me until now, and now it seems like it has been intensified.

So the side effects are somnolence, dizziness, existing pain being intensified, and I feel drugged up. I’m sure the side effects will start to subside when I am more used to taking this medication.

Honestly my brain is dead right now and I don’t even know what else to write so tootles!

Chronic Insomnia

On By Michel McDonaldIn Health1 Comment

WWS-Insomnia

I don’t know why, but I have suffered from chronic insomnia for at least 21 years. When I was in the hospital way back in 1994 with Pneumocystis pneumonia, I wasn’t taking any HIV medications. The doctor’s told me that I didn’t need to take any medication, so I didn’t take any until I was in the hospital. After I got out of the hospital, I started going to a HIV clinic in downtown Los Angeles. The medication was fine, but I started noticing that I couldn’t sleep very well at night, so when I was at one of my appointments, the doctor asked if I was having trouble sleeping and asked if I wanted sleeping pills, so I said yes.

The doctor gave me a medicine called Trazodone which I took for several years until one morning I woke up with an erection, which is usually common with men, but the erection would not go away. After several hours I decided it was time to visit the emergency room, and they had to inject something into my ass to make the erection go away. It was so embarrassing having to go to the emergency room, and the doctors snickering and gathering around me to look at my erection added to the embarrassment. I told my doctor about it and he told me to stop taking it, but didn’t give me a new prescription, and I was having trouble sleeping again, so I took it once more and it happened again and I had to go back to the emergency room. After that I tossed them in the trash.

After Trazodone, the doctor gave me Ambien which was a miracle for a very long time, but then gradually it stopped working for me. I was on Ambien for too many years, and I think my body built up a tolerance, so I would take it and it would be like 3am and I was still awake. I started eating when I took it, like a banana or toast or something, and that worked for a long time, but eventually that stopped working as well. Last year my insurance stopped paying for Ambien, so the pharmacy didn’t include it with the rest of my medication without any explanation. I assumed the new doctor didn’t want me to take it, but I found out it was the insurance company.

Last month I told the new doctor about my insomnia and the first thing he suggested was Trazodone, which I had to tell him that that medication is not good for me. He gave me Amitriptyline which he said was Elavil. My partner used to take Elavil and that stuff was potent. I would take it, but it would leave me groggy in the morning. He only gave me 25mg and they were tiny green pills as opposed to the big red pills that my partner used to get, but the Elavil 25mg tabs didn’t do a damn thing for me. I took that all month long and I was still awake until 3, 4 or 5am.

We just went to the doctor again yesterday and he gave me something else called Hydroxyzine. I told him about the depression and the anxiety caused from the flashbacks of my childhood and he said this should help out with my PTSD, but as far as it being a sleeping pill, it doesn’t work. It is a antihistamine, so that’s why he gave it to me. I’m supposed to take this one every 6 hours, which is odd, but whatever. I took it last night and was up until 5am and I ended up drinking some Zzzquil to help me get to sleep. I use that out of desperation.

Today I’ve slept the entire day away.  I don’t know if it was because of the Zzzquil or if it was that combined with the new medicine, but I just did not want to wake up. I woke up several times, got on the computer, took the dog out, but then went back to bed. As soon as I finish writing, reading and editing this, I’m thinking I’m just going to go back to bed. I hope I can sleep until morning.

I just hope that I can find something that will help me sleep because I absolutely hate staying awake so late and waking up around noon or 2pm. Although, I think in the summer it might be to my advantage because I can just sleep the heat of the day away.

Minecraft Pyramid

On By Michel McDonaldIn Games, Minecraft, PS42 Comments

pyramid

I recently blogged about finding my old home in Minecraft. Well, near that old home is a NPC village which is right next to a desert. I wanted to build something that you would normally see in a desert, but wasn’t quite sure what to build. I heard someone say something about Egypt on TV, so that brought my mind to Pyramids, so that’s what I started to build.

This pyramid has taken at least more than a week to build. There was a sand mountain in the spot where I built my pyramid that I basically had to demolish while I was building the pyramid around it. The reason I chose this location was because it was right next to the NPC village, and I could use the material from the mountain to build the pyramid. First you have to turn 4 blocks of sand into 1 block of sandstone. To make the stairs you need 6 blocks of sandstone just to make 4 stairs. There is a specific block that I like to use called Chiseled sandstone that has a Minecraft logo on it. I use that for the floors and for the middle of the walls throughout the pyramid. I use the chiseled sandstone for the floors because the regular sandstone looks dirty on the bottom, and you don’t want a dirty ceiling. The chiseled sandstone is clean on the top and bottom.

Pyramid walls

I found a video on YouTube of a person who was showing off a game generated pyramid (from a mod) where it has mazes and a treasure room at the top, so that gives me an idea of what to put inside the pyramid. At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, because I’m not that creative, but I found a website that generates random labyrinth’s, so I will use that as a guide for each floor. The labyrinth’s have long hallways and rooms and dead ends. It’s similar to a maze, but with rooms.

mazeHere is just an example of how the labyrinth will look. I think it will be very neat to build. It would be neat if people could actually come visit my pyramid and walk through my labyrinth. I’m sure it will take me another month just to gather the material (mining sand and sandstone) to build the labyrinth on all 6 floors. There will be 7 floors, but the very top floor will most likely be a treasure room since it’s going to be very small. Of course, that requires treasure, of which I am very limited lol. I guess I could add some emeralds, gold and iron ingots and some food. I don’t really have anyone who will visit my world who would benefit from it.

Well, hopefully it won’t take me too much longer to finish this. This is the biggest building project I’ve worked on so far. I’ve actually gotten kind of bored with it because it’s such a huge job. I find myself falling asleep while my fingers are pressing the button to mine the sand and end up going deeper than I wanted.

I will post a video when I am finished with the labyrinth, but in the meantime, here is a video I made a couple of days ago before I finished the outside of the pyramid.