I’ve had one of those lost days today, where forces conspire to make me unable to go to work or do just about anything else. Someone I talk to regularly will often remark, “Well, it’s nice that you get to stay home.” No, it is not. If I had a job that absolutely demanded I show up for work every day barring a life-threatening emergency, I probably would not be at that job very long.

Today, I will blame the medication that my nephrologist prescribed me to deal with the itching from the presumed poison ivy I’ve had for the last eight or nine days. It’s supposed to have less of a sedating effect than benedryl, but I think the last thing I need in conjunction with all of my other meds is something with any sort of sedating effect. So, I will officially blame the poison ivy for this lost day. However, I’m sure that it’s really the overwhelming nature of everything else that just caused me to be immobile and non-functioning earlier.

This “poison ivy” is a bit odd in that it started out as a few mosquito-bite-like hives. My scratching seemed to make it spread and resemble more of the blotchy red spots that resemble a poison ivy reaction, and that happened over several days. It doesn’t seem like poison ivy should get worse after a week. I think I was too late in getting Tecnu last night; that seems like it’s for use right after exposure. A tube of Benedryl ointment didn’t do much good a couple of days ago. From past experience, most topical anti-itch treatment provide about 5-10 minutes of relief. So that brings me back to these pills–hyrdroxyzine hcl.

Hydroxyzine is used for the short-term treatment of nervousness and tension that may occur with certain mental/mood disorders (e.g., anxiety, dementia)

Great…

It is also used to treat itching from allergies and other causes (e.g., reactions to certain drugs).

Gee, I love meds that are used for preventing both anxiety and itching.

Meanwhile, there’s been bulldozer activity across the alley all day. If bulldozers beep when they are backing up, and one is beeping about 50% of the time, won’t people become desensitized to that beeping and not be any more careful when they are hear it as opposed to when they don’t?

So it’s been a bad day to be stuck at home. And I really have been stuck. I went out briefly to get lunch and contemplated a half-day of working, but I found myself overcome by lethargy.

I am upset about this day, because I simply cannot afford to have lost days. Already, three days a week seem like half-lost days due to dialysis, and try to work around those and still get work done. Tuesday and Thursdays need to be my power-days.

To make matters worse, my morning consisted of excessive dreaming, but mostly variations of the dream where I haven’t gone to class all semester. I recall saying to someone in one of the dreams, “But wait, I already have my degree. Can’t I just go to the registrar and ask to withdraw from these classes? Otherwise, my GPA is going to get destroyed?” But this realization seemed to take forever to come. Until then, I just had this enormous sense of dread since I had not been able to go to class all semester, and now the semester was almost over, and I was going to fail every class. Apparently, hyroxyzine hcl does not work in dreams.

Until today, I was struggling not to have this be a lost week. I was having a productive work week, though I was sleeping at dialysis. Dialysis has been terrible, actually, but I’ve given up, for now, in looking into other options, since the other options aren’t likely to improve matters much.

It’s no consolation that the weekend is almost here again. To me, a weekend is simply a couple of days during which I have more time to think. More time to think means depression is inevitable.