Marching on

A little premature, that title, but it's almost March. March is not my favorite month, normally, but like last year Rocket Boy is going to try to be here for most of it, so that's got me in a good mood. A tentative good mood, perhaps I should say. His boss, who is retiring, wrote a letter to the incoming boss saying that RB should be approved to telework more extensively, one month in St. Louis and one month in Boulder -- starting April 1st! So next week RB is going to try to get that corrected to March 1st (he actually doesn't plan to get here until March 7th or 8th). Oh, sigh, what a pain if he can't come until April. He'd miss the twins' birthday, Spring Break... I'm not going to think about it. Whatever will happen, will happen. It will be OK.

The twins are turning 14, and I always get a little stressed about their birthday, but this year I'm not really feeling it. (In fact, it would be a good idea if I got a little more stressed, so that I would remember to go shopping!) Unlike last year, we can probably plan some sort of little party for each of them -- a movie date with friends, mini golf, something like that. And Rocket Boy will be here (we hope) to make it all happen.

We survived our deep freeze this past week. I'm not sure how low it got officially, but it was -8 on our front porch on Tuesday morning and -10 on Wednesday, and both days the high was less than 10. That's too cold for me -- I didn't go out and shovel or go for a walk, and I drove the twins to the bus stop both days (I made them walk home in the afternoon, when it was, you know, 7 or so). Unfortunately our neighbor with the snowblower decided it was too cold for him to do the walks, but we didn't really get that much snow, only about 5 inches over three days, and it was that very dry, light snow that doesn't stick to anything. Now we're warming up and we have to dig the tramped-on snow off the sidewalk, but it's coming along. I'll go out and work on it some more later. 

One reason I didn't want to exert myself in the cold is that my cardiologist -- yes, I have a cardiologist now -- told me not to do anything majorly exhausting before my stress test, which is happening this coming week. I have a bunch of appointments this week: an eye exam tomorrow, the stress test Tuesday, and I'm getting a tooth pulled (to prepare for braces) on Wednesday. The eye exam is sounding almost fun compared to the other two. 

It occurred to me that I won't do well on the stress test if I'm completely out of shape, so yesterday I spent half an hour shoveling snow (with help from the kids, especially Teen A. We're supposed to have a whole week of warmer temps now, so maybe the enormous piles on our lawn will finally start to diminish.

I also took a very leisurely half-hour walk with Teen B and I'll take another this afternoon and one on Monday. I guess that's all I can do.

I'm also preparing for the stress test by NOT going off my blood pressure medicine, though I would like to. All week I've been having intense anxiety, which I think is due to the Lisinopril. My rule of thumb is that if a medicine has a possible mental side effect, I'll be sure to get it, and I seem to be getting this one. It's bad, because the anxiety is leading me to eat more, especially sweets and junk food, so I'm gaining weight and generally not feeling good (my blood sugar is probably too high, despite Metformin). I need to talk to my doctor about alternatives, but I thought I'd better not touch that until the stress test is over. I'm hoping the stress test will show a healthy heart, but we'll see.

All week I thought about how I might talk to my doctor about this, and I kept coming up against this question: how do you know your anxiety is caused by Lisinopril and not by, you know, just regular stuff? It's a fair question. I'm very anxious about what's happening in the world right now, especially Putin's invasion of Ukraine. 

But that's not really personal anxiety, and I can't think of anything in my life I should be anxious about. I was worried about seeing the cardiologist, but he was nice, and he doesn't really think there's anything wrong with me. We're doing the stress test because I have so many risk factors. I was worried about the storm, but that turned out OK too. It helped a lot that we didn't get a big dump of snow.

I looked up articles online about how to deal with anxiety -- because it would certainly be easier if I could deal with this side effect and not have to change medications. But most of the suggestions weren't too helpful. Exercise: yeah, not when it's 10 below. Write down your feelings: but I don't have any feelings about this. I'm not anxious about anything in particular, I'm just anxious. 

I found it very difficult to get through the days when the kids were at school. I was too anxious to do anything -- I couldn't even read. That's really saying something when I can't read. I finished a supernatural mystery on Tuesday and then couldn't get started on anything else until Friday evening. I wanted to read the book I've chosen to be my "biography" of James Garfield (our 20th president), Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard, but I couldn't get into it -- even though it's a great book, really interesting. Everything about it made me anxious. I was anxious about Garfield getting elected, dealing with Congress, getting shot... I was anxious about the murderer not paying his boardinghouse bills. Everything set me off.

This weekend, with the kids home, I've made progress on it, and in fact I'll probably finish it tonight -- if I can keep the anxiety at bay. But it's really hard. Not to mention ridiculous. Why should I care if the man who shot Garfield in 1881 paid his boardinghouse bill or not? Why is that a source of stress for me?

So, anyway, that's where things stand. Everything's just fine except that I'm losing my mind. But that's nothing new. Oh, and I can't stop eating. All I want to do is stuff my face -- very weird, considering I'm back on Metformin. Metformin makes it difficult to process a lot of food, so night after night I'm having trouble sleeping due to my stuffed stomach and have to take a lot of antacids. And then I want to eat more, and more and more. I'm thinking I really need to get off the Lisinopril.

The first week of March I've got a bunch of medical appointments, as I mentioned, and the last two parent-teacher conferences (we had seven this past week). I also will try to start my next book for the Classics Challenge -- have to request it from the library first. It would really help if I could get my anxiety under control first, but we'll see. I'll try to work on the twins' birthday and prepare for Rocket Boy's visit and work on the taxes. Ha. Well, I'll do what I can.