Not right now.

A few weeks ago, I stopped swallowing a pill I had been taking daily for nearly two years.

While it may balance out emotions and sooth fears, it also raises blood glucose which leads to a whole other kind of imbalance of emotions and fears.

It does more harm than good.

The first couple weeks without it found me in a rough spot emotionally and physically, not a great place to be when starting a new job. The next couple weeks found me dealing with unusual bouts of insomnia (related? unrelated? who knows?) as I began to step up workouts with WildFit. The past few days have been pretty darn good, with better sleep in hand.

It turns out that blood glucose averages dropped dramatically over the past six weeks, from inching towards a 7% A1C to the current corresponding 5.7% according to this chart. Certainly some of that has to do with the increased exercise and more mindful eating, but even before I began doing those things, I saw 7- and 14-day averages on the meter that blew the 30-day averages to pieces.*

I did this on my own.

Because of starting the new job and the schedule of the psychiatrist, I could not see her at the point where I knew I wanted to stop. Just to see, just to take a look at how blood glucose would do without that daily happy pill, just to prove to the endocrinologist I could try.

There were scary moments. I felt dizzy for a solid two weeks, falling and tripping more than I would like to admit, punctuated by a spill that left me scraped up and bruised as I stepped off the bus with arms full of groceries. I cried and cried over all the lost sleep while on the telephone with my mother, though usually by the time we hung up, I was laughing or at least smiling.

I am not going back, not for awhile.

I think I can manage emotions with this diet and exercise plan, just as I do diabetes. And I know that summer is kind to me with the absence of seasonal depression, but what about after that?

Wait! You know what, there is enough for me to worry about without planning out when I might need the SSRI again. If absolutely necessary, there is fast-action, as-needed anti-anxiety medication. I can continue seeing the psychiatrist without being prescribed daily medication. And that is exactly the action plan I will present when I finally see her again in a couple weeks.

I feel strong. I hope this moment lasts and lasts (though I will keep in the back of my mind the notion that it is not my fault if it does not).

(*which begs the question – could the insomnia, and perhaps the dizziness, been a result of a significant drop in average blood glucose, even if the fasting blood glucose rose due to said insomnia? Nearly 40 points in six weeks? Hmmm…)