Another week of progress and challenges. I started back to work on Thursday, telecommuting from home. Two days of work wasn't too much of a stretch but it will be interesting to see how I handle a full week. Anyhow it felt nice to start to get hooked back into what is happening at work.

Saturday night Bonnie and I attended a neighborhood dance at our Walnut Knolls park. I really enjoyed dancing again. I think I surprised Bonnie with how many dances I had the energy for. I know I surprised myself! It was great watching Bonnie dance. She dances with such joy and exuberance and her distinctive style brings back many happy memories from the earliest days of our relationship.

I found out at the dance that one of our friends from our Knolls' neighborhood was recently told she had melanoma. I vividly remember how scary the news that I had cancer was for me, so I found a chance to talk with her and passed along some of the advice that I was given early on. It's amazing and depressing how many members this 'club' has.

I thought I only had one potentially addictive drug with withdrawl potential to deal with, but I found out it's actually two! Thursday night I couldn't get to sleep and I had the same sort of restless twitchy feelings that I had when we forgot to replace my pain patches and I started opiate withdrawl, but this time I wasn't due for patch replacement for another day. After a couple of hours I decided to take half an Ativan (one of the meds I'm still on) and about 30 minutes later I finally got to sleep.

The next day Bonnie suggested that the Ativan might have something to do with my 'withdrawl' symptoms and that reminded me that Glen had expressed his concern that I was still taking Ativan a few days earlier. I did some research on the net and found out that the Ativan that I was prescribed to help with the worst days after my treatment had the potential to cause withdrawl even while I was still taking it due to my body developing a tolerance for it. I also found out it had the potential to be very addictive and could be very challenging to quit!

It also can cause depression, and I have been struggling with depression off and on for a couple of months. I thought that being depressed wasn't too unexpected given all I was going through and the impact on my life, but when I had a bout of depression shortly after getting the good news about my PET scan, it just didn't feel right. I had been taking 0.5mg each morning and afternoon for months. I didn't really think about it. It was just part of my medication routine.

Friday night I had the same symptoms at bedtime and decided to try to not take any Ativan. Finally at 4am I gave up and took 0.5mg and got some sleep. Over the weekend I stopped taking it during the daytime without any problems and took about 0.25mg at bedtime, which has worked out OK. I can't cut back more with any accuracy since I'm using a pill cutter on 1mg pills. I emailed one of my doctors over the weekend to inquire about following the treatment I found on the web developed by a British doc, where Valium slowly replaces the Ativan and then the Valium is cut back slowly to zero. I hope to hear back from her tomorrow.

All in all, I felt better this week than last. And I haven't been depressed since I read that the Ativan is probably the cause. So although I keep getting surprised by new challenges, I do feel I am making progress. Now, if I could just regain the ability to eat spicy food!