The Ziprasidone Chronicles,  Day 2.

Less manic today, slept fine, awoke 4:19 with severe case of the chills, but otherwise proceeding with normal meds and morning routine.

Afraid to go out, will wait to drive to town when Doris returns home from Wells.  Have driven twice now, from CVS to home, and from Hannaford to home.  Medication runs.

Had crazy idea to re-publish my memoir and add updates to life story to cover the last 3 years, including advancing to Stage 4 CKD.  Read some lengthy emailed articles from DaVita about life on peritoneal dialysis.  

They send me emails about three times a week, with various articles about CKD and life on dialysis.  Made me paranoid that they were being sent by my nephrologist, since the last time I saw him a couple of weeks ago he tried to encourage me to at least consider treatment in the future by peritoneal dialysis.  

Treatment options whirling around in my head, can't imagine reaching ESRD and what that will be like.  Just seems like a huge aircraft carrier is approaching my dying body on the pier and I have to somehow survive it's landing.  

It is something I can't face now, even though I am always trying to face that possibility.  Felt guilty because I drank a 2nd cup of coffee about 9:30 because the house is cold.  It is cloudy this week in Maine, and cold enough to cause me to wonder about venturing upstairs to the storage area to find the old corduroys.

I miss Doris when she teaches all day, and I get very lonely like I did for the past 19 or 20 years of being on Social Security Disability Insurance.  Just this past Wednesday I received my last SSDI payment, and I am now officially drawing Social Security income from the normal retirement trust fund now that I have reached age 66.

I sure don't feel any different, except I am trying the new medicine ziprasidone.  I am still on the old medicine risperidone (4 mg daily) and going slow with the ziprasidone (40 mg daily) for now.

Titration they call it, with breast feeding they call it weaning.  My doctor will slowly add the new, and slowly reduce the old, with the proper pace based on my feedback and ability to regain some functioning.  I am supposed to drive and walk or exercise a little each day, and then slowly increase my activity levels.  Sounds like a fair deal, and I have succeeded for two days, but I am unsure when driving and the anemia from CKD combined with the lethargy and apathy of my head disease make me just sit her calmly and type.  I am weak, and it is about lunch time, so I will eat and sleep and see how energy levels are then.  

And so it goes.