I woke up, for the third or fourth time, at 8am on last Wednesday (fifth day on the Citalopram) and felt pelted with exhaustion. Getting out of bed wasn’t too difficult, but once I was up, showered, dressed and performing my morning ritual of “sit on the couch until I feel awake enough to greet the world”, I was ready to sleep again.

I mean really ready to sleep. I was dozing off sitting on the couch, too tired to make myself anything to eat. Dave, #1 husband that he is, made me an egg muffin sandwich and I proceeded to sit and stare at it.

Normally I would bike into work or bike or walk to the shuttle that picks up a mile away in downtown Mountain View, but I wasn’t feeling up to it and I learned a long time ago that if I make things too complicated in order to do the “right” thing, sometimes that thing doesn’t get done at all. So I drove.

I also went back up to 20mg of Citalopram (Celexa). I felt calmer about it this time and it must have paid off because, besides a little gastrointestinal (GI) discomfort, I felt terrific. Well, not normal person terrific, just the “I’ve been freaked out for days and now I’m back to my normal level of anxiety, which feels normal to me” kind of terrific. And that GI discomfort? P-shaw! It’s nothing compared to the Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) symptoms I’ve had since I was a teenager. I’m hoping less anxiety = no IBS.

After day five I continued to wake up once or twice in the night, feeling like something was wrong with me or feeling worried spontaneously. For the past couple nights I’ve been happy with waking only once during the night. It’s been a restful change of pace.

I have been yawning a lot and feeling drowsy during the day, but I can’t say that that’s unusual for me so I’m not sure if I’d call it a side-effect. Plus, my job can be pretty mundane so it’s to be expected that I’ll need to get up from my desk once in a while and possibly inject myself with a little caffeine.

Now I guess I just sit back and wait for a few more weeks to see if it works.