There is hope. And weird jewelry. But mostly hope.

Well, I think the doctor visit was a success. He seemed to actually really listen to what I was saying, and talked with me about some options we have. I think what's going to end up happening is me being referred to someone for a complete psychiatric profile (which might be useful, this has never been done). Apparently it takes around 8 hours, joy.

I was feeling downcast at the prospect of having to go to yet more doctors before getting any sort of relief, but then he gave me a prescription for a drug to try. It's called Prazosin (brand name: Minipress), and it was apparently originally designed to treat high blood pressure. When they did a study involving vets with PTSD, they noticed that the drug made the vets' anxiety far less and their nightmares diminish or go away entirely.

THIS IS HELLA PROMISING, Y'ALL.

I am to try 1mg of this in the evenings and see what happens. Hopefully it will help me! Apparently the side effects mostly include lightheadedness when standing up quickly and nasal congestion, of all things. I can deal with a little snot, and I already have the lightheadedness, so that will be nothing new. We may up the dose a bit, depending on what it does at this level. I think 10mg is usually what people end up at, but it may take less to have an effect on me. He did say that I could up it to 2mg myself if I didn't notice anything with 1mg.

He wanted me to write out my life story (sort of a summary) in 10 pages or so, including some of the nightmare details, so that he could evaluate better how I am to be treated. This makes sense to me, since a lot of what I have to tell won't fit into a standard doctor appointment. It just takes too long to say all of it. I was going through old blog entries looking for examples of nightmares and filled up 5 pages just with nightmares from 2006-two months' worth of 2008, sigh. And that's not even taking all of them! Just the ones that seemed like they might be useful.

I meant to mail it to myself so I could keep working on it at home tonight, but sadly I forgot to do the emailing part, so there it sits at work. I'll finish it tomorrow and mail it off. He really seemed to wonder if there was some sort of traumatic event in my past or something, since what I deal with seems in many ways like PTSD, but there just isn't... I have a relentlessly normal and healthy family. Anyway, I'll explain what I can. Hopefully it's good for something.

Thank you all so much for your kind comments. I am lucky to have family, friends, and readers such as yourselves! <3

In other news, I ordered a killer necklace to go with my dress! I was going for creepy gothic since, after all, this is Mina Harker we're talking about here, not Elizabeth Bennet. I think this necklace, from the Ruin of Spider Queen collection by Suppurate System (out of Japan), does the trick:

Delightfully creepy!

This being Japanese, of course there is some fabulous Engrish to go along with it:
It is the cross necklace which imagined the burying article of the queen who manages the spider beyond a century. The corroded jewelry is embedded in the center of the cross of a wood base, and a spider nestles up. 

I think it's splendid. Just the essence of creepy gothic-ness that I wanted. It is 10cm by 5.5cm, so it will accessorize my décolletage nicely without being oversized or minuscule. And you get a nifty postcard! I love freebies. Especially interesting ones that have the possibility of being framed on a wall later.

Total credit to RW for pointing me in this direction. That was a good idea you had, lady!