another article rejection

This time the article was rejected after it had been previously conditionally accepted. This particular beauty has been under review at this same journal since September 2005 and has already been revised twice. Now they reject it?!?

I sent my coauthor (A.K.A. my graduate advisor) the rejection message along with a long, convoluted email request for a “virtual latte.”

On a somewhat related note, at some point this summer, I was hoping to seek your opinion/guidance about how I should approach the job market next year. This has been on my mind for a while. I’d hoped to have a chance to talk at Big Biennial Research Conference, but it just didn’t work out, so then I thought I’d wait until after the wedding. No luck – this most recent rejection has made me think that I need to start discussing it sooner rather than later. I’m asking for your help because you’ve known me for a long time, and I trust that you can provide guidance with my best interests in mind.

My struggle to publish over the years now feels like the proverbial writing on the wall. I clearly am not cut out for this. Let’s face it… if I were a stock, shareholders would have dumped me for my disappointing performance long ago! My gut instinct is to try to return to my liberal arts roots after finishing my postdoc instead of trying for more research-oriented positions. Such repeated rejections have diminished my interest in research substantially (what’s the point of doing all this work if I can’t do it well enough to get somebody to care to publish it?). No matter how hard I work, I can’t seem to do research well enough to anticipate success in a research-oriented university of any level. Furthermore, I don’t want to play the social games that seem obligatory in order to get ahead in the field. I don’t think my research is better than anybody else’s or is going to change the world, and anybody would know I was lying if I tried to present it in those ways! I realize that the grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence, and that I haven’t always enjoyed all aspects of my teaching experiences. But such little payoff for all this hard, prolonged work on research is comparably far less enjoyable. All around, the liberal arts option is starting to feel like a better fit for my personality, worldview, neurological quirks, and Jan’s and my shared life goals.

Granted, things have been quite complicated lately because of the wedding and due to yet another medication change. I was entirely unprepared for how much extra work I have to do just to keep everything running smoothly with Hubby on the road M-F. Recently I’ve been totally worn out, the house would be a disaster if we didn’t have a cleaning service, and I know these extra personal responsibilities have affected my work. The most recent medication has helped, fortunately! A more prolific Addled is currently in the office, but it seems like way too little too late. I know I’m not at all competitive, and I don’t think I would be happy continuing with so much research after so many struggles and disappointments.

Alas I anticipate having extraordinarily little local support while seeking a new position in the coming year. In fact, I anticipate having so little support that I’ve tentatively planned to make a trip to Large Rural Alma Mater this fall to do a practice job talk to a trusted, familiar audience. Other job-seekers in my lab have received rather useless feedback on their practice job talks, mostly comments along the lines of “Make sure to use consistent colors in your slides’ figures!” This just another illustration of how my whole experience at Large Research University has been disappointing, disillusioning, and quite discouraging. It’s very clear to me that my current supervisor has been disappointed with aspects of my performance here (and granted, I haven’t told him about my ADD discovery or the ongoing struggle to find a medication that treats it properly without awful side effects). I’m very concerned about his letter of recommendation and the lack of mentoring I will receive throughout the process. I’m alarmed that most of my job-seeking colleagues have struggled to find outside employment following their time in this lab.

I know that going into this without confidence or a well-developed plan will help guarantee an undesirable employment outcome. I am very motivated to do whatever I can to get out of here and into the right sort of position for me. Part of my take on finding a job is getting experienced, trusted others’ feedback on what they think is going to be the right choice for me. Do you think that there might be a time this summer that you could please provide me with some, in order to help me start out back in the market on the right foot?

This email ended up becoming much longer than I intended, and for that I apologize profusely! All of this unleashed because of a simple rejection. I completely understand that it’s summer and that you’ll be extra busy for the next few months while you try to tie up loose ends at Large Rural Alma Mater and prepare to move to Large Rural Research University. I know that your primary obligation during this time is to your current students, research and grant collaborators, etc. Thus, please let me make explicit that I’m not asking for the level of help you provided when I was a student. I’m really just asking for your opinion on whether you think I’ve come to the right conclusion based on my evaluation of the evidence.

I had a reply and an invitation for a phone conference within minutes (my old grad advisor is a fantastic person and mentor in general, and I would have been surprised by anything other than that response). We’re chatting tomorrow at 1, between my meeting with my current boss and her meeting with a realtor. (I think I’ll go order her a bottle of wine by mail as a thank-you gift, before we even have the phone call…)

We’re also going to prepare a letter appealing the rejection. She and another faculty member from my old department at Large Rural Alma Mater think that at the very least we should get a 2nd review on the basis that the article had already been provisionally accepted.

Acknowledging that I think I want out of the research machine makes me feel strange. Part of me feels like I’m dying, but another part of me feels like I’m being set free from prison.

“interim” medication for the holiday weekend & beyond

On Thursday, I left a voicemail for my meds-shrink that probably sounded pretty pathetic. I told her about my struggles to get the prescription filled, and that I was truly close to the end of my rope at work. I mentioned that she didn’t need to call me back, that I’d keep her in the loop about developments, and if it didn’t come in on Saturday, I’d let her know because we’d need to make alternate arrangements. I *need* to be able to work.

On Friday, I met with my talky-shrink for the first time in three weeks and told her all about the medication-related stress. While I was in the office, she emailed and directly paged my meds-shrink (they know each other from med school and are a year apart in their residency programs in Psychiatry at our local Big University-Affiliated Research Hospital). Two hours later, talky-shrink (heretoforth referred to as “TS”) called me on my cell and told me she’d found meds-shrink (“MS”) at a lecture and impressed the urgency of my situation upon her. TS said MS would be calling me soon.

MS called an hour later, said that she’d write me a script for short-acting generic ritalin, and would drop it off for me at my pharmacy. She told me that she was writing the prescription for 15mg twice a day, but that she trusted me to fiddle with it until I found the right dose that lets me get work done. She knows I’m not going to abuse it and just want to be able to think. She clearly felt terrible that I’d gone another week twiddling my thumbs at the office just because my insurance company is stupid.

A few minutes after that call, I decided I’d had it at work for the day. I got in my car and did the grocery shopping at Whole Foods and Trader Joes (silly me thought that there would be no crowds at either store between 1.30 and 3 on a Friday before a holiday weekend!) I picked up some corn, some shrimp, hummus and chips, salsa, and fixings for greek tomato-cucumber salad.

The decision to just “take off” was probably the best decision I’ve made in a while. It felt great, and I was pretty de-stressed by the time I picked up my chipper hubby at the airport, despite sitting in traffic for about an hour on the way. He’s always happy to be back at home after a long week of work, and I try to keep things like heat and humidity from bugging me when we reunite on Friday evenings.

We saw and I waved to MS in the parking lot of our grocery store on the way in to pick up my new ritalin script. She forgot herself for a moment and called across the lot, “I dropped off your prescription for ritalin hours ago, so it should be ready! Give me a call if you have any problems!” This was a little bit embarassing, but it could have been worse if it had happened elsewhere. At least nobody I knew was in the lot! We were pleasantly surprised to learn that the copay on generic methylphenidate was only $10, which is far less than I was spending on strattera!!!

We mostly enjoyed our dinner, and watched the season finale of “Lost” together. We also installed our window air conditioners, which made our kitties ecstatically happy. They’d been miserable in the humidity, and had been seeking my comfort constantly (They’d hop on me like they were thinking, “Mama, I feel bad! Snuggle me and make me feel better! Wait, it’s too hot to snuggle you… leave me alone!” Kitty dashes away. Repeat every 15 minutes). My hubby stayed up late playing on his PS2 with a friend in the Heartland, and I crashed quickly in the coolness of our bedroom.

I started generic IR ritalin on Saturday, and overall I’m pretty satisfied thus far. I noticed a slight feeling of shakiness on Saturday an hour after I took it. It went away after I had a little snack. My appetite was less than it usually is when I’m non-medicated. I had a little bit of dizziness, but nothing terrible. I also felt a little sick yesterday when I took it then tried to work out before eating breakfast. Bad idea — 13 minutes on the elliptical left me wanting to vomit. I stopped and ate and it went away. I’m happy that there’s no wonky exhaustion when it wore off, and no feeling of being sped up. No overall sensation of being drunk at a dance club, which is definitely how Adderall made me feel. With ritalin, thus it’s more like being at a quiet bookstore, which is definitely a better fit for me. Long-term, this seems like it might be a better option. Easier to find, packs a smaller punch to the wallet, and just feels better in my system than the other options.

This morning, I stopped by the pharmacy that ordered my long-acting generic ritalin (Metadate) last week. They were supposed to call on Saturday when my prescription was filled. They never called on Saturday because the metadate they ordered for me never arrived. Rahul the pharmacist told me that they’ve now been billed for it and expect it today. He also said that he’d start doing some research into what long-acting types my insurance will pay for, as they are as frustrated as I am that the wait has been so long (the other pharmacist behind the counter made a snarky comment like “this is why we don’t like to place special orders!” but I determinedly ignored her).

I have an appointment with MS tomorrow, and depending upon what Rahul tells me this afternoon, I may just ask to stick with IR ritalin for a while. Enough is enough.
<later> Rahul just called… they didn’t get it in, but he called the manufacturer, and they guarantee that he’ll get it tomorrow. He said this is common whenever they order narcotics, and that if it doesn’t come in by 10.30 tomorrow morning, he can talk with MS about what they do regularly stock during our appointment a little while later.

Overall, I am continually amazed what a difference a little pill can make. Writing is going better provided that I work to minimize distractions. I feel a little edgy today, however, which I don’t really like. Maybe that’s just because I forgot that we have a lab research meeting in 45 minutes, and I’m not prepared!

meds delayed again

I have now gone a total of 15 days without strattera. I thought I would have my new prescription today, but the pharmacy just called and said that it didn’t arrive with today’s order. They’ve reordered it and should have it on Saturday. The irony of the situation doesn’t escape me: I know I need to be patient, but it’s really hard to do with (unmedicated) ADD!

The last time I tried a stimulant I took “holidays” on weekends, ergo, I won’t really need it until I’m back at work on Tuesday. I just need to make it though 2 more days of work this week. I have a med management appointment with my medshrink on Wednesday, and that’s not nearly enough time for me to figure out whether the new med is working well enough or not.

In other less-interesting but related news, last night I put away last week’s clean laundry, did 6 more loads of laundry and swapped out my seasonal clothes, all before “Lost” began at 9. My increased energy from not taking strattera for these past two weeks is paying dividends! Now if I could just conquer the piles of junk on my dresser and cedar chest…

I will post some thoughts about the season finale of “Lost” later….

it seemed like a good idea at the time

I noticed I had split ends within days of my last haircut, but have been obsessing about them for the last week or so. It’s gotten to the point that I trim them off at work because I hate noticing them out of the corner of my eye. They also tickle my neck, which drives me absolutely crazy. I’ve planned to wear my hair up for the wedding, but down as always at all other wedding events. Split ends do not look nice, and I was starting to be bothered by the fact that my hair would look like crap for most of the wedding events.

So last night I decided to take matters into my own hands and did a home treatment in order to fix, mask, or prevent the annoying things. I decided to follow a recipe I found on the internet (Mix 1 tsp honey with 2 Tbsp olive oil, then beat in 1 egg yolk. Massage on hair in small sections. Wrap head with shower cap for 30 minutes. Rinse and shampoo).

Being a thrify girl, I opted to save my olive oil for my cooking, and chose to use the end of a small bottle of lemon-infused safflower oil instead. I added 2 t of honey to the bottle, plopped the bottle into some hot water to soften the honey. I skipped the egg yolk, thinking that if I made a mistake it might be embarassing to explain to the plumber why our shower drain was clogged with cooked eggs. I used less than half of the mixture on my hair and let it sit for 30 minutes. My cats sniffed my hair a lot during this time, but didn’t try to eat it, per their usual nightly routine.

When 30 minutes was up, I rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed, but the sticky-slick mixture didn’t want to leave my tresses. I toweled my hair dry, only to notice that it looked like I’d never rinsed it at all. Two shampoos later, my hair still felt oily and I could still smell a little bit of lemon. I wrapped a towel around my pillow before going to bed, in the hopes that I wouldn’t ruin our brand-new pillowcases.

I took another shower and washed my hair for the 4th time in 24 hours this morning. Lo and behold, all the oil washed out this time around. I skipped conditioner, and was more careful with combing, blowdrying and curling. An inspection at the office revealed fewer noticible split ends but overall substantially duller color. So it did what it was supposed to, but still doesn’t seem to have done much good for my hair. I have a feeling that today will end up as a ponytail day after all!

40 more days until life returns to normal, and I will be able to cut my hair properly!

“The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.”

Henri Bergson (French Philosopher, 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1859-1941)

medication struggles, part ???

I found out late last week why the insurance company denied my claim for Concerta. It’s because I’m over the age of 18! They sent a fax about this to my medshrink, and I received a copy of the fax in the mail on Friday. They are only willing to pay for Adderall-XR (long-acting methamphetamine), Metadate ER, and Methylin ER (latter 2 are long-acting forms of ritalin), plus generic methylphenidate (generic short-acting ritalin). Great news: Everything but Adderall-XR will be $12/month, as they are generics! So, now it’s just a matter of getting my doc to call me back, me picking up the prescription, and then going through the whole verification rigamarole again. But, at least it looks like I’ll have meds tomorrow or Wednesday morning, which is a huge relief. I am tired of going off in a dozen different directions at once and not feeling like I can get anything done at work. I have a list of a jillion tasks, but anything involving more than a few steps and I feel like shutting down already.

When I was diagnosed about a year ago, I didn’t recall many symptoms of impulsivity or hyperactivity. Consequently, my formal diagnosis is “ADD — primarily inattentive.” I still don’t think I have enough impulsivity or hyperactivity to qualify as a “combined type,” but I’ve definitely noticed an increase in hyperactivity and impulsivity (or perhaps my forms of both) since going off strattera almost 2 weeks ago. I’m usually quite calm, but I found myself skipping around the apartment this past weekend. I also knitted virtually non-stop, and added about 3″ to the baby blanket I’m currently knitting. I’m really excited about having more energy, even if it is hyperactivity! I also just *feel* more impulsive and spontaneous, and am having to do a little bit of work to not act on these impulses. I’m also snackier. This makes me laugh, because the first thing I noticed when I initially started taking strattera last year was that I wasn’t snacky. Now I’m hungry all the time, and the timing couldn’t be worse! I never thought I had an impulsive/hyperactive vocabulary, but apparently I do, because it feels like my commend of the English language has returned.

I’ve read other ADDers’ writings about feeling more like themselves when they are off meds, and consequently some take drug holidays on the weekends. Perhaps I will do the same once I am back into a med routine, because I feel a lot better as my normal, silly, scattered self. To paraphrase Martha Stewart, “…this is a very good thing.”

<Later>

My medshrink called me shortly after I first posted this message. I picked up the script, and proceeded to visit 2 pharmacies in person to try to get it filled. No luck. I then called 12 of them, and nobody has Metadate-ER in 10mg. The pharmacist at Eckerd is going to order it for me, and it will be another 2-3 days before it comes in to the store.

It’s not necessarily a great thing to make somebody with limited frustration tolerance have to deal with so much frustration in order to get medication that will help them better handle it.

All the pharmacies have Metadate-CD, for which the copay is $48. One tried to tell me that ER and CD were the same thing, but my formulary says differently. Looks like no stores are willing to stock the cheaper generic…

Walking outside to try to get it ordered now…

late-night ramblings

I can’t sleep because my head is rushing with impulsive thoughts at a million miles an hour. On the plus side, my vocabulary is back (hooray!). All in all, I guess this means that I’m back to “normal,” whatever that may be.

Tonight’s meteor shower of thoughts has been mostly about one theme: dreading my meeting with my boss tomorrow, and just generally how dissatisfied I am with my professional life in general (John, I guess I can thank your Wednesday email for helping me go in this direction. Don’t feel bad, however, because I was already going there before I spent 2 hours working on my reply to your message).

I was 21 when I decided to go to grad school in psychology. Nine years later, I now firmly believe that 21-year-olds shouldn’t be allowed to make these types of decisions. A lot has changed in these years.

Probably most important, I met and fell completely in love with my hubby. I can’t imagine my life without him, and hope I never have to.

My suspicions that I’m not so normal in my head have been confirmed by professionals. Through this experience, I’ve learned that I need a certain level of stimulation I’m not currently getting in my job.

I’m really bored in my career and am starting to think that there’s not much I can do to stay interested in it long-term. I might be able to prolong the inevitable by switching gears and teaching for a while, but I think I’ll ultimately end up bored doing that, too. There’s no creativity, and it’s just sooooooo slow. There’s not enough there to really keep me going on a day-to-day basis.

I feel like most of my life in these last 9 years has gone in the right direction…. except for one discrete aspect of it. It’s like there’s one stubborn hair that won’t go with the rest, no matter what I do to try to tame it. So now I need to figure out what I need to do in order to get it going the right way.

It’s possible that this is just another impulsive thought, but I really want to start our family. My baby-lust is becoming increasingly painful. Our plan had been to wait until we’d moved again following my postdoc. Now I’m not so sure that I want to wait that long after all. If I’m not finding true fulfillment in my career, then why should I sacrifice in other life domains because of it?

Not going to make any impulsive decisions… not going to do anything I’ll regret later.

Maybe I’ll be able to sleep now.

**************************************

(Later…. as in, the day after the late-night entry…)

Maybe this is why I’m so bored with academics.  It’s boring, and it’s taken a Danish scientist to recognize it. Click here (Study about boring science ) to read the original article.

don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone

I’ve now gone one week free of Strattera. In some ways, it’s been freeing. I no longer have to remember to take a capsule every morning, and I’ve been able to give up eating ever-so-pricey Activia yogurt. However, concentrating at work is a bit of a joke these days. It’s taken me 2 days to write 3 pages of a paper (2 pages of results, 1 page of introduction revisions). Even small, mundane data tasks seem even more overwhelming and daunting. I am entirely dreading my meeting with my boss tomorrow, because I know that I just haven’t accomplished nearly enough. I no longer doubt that Strattera was helping in some very subtle ways… just don’t ask me to describe specific instances or ways it actually helped. I guess I still should have been grateful for the small help it provided.

It’s also been a total nightmare getting my new Concerta prescription approved by my insurance company. I’ve been stressing about this and making multiple trips to the pharmacy and multiple phone calls to the insurance company since I picked up the paper prescription early Monday morning. As Concerta is a controlled substance (generic long-acting ritalin), my doctor has to submit all sorts of proof that I’m not a junkie planning to turn it into street-quality meth in a shady basement lab. That’s before I get to sign my name in my own blood and shell out $25 for a month’s supply.

Yesterday’s pharmacy trip and today’s 2 phone calls to the insurance company helpline have led to my making 2 phone calls to my med-shrink’s voicemail. This afternoon, I learned that the insurance company denied authorization for the prescription after my med shrink faxed the pharmacy verification of my prescription, called the insurance preauthorization number, had a conversation with the insurance company’s doctor who approved my stimulant prescription, and called me to tell it was already approved and I could pick it up Wednesday night. Apparently they changed their mind, and have since faxed something else back to my med shrink. It’s either a request for additional clinical information or information about the denial and subsequent appeals process. But naturally, the folks on the insurance helpline can’t tell me what’s gone wrong in this process. I’m just the insurance member… why should I know anything?

Hence the reason for the 2 phone calls to the med shrink’s voicemail. She’s in about 10 different offices during the work week and has no secretary. For all I know, the form was faxed to the Tuesday morning office, not the Thursday afternoon one, and she won’t get it until next Tuesday morning, if ever. Once she turns the fax around again, it could take up to 24 hours for the approval to make it through the computer to the pharmacy. I doubt any of the aforementioned paperwork moves between 5 pm on Friday and 9 am on Monday.

In the meantime, SNRI discontinuation syndrome (a fancy name for “Strattera withdrawal”) continues… I’m on day 2 of a low-grade headache and mid-grade stomach upset. I can’t concentrate, have very little motivation, am sleeping like total crap and am pretty tired, and am overall kjæmpe-stressed* because I’m not getting any work done.

At risk of sounding like a speed freak, I also asked my doc if there were any interim options available… I’m willing to risk being perceived as drug seeking because my med shrink knows it’s not true. I wouldn’t have put up with her weird jokes for over a year and tried so hard to stay on Strattera if all I wanted was to get high on kiddiespeed. I just want to work like any other mostly-normal person… is this too much to ask?

___________________________________

* kjæmpe = mega in Norwegian. A favorite word in our household.

one ADD moment after the next…

Argh. Today has really just been one ADD moment after the next. I can’t tell whether I’m so out of it due to no medication or just simple lack of sleep.

I arrived at home tonight after a long afternoon with too much caffeine only to find that I’d parked on the wrong side of the street this morning after returning from Oakland. I received a $15 ticket for interfering with street sweeping. I hadn’t noticed the ticket when I walked past my car on the way to drop off my prescription at Giant Eagle an hour after it was left on the windshield.

I took a little break, ate some dinner, and then ran to the store, in the hopes of picking up my new prescription and ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner (lentil vegetable soup, for which I had to buy onions, carrots, and corn). When I got to the store, I wandered through the whole produce section and almost passed the pharmacy before I remembered that I needed to pick up my new kiddie speed. Then I couldn’t actually pick it up because my doctor has to verify the prescription via fax, and this might take another couple of days. I wandered down to the dairy aisle, picked up my soy milk, Jan’s skim milk, and then took 5 minutes to decide which type of yogurt to buy (it’s YOGURT… not exactly a lifetime committment).  I forgot I needed to buy frozen or canned corn for the soup until I put the key in the car’s ignition.

Tomorrow, I will either eat the soup without corn or I will get some at the Eckerd near work, because I’m getting tired of multiple trips to Giant Eagle for fewer than a dozen items.

so tired…

I’m so tired…. I can’t keep my eyes open. 1 hour until 1-hour-long teleconference… then I can go home and crash out on the couch with the cats. Just have to make it two more hours.

Might need to get a coffee, putting me up to 2 coffees, 1 black tea, and 1 green tea today.  That’s like 7 times my normal caffeine intake.

Going to get coffee now.

spoke too soon

I made the mistake of checking my work email before leaving for the office and instantly started feeling overwhelmed.  Had forgotten that I have to do a presentation via teleconference today at 3.30, and had also been invited to review an article for Developmental Psychology. This will be my 2nd review for them this month.

I think we need to look into leasing a 2nd car so I can sleep normally on Jan’s airport days. I’m totally knackered AND was ready to eat lunch at 10.30.