Giving cigarettes the Axe

My seizure medication (Lamictal, which is being slowly titrated up from 400mg/day to an eventual 800mg/day) hasn’t killed my cigarette-smoke hallucinations, so I’ve resorted to attempting to mask the imaginary stink with one of these plug-in room-smell thingies (in the default—but debatable—Fresh Linen scent):

And even though it’s on the lowest setting and hidden halfway behind a huge piece of furniture, it makes my entire Basement Bachelor BunkerTM smell like a middle-school boys’ locker room the day after a massive sale on Axe Body Spray.

It does mask the cigarette-smoke hallucinations—which get especially strong (or at least acutely noticeable) as I work at my desk—but it’s giving me a low-grade headache.

Even worse, it’s giving me flashbacks to my boyish middle-school waistline, first fuzz of pubescent armpit hair and store-brand parachute pants. Can I borrow some hair mousse?

MRI/OLFACTORY HALLUCINATIONS UPDATE:

My MRI showed no evidence of seizures, but my cigarette-smoke hallucinations are so pervasive and choking that my neurologist had the levels of Lamotrigine—an anti-seizure medication I'm already on to control my bipolar disorder—tested, and since the numbers were so low he wants me to quadruple my dosage.

Quadruple. In one fell swoop. Which is crazy. And since I'm crazy, I KNOW crazy.

So I have a call in to my psychiatrist to get a second opinion. Because it took a decade to test and titrate the med cocktail I'm currently on that finally makes me (relatively—the jury is still out) functional. And I'd rather choke on imaginary cigarette smoke the rest of my life than spend another day in a psych ward with a roommate whose first words to me are that he just got out of prison. Because I've already crossed THAT off my bucket list.

BUTT UPDATE:
The super-handsome leather-clad supposed-to-be-for-a-dining-room chair I use for my work-at-home desk has started leaving crippling pain in my butt and tailbone—please keep your vulgar comments to yourselves—so I ordered an ergonomically designed butt pad to hopefully let me stand up after every hour of writing without shouting epithets at the no-butt-pain gods.

The pad I bought is literally called Everlasting Comfort(R)—which, I'm sorry, should have been snatched up by the funeral industry decades ago, so way to drop the ball, casket-makers—and it's velvety soft and everlasting-comforty cushy and it has a cavernous space for my poor beleaguered tailbone to hang in peace. I can't say the same for the little hill it expects me to rest my boys on, but if I can walk like a bipedal hominid after spending a day writing about pajamas and kitten hats, the boys and I will learn to adjust.

This is my first day riding the Everlasting Comfort Train, and I've been ergonomic-butting and tailbone-hanging and boys-resting on it for six hours of work now. So far it doesn't feel like anything's changed, but that could just be because my existing profound butt pain hasn't cleared itself up yet. So—like Nevada—the boys and I are still tallying votes and we'll announce the results sometime before the peaceful transfer of power.