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Mood Disorder Community
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screamingdata
Starting Member
19 Posts
Gratitude: 2
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 Posted - 09/30/2005 : 09:00:35
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Yesturday was a good day for me, when I weighed the downs against the ups, the ups were higher.
Work had been boring, but went well. Traffic was moving on the way home. And when I did get home, my son came racing from the back of the house to hug my legs with that cry of "Mommy!" that breaks my heart and mends it all at once. My boyfriend was awake and we cooked dinner and ate as a family at a living room picnic - something we don't do very often. Usually I am either too depressed or too irritable or just too... not there to cook dinner... and if the significant other cooked... well, we'd STILL be ordering out.
Post dinner the S.O. went to bed, as a night shifter who'd been up all day watching the wee munchkin (since they apparently didn't make it to daycare), I didn't say anything about it, though I had had my heart set on sitting down to a movie with them both. He had that look of "where am i?" that I tend to get thirty minutes after taking new meds, so I didn't question it and successfully put my disappointment into the "Reasonable, and Discarded" category.
I watched the Wiggles with my son instead - not as good as Troy, but he likes to dance to the dvd, so it was better in some ways too.
About this time a firetruck went by, ...and by... and by... apparently un able to find the opening to our townhouse complex. ( I later learned there was a light smoking, but nothing burning. ) So, with no tragedies, this wound up being a good thing, because it gave me a chance to wonder at and appreciate and remember what it was like to be a kid and to be amazed by the lights of a firetruck. My son and I sat at the kitchen window for a half hour watching it pass back and forth until it finally made it.
Bedtime with the toddler went with NO FUSS!!! Always good.
My boyfriend awoke in due time and we had a little time to chit chat about the game we both play before he went to work, and I made some very concious decisions about how to continue to help myself -
- Setting up art classes
- Writing more, and maybe some refresher courses here also
- Returning to my lifelong passion and personal-ultimate-therapy (though tragically more expensive than my pdoc, counselor, and meds combined!)... Horseback riding
- Joining this forum for that like-mindedness that works so well to beat back the "arrrgh why am I alone in this?" feeling.
- Finding a good Mommy/Kiddie activity
- ...And so forth, my list is actually very very long.
So then I just had to sit back and think - Why did today go so well?
I only had 2 bouts of crying/sniffling. And I laughed a lot. And I smiled a lot. And I didn't feel that over-the-top giddiness.
I'm getting more sleep since starting the new med, Rispardol (?spelling?), mostly because it knocks me out in 20-30 minutes flat. So maybe that helps. Then there is the fact that there is A medication at all - which I'm not entirely sure I'll be staying on.
I've noticed weight gain already, and yes, I'm sleeping better without the wake ups, but I can't shake the zombie state until well after noon the next day! I swear my employer must think I'm walking in hungover every morning.
This is AFTER I struggle to wake up in the first place. (This is the most serious point of contention between my boyfriend and I - He's exceedingly understanding and supportive with my ... "afflictions" as we've lovingly endeared them ... but he gets REALLY frustrated when he can't wake me up in the morning (mostly because he's afraid I'll lose my job, or because he's too tired to take my son to daycare, and the general fight of it pushes back his time to sleep during the day while all is quiet.) Alarm clocks just... don't cut it. Not smart enough I guess. I have mastered the practice of standing, navigating a mess-strown room, turning the clock OFF, and going back to bed without waking up it seems. )
So anyhow - enough about me, lets talk some more about me - 
So by two or three I shake the empty, disconnected, disjointed, ... kind of like... watching myself go through the day through first-person filming... feeling, and I'm noticing that I feel really good and energetic and motivated, ONCE I shake that feeling. But thats only... 5 hours or so out of the day before I take the next dose :/.
So, yesturday, all in all, was a good day. Dinner and firetrucks. But, I'm learning that Rispardol might not be for me, and this is a good thing. I haven't been on it long, so a switch should be relatively easy. I see my pdoc Monday - he's fresh and green and full of enthusiasm - and happy to see me as frequently as I need to adjust dosages and meds. I also see my counselor Monday, a wonderful wonderful woman. More happy things :) I'll have to save this to read on one of my crying binges - I'll never remember it then, but right now things seem rosy and clean. Maybe today will be another successfully good day too. :)
Signing Off - Screaming Data, and her Infinite Jabber Drive  |
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| GentleLady
New Member
80 Posts
Gratitude: 5
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Posted - 10/01/2005 : 07:51:01
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SD,
What wonderful wise woman you are!! Im beginning to see the YOU underneath this illness, so insightful and delightful. Im sure the SO and son see you as well. You are on the right track. Stick with your search for the right medication. You shouldnt be so drugged.There are plenty of new and old drugs out there. I hope you find the right one, or ones soon. Its great that you are able to appreciate the simple things in life, such as little boys and fire trucks. This is exactly what has happened to me in the last year, since I finally got the right meds on board. I sit in the yard tossing balls for my VERY enthusiastic dogs, and feel their joy. I appreciate the chirp of a bird, and the blue sky above me. So THIS is how normal people feel. WOW! What a concept.
There is a new drug called lamictal that has been a miracle drug for me. If your pdoc suggest it, jump on it! I take syroquel at night and sleep like a baby, as long as I take it early enough in the evening. It takes about an hour and half to kick in. Then I get 7-8 hours of wonderful sleep and wake up ready to go. But its not for everyone.. we are all different biochemically.
Im glad you found us. Hang in there with your treatment plan. And be sure to THANK your SO for sticking with you while you work it all out.
My husband is very tolerant of my moods. But I dont think its fair to him to have to deal with them. He has stuck with me through forty years of marraige. Some of it has been really fun. I guess the fun times and the loving times outweigh the difficult times, for him anyway.
Hugs,
GentleLadyJavascript:insertsmilie(' ')
Seeking friends who understand |
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| screamingdata
Starting Member
19 Posts
Gratitude: 2
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Posted - 10/03/2005 : 07:07:48
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:) Thank you so much for your kind words, GentleLady. And I will deffinately keep that med in mind !!
Oh, and I do thank him, in my good moods ;) He's been an absolute godsend. An amusing story about him really - I was apparently fated, and he doomed, to be in a relationship with him.
I ... wait for it... Met my significant other on the internet. Yes, its true. A travesty I know. But - I have this to say for it -
We ran into each other across 3 different online games (the sorts with a thousand + players on at any given time) we played over the course of 5 years (so I met him in my mid-teens, 16 to be precise), without ever realizing it. It wasn't just brief meetings either, they were chat every other night or so about everything under the sun and under the skin friendships.
It was not until the third game that we connected all the dots and were just... amazed that we'd not seen it prior. Because hindsight being what it is, it was all so clear.
After that things began to take a serious turn, he came out from California to visit me here on the east coast, and a few months later, he came out again and didn't go home. Now, over a year later, he's still here, absolutely beautiful with my son, very tolerant of my moods and swings and I don't know who I'd thank, I'm not religious in a monotheistic way, but I thank them for him daily. Now, if I could just get my mother to stop hinting (not so subtley) at marriage! I swear the woman is going to spook the man :P
Anyhow, another addition to my personal story line, and a long response. I fear I'll grow notorious for that in due time ;) I must get this jabber drive removed!
Oh, but first - the resize kinda...butchered the av, here is the full for the curious (yes, thats me under all the CG and photo-manipulations):
http://geocities.com/drosimel/Work/ga5.jpg
I'll be starting a photobucket soon just for you lucky people ;), so please forgive any bandwidth exceeding notices for the time being -
Signing Off - Screaming Data, and her Infinite Jabber Drive |
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| screamingdata
Starting Member
19 Posts
Gratitude: 2
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Posted - 10/04/2005 : 08:09:44
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I visited with my pdoc and counselor yesturday. The pdoc raised the dosage, or will be , over the course of the next week or so, which is going to be tough. I had to call into work today . I'm not sure if I'm weird in this - but my body reacts strangely (I think) to medicine. Even tylenol will knock me out if I haven't taken it in a while, it seems as though anything of a medicinal nature puts my body into sleep mode. However, this only lasts for a couple days, at which point I'm back to little/no sleep. At this point, this is a good thing since I'm not taking anything for the insomnia until I get the bp med straightened out. So, we're gradually increasing the dosage, which means several nights of being knocked out cold and waking up as the living dead.
My visit with my counselor went very well, I think - as she put a question in my head that is still with me. She marks with the one other counselor I had that actually helped in my book. Good counselors can be so hard to find! The other one argued with me, over silly stuff, which really got me rawled up and saying what was really on my mind. This was when I was 14 and had no interest in sharing because "There's nothing wrong with me!" was my slogan at the time. He sort of cracked the door to make me realize otherwise. This one is very good at posing the questions that make me dig deeper into myself and really helps me figure out for myself. I think, for me, that is what I need in a counselor, not someone to tell me how its going, but to guide me in the dierction of finding how its going and what to do.
So, the question was this (in so many words) - Beyond the scope of getting the bipolar in hand, what do you want to get out of this?
That made me stop talking for once. I really didn't know. I have a weird way of living in tomorrow, but with no concern for the day after that. So the question has been banging around in my head now, still, and I talked it over with one of my best net-friends, and I think I've worked it out.
I see life as one of those cartoon roads, like out of the Roadrunner cartoons, that stretch on forever and gets tiny in the distance. All along the way so far, Something has always occured. Well, life happens yes, but I mean big somethings.
Constant moving (military family), my parents divorced, custody wars, more moving, my father remarried, my father divorced, my mother remarried, intense physical confrontations with my stepfather, commited, diagnosed, moving again, culture shock in Saudi Arabia, life upheaved again, mother divorces, father finds new live-in, intense physical confrontation with live-in, juvenile detention, very unplanned pregnancy, uncle commits suicide, late-pregnancy complications, my own custody wars, mother remarries, terrible twos... Its a never ending stream of happenings. Life's supposed to be right? But I question if its like...this.
And its very tiring always waiting for the next big thing to happen. And I don't know what the next thing is, so I can't plan for it, decide ahead my best course of action. Can't evade it.
I think... at the end of all "this", if there is an end to it, when I have my illness (or illnesses, if that is the case) under control, and I'm told I can leave counseling (the group I use has a policy that you can't be given medication unless you're in counseling unless dismissed from it by your psychiatrist, a good policy I think) that I want to be able to really live in today. I don't want to forget about tomorrow, don't want to be taken by surprise, but I really think what I want to get out of this is to be able to appreciate today, rather than always waiting for ball to drop. I think thats what is at the end of that road for me. Either that or the anvil meant for Wile E. Coyote.
Signing Off - Screaming Data, and her Infinite Jabber Drive |
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| screamingdata
Starting Member
19 Posts
Gratitude: 2
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Posted - 10/11/2005 : 06:50:47
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Its been a while since I posted to my little personal thread, so I thought I might today - Since my last post there's been some ups and some downs. Pretty standard fare.
My risperdal dosage is up again and having a faaabulous <enter cynical grin here> time getting settled with that. Waking up is the hardest. I didn't make it into work yesturday, and didn't call in. No one has said anything yet - so hopefully I still have my job (since I'm here and all). My immediate boss knows that I am adjusting to medications for an on-going illness, though I haven't told him what.
Which reminds me - Why is there no threads regarding work on the forum? We work - sometimes. ( I personally have never managed to pull more than a 3-6 month stint in a single job, but hey, its work! )
In the mean time - Should you, and how do you, tell your bosses about your illness? Currently I'm leaving out early so often for doctor's appointments, dragging in late so many times from the meds, I'm just waiting for my immediate boss to say "Ya know - no thanks." I don't know that it would make a difference if they knew the causation of it.
Anyhow, so that was yesturday. Sunday was good. Spent the day at my mother's and she cooked for us *drools*. Nothing quite like my cajun mama's cookin' ;).
Saturday was another story.
I was off-kilter all morning, then had to go with the significant other and the wee monster to Wal-Mart. It was supposed to have been a quick run. We had a list - but it didn't save us. Saturday afternoon at Wal-Mart in my town is a warzone.
It started out well enough, we had a plan - Drop off my prescriptions first - p. hygeine isle , then over to the food - But by the end of it I was sitting in my car with my toddler bawling my eyes out waiting for my significant other to come out from check-out.
I completely lost it. The shakes, glancing around everywhere , trying not to look at people, heart rate, clammy hands, full-on anxiety attack. The SO managed to calm me down and we were going to get lunch and check a store for a computer part we needed, then a stupid little thing that stalled us longer from getting home (OOoh all I wanted was to get home!) made me completely break down again. 20 minutes later in the parking lot of a fast food resteraunt things were scraped back together again. The whole time - my son never made a peep. Saturday night my SO's friend came over and I was a hero for cooking dinner for a couple hungry guys. A morale boost I desparately needed.
Today - seems like it will be a relatively decent day. My son is home sick with the SO and I want to be there with them both, curled up on the couch and watching cartoons and sipping fruit juice. I'll probably be leaving work early so the SO can get some sleep before work tonight. I'm sure it will reflect faaabulously on my current trend, but there's no one else to watch him.
Early October Report : A waiting game - I keep dropping the ball, but managing to scramble it back up into the air before anyone can notice...I hope.
Signing Off - Screaming Data, and her Infinite Jabber Drive |
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| screamingdata
Starting Member
19 Posts
Gratitude: 2
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Posted - 10/28/2005 : 12:35:31
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Late October Report:
The Pdoc started me on meds for ADD in addition to the meds for Bipolar, and WOW what a difference. Its been ... really good. As for my moods, they've seen a marked push towards stable. We're not there yet, but much closer than I was a month ago.
By the same token, some people have been saying they think I'm doing worse on the meds. I don't know, I can see where they may think that. When I am down, I'm down longer. I'm not flying back and forth so quickly as I used to (which is exhausting to be doing), but I'm not down as hard either. I'm not having two hour crying spells for no reason and feeling so sad that my body aches and hurts. I've actually only had one really bad episode since that one at Wal-Mart, and that was after a really bad day. So yeah, they see me on a down for a few days, but most of them never saw the downs I took before. I have always had my bad times in private.
I was talking to my Father on this very subject. He's always been a bit worried (ok, very worried at times) about me and my health. This is despite the fact that I've hidden the more extreme edges from him. I explained to him my thoughts on it but I'm not sure if he believed me. He's always looking for something that can be fixed, he wants to be convinced I'm just going through a stressful time. (Which, I am, to be honest, and thats probably why it got so out of control in the first place, got un-copable, and sent me back to the doctor.)
He also said he felt like there were a lot of people with mental health problems cropping up, namely in the arena of my disorders, and wondered if it was just a common problem to begin with that is nice to treat, or if its something in the air thats disrupting systems (polution-prompted gene mutation maybe? ). I feel like there are a lot too, but probably due to the fact that people are beginning to pay more attention to their mental health, that they're beginning to realize that it is important too.
At any rate, October sees me in a better way at the end of the month than at the beginning. Go back to see both doctors on the 2nd, hopefully all good news.
Signing Off - Screaming Data, and her Infinite Jabber Drive |
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| Donaya Raven
Full Member (100+ posts)
214 Posts
Gratitude: 55
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Posted - 10/28/2005 : 17:06:46
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Wow, screamingdata...you have an extremely interesting life. And the bipolar and meds seem to be treating you roughly. Yet you sound like a loving, devoted mother and girlfriend in spite of all this, which is incredibly admirable. I don't know whether you should tell your boss about why you keep missing things, but when I told my teachers it was a big help. Now they give me a little slack when it comes to making up assignments and let me just sit in the corner or outside for a few minutes when everything is rushing up at me - sanity breaks, as it were. I haven't been manic since I told them, but when I am manic I won't have to spend so much energy hiding it and focus that energy onto work and my writing. I'm slowly telling people who are close to me, one by one or in twos and threes. Few understand the magnitude of BP, but they've given me hugs when I needed them, got me to see the funny side of my one-night hospitalization, left me alone when I needed some space, and helped me catch up on any schoolwork I missed when I was busy seeing a pdoc and/or crying. I don't know if this helps any, and the teachers at my school may be different since it's an international school and if they're intolerant in any way they won't be able to keep their jobs, but I'm just trying to show you one possible outcome. Big online hug!
Best of blessings and lots of love. |
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| xek
Incredible Member (2000+ posts)
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