Bipolar – I Just Wanna Sleep

/ Robin / 7 Comments

say-no-to-sleeplessness-in-old-age-with-yoga1I wanted to share with you what happens with me on a typical night when I can’t sleep… such as tonight.

This is the second night in a row that I’ve not been able to sleep. I’m so tired yet sleep flees from me. I have things on my mind that I’ve tried to get to go away. I’ve written them down. I’ve talked about them. I’ve walked on my elliptical for the second time today. I’ve taken my sleeping pill and my regular meds. I’m clearly not asleep. They just won’t stop. Maybe I’ll try reading some more when I go back to bed.

I’m struggling with three things. First, one of my kids is struggling and that’s hard. Second, something is wrong with my car and has been since I got snow tires put on. I got snow tires a couple of weeks ago. Ever since they loaded my old tires and wheels in the trunk and back seat the car has ridden low in the back end. Even now that they are out of the car it still rides low. The backend is noticeably lower than the frontend. I guess it’s the shocks or struts. She’s an old car. I hope it wasn’t just “their time” to fail because of its age. The timing would be awfully strange. And third, I have a credit card that has what to me is a high balance. The card has been active since April this year. According to me, when I look over the charges, there is nothing near the balance that has been charged. Let me put that a different way. It says my balance is one thing, but it doesn’t appear to me to total that much in the actual charges.

Now, I know I can’t do anything about these things right now, but I can do this. I can write about it. I know I might not be able to help my kid. I know I may have to pay to fix my car. I know I may have spent more than I think I have. These are all bad options. I can’t do anything about them at 11:38 at night.

Deep breath. Ah. Time to find that YouTube playlist I made for helping me sleep. It has a 30 minutes “talk down” guided meditation video then has about eight hours of soothing nature sounds like of rain in the woods or waves and maybe a little music. That’s what I’ll try next. Read then YouTube.

Wish me luck.

Bipolar – Run Away Mind, Rather Than Matter

/ Robin

running-meredith-fritzI was supposed to see my counselor yesterday. I was glad. The timing couldn’t have been better considering how I’ve been feeling. And then reality hit. I’d convinced myself that my appointment was an hour after it really was. I was convinced that I was there at the right time. Nope.

I do this to myself every once in a while. I convince myself that something is one way and it’s really another. It usually has to do with interactions with other people, but sometimes it’s more like this. I was really upset about it. Now I will be seeing her January tenth. January tenth. This sucks. We have more people who need mental health care in this state than we have mental healthcare workers. So, we are forever not getting the counseling we need. I average an appointment with my counselor about once in about every six weeks. Okay, it’s somewhere around eight times a year if I’m lucky.

My youngest daughter was over here last week and we did her FAFSA for college next autumn at UWT. She’s had trouble getting it done again this year. I was irritated and I guess I must have let that show. I remember feeling like she was being rude to me. In fact, my eldest daughter remembers me telling her how rude I thought her sister had been. I’ve asked my family to keep an eye on my behavior and tell me if I start to slide back into hell’s mouth. The youngest apparently though I was mean to her.

I was what?

I don’t remember it that way. Was my daughter was being hyper-vigilant and looking for me to act in the least not perfect? Seeing something small and making it really big in her efforts to help me? Was her mind running away with her? Or was mine?

I don’t know.

I do know is that my memory is impaired, I admit that, it has been for years. But, I don’t think I’ve become mean. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to treat my family badly.

One of the things I suffer most from when I’m afflicted with my illness is extreme irritability. I blow my stack over the slightest of things. Sometimes I go nuts over imaginary things, thinking things are different than they really are. This is one of the things I’m most afraid of becoming again.

I was reading today that extreme irritability is evident in both the depths of despair and the fury of mania. I agree with this. I think it shows how although the illness is called “Bipolar Disorder”, there are symptoms that cross the boundaries between the two poles. I know that this can sometimes be confusing and even misleading. Some may ask, “How can you be irritable and angry and say you’re depressed?” For me, it’s easy. It’s part of the way things have always been for me. I’ve always been severely irritable no matter what my mood.

Lesson learned: When I ask my family members to watch me I need to be more specific. I can also use these times to teach them more about the illness so they understand me better and I’m not just their “sick” mom.

I hope that I can show each of my children how much I love them every day, regardless of what state I’m in. But, I know that isn’t always as easy as it may seem.

Bipolar – Never Far Away

/ Robin

I reached a stasis point, a time of going to neither depressed nor manic poles. I thought I was emotionally cramped or stunted. So, as I’ve said, my med provider and I decided to lower my Latuda to 80mg. It’s been about three weeks now and I can say without a doubt that I’m swinging again and in a bad way. I just called one of my daughters (I asked my family to watch me) and she said she’d noticed something had changed too and was wondering if that’s what was up.

Of course, I denied it. I realize now (30 minutes later) that I was protecting myself. I’ve worked for so hard for so long to be stable I didn’t want to admit that I’d have to up my medication again. I wanted to believe I could do this, be normal on my own.

I guess I feel like if I can’t be “normal” I won’t have really lived, I won’t really have given to my world or amounted to anything. I think those thoughts and feelings are always beneath the “calm” exterior of my well medicated self. It’s frustrating.

I’ve gone back to school so I can get a job. I’m 54 and I’m just going to school for a career now. It makes me so sad. See, the depression is coming like a vengeful lover, rough and dark.

If I’m already behaving “mean” towards my daughter and feeling depressed and like I’m about to have a fight I guess I’m not ready to be on a lower dose of my Latuda. So, it’s either go back up or change to something else. I’ll need to call the nurses line tomorrow and see if I can talk to my med provider as soon as I can. This isn’t the kind of thing that I should just wait until my next visit to handle.

Tomorrow I also see my counselor. We definitely have something to talk about.

Today I saw my pain management specialist. She ordered an MRI of my lower back. For some reason no one has ever had one done. I would have thought that having me on pain medications as long as I’ve been on them that someone would have had one done, but I can’t find it if they did.

Well, my new reality and I are going to read for a few minutes and then go to bed.

Be safe my friends.

Bipolar – Hidden Emotions

/ Robin

After months of not really feeling anything accept sever anxiety, my emotions are waking up again. I’m hoping that all the months of counseling have prepared me for my feelings, my moods.

I took a poetry class this last quarter. I had a difficult time writing the poetry because my emotions were packed away in a closet inside my brain. I wrote very clinically, very much cerebral and didn’t feel inspired or moved at all.

I’m enrolled in the disability program at the college and one of the things I get is time and a half for exams. Of course there aren’t exams in poetry, but the first quarter that I had this professor with I’d gone in and went over my disability papers with her and explained about how this was my first year back to college and I that was having a hard time. I took a chance and told her about my having Bipolar. I haven’t really thought it was necessary to tell my other professors what my disability is, but I felt like I was connecting with this professor and I also felt like I would be able to come and her and talk if I needed to.

I talked to her about how my BP was affecting my writing and she suggested I read “Touched with Fire” by Kay Redfield Jamison to see how many artistic people have mental illness (especially Bipolar Disorder). Funny thing was, I have read it. I’ve spent so much time in it that the pages have come off the spine of the book and nearly every page has notes and things underlined in it. It is in such bad shape that I purchased another copy so I could read it again. This is one of those books I bought in paper back and not as an eBook. If I have a book I want to markup I always get it in print. It’s just easier for me to make notes and find things in.

The first thing I encountered in Jamison’s book was a through recounting of all the symptoms having to do with Bipolar Disorder. Having been only anxious and not having mood swings for a few months per se, I was shocked as I remembered all the emotions that are currently hiding behind my medications.

I’m glad that I read what the symptoms are again because of the fact that we’ve lowered my Latuda and I need to be on the watch for symptoms to return. I have to admit, I’m worried now. I forgot how bad it has been for me. I rate on the top of the Bipolar Disorder Type 1, but I’m also high functioning so I’ve been able to hide it from most people. At least I think I have. Who really knows what others think of us when we’re in the midst of an active outburst of violent emotions.

So here I go, with an intentionally lowered mood stabilizer, and me waiting to see if any of my old enemies come sauntering out of the closet. I must remember not to hold my breath.

Bipolar – Reducing My Latuda

/ Robin

A few weeks ago I approached my med provider with the complaint that I’d been unable to tap into my creative side at all and that I was feeling rather muted in my emotions. She said that wasn’t uncommon and asked me if I’d like to try lowering my Latuda. She wasn’t my proscriber when I was put on that dosage of the drug and it wasn’t in my chart so she asked me if I remembered why it was at the dosage it was at. Of course, I had no idea.

Now that I’ve been taking 80mg daily instead of 120 mg for several weeks now I’ve come to a conclusion… I need to be very careful because I feel a bit unhinged. A bit like a car sliding on ice and is just barely keeping its grip. The real tests will be the holiday and then starting my next quarter at school.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to blog consistently now. Maybe feeling a little less safe is what I need to get me going again.

I dislike feeling stuck and like my emotions have gottened stuffed.

I also dislike feeling unhinged.

Sigh…..