Bipolar 1, ADHD, FM, PTSD, Anxiety, Chronic Pain, OA – Now What??

/ Robin

If I’d started my blog off listing all my bits of my alphabet you might have clicked off and dismissed me as a hypochondriac. Personally, I might have too. However, the fun facts pile continuously up and I wonder if I might be much older than my drivers license says I am.

I’m 51 degrees old. Wait. 51 years old. Yes, that’s it. I think it’s time I leveled with you and give you my “medical” life. I am much more than my medical stuff. I’ve had my right knee replaced twice – in just two years. I know, that’s very young to even have it done once, but twice on the same knee… Skip that. Here’s a “brief” list. Each item is a medically real thing for me.

Bipolar 1
ADHD
FM
PTSD
Anxiety
Chronic Pain
Degenerative Disk Disorder
OA
2 Total Knee Replacements
Cataracts
Allergies – environmental, biological and food
Depression
Manic
Stress – Excessive
Obsess
Asthma
Dentures – Full

I’ve also had a ruptured appendix, broken ankle, blood clots, carpal tunnel syndrome, rage… I think you get the idea.

Over the last couple of months I’ve thought I’ve been falling asleep while driving. It freaks the freak out of me. No matter what I do I don’t seem able to prevent it. I even pull over and try to nap just so I can complete a 40 minute drive home. I’m not able to nap when I pull off the road. I try. No go. I can sleep in a parking lot when I’m too tired to drive, but it’s not working now. I sing, I scream, I pound my feet on the floor, I hit my steering wheel… Nothing helps.

It’s very scary. No, it terrifies me. Suddenly I’m about to rear end another car or find myself drifting to one side or the other. I’ve been asking my health care people what it could be. I eventually got around to my pain management specialist. I described it to her and asked if she thought it might be any of my many medications. Like my med provider, she didn’t think so. She wanted to know if I was born prematurely. Nope. Seizures? Nada.

Michelle, the pain specialist, asked if I could describe what happens as a “loss of time”. Maybe I’m not really falling asleep. Maybe I’m just losing time and tune back in just seconds later. Do I remember actually falling asleep or feeling sleepy. No. I’ve even tried coming home and trying to sleep. Not sleepy. No naps.

She sent me home charging me with looking into Absence Seizures. She knows I love to research stuff. I appreciate that she lets me learn and talk with her about my health care. I have read a bit about Absence Seizures. I think she might be right. Before I left she agreed she would get me in to see a neurologist she likes to use in a city about an hour from here. I’m going to have an EEG to see what’s going on.

New bipolar med on Wednesday… Friday a possible new diagnosis to add to my alphabet soup. Know what I keep thinking?

… Well shit.

Lamictal – Continuing Adventures

/ Robin

I harbored no illusions that my renewed increased dosage of Lamictal was magical nor that it was certainly going to last and I was very correct, but let me explain the bizarre circumstances of how I was provoked to remember this fact.

Saturday … sorry, gotta finish later.

Reduce – Do Over? Hope not.

/ Robin

This is a quick summary of my day.

We stopped at my Med provider who quickly added Latuda to my 400 MG Lamictal and changed my chill pill back to Diazapam. (It doesn’t kick my butt so badly.)

The day moved from fun to 100% stress to terror to worry and back around again. I’m completely spent. Rundown.  The drive was different but as heavy as expected.  The Espionage Exhibition was cool. Sydney got sick and had to leave. No restrooms are in the thing. I’d been really wanting to see the Espionage Exhibition at the Seattle Science Center for months. We needed to leave early and brave traffic once again because she was sick. 40 minutes from home. I did this curious newish thing I’ve started doing driving home. For an instant,  my brain shuts off and it’s like I’m asleep. It freaks me out! I sing and yell and have people talk to me and nothing helps. It’s very, very scary.  I had Kyle drive the last 30 minutes home.

We arrived home to our puppy and I freaked out (ok, maybe not quite). Bailey,  my 6 month old Heeler and companion dog in training, wasn’t waiting for us at the top of the stairs. I was very concerned. She always does. Always. She came around the corner with a pretty big heater vent hanging from her collar. OMG! At first I froze.  I thought she was choking.  She’s okay.  It stressed her and Sydney and I out. Kyle came in after it was off and laughed. What else could he do?

Earlier in the day Sydney had explained to Jane why she was wanting to kill me lately. That’s when she changed my meds. Fast forward again to after we helped Bailey… I slammed the microwave door heating my dinner. Before I became more belligerent I took my food to my room, ate and took my meds with a chill pill. Now my puppy, my companion dog to be, is passed out next to me on my bed.

I got to tell Jessica,  my 22 year old who is off in the Air Force,  about my day. I’ve calmed down. Now my back is lighting up. Time for a painkiller. 

Wow! I didn’t expect my day to play out like this. I managed to maintain much better than I expected. But, I’m so thankful for my chill pill. Boy am I ever!

I am most thankful though,  for my kids. They are so incredible!

Chillin’ in Seattle or What?

/ Robin

It’s 9:30 am and I’m waiting to do in to see my med provider before heading to Seattle with my son (19) and daughter (17) for the day. I’m still not up to a satisfactory dosage of my Lamictal yet and this chill pill I take sometimes kicks my butt too much. Wanna chill, not sleep while driving. .. the next day.

I’m still talking way too much and too fast. It, I, annoy the kids to death. The don’t bother to talk. I do it for everyone.

I feel shame and I grieve for the things I miss they might have shared while I rambled on and on about…?

I’ve made Syd come in with me. I bother her the most. My med provider (Jane) and I don’t communicate well and I’m bad enough that I really need her to understand what is meant when she says she wants to kill me. That needs to stop.

I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

Licked by Lamictal

/ Robin

Licked by Lamictal. Yep. I had requested that we lower the dosage and find another drug to use for my Bipolar 1 mixed state because I’m fair skinned (millions of freckles) and as soon as the sun made it’s annual appearance I started burning… in the shade, with sun screen on and with a long sleeve shirt. I mean what the heck is that all about? I didn’t want to go through it all again so I begged my med provider to change it. Not my shirt, the drug.

We backed off from 200 mg twice a day to just 200 in the evening. Within 2 weeks my youngest daughter (17) was actively searching for large boards to bonk me up side the head with. Yeah, I really sucked eggs. The really sickening things about it this time were that “I” chose to lower the medication and “I” slid head first in the inferno that is my brain roaming freely like a blind cat on a boat in high seas.

I called Jane, my med provider, and asked to come in to see her much earlier than my scheduled appointment. I was in her office in two days. We changed the dosage, raising it again over 3 weeks. I had met my new counselor when I was rapidly sliding into the pit and was a manic momma for the first two visits. Then, this week I had my third meeting with her.

I sat calmly and we talked. We talked back and forth. We worked together. It was nice. She mentioned that the change in me from the first two meetings to this one were remarkable. Indeed they were, they are. I asked her, “If you met me today and I behaved as I am doing now and I told you I’m a raging Bipolar 1 mixed state would you believe me?” Her answer was exactly what everyone says… “No.”

The Lamictal gives me the ability to fence in a lot of my insanity and I can pretend I’m “normal” and that I don’t really want to jump up and tell you how stupid you are. I’m smart. I know how to fake “normalicy”. It has come in handy (in fact I felt it was necessary to keep my ex-husband from getting his moronic, I live in another plane of reality, over the top and burning in hell as a terrible father, rotten Christian and ex-husband). I didn’t want them to take my babies away from me. No way. I fought myself like hell. I learned how to fake it really well.

At the end of our meeting I asked Julia (counselor) if she had just met me for the first time today would she believe I was as overwhelmingly Bipolar 1 as I say I am. Absolutely not. I let my secret out with more than a little pride I must confess. I told her that when I met new medical people (new to me) I always “let the crazy out” enough for them to believe that I’m more than a tiny bit messed up. She was amazed. Then I reminded her of my situation with the kids and that that desperate motivation and my above average intelligence giving me the messed up strength to stumble on each day. Mostly… Kind of. Sometimes. Blah…

Now before you jump up and down and up again shouting that I’m suffering from our common trait lovingly referred to as “megalomania” or “delusions of grandeur” understand this: I have lived most of my life believing that we each need to have an accurate estimation of our abilities. If you’re amazing, it’s perfectly fine to think it and sometimes, when the time is appropriate, to say it. “I am a high functioning Bipolar 1 mixed state. Very high functioning.” Never let that fool you into lethargy and believing wrongly that I’m perfectly fine and don’t need to be watched with due care. If you do, you are a moron.

Got good meds that are working for you? With your med provider’s help? Then keep taking the bloody things. Don’t ever risk sliding down that dark shoot to the garbage bin of your soul. Will you do that for me? Trust your people. If you can’t, find someone you can trust.

Just never, ever, stop your meds without a safety net.

I mean it. Watch it.

Mind the gap.