… hair loss is another side effect of the lamotrigine for me.  Not like I’m going bald. But I’m definitely finding a lot of hair in the drain after I shower. Eh well. I can live with that.

I’m trying to sort out what’s going on with my head so maybe I can feel a better. What a tangled web, though. It seems just impossible to deal with.  I know my bipolar stuff was out of sorts for a long while there, trying to get up to a useful dose of lamotrigine without having a ton of side effects. Up down up down.

Seemed to get that on the way to working well enough and all hell let lose in my life. Death. Serious work problems. More serious work problems. Family problems. Money problems. Rise up ole PTSD and start stomping around.

Up… down down down down down

The depression is going to kill me one of these days. When it’s around I just wish it would. I’d love to evaporate then. Seems I keep getting over it, though.

Now I’m just in the middle more or less struggling to not be cast about by everything that blows a little wind my way. I’m not doing so well with that, I sometimes think. Other times I think I’m doing great.

Nothing consistent.  I’m tired of that.

I think February was the poster child for depression and anxiety. Sheesh.  I survived it, though. I figure that’s good. And I’m finally up to enough lamotrigine (generic lamictal) that it’s axed the mania stuff.  Delightful! Oh wait, it’s also clobbered my creative drive. Dayum. This is not so hot for an artist.

Delightful Case Manager pointed out today that there’s always a trade off between good and side effects of meds. Errr. Yeah, I knew that. I mean… Trileptal worked well for me, but caused a nuclear explosion in my stomach over time. Abilify worked well… but gave me gut spasms that crippled me. Zyprexa makes me gain an average of at least 3 lbs a week… for at least 10+ weeks. Topamax made me unable to speak almost. Yadda yadda. Merely not being able to do my work well is  a peesacake, right?

I’m sure if this higher dose of wellbutrin kicks in it won’t seem so bad.  LOL

My mood is spastic. A day or two of morbid depression. A day or two of hypomania escalating up. Anxiety hangs out with both, though.  The anxiety is worse when I’m depressed, but it’s always there.  Free-floating, not reality based anxiety.

And the worst part is the intrusive thoughts that anxiety drags with it.  An example… I saw in my minds eye that one of the cats would jump into the oven when it was opened to get the holiday turkey out, and he’d knock hot gravy everywhere and get it in his eye and put his eye out with it.  I can’t stop these thoughts. They just sneak up on me while I’m going about trying to live.

I hate the intrusive thoughts the most.  I’m used to low to moderate anxiety. I don’t like it, but I’m accustomed to it. But these intrusive anxious thoughts are not usual for me the last couple years. This is like the old crap when I had to be hospitalized in 07.  I sure hope the lamotrigine kicks in soon and this goes away.

Migrainechow.com has some sort of weirdness going on. I can’t edit posts. I can put in something, but once I’ve saved a draft or published it, I can’t edit it. My webhost told me it’s my plugins or my theme. So I got rid of all that. I mean deleted off the  server rid of.  Didn’t work. I didn’t think it would, it made no sense at all that it would since the problem started out of the blue, but you can’t tell tech support people anything. (I should know, I was one once upon a time.)

Aside from that, this rapid cycling sucks. It comes at me out of the blue with depression or mania in hand and knocks me around. I’m vastly tired of it.  I hope the lamotrigine starts working soon. Or a miracle. I’d settle for one of those.

Update: Is this thing working now? If so, you can see this update. If not, I’m busy screaming.

I went to see my new therapist today.

I’m a bit on the hypomanic side from being undermedicated while titrating up on lamotrigine.

Babble babble.

It turns out though, that she’s quit to take a new job elsewhere. So I won’t be seeing her again. aaaaaaaaaaagh! LOL In fact, I have no therapist or case manager right now because the county hasn’t sorted it. I may not get either one til next year sometime or other. Whenever they get around to it.  Or it could be next week. I may never get a therapist, only a case manager. No one has a clue.

This is just absurd. What timing! My life is just a series of messiness. LOL

Do NOT let the psychiatrist quit too!!!

I wasn’t born when Kennedy announced that we were going to the moon. I had just turned five when we went.

No wonder I grew up believing anything was possible, in spite of having been sexually and emotionally and physically abused for years by then.

Amidst the PTSD wreckage left by that abuse, other traumas through the years, and untreated or improperly treated bipolar disorder, that idea stuck with me. Anything is possible if we dream hard enough, work smart enough, and persist..

Now it’s 40 years later and I’m sliding into middle age.  Anything must still be possible. We have a space station up there now. And a huge telescope. And the C-PTSD wreckage doesn’t eat me into small pieces daily any more. And the bipolar disorder doesn’t slam me around like a paper airplane in a wind tunnel any more. To me all those things are equally amazing and near miraculous.

I do understand now that perhaps literally it’s not true that anything is possible. But many, many things are. And mental illness doesn’t make that untrue.

Visit with therapist was not so hot yesterday. Mainly because of me. I was just starting to slide into mixed mania. Low grade to middle grade. But that makes my life go all baby puke green. And she was being reasonable. Reasonable doesn’t work for me so well when I feel hopeless and am so agitated I can’t sit still and so hyper I can’t shut my mouth.

The big thing was: Life is messy. You are normal.

Life is messy. No doubt.

I, however, am certainly not normal. I laughed at her saying that.  Bipolar disorder symptoms are normal? Excuse me? Not being able to have a romantic relationship is normal?  Not being able to have kids is normal? Menopause starting at 39 is normal? Not being able to tolerate working except at home because of get too angry with it and the people there? Not being able to force oneself to take a shower daily. Having to fight daily to force oneself to brush  teeth. Getting waylaid by your own brain regularly?  And on and on. That is NORMAL?  Oh fuck no.

Yes, I’m mostly ok with these things much of the time, but they’re not normal and it is silly to pretend they are.  Yes, I handle it well, even better than most and even THAT is abnormal.  I’m not capable of living a normal life. A good one, yeah, at least a good part of the time. But normal? Um, no.

Gah. Unproductive and annoying session. But that’s a fairly good description of how I go on and feel about stuff when mixed mania bites me. At first anyway. It gets worse from there.

About 10pm, though, the mix left me with just the hypomania.  YAY! God I hate mixed mania, however mild it may be at the time.

This has been a bloody weird ride lately. Waves of medication induced stupidity and waves of mood and energy swinging around. But that’s normal.  heeeehehehehehe

Now Immi goes off cackling to do 23 things at once.