Mostly at myself.  At this crazy bipolar roller coaster, and at it’s best friend crazy meds roller coaster.  

I’m feeling somewhat better today with the Lamictal than yesterday.  That means I’m only sort of drunk feeling, queasy, tired, can’t balance, and now am smelling non-existant pennies that I can’t get rid of.  This is better? heeeeeehehehe  Too funny!  Considering yesterday, yeah it is.  So I’m feeling positive that all this will pass. 

As folks commented on my post from last night, it’s time to just hang in there.  I do know how my brain works — the worse the initial effects are, the better it ends up working for me in the long run with the fewest side-effects.  Yeah, weird brain, but after so many tries with meds over the years, I know this is so.  So I’m willing to hang in there with the nausea and penny smells and so on.  I originally gave it 3 days to start getting better or I’d have to call the doc and change something.  It’s already improving some, so no call to the doc.  I’ll just wait and see how it goes.

In the meanwhile, I’ll have a few chortles at the idea that today’s weird stuff is an improvement over something.  heeeehehehe  Gotta love that!

The weirdies from the increased Lamictal aren’t as bad tonight.  Not to say I’m feeling perky. But I don’t feel like I’m going to croak of it. I also don’t feel so much like someone snuck in and stole all the liquid from my body and dumped cement in my sinuses and ears. A vast improvement.  It’s kind of sad, though, that merely feeling nauseous, stoned, wobbly and tired is an improvement.

Today… well, yesterday by now… even after the worst of it passed, I felt icky, though.  I just felt sick. I just felt nasty.  And out of it. And wobbly. And tired. And queasy. Almost all day long. I finally started feeling halfway decent an hour before time to shove more drugs down the hatch. Ugh. I’ve never truly dreaded taking my meds before. Tonight I did.

For the first time, I really understood why people go off their meds.  I’d always wondered why there’s so much talk about folks with bipolar just stopping meds.  Ok, I get it. I get it! Cripes. If I felt like that much of the time from the meds, I would too. I’d rather be way nuts than feel like that on a regular basis.

… for a colorful metaphor.

*bows and grovels to the gods of spell check who make it possible for me to blog*

I have a list of like 20 things to do today. I don’t think they’ll get done.  I’m halfway hung over from the meds increase and halfway “stoned” still.  I feel like I have a football field between my ears.  I keep feeling nauseous from all the water I’m drinking to try to kill the dry mouth from the netherworld.  For the first time, in spite of the oddball side effects of the past weeks, I’m dreading taking the Lamictal tonight.  The unspoken chant of “it’ll pass it’ll pass it’ll pass” sounds dull in my mental ears.  Still, I know that the Trileptal did the same, and it’s worked well for me except for eating my stomach.  So apparently it’s hitting the right part of my brain.  Three days. I’ll give it three days.  If it doesn’t start letting up by then, the doc will have to be consulted. Right after I go back to the former dosage.  hehehe Oh ok, before.  Pleh.

Now let me see if I can figure out how to do any of the things on the list.

I am whacked. Stoned. Something.  Per the plan the shrink and I came up wit, I stepped up to 200mg Lamictal tonight. (In 2 wks I start taking away the Trileptal.) That was around 9pm.  About 10:30, I stopped what I was doing because I realized everything looked funny and I had horrid dry mouth.  Standing up didn’t work too well, nearly fainted. Orthosomething hypotension no doubt. Managed to finally get up slooooowly to go to bathroom. Unsteady on my feet. And lips and tongue tingle - weirdo side effect that happened when I was going up on Trileptal too. And the stoned/drunk thing, but that’s normal enough with this stuff. Yeesh. This is going to make work fun tomorrow.  Shoot, this week. I keep reminding myself that it wen away with the Trileptal and will with this.

You folks dealing with this, good luck to you too. It’s darned weird.  It passes though. Thank goodness for spell check! Now if the mouse would just stay still.

RANT WARNING
Other stuff after the sorta foul-mouthed rant, but hey, a rant is a rant.

Immi is cranky. Immi is sick to death of customers. Immi is especially sick to death of stupid customers who send stupid emails.

I just need to be able to do very simple searches to view all that you have for sale, click a button to add to cart, and then go to checkout.

Read the rest of this entry »

9/27/08 through 10/4/08 is Banned Books Week and the start of that week is a good time for a break from spelunking in my past. I’m all for Banned Books Week. Yes, I read banned books.  Always have. And unless the right to read things is taken away from me, always will.  Of course, if the right to read things is taken away from us, you probably won’t be reading my blog any more.  It would no doubt be banned. I don’t agree with censorship.

The rule for reading when I was growing up was: If you’re able to read it, you’re allowed to read it.  One of the things my parents did well I think, though I think perhaps a few explanations along the way would have been a good idea.  I’m well aware other parents have other rules, and I’m ok with that. Parents have a right to raise their children any non-abusive way they want, as far as I’m concerned. And if closed groups want to ban books, well, that’s up to them. If parents want to ban books from their homes, or closed groups removed them from their shelves, I don’t feel I have a right to complain of it.  However, when their opinions reach into the public sphere at large, it’s gone too far.  I do feel that categorically removing them from public schools and libraries is against the whole concept of freedom. Being allowed to read anything gave me much more of an open mind and encouraged me to learn and read more. Perhaps it warped me, but I think learning and being open-minded are generally good things, even if the house is peppered with banned books.

Want to know more about Banned Books Week?  To join in or to criticize?  ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has more information at its blog. You can also find more info, at BannedBooksWeek.org and a free list of challenged, banned and removed books for 2007-2008 at the Illinois Library Association website.

Some of the books that have been challenged, banned or removed over time strike me as particularly odd.  Harry Potter??? Huckleberry Finn??? For goodness sake!

• The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman)
• Harry Potter and the Socerer’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J.K. Rowling)
• Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
• The Color Purple (Alice Walker)
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll)
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
• The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)
• The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
• Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
• Deenie, Forever (Judy Blume)
• Hamlet, MacBeth, King Lear (by Shakespeare)
• and oodles more have been banned around the world at various times.

For a grin to leave you with… My most favorite banned books incident happened when I was finally old enough to vote.  
Picture a henna-haired art student in holey jeans, tshirt and jean jacket standing covered in buttons in line at the polling precinct.  She is reading a book.  That was me.
A conservative looking lady was behind me in the line.  She did not have a book, and out of the blue she said, “I know who you’re voting for.”  I looked up from my book, surprised. I thought the lady was strange and not terribly pleasant. I knew I had a right to not tell anyone who I was going to vote for.  She smiles and pointed to a button on my jean jacket.  It said “I Read Banned Books”. I just laughed.  I guess I know who she voted for too.

I’ve always had a hell of a time with that.  Secrecy is what kept me abused for so long when I was a tot. Privacy had no meaning, really. My bedroom as a kid was private, except that my father ambled in to abuse me whenever he took the mind, and my mother ambled in to clean and who knows what else.  I can hear my father’s words echoing in my ears today, “Keep this private between us or I’ll have to kill your mother and your brother so they can’t tell anyone else.”

When I finally kicked the cocaine and booze thirteen plus years ago, I went on a complete diet of no privacy/no secrecy.  It helped me stay on the wagon, yes. If everyone around you knows you’re in recovery, they’re watching for you to screw up, and at the time that was exactly what I wanted. After 2 years of no cocaine but not talking about it, and still drinking,  I crashed into my worst experience with cocaine from being tipsy and saying yes to a line just for kicks. It damned near killed me. Actually, I think it did, but that’s another tale. Near or actually, though, I finally realized I just couldn’t do anything mind altering and be ok and I just couldn’t do it alone, so no privacy any more.  I had to have help.  I got it, through 12 stepping and RR and all sorts of things and groups and people. Along the way many things that should have stayed private got shared.   That habit stayed with me for a dozen years into my recovery from addiction.

Nothing in my experience taught me there was any value in privacy.  Secrets, yes. They kept me and my family alive through the worst hells, I thought. It was ground into me from childhood. Privacy? What’s that?  People talked about it and the idea sounded good. I came to think maybe I should have it.  Just maybe I deserved it.  But I wasn’t exactly sure what it was.

I hit the dictionaries many times. I do that when the world of English makes no sense to me, which is fairly often.  Unfortunately, the word privacy is actually one of the definitions of secrecy and vice versa. Oops. Well at least I discovered I wasn’t insane to not be able to distinguish between the two words. Back to square one.

I finally asked my current therapist what the heck was the difference between secrecy and privacy in the “real” world.  
The first thing she said was, “That’s a tough one.”  
Well hell’s bells, I KNOW that!  
But she thought a minute and came up with something that made sense to me finally and has been slowly sinking in since. It’s sort of a kindergarten version of the concepts, but sometimes those are the best.

Secrecy is hiding something even when it’s harmful to you or others.
Privacy is hiding something when it’s just your choice to, and doesn’t hurt anyone to do so.

Oooooh! A workable definition difference.  Nevermind the semantics. I can do semantics up one wall and down the other any time I want, but it’s seldom useful, and often more confusing.  This I can work with!

I can keep things private without remorse when it doesn’t hurt me, and at least as far as I can figure doesn’t hurt anyone else. Secrets, nyet. Unless I want to end up feeling crappy, that is.  It’s always my choice, and I can always feel crappy if I choose to. But privacy, when chosen, isn’t likely to make me feel bad.  Ooooh ooooh! Yes!

I love it when a plan comes together.