That’s how long it seems since I’ve posted. LOL  Shit has happened. Good things too.  Now I’m a year older than I was a few days ago. And I’m getting manic.

SLEEP!

That’s what I need. And I need a lot of it.  For my sanity.  Almost 2 weeks now I haven’t had a full night’s sleep because of RLS and neuritis. If the stupid hopping legs aren’t waking me up, rolling over on that nerve is. Waking up 20+ times a night is aggravating for anyone. For bipolar me, it’s dangerous — it makes me manic. Luckily I’m still “just” hypomanic. So mostly I just babble and want to spend money (though no fear, I don’t — I have none to spend LOL).  The lovely catch 22 is that the more hyper and manic I am, the harder it is to even get to sleep, much less stay there. Even with ativan for sleep. Urgh. This is nuts.

Oddly enough, though, I didn’t start getting manic until *looks at mood chart* 3 days ago. I guess that means my crazy meds are where they should be.  I mean, it kept me straight until over a week of way too little sleep. Good job!

So what am I doing about it?

Today I have an appointment with my PCP to see about dealing with the RLS and neuritis. It’s probably caused by a new blood pressure med. I think, anyway, since it started around the time I started the med and has just gotten worse and worse.  So, we’ll deal with that and hopefully very soon RLS and neuritis won’t be waking my bipolar ass up over and over again.

And yes, my support people are aware of it and looking out for me. If I start acting paranoid in the least bit or being disconnected from reality somehow, they’ll let me — and if necessary my case manager — know, so it can be dealt with.

And I have my (unfortunately new) emergency med sitting on the desk here. Zyprexa was wonderful for my mania, and it worked very quickly for me. Unfortunately now that I’ve been diagnosed as being diabetic, I can’t take it any more. Wah wah! And all the atypical antipsychotics can be gnarly with blood sugar. So this time we try Navane.  A “typical” antipsychotic. New crazy meds. Urgh again. Considering that new psych meds so often give me weirdo side effects, that could be quite interesting.  We’ll see, I guess. Hopefully I won’t need to take it.  I must say I’m not holding my breath on that hope though.

Fiddle faddle on the whole mess. I’m going to go take a shower. Ta ta!

Photo Credit: LunaDiRimmel CC-A-NC-ND 2.0

Just wide awake. In spite of sleep meds. I guess the skipping was me skipping on my way up the bipolar escalator. I did lay down for a half hour. No intrusive thoughts or anything. Just wide awake. I’ll go lay back down in 15 minutes whether I feel the least bit sleepy or not. I’ll daydream or something, but at least let my body rest. I’m a wee bit paranoid about not sleeping. More than two nights of it often sets me down in the middle of a nice little mixed mania. I’d rather be boiled in oil than that.

No caffeine tomorrow.

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.

When I find myself scrubbing the bathroom walls at 11 o’clock at night, I know I’m getting a tad manic.  Not that scrubbing bathroom walls is bad. I just never do it at all, much less late at night, when I’m not getting manic.

I should have realized my brain had flipped around when suddenly I could think clearly to complete a project that’s had me in tears from its complexity the last few days. Or maybe when at 10pm I called a friend out of the blue to just run my mouth. But no, I didn’t realize until I was standing there scrubbing the bathroom walls. LOL

Oh the joys of bipolar disorder!

Well, the bathroom walls are clean, at any rate.

The time off has helped me peel myself off the manic ceiling quite a lot. Not entirely yet, but much better. Hasn’t done as much for the depressive side of the equation, seldom does, but even that’s not so bothersome when I’m not also jumping out of my skin.  I’d far rather be manic OR depressed or preferably neither, than roil in the mixed mania I was coping with just a few days ago.

The depression isn’t so bad either.  Just mild. Not wanting to drop dead or anything. Just nothing much is interesting and I have no energy.  Overall my mood is better than it was.

Did I say “just” to lack of interest and energy? Like that’s a good thing?  Well, I guess it is in comparison to mixed mania or some of the extreme depressions I’ve dealt with, even the week before.  It’s all relative.

Why do I think the mania’s not totally gone from the mix? It’s horribly difficult to drag myself to bed at night, in spite of the fact there’s nothing that interests me going on. I am having a hell of a time sleeping, and when I’m solely depressed I can easily sleep 12 to 18 hours a day. Left to my own devices right now I’d sleep almost exactly 2 hours a night — and that’s with a moderate dose of trazodone to help me sleep!  I keep waking up after 2 hours and am wide awake, then have to fight to get back to sleep at all. That and I’ve got the hand tremors still.  And don’t have much appetite at all. Oh, and I can write forever. LOL These symptoms are not common at all to my depressions, but are common to my manias.

Cognitive loopies are still with me too. Astrid asked today how my week was last week. I had no clue at all. Couldn’t remember anything about it for about 10 minutes. Couldn’t even remember I took time off. LOL And words are still random or missing quite frequently (yes, I typed friendly for frequently at first, then caught that on proof).  Well, that’s not fixed yet.  Oh I am so not ever messing with topamax again.  It ate my brain! LOL  Give it back NOW!

I may work half days or one day off, one on next week.  I’m not totally past all this mixed mania stuff, obviously. But seeing as it’s my own business, I can’t ignore it very long and actually make any money.

It’s actually kind of bizarre, really. When I take a day off, even though I don’t announce it and it doesn’t change anything at my site where I sell my stuff, sales tank.  Conversely, if I do a lot of work behind the scenes that no one actually sees, sales go up. That’s all happened for years now, and it’s strange but interesting. Energy moving around makes weird things happen.

So I have to do some work so I can pay bills and buy meds.  But I will go easy on myself nonetheless. After all, it’s working

By the way, with the 50 or 100mg dose of trazodone, I’m getting restless leg syndrome.  Granted, I can’t take seroquel because it gave me RLS from the start. I don’t HAVE restless leg without these meds, at least, not in the last decade or so. And these are meds that people take to get rid of RLS effects sometimes.  What’s up with that?

Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask the shrink tomorrow. And yes, I’ll make it to see her. Didn’t come unglued. Just a bit mucked over. LOL

I ran into this comment the other night that Wellness Writer made in response to something that was said on a recent post.

Now that I’m not hypomanic, I just begin doing things I enjoy. But, I don’t see frenetic activity as a good thing. And I believe it’s really important to try and slow ourselves down if we feel that way because it will always result in another depression.

Boy do I agree. As manic as I got lately, I’ve also been doing things to try and slow down.  No, I didn’t mention it the other day. I needed to express the inner feeling of it. Or just babble.  But over the course of the day I did things to slow down. Good thing, no doubt.

What I do to calm the frenetic activity both inside and outside my head…

I meditated. Yes, I did. It’s danged hard to do when you feel like you’re vibrating. But just stopping to be present and still for 15 minutes is hugely helpful for me. So I’m not always good at it when I’m vibrating. Big fat hairy deal. I do it the best I can anyway, and keep going back to it when I find myself wandering. It helps. Doesn’t fix it, but it helps.

Music. Blaring rock wouldn’t work to help me slow down. But soundtracks and classical do. Frankly, the more manic I get, the more I want to jam to dance music and rock. I’ve learned, though, that if I do that, I just escalate it, and end up feeling worse.

Exercise. Now this is a totallly new one for me. But doing these PT exercises slows me down. At least while I’m doing them. I can’t keep tcount well when I’m manic, but no biggie really. It does stop my need to babble, though, and gives me a couple of hours or so of relative peace. So I do believe I’ll keep using this one now that I’ve gotten into the exercise habit.

Sleep! THE most important and helpful thing I can do to slow down. Sometimes one of the hardest, though. Keeping to my schedule makes it easier why I’m getting hyper. And if I need it, there’s trazodone. It makes the biggest difference I’ve ever found in getting back to middle and staying there. Otherwise I’d not do it. I loved being a night owl extraordinair and going to bed at 6am. I love feeling decent most of the time better than that.

Give myself a break. Tell myself (as often as necessary) that it’s ok to just live, that I don’t have to accomplish xyzpdq and whatnot. Again, it doesn’t fix anything, but hearing it repeatedly helps.

Eat decent. I hate cooking. I tend to eat junk. I forget to eat. I have a kitchen phobia. I work on it all the time, really. Sometimes I do better than others. But I find over and over that if I’m getting manic and I can make myself eat 3 meals a day, as good meals as I can manage I feel better.

I get my team on my side. Family, friends, healthcare folks, strangers. Everyone becomes a mirror for me to see where I am. Friends and family and healthcare folks are conscious mirrors. They tell me when I seem to be getting off track. Everyone else, well, I just see it in their eyes when I’m being a bit too odd. It helps by helping me stay aware. The more aware I am of just where I’m at, the better I can help myself with the other stuff.

Make time for some low key fun.  No, not for new projects or taking on the world. Just for doing little fun things. Play with the kitties. Read a book. Sit on the porch and watch the crazy neighbors.

Put it all together, and it helps a lot.  Even if I feel a mess and can only get half of it together, it helps a lot.  And the lower I can keep the ceiling, the smaller the amount I have to fall after.

I have to laugh when I see comments or emails from earlier in the day saying they hoped I didn’t fly off the planet when at the time they were written I was buzzing so fast that I was ranging out around ohhhhh Mercury. It was getting pretty sucky with my head flying that fast.  I’ve actually come down a bit. Goooooooooood!  Not down to earth, but not so sucky now. And I’m sitting still again. Without my hands flying around trying to sign because my mouth just can’t keep up. So, it works. For the moment, anyway.

I did have the PT guy laughing at me today. Babblebabblebabbleexerciseexercisebabble… until I got so busy exercising that the babble just halted.  I have no idea where my brain went, but it wasn’t with me much while I was there. I could only randomly tell which leg was my left, which got comical. PT dude finally resorted to telling me “Use the hurt leg.” or “Press down with your good leg.”  Resourceful, he is. No bike today, though. Not well enough for that yet. Maybe Wednesday.

Of course, by Wednesday I may either be walking on sunshine pretty literally, or laying on the floor drooling. It’s a toss up.  But at least it’s not dysphoric! As much as I tend towards mixed mania, lack of dysphoric is a blessing.

Actually, by Weds if this isn’t toned down… since I am now on the way down with the prednisone and that will help *crosses fingers*… I’ll have to grab the Zyprexa. Hopefully not the Ativan, though. It seems nutso to take one thing that flies you up but have to take, then take another 2 to get you back down. This is about as high as I can go without being at risk of… Heck, I don’t know what. Unhealth, I guess. Stupidity. Who knows.  My watchdogs are all over me though, and the car is parked until all this passes.  I even put it on my bloody calendar to not drive until after the pred is all done.  Tres genius.

It’s been pretty weird. My vision comes and goes at random. Not because I can’t actually see, because I can. My eyes are just fine. Just sometimes I can’t make any sense out of the things I see. Letters are there on the page, but I have no idea what they mean strung together.  Then *whap* it works again. And I can babble endlessly, but boy talk about tangents.  I can clean it up here a good bit, but it’s pretty funny IRL. No backspace there. No verbal spell check either.  I don’t need anyone to interrupt me thankyouverymuch. I can do it just fine all by my lonesome.

I have a feeling I’ll need the trazodone tonight. Probably because I woke up at 5am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Not good. But it’s worse if I take it at that hour and get my schedule all whacked.  Getting up at 8:30 to 9:00 am is a huge stabilizer in my day. Losing 3.5 hours of sleep ain’t as bad. So I have an SMS alarm set to remind me to take my trazodone at 11:30.  Full on dose.  That should have me to bed by 12:30 or 1 latest. Goodie for me. It’ll work. I’ll sleep. And tomorrow probably won’t be so odd.

I’d sort of like the shakes to go away too. I’m not sure if that’s from the pred induced mania or just from the prednisone and albuterol. Stinkin steroids can make you shake even if they don’t try to eat your brain. And this stuff is holding my brain hostage. Liveable I guess. As long as I don’t get Stockholm Syndrome.

Speaking of Stockholm… LOL… my dad called yesterday. It seems he was in the hospital two days and was calling to tell me he’d gotten out. Heart pain of some sort, though after $10K or $20K of tests they couldn’t figure out. He’s scared it’s his Marfan’s trying to yank his fake aorta out. Shoot. I’d be ascairt too.  Puts me in an odd spot, though. He’s deteriorating again over the last couple of months. CHF, TIA’s, Marfan’s possibly sticking it’s head up.  So… If I want to see him alive and not in a hospital bed with tubes sticking out, soon is a very good time to go visit. He might get patched up for another 5 years. If they can figure it out. Or not.  No way to know.  He’s had 2 major open chest/heart surgeries, and the  last one left him on a respirator for 2 weeks and in ICU for 3. He almost didn’t make it out. One more might be it.

I hate him for the things he did to me. I love him because he’s my father.  I have to live with that dichotomy. Neither feeling is going to vanish. But what do I want to do about it?  I’m in no spot just now to figure it out.  Or even to drive the 3 hours to visit. But I feel pressured. (How could I not when I’m running 2500 miles a minute and wondering if I’ll ever see him again before his body goes kaput?)  I give myself permission to not decide anything tonight.  Doesn’t stop the brain flight. But it takes the edge off the compulsion some. Enough, I guess. Hopping in the car right now would be a disaster. As long as I know that and can act on it, I’m still in the realm of the relatively sane I think.

Wish me a lack of need for Zyprexa over the next 48 hours. I’m not keen on it at all. Great life preserver for me, though. I’m grateful for that. Just toss a few Zyprexa over my head and I float to the right place. Very handy.

How DO you take your coffee anyways?