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

One of the reasons people don’t like meds is they don’t feel like themselves. I can understand that. It does really sort of suck to have the highs flattened or feel dull or numb.

I felt the most “me” and the most alive when I have been manic. I do miss that feeling sometimes. I was on top of the world and nothing could stop me.  Kind of a pity, though, because I always end up making huge  messes for myself when I’m manic. When one wonderful mania ended I found myself broke, unemployed, and living 3000 miles from home with a very weird man who was having an affair with his daughter and some chick online.  It took me a lot of begging for help from my family to get home, and a couple of years to get my act back together.  Another left me broke again, psychotic, numb, and 4 years later still cleaning up the mess I made of my life. My manias are like that.  And so on. And my depressions just eat my life and soul to where I can’t function, and that wrecks my life too, though I can’t say that feels the most, or even much like being myself.

For me, that sense of feeling the most like me isn’t worth it in the long run. It never lasts, and it makes a complete wreck of my life that takes years to overcome. I am thoroughly tired of spending years of my life fixing things from the times my mood has been out of control. So I choose meds because nothing else removed enough of the highs and lows that I wasn’t tearing up my life. I choose to take as little as I can, so I’m the closest to that feeling the most alive that I can get without shredding my life. I work my tail off so that it works for me fairly well. Better that letting it go did, anyway.

Really, I think we have to each sort it for ourselves. If meds make your life better, super, go for it.  If meds make your life worse, well at least that one, and maybe any, aren’t for you. In the long run, anyway.

So Lamotrigine (generic Lamictal) is infamous for rashes. And you hear horror stories about the really rare but flesh eating ones*. So ramping up on Lamotrigine, I have to keep an eye out for rashes.  Today I about turned green when I saw a bright red blob on my calf. When it came off because it was fuzz from my red fuzzy slippers, I had to laugh. Sometimes I worry too much. LOL

*Steven Johnson Syndrome or TEN

I just realized that my sense that things will be ok eroded almost completely over the last year. I didn’t really notice until now that it’s starting to come back a little.

Can I lay that erosion at the door of bipolar disorder?  Some. Not all.

Being hit by a truck that didn’t see my red car pulling out of the parking lot made the first half of last year difficult to say the least. Months of pain, fighting with doctors over it, surgery, PT, all the legal crap, people harassing me for payments I didn’t have until the legal stuff was settled. All that lasted well into October.  And by September I had realized that though my knee is “fixed” it will never be right again. I will always have trouble and pain when the weather changes, or if I sit too long at a desk, or if I stand too long.  And I can’t do a  damned thing about the weather, so I’m stuck with a messed up knee until I exit stage left.  This has not helped me feel things will be ok.

Bipolar disorder gets its fair share of blame for this erosion, though. The Trileptal that helped my bipolar symptoms so much ultimately gave me such bad gastritis we thought I had an ulcer. So that had to go. I tried Abilify, which worked nicely, but appeared to give me gut spasms not to mention the county would no longer pay for it and I sure couldn’t. So within a year I started up on a third bipolar med. Encouraging? Not particularly.

Then there’s the gut spasm abdominal pain itself. That’s gone on for months on and off. We don’t even really know what it is. That doesn’t encourage hopefulness.  Nor does the rest of my  health stuff over the past year. I’ve had bronchitis twice I think it was, once that lasted almost 2 months.  I’ve also had colds and the flu.

Then there’s the financial problems. When you’re as sick as all that so constantly, working properly and consistently is almost impossible. So… severe financial problems just because I wasn’t able to earn as much.

Now that I’m looking at my eroded sense that things will be ok, when I stop to see what’s contributed to that, I realized I’m not so nuts. Most anyone would feel emotionally worn down after dealing with all this in just a year. Somehow that makes me feel a little more hopeful.

I’m still crossing my fingers and knocking on wood. But hey, two months ago I wouldn’t have bothered because I was convinced nothing could possibly help. I like having a little light at the end of the tunnel.

I got approved by a local clinic today. Thank goodness.  I had  no way to pay for the colonoscopy and CT scan my GI guy says I need, but now I can get them. Well, once I go through the system I can. That’s a lot better than not at all.  I’m not thrilled with the idea of the tests, but I’d rather know what’s up and hopefully be able to fix it.  I’m relieved I’ll be able to get them done after all.

All this is because of my abdominal pain that stopped for a while then came back then stoped again etc etc.  So apparently it wasn’t the Abilify like the GI guy first thought. It’s probably IBS, but no way to know until other stuff is ruled out. At least so far I know it’s not my gall bladder or stomach.  And my bloodwork is all ok.

Do you have any idea how heartily tired I am of having health problems to blog about?  Between the bipolar brain stuff and the rest of my body trying to fall apart, it eats up way too much of my time and energy. I really hope 2010 will be better than 2009 was for health. Wish me luck.

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.

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!!!