I saw Lady Dr. Shrink today. She was a tad annoyed at me for not taking my PRN Zyprexa. She did understand why I didn’t do it, though: I wasn’t quite *that* out of it, and I refuse to take it and muck up my blood sugar except as a last resort before having to go off with the little men in white coats.

I took most of a week off work instead, and that helped a good bit and didn’t muck up my blood sugar.  She just wanted to emphasize that if 3 to 6 days off doesn’t help any, that’s probably time to risk the Zyprexa for a week or so.  Ok ok, Lady, I can live with that.  She said aside from that, which could have helped a lot, I handled things great.

Um, I knew that. This has been the worst run of mixed mania I’ve had since I was last in the hospital.   I’d have been in the hosptal if I hadn’t handled things great.

She was somewhat alarmed at the continual mixed mania throughout the month and the other stuff like cognitive problems, and even bitter tasting sodas.  Oh, and the restless leg syndrome too.  She’d never heard of having such side effects 3 weeks after discontinuing a med.  I bet she has but didn’t recognize it. hehe  And RLS from trazodone is downright weird. Add migraines, insomnia and intercostal neuritis, and it’s all pretty strange.  What a month June has been.

Good thing I do good mood charts. They really do contain a ton of info to help figure out what might be going on and what might be useful to try. And she loves it too. LOL

The goal at the moment is to get rid of the mixed mania. All mania really. Getting rid of the depressive side would be nice too, but not as urgent at the moment. Then we’ll figure from there what should be changed back if anything.

So… upping the Trileptal from 1200mg daily to 1500mg daily. I volunteered for that after we’d gone over discussing a slew of other meds and reasons why I can’t take them, or at least can’t take them for more than a week at a time.   I’d tried the higher dose a little over a year ago when having mania problems, and it worked. At the time it clobbered my stomach, though.  I’m on better stuff for the stomach now than I was then, so hopefully that won’t be a problem.  Started that tonight. I’m mildly stoned feeling, but I expect that’ll be gone by morning… always has before when I was upping the dose to get to where I was yesterday.

Get rid of the trazodone, at least for now. It’s an antidepressant (tricyclic or tetracyclic, I can’t remember which) and may destabilize or cause mania at some point. Since I’ve had to take it daily for almost a month, and take the highest dose I’ve been rx’d, that may well be a contributing factor in the mixed mania. For a few days I’ll take low dose Ativan to try to get my sleep straightened out.  As few days as possible — the idea of getting addicted to anything makes my toes curl.

Start taking Folic Acid supplement daily. That can help with depression sometimes, and also helps the body metabolize Trileptal better.  Ok, good deal. Good thing it’s not expensive either.

So I was off to see the Wizard today, and now I’m off on more adventures in pharmaceuticals. Isn’t there a song somewhere about how much we love bipolar disorder? *shakes head laughing*