I finally have my knee surgery scheduled! Woo!  Tuesday, February 10th, assuming the crick don’t rise. If the crick rises, I’m going to strangle it. hehe

I do NOT like surgery, but I am so psyched about getting this knee fixed and getting on with my life!  I’ll trade the 24 hours of anethesia nausea for a knee that will work right again and not hurt me every day for the rest of my life. And once it’s healed, I can go on with getting all this legal mess about the accident out of my hair. Oh yes, I’m looking forward to this.

Being me, I quizzed the ortho nurse about all my meds. Can I take this the day before? At midnight the night before?  I went through every single medication and supplement I take. I don’t want any ugly surprises because info on one of my meds got missed and it’ll turn me fuschia for 6 months or worse when interacting with anesthesia.  So I’ve got all that straight.  

Yeah, that’s a meds tip: Before you have any procedures or surgery done, go through and ask about each and every med with the doctor or nurse to be sure there won’t be any funky surprises.  They might miss something when looking at a list.

Now let’s get on with getting this knee fixed already.

Photo Credit: Liencrez Some Rights Reserved. See Wikimedia page for details.

Well, the depression isn’t too bad. If I sit by myself, I drown in it. But if I stay in contact with the world, or busy it recedes a good bit.  Ok, I still don’t like it, but I can cope.  The situational stuff I’ve worked on with self-checks and talk. The chemical I’ve worked on by yes, waiting until I was in tears over the knee pain. Sucks as far as pain, but might have helped some with the depression. If not, then I just cried over nothing, oh well.

A good friend from Vienna is off for holidays still and she’s been helping keep my head above water.  Chat is a good thing sometimes. Very good these last couple of days.   She reminds me to beat the crap out of Mr Depression if he shows up.  Good plan. And I love the image in my mind of it. hehe

Tip: Depression is often a combo platter of chemical and situational stuff, whether it’s bipolar or unipolar depression.  The situation can trigger the chemical and vice versa. So work to head off Mr. Depression in both places. If you can’t figure one of them out, or deal with it at the moment, then work on the other. It can help.  Finding a friend near or far to remind you to keep at it can help too.

As for busy, I finished moving Bipolar to Bipolar Info yesterday. And today I’m back working. After over a week off that’s definitely keeping me busy.  Take THAT Mr. Depression

Oh, and I didn’t wake up not wanting to live today. I woke up having an asthma attack instead.  I’m not entirely convinced that’s an improvement.

That’s about how I felt about it this morning. That didn’t work so well as far as happy new year feelings go, but it did remind me of something I’d like to share with you.

One of the biggest challenges for those of us with bipolar, is to sort out what’s the bipolar, and what’s just plain old life stuff. Because life and bipolar both are going to happen with us. And they need to be sorted so they can be taken care of appropriately, because throwing bipolar meds at something like a broken down car triggering feeling bummed out makes no particular sense.

So how do you sort it out?  Practice and learn yourself.  It’s not going to happen over night, probably, but most everyone gets better with it with practice.

The first thing I do when I’m feeling out of sorts is ask myself, “What’s going on today? What went on yesterday? Is there some normal reason I have whatever disturbing feeling I’m feeling now?”

If the answer is like the one I got today when I asked myself those questions — I stayed up late, my knee is killing me from this car accident, I’m lonely, I’m still on these stupid painkillers, and I got some issues triggered last night — then probably it’s just normal life stuff. Most people would feel kind of bummed over those kinds of things, especially all at once.

It’s normal to feel blue or excited or frustrated and such over different types of things in life. And we can deal with those types of things by just taking care of ourselves and waiting them out. Or we can be more proactive and meditate or get with a friend for coffee or other things that help us feel better about the stuff going on in life.

But if the answer is that nothing particular is going on and this mood hit out of the blue, then it’s time to look into your bag of tricks for heading off or dealing with a bipolar episode.

The real trick is to learn yourself. Not always a fun prospect. But if we’re honest with ourselves and willing to look clearly, we can usually figure it out.

And to you…. Happy New Year

More on coping with holidays. Today, though, I lucked out and don’t have to type much. BL at One Life Worth Living has a great list of Holiday Distress Tolerance Tips and I can’t think of a thing to add to it. It even includes things you can do at the dinner table!  The things on the list will work for folks with bipolar disorder, bpd, or just plain old holiday angst. So stop by and check out the list.

Christmas is the most stressful time of year for a whole bunch of people, dealing with mental illness or not. Stress aggravates bipolar symptoms and can even trigger an episode. So what do you do?

Minimize bipolar symptoms by managing how you deal with Christmas. Try to be realistic in dealing with it and don’t expect miracles from yourself or anyone else.

• Keep your sleep schedule as normal as you can.
• Eat on as normal a schedule as possible.
• Turn down stressful invitations.
• Be sure to take your bipolar meds as usual.
• Ask for help if you need it.
• Get plenty of rest.
• Don’t overindulge in food, drink, or anything else.
• Get together with friends you can relate to, even if it’s online.

Lack of insight is one of the problems with bipolar disorder: We may not realize that we’re having symptoms when we are. It’s a cognitive dysfunction where the brain just doesn’t work right caused by the illness itself. Like the other symptoms of manic depression, though, we need to find ways around it.

One thing I do is have code words or phrases for close friends and family to use if I seem out of whack without realizing it. One happens to be “Have you had your lithium today?” Now, I don’t take lithium, so it makes me pay attention because it seems like they’ve gone nuts. Then that triggers the memory of the whole code thing and possible symptoms can come to light in my head. Finding tricks like that which work for you can be a big help. You’re welcome to try mine.

Looking at the cocktail of medications that some people have to take to manage their bipolar disorder, I think I’d be on the floor comatose if I had to take all that daily. I tend to be quite sensitive to small amounts of medications, such as the 25mg of Lamictal that had me seeing flashing green lights for a couple of days. Other people aren’t especially sensitive, and might need more of a medication to have a beneficial effect.

It’s good to know whether you’re particularly sensitive or not to bipolar meds, as well as other medications in general. It helps the  psychiatrist and other doctors if you can tell them whichever tendency you have. That can help them prescribe so that you’re neither comatose on the floor nor feeling no beneficial effect at all. Don’t be afraid to tell them what your experience of your body and medications is. They aren’t mind readers, and you might save yourself a lot of trouble by telling.