Hey! I haven't been around for a while, but there are a few reasons for that. I have been having horrific headaches, and a couple of mood bobbles and when I have had the energy to blog, I blog on a support site for the crazies.
When I just feel like splatting words onto a page, as a writing exercise, I have been using 750words.com. A great place to write garbage safely. I still fixate on myself, too much, I need to be more conscious of having an idea or topic upon which to riff.
So with all the writing I was doing here in December, followed by my spreading my writing efforts on other websites, and the headaches, I have been neglecting this blog.
Well, I hope to both get back into the "What I wore," and thrift shop finds. I do believe I haven't shown you some of my final finds before this total collapse of my health. Not to mention general the discussions about body image and BP illness. I can sense it will be coming soon....
Showing posts with label bipolar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bipolar. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sinking feelings
"I was more at the point where I felt like I wanted to be dead, but wasn't thinking about acting on it. I didn't have any plans or desire to do it myself. I just wanted to stop existing." -Me, February 13, 2011
So I off-handedly shared a major crisis in my life on a thread at Crazyboards Sunday. It didn't even bother me when I wrote it. Later, when I went back to the thread, and saw it, it made me do a double take. So blase, this has happened so many times, I think I know just what to expect.
My stomach dropped at rereading this hubris, this nonchalant dismissal of a time when I longed for death, as just "one of those things." To be clear, I am NOT longing for death at the moment, exactly the opposite. I would hardly use a forum to announce my impending suicide where people know me in person, and how to find me, I may be crazy, but I'm relatively intelligent.
It isn't that I am depressed at this moment. It is more that I am afraid. I feel like something may be stirring in Crazyland, but I can't tell for sure. Is it a bad mood? Might it be a side effect of medication? Or am I just due for a visit from the Mood Fairy?
Or perhaps my DH deserved to have his head bitten off this afternoon. Yes, I have snapped at him for the exact behavior before. But this afternoon I was very assertive about explaining what about a particular behavior bothered me so much. On the one hand, I interpreted in the most negative way possible. On the other, he admitted given the language he uses, he can understand how I might come to make that interpretation.
But irritability could be a sign of a mood swing in any direction, regardless of our eventually coming to an understanding. It's the fact that I initiated the discussion with anger that is different and troubling.
I will never entirely know what to expect. Bipolar is a difficult disease to treat. Its patterns change over time, confounding previously accepted truths. Drugs that work for years poop out, and drugs that don't work can make one even crazier than before taking the medicaton. I blandly assume that I have learned how to recognize a pattern or rhythm to help me anticipate episodes, to cut them off at the pass, so to speak, before they become too bad.
Then, suddenly, my brain decides it is time to clean house, and throw out all the knowledge, patterns, and tips I have accumulated over time, and make a fresh start. New types of episodes. More instability.
I can remember the year to which I so indifferently referred yesterday so distinctly. I had been laid off, yet was still teaching another semester at that school before I left, so that wasn't fun. The day I was laid off was also the day I had evacuated a busload of teenagers from the school campus, as wildfires raced towards it. The next day, I heard about the murder of my friend. Then came the week+ hospitalization for my kidneys. Followed by very, very severe depression. I ended up calling a crisis line for the first time in my life.
The first few psychiatrists gave me medications that either sent me into a manic frenzy, or were toxic to me. I ran out of money. Next stop, a crash landing in my parents' basement. I was so ashamed, and my mother made sure I knew she was ashamed of me, too. Her verbal brutality was just one more thing to hasten my downward spiral. And the headaches. Never forget the headaches.
Awful. I remember thoughts: "It would just be so much easier if I died. If I just went to sleep and never woke up." I never acted on it. I think there was only one time I was ever truly serious about taking action to bring about my own death, and that was a depressive episode that turned into a mixed episode. But that was several years in the future. This episode's theme was inertia. Hunger and inertia. I ate at night, to avoid my mother. I lived at night, to avoid my family. My dog, Bess, would lie next to me on the bed all day as I slept and hid, if I needed her to. She was my best friend. I never want to be without a dog if I am depressed again, even with my husband around. No person near me can understand the place I am living when I am so depressed. I need a dog to just shower me with love and affection when I am wanting to die, because it is such a simple straight-forward love, it is easy to return. No baggage.
And there's more. I have been on a new medication, a type of anti-depressant, a tricyclic. I actually am not taking it for depression, but to treat my intractable migraines. I was quite excited to try it, it was the first drug of this "class" of medications I had ever tried. I have basically tried multiple versions of all the other classes that my body will tolerate. Ironically, I seem to have magically stopped my standard rhythm of migraines 2 out of 3 days as soon as I started the new medication. Sheer coincidence, it actually still needs time before it will start working. But it has coincided with a 13 day period when I have only had two bad headaches and a three or four of mild ones. The first 5 days, I didn't have *any* type of migraine (migraine is a disease, the headache is just the worset symptom of it). I am still suffering from too many headaches. But less pain is less pain.
But with this exciting new (to me) class of medication, comes a caveat: While the amount of tricyclic used to prevent migraine is quite small compared to the therapeutic dose necessary to treat depression, as a rule of thumb, anti-depressants + bipolar = not a good thing. This is one of those rare instances where I have run out of other options to try to stop headaches that are ruining my quality of life. We are trying to delicately balance contraindicated treatments, hoping we can find the magic amalgam that will help with my head, but not hurt my mental stability.
So while we wait to see if the tricyclic helps, we also are watching closely for signs that it might be activating my bipolar illness: That is, triggering a mood swing. My doctors biggest concerns are that I have any lability of mood at all. My biggest concern is having a mixed episode: Mixed episodes are kind of like having a pocket-Hell that you are forced to carry around, and you have to negotiate life and cope with the havoc Hell is creating at the same time. No one else can see Hell in your pocket, you just seem flat out insane. Which I am. And part of that insanity is believing that others intentionally try to do everything they can to provoke Hell into bursting out of my pocket, and breaking things, forcing words that I know are dangerous even as they fly out of my mouth to come pourng out, throwing things, berating myself and my loved ones. Of course, I understand intellectually I am the one doing those things. But my intellect is being over-ridden by sick brain.
As a reasult every time I feel a petty thought, or am irritated, or tear up, or get overly excited about things, I begin to worry.
Usually, when I talk about depression, it is something in my past. My last one was a brief one in 2001. I almost had forgotten what it felt like. But re-reading the sentence I quoted above makes my stomach clench, makes me hyperventilate, makes me want to cover my head with a pillow. It made me remember a tiny inkling of what it was like, and now I am scared that the reason I can suddenly so closely identify with that feeling is that I am headed in a bad direction.
So I off-handedly shared a major crisis in my life on a thread at Crazyboards Sunday. It didn't even bother me when I wrote it. Later, when I went back to the thread, and saw it, it made me do a double take. So blase, this has happened so many times, I think I know just what to expect.
My stomach dropped at rereading this hubris, this nonchalant dismissal of a time when I longed for death, as just "one of those things." To be clear, I am NOT longing for death at the moment, exactly the opposite. I would hardly use a forum to announce my impending suicide where people know me in person, and how to find me, I may be crazy, but I'm relatively intelligent.
It isn't that I am depressed at this moment. It is more that I am afraid. I feel like something may be stirring in Crazyland, but I can't tell for sure. Is it a bad mood? Might it be a side effect of medication? Or am I just due for a visit from the Mood Fairy?
Or perhaps my DH deserved to have his head bitten off this afternoon. Yes, I have snapped at him for the exact behavior before. But this afternoon I was very assertive about explaining what about a particular behavior bothered me so much. On the one hand, I interpreted in the most negative way possible. On the other, he admitted given the language he uses, he can understand how I might come to make that interpretation.
But irritability could be a sign of a mood swing in any direction, regardless of our eventually coming to an understanding. It's the fact that I initiated the discussion with anger that is different and troubling.
I will never entirely know what to expect. Bipolar is a difficult disease to treat. Its patterns change over time, confounding previously accepted truths. Drugs that work for years poop out, and drugs that don't work can make one even crazier than before taking the medicaton. I blandly assume that I have learned how to recognize a pattern or rhythm to help me anticipate episodes, to cut them off at the pass, so to speak, before they become too bad.
Then, suddenly, my brain decides it is time to clean house, and throw out all the knowledge, patterns, and tips I have accumulated over time, and make a fresh start. New types of episodes. More instability.
I can remember the year to which I so indifferently referred yesterday so distinctly. I had been laid off, yet was still teaching another semester at that school before I left, so that wasn't fun. The day I was laid off was also the day I had evacuated a busload of teenagers from the school campus, as wildfires raced towards it. The next day, I heard about the murder of my friend. Then came the week+ hospitalization for my kidneys. Followed by very, very severe depression. I ended up calling a crisis line for the first time in my life.
The first few psychiatrists gave me medications that either sent me into a manic frenzy, or were toxic to me. I ran out of money. Next stop, a crash landing in my parents' basement. I was so ashamed, and my mother made sure I knew she was ashamed of me, too. Her verbal brutality was just one more thing to hasten my downward spiral. And the headaches. Never forget the headaches.
Awful. I remember thoughts: "It would just be so much easier if I died. If I just went to sleep and never woke up." I never acted on it. I think there was only one time I was ever truly serious about taking action to bring about my own death, and that was a depressive episode that turned into a mixed episode. But that was several years in the future. This episode's theme was inertia. Hunger and inertia. I ate at night, to avoid my mother. I lived at night, to avoid my family. My dog, Bess, would lie next to me on the bed all day as I slept and hid, if I needed her to. She was my best friend. I never want to be without a dog if I am depressed again, even with my husband around. No person near me can understand the place I am living when I am so depressed. I need a dog to just shower me with love and affection when I am wanting to die, because it is such a simple straight-forward love, it is easy to return. No baggage.
And there's more. I have been on a new medication, a type of anti-depressant, a tricyclic. I actually am not taking it for depression, but to treat my intractable migraines. I was quite excited to try it, it was the first drug of this "class" of medications I had ever tried. I have basically tried multiple versions of all the other classes that my body will tolerate. Ironically, I seem to have magically stopped my standard rhythm of migraines 2 out of 3 days as soon as I started the new medication. Sheer coincidence, it actually still needs time before it will start working. But it has coincided with a 13 day period when I have only had two bad headaches and a three or four of mild ones. The first 5 days, I didn't have *any* type of migraine (migraine is a disease, the headache is just the worset symptom of it). I am still suffering from too many headaches. But less pain is less pain.
But with this exciting new (to me) class of medication, comes a caveat: While the amount of tricyclic used to prevent migraine is quite small compared to the therapeutic dose necessary to treat depression, as a rule of thumb, anti-depressants + bipolar = not a good thing. This is one of those rare instances where I have run out of other options to try to stop headaches that are ruining my quality of life. We are trying to delicately balance contraindicated treatments, hoping we can find the magic amalgam that will help with my head, but not hurt my mental stability.
So while we wait to see if the tricyclic helps, we also are watching closely for signs that it might be activating my bipolar illness: That is, triggering a mood swing. My doctors biggest concerns are that I have any lability of mood at all. My biggest concern is having a mixed episode: Mixed episodes are kind of like having a pocket-Hell that you are forced to carry around, and you have to negotiate life and cope with the havoc Hell is creating at the same time. No one else can see Hell in your pocket, you just seem flat out insane. Which I am. And part of that insanity is believing that others intentionally try to do everything they can to provoke Hell into bursting out of my pocket, and breaking things, forcing words that I know are dangerous even as they fly out of my mouth to come pourng out, throwing things, berating myself and my loved ones. Of course, I understand intellectually I am the one doing those things. But my intellect is being over-ridden by sick brain.
As a reasult every time I feel a petty thought, or am irritated, or tear up, or get overly excited about things, I begin to worry.
Usually, when I talk about depression, it is something in my past. My last one was a brief one in 2001. I almost had forgotten what it felt like. But re-reading the sentence I quoted above makes my stomach clench, makes me hyperventilate, makes me want to cover my head with a pillow. It made me remember a tiny inkling of what it was like, and now I am scared that the reason I can suddenly so closely identify with that feeling is that I am headed in a bad direction.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Ending 2010: Deflation #reverb10
Well, it is the New Year. I admittedly threw over the final set of prompts. I was tired of their sameness, and while self-reflection is good, this exercise was beginning to strike me more as self-absorption.
The year ended with a completely crushing disappointment for me. Atenolol, the medication to which I switched two weeks ago in my attempt to control my migraines, started causing side effects that were intolerable, and/or precursors of more severe side effects. I left a message for my neurologist on Friday, Dec. 31, knowing he wasn't expected back in the office until January 4. I knew I couldn't stop this medication cold turkey without endangering myself, so I thought I would have to wait until Tuesday, and just cope with the side effects, making sure they did not take a turn for the worse.
So I was surprised that he called me at 9:30 PM on New Year's Eve; perhaps he was the Neurologist On-Call for the evening, but he uncharacteristically checked his messages on a Friday. He told me to titrate of the atenolol. I already had an appointment scheduled for mid-February, but I said to him I guessed I should reschedule the appointment for an earlier date. He began to hem and haw a little, and said something like, "I am always glad to see you, we can talk about the frequency of your headaches. I really think you should go back on Depakote in the fall." First of all, no. I will not go back on Depakote, and I have told him that repeatedly. But his message was clear. There is nothing else left in his pharmacological arsenal for me to try.
I had thought I was going to try the SSRI Cymbalta, until my psychiatrist nixed it, seemingly out of nowhere. He is now adamantly opposed to my using it, even though he told me in early May that the dose of Cymbalta used for migraine were so tiny that it would have no activating effect on my mood. SSRIs are generally no-nos for bipolar people, which was the whole point of that visit, to see if he thought I could handle it. I have in my notes that he said I could. He either changed his mind, or forgot, but it made me feel foolish. I really don't like to give the impression that I am pushing around my doctors (not that it doesn't happen). But this time I really wasn't, I was suggesting a medication that I have a record of his permitting.
But the long and short of it is, I have reached the end of the medication merry-go-round. With SSRIs eliminated, there is no other class of medication left to try as prophylaxis. I am now officially reliant solely on OTC analgesics, sumatriptan, and medical cannabis. As far as my neurologist is concerned, I can visit him sooner, or I can visit him later, there is nothing more he can do. I am going to beg and plead for a referral to the UCSF Headache Clinic. I have no idea if they have anything to offer, but they are the West Coast center for people like me.
Planner that I am, I already have contingency plans in case the UCSF Clinic, to which I have not yet been referred, is unable to help me.
So yeah. Way to end 2010.
Which just puts me in a morose mood for all of the challenges we already know we must face in 2011. I have foot surgery again. Then my husband has brain surgery. And at some point in 2011, I need to get over to Berkeley medical school, to have an eye I am losing vision in examined, and treated.
If all those events go smoothly, 2011 holds a lot of promise. But it also holds a lot of pitfalls. It seems as if the entire duration of my relationship with DH has been stumbling from one drama to the next. Our health issues have definitely meant there are dimensions to cope with beyond the usual loving and cherishing we would naturally provide each other: There is frustration and fear, for starters.
I burnt a candle on the Solstice, and again on the New Year, to send up all the bad vibrations and echoes of 2010 into the ether. I have my superstitions. Although if you ask me, I'll admit, I don't truly believe in them. But I like rituals, and superstitions are ripe for ritual. Rituals give me a false sense of control that is comforting, in spite of my knowing I am fooling myself.
2011 is also the Chinese year of the Rabbit, which is my birth sign. I turn 48. I fall under the water element, and am supposed to have a good career year. That would be nice for a change.
I know good things are in store, too. I am looking forward to further involvement in the Medical Cannabis community. Our tenth wedding anniversary is a huge milestone for us. And my third Oregon Country Fair is another anniversary of sorts. My French Bulldog Violet turned 7 on New Year's day, which is always auspicious.
Now if I could just locate my wallet....
The year ended with a completely crushing disappointment for me. Atenolol, the medication to which I switched two weeks ago in my attempt to control my migraines, started causing side effects that were intolerable, and/or precursors of more severe side effects. I left a message for my neurologist on Friday, Dec. 31, knowing he wasn't expected back in the office until January 4. I knew I couldn't stop this medication cold turkey without endangering myself, so I thought I would have to wait until Tuesday, and just cope with the side effects, making sure they did not take a turn for the worse.
So I was surprised that he called me at 9:30 PM on New Year's Eve; perhaps he was the Neurologist On-Call for the evening, but he uncharacteristically checked his messages on a Friday. He told me to titrate of the atenolol. I already had an appointment scheduled for mid-February, but I said to him I guessed I should reschedule the appointment for an earlier date. He began to hem and haw a little, and said something like, "I am always glad to see you, we can talk about the frequency of your headaches. I really think you should go back on Depakote in the fall." First of all, no. I will not go back on Depakote, and I have told him that repeatedly. But his message was clear. There is nothing else left in his pharmacological arsenal for me to try.
I had thought I was going to try the SSRI Cymbalta, until my psychiatrist nixed it, seemingly out of nowhere. He is now adamantly opposed to my using it, even though he told me in early May that the dose of Cymbalta used for migraine were so tiny that it would have no activating effect on my mood. SSRIs are generally no-nos for bipolar people, which was the whole point of that visit, to see if he thought I could handle it. I have in my notes that he said I could. He either changed his mind, or forgot, but it made me feel foolish. I really don't like to give the impression that I am pushing around my doctors (not that it doesn't happen). But this time I really wasn't, I was suggesting a medication that I have a record of his permitting.
But the long and short of it is, I have reached the end of the medication merry-go-round. With SSRIs eliminated, there is no other class of medication left to try as prophylaxis. I am now officially reliant solely on OTC analgesics, sumatriptan, and medical cannabis. As far as my neurologist is concerned, I can visit him sooner, or I can visit him later, there is nothing more he can do. I am going to beg and plead for a referral to the UCSF Headache Clinic. I have no idea if they have anything to offer, but they are the West Coast center for people like me.
Planner that I am, I already have contingency plans in case the UCSF Clinic, to which I have not yet been referred, is unable to help me.
So yeah. Way to end 2010.
Which just puts me in a morose mood for all of the challenges we already know we must face in 2011. I have foot surgery again. Then my husband has brain surgery. And at some point in 2011, I need to get over to Berkeley medical school, to have an eye I am losing vision in examined, and treated.
If all those events go smoothly, 2011 holds a lot of promise. But it also holds a lot of pitfalls. It seems as if the entire duration of my relationship with DH has been stumbling from one drama to the next. Our health issues have definitely meant there are dimensions to cope with beyond the usual loving and cherishing we would naturally provide each other: There is frustration and fear, for starters.
I burnt a candle on the Solstice, and again on the New Year, to send up all the bad vibrations and echoes of 2010 into the ether. I have my superstitions. Although if you ask me, I'll admit, I don't truly believe in them. But I like rituals, and superstitions are ripe for ritual. Rituals give me a false sense of control that is comforting, in spite of my knowing I am fooling myself.
2011 is also the Chinese year of the Rabbit, which is my birth sign. I turn 48. I fall under the water element, and am supposed to have a good career year. That would be nice for a change.
I know good things are in store, too. I am looking forward to further involvement in the Medical Cannabis community. Our tenth wedding anniversary is a huge milestone for us. And my third Oregon Country Fair is another anniversary of sorts. My French Bulldog Violet turned 7 on New Year's day, which is always auspicious.
Now if I could just locate my wallet....
Sunday, December 26, 2010
The Helpful Crone: Prompts 19, 20 & 21 #reverb10
Dec. 19 Healing. What healed you this year? Was it sudden, or a drip-by-drip evolution? How would you like to be healed in 2011? -Leonie Allan
Dec. 20 Beyond avoidance. What should you have done this year but didn't because you were too scared, worried, unsure, busy or otherwise deterred from doing? (Bonus: Will you do it?) -Jake Nickell
Dec. 21 Future self. Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?) -Jenny Blake
Dear 47 year-old me:
If 2010 was the most chaotic year of your marriage, 2011 was still a doozy. But as usual, the two of you pulled through. The lesson of 2010 was that in order to heal, you must learn to endure the pain with patience, because things may get much worse before they get better. The bottom may have been a lot further down than you initially realized, but there was a bottom. And once you hit it, you found it was something to push off of, to stabilize you during your climb back up. It was a good lesson to have under your belt for 2011, with both of your continued health challenges.
First and foremost, were all of the surgeries. First the foot surgery, to remove the metal you had developed an allergy to. After what you endured after the foot surgery in 2010, this turned out to be a breeze, and you were back on your feet within a month. Then DH's brain surgery, both planned, yet scheduled abruptly, when his epilepsy and seizures took a turn for the worse. As scared as you were for your husband, and as concerned as you were about your finances, both survived. Not without a little too much angst on your part, crtclms. But the fact that you both had endured so much in 2010 made your bond and your faith in yourselves stronger.
The outcome of the brain surgery wasn't the miracle you had hoped for, but it did help with DH's seizures. He became much more responsive to anti-epileptics. He even got his driver's license back.
Then your right eye, the one that was practically blind, and which worsened considerably in 2010, was finally treated. You had been so frightened of the idea of eye surgery, or worse, of losing sight in that eye altogether, that you had totally ignored the problem from that day in October, 2009 that you were told your eye was beyond regular opthalmological care. Then suddenly, the scare in December of 2010, when your sight got abruptly worse. That was scary. And the fact is that it was an unusual and uncomfortable treatment. But the results were worth it: No more night-blindness, no more cars and street lamps throwing halos of light, rather than beams, no more holding books inches from your nose to read regular-sized print, no more hitting the apple key and + over and over again to make sites legible, if distorted.
And on top of that, you worked hard at pulling your financial picture together again, at the same time that you planned a somewhat extravagant 10th wedding anniversary. 10 years of physical disaster after physical disaster, 10 years of joy in and with each other. Years of penny-pinching as you got your marriage started, then years of largess. Followed by 2010, when you became two of millions of victims of the Great Recession.
But while 2010 proved your marriage, 2011 celebrated it. All your life, you had resisted being so reliant on one other person, fearing the idea of merging with them. You feared loss of identity. But in 2010, you realized the strength of two individuals, joined like a mortise and tenon at Stonehenge, create a simple but strong and durable bond, that is stronger than either person alone. The quotation from your wedding ceremony by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry seems to have proved an important tenet in your marriage:
While you lived your marriage day by day, you both were committed to keeping your marriage moving in concert with both of your future dreams.
In 2013, you finally made the big trip to Australia, so that DH could see the country you love so much. It was odd to have a sister living permanently abroad, and you will always feel a little sad that you never had the chance to live overseas. But you made different choices than your sister, and have a happy life.
That was for your 50th birthday, and now your 60th is much closer than I would like to admit. But if I could offer advice to the 47 year-old me/you, here are some of the tidbits I have to share, in my extreme decrepitude:
And of course, you took the time yearly to renew yourself at the Oregon Country Fair, with Nakedjen and friends.
You still miss Bess and Violet. You always will. Your current dog is as lovable as they come, but different. Sometimes you still cry from missing both of them.
DH and I are about to celebrate your 20th wedding anniversary. Congratulations to us all! May we share many more years.
Love,
57 year-old me
P.S. And after all these years, I still can't get the fonts to work properly on Blogger!
Dear 47 year-old me:
If 2010 was the most chaotic year of your marriage, 2011 was still a doozy. But as usual, the two of you pulled through. The lesson of 2010 was that in order to heal, you must learn to endure the pain with patience, because things may get much worse before they get better. The bottom may have been a lot further down than you initially realized, but there was a bottom. And once you hit it, you found it was something to push off of, to stabilize you during your climb back up. It was a good lesson to have under your belt for 2011, with both of your continued health challenges.
First and foremost, were all of the surgeries. First the foot surgery, to remove the metal you had developed an allergy to. After what you endured after the foot surgery in 2010, this turned out to be a breeze, and you were back on your feet within a month. Then DH's brain surgery, both planned, yet scheduled abruptly, when his epilepsy and seizures took a turn for the worse. As scared as you were for your husband, and as concerned as you were about your finances, both survived. Not without a little too much angst on your part, crtclms. But the fact that you both had endured so much in 2010 made your bond and your faith in yourselves stronger.
The outcome of the brain surgery wasn't the miracle you had hoped for, but it did help with DH's seizures. He became much more responsive to anti-epileptics. He even got his driver's license back.
Then your right eye, the one that was practically blind, and which worsened considerably in 2010, was finally treated. You had been so frightened of the idea of eye surgery, or worse, of losing sight in that eye altogether, that you had totally ignored the problem from that day in October, 2009 that you were told your eye was beyond regular opthalmological care. Then suddenly, the scare in December of 2010, when your sight got abruptly worse. That was scary. And the fact is that it was an unusual and uncomfortable treatment. But the results were worth it: No more night-blindness, no more cars and street lamps throwing halos of light, rather than beams, no more holding books inches from your nose to read regular-sized print, no more hitting the apple key and + over and over again to make sites legible, if distorted.
And on top of that, you worked hard at pulling your financial picture together again, at the same time that you planned a somewhat extravagant 10th wedding anniversary. 10 years of physical disaster after physical disaster, 10 years of joy in and with each other. Years of penny-pinching as you got your marriage started, then years of largess. Followed by 2010, when you became two of millions of victims of the Great Recession.
But while 2010 proved your marriage, 2011 celebrated it. All your life, you had resisted being so reliant on one other person, fearing the idea of merging with them. You feared loss of identity. But in 2010, you realized the strength of two individuals, joined like a mortise and tenon at Stonehenge, create a simple but strong and durable bond, that is stronger than either person alone. The quotation from your wedding ceremony by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry seems to have proved an important tenet in your marriage:
"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction."
While you lived your marriage day by day, you both were committed to keeping your marriage moving in concert with both of your future dreams.
In 2013, you finally made the big trip to Australia, so that DH could see the country you love so much. It was odd to have a sister living permanently abroad, and you will always feel a little sad that you never had the chance to live overseas. But you made different choices than your sister, and have a happy life.
That was for your 50th birthday, and now your 60th is much closer than I would like to admit. But if I could offer advice to the 47 year-old me/you, here are some of the tidbits I have to share, in my extreme decrepitude:
- Everything is going to be okay. Yes, the unknown is scary, and makes you anxious. Yes, the path may be difficult. But your failures have often been more rewarding than your successes.
- Stop feeling guilty for not living a life you are not suited for, even if it is what was expected of you. I can't believe this still bothers you, frankly. You know better, and have given this exact advice to dozens of friends. Now take it yourself.
- You still do not owe your mother any more of your life. Be polite. Accept that you will be devastated by her death, but will have a hard time feeling anything positive about her until then
- You are very much like your father. His life did not end happily. Learn from his example.
- Live in the now, stop trying to get a jump on the future. It isn't possible in the current space-time continuum.
- This is very hard, but try not to live in fear of your illnesses: Don't let fear of the next episode invade your periods of good health, and enjoy your wellness.
- Your psychiatrist has prescribed you Xanax because you need it. Now listen to his advice, and stop being afraid of it. It will improve your quality of life. Needing a medication is not the same thing as being addicted to it.
And of course, you took the time yearly to renew yourself at the Oregon Country Fair, with Nakedjen and friends.
You still miss Bess and Violet. You always will. Your current dog is as lovable as they come, but different. Sometimes you still cry from missing both of them.
Bess
Violet
DH and I are about to celebrate your 20th wedding anniversary. Congratulations to us all! May we share many more years.
Love,
57 year-old me
P.S. And after all these years, I still can't get the fonts to work properly on Blogger!
Friday, December 24, 2010
Dec. 18 Try: Cleaning House #reverb 10
Dec. 18 Try. What do you want to try next year? Is there something you wanted to try in 2010? What happened when you did / didn't go for it? -Kaileen Elise
This is a mundane answer on one level, but a more serious one on another. I want to try to organize my house. This year, it was a real struggle for me, especially because I was off my feet for 4 months. Right before my foot surgery, I had had a hypo manic episode, and one of the characteristic behaviors of hypo mania is frenzied cleaning. This is not universal, but is so common as to be considered a warning sign to see your doctor. It is also a source of jokes among those of us who find cleaning very difficult, except for these outbursts.
I was never really taught how to clean. My mother had a cleaning lady for as long as I can remember, and she felt that teaching us housework was sexist. Of course what was sexist was that they weren't expecting boys to do housework, not that girls had to do it. But at any rate, it means the few cleaning skills I have are self-taught.
In addition, because bipolar illness causes brain damage to certain parts of the brain, I suffer cognitive defects in my Executive Function, which is sort of the overarching cognitive meta-structure that allows one to live an orderly and organized day to day life. I flat out can't do this. I also have bad impulse control. It is connected to damage done to the frontal lobe, Phineas Gage via neurotransmitters. Well okay, not as bad as Phineas Gage.
Anyway, I went into my foot surgery with the house cleaner than it had been in some time. Which meant it was clean, but crammed with "stuff." And things have deteriorated from that point.
So I have made a couple of decisions about how to approach this in the coming year: I am going to throw being Green to the winds for a little bit, and use all the "magic sponges" and "swiffers," and wasteful but convenient things: The easier the better. And then, we are going to invest in some storage. I am already measuring spaces for shelves and storage units. We are buying shoe racks, and hangers. We are going to make a real go of it this year. We kind of landed in this duplex in June of 2006, when DH lost his license due to a seizure: Where he was working at the time was a mile from this house. Now he actually commutes to an office two blocks away from where we lived before we landed here. But we never sat down and "organized" the place, the furniture is pretty much where we dumped it upon arrival. And while this is technically not the smallest place we have ever lived, the smaller place was designed to maximize use of space. And we owned less 11 years ago, of course.
So we have never really pulled this place together. We are always soooo proud of ourselves when we do even the tiniest amount of decorating. For instance, At Goodwill last week I found a matching trio of colorful but muted cushions that look great against our beige-y sectional. Oh yes, I am still "thrifting"; I am taking a break from the daily photographs of outfits while I work on this #reverb10 challenge.
Anyway, not my most riveting entry, but I needed to start catching up! Part of the reason I am behind is this has been a very challenging week, for all the reasons I have been discussing this month, and I now need to sleep. So this is a bit rough, sorry for any garbled sentences.
This is a mundane answer on one level, but a more serious one on another. I want to try to organize my house. This year, it was a real struggle for me, especially because I was off my feet for 4 months. Right before my foot surgery, I had had a hypo manic episode, and one of the characteristic behaviors of hypo mania is frenzied cleaning. This is not universal, but is so common as to be considered a warning sign to see your doctor. It is also a source of jokes among those of us who find cleaning very difficult, except for these outbursts.
I was never really taught how to clean. My mother had a cleaning lady for as long as I can remember, and she felt that teaching us housework was sexist. Of course what was sexist was that they weren't expecting boys to do housework, not that girls had to do it. But at any rate, it means the few cleaning skills I have are self-taught.
In addition, because bipolar illness causes brain damage to certain parts of the brain, I suffer cognitive defects in my Executive Function, which is sort of the overarching cognitive meta-structure that allows one to live an orderly and organized day to day life. I flat out can't do this. I also have bad impulse control. It is connected to damage done to the frontal lobe, Phineas Gage via neurotransmitters. Well okay, not as bad as Phineas Gage.
Anyway, I went into my foot surgery with the house cleaner than it had been in some time. Which meant it was clean, but crammed with "stuff." And things have deteriorated from that point.
So I have made a couple of decisions about how to approach this in the coming year: I am going to throw being Green to the winds for a little bit, and use all the "magic sponges" and "swiffers," and wasteful but convenient things: The easier the better. And then, we are going to invest in some storage. I am already measuring spaces for shelves and storage units. We are buying shoe racks, and hangers. We are going to make a real go of it this year. We kind of landed in this duplex in June of 2006, when DH lost his license due to a seizure: Where he was working at the time was a mile from this house. Now he actually commutes to an office two blocks away from where we lived before we landed here. But we never sat down and "organized" the place, the furniture is pretty much where we dumped it upon arrival. And while this is technically not the smallest place we have ever lived, the smaller place was designed to maximize use of space. And we owned less 11 years ago, of course.
So we have never really pulled this place together. We are always soooo proud of ourselves when we do even the tiniest amount of decorating. For instance, At Goodwill last week I found a matching trio of colorful but muted cushions that look great against our beige-y sectional. Oh yes, I am still "thrifting"; I am taking a break from the daily photographs of outfits while I work on this #reverb10 challenge.
Anyway, not my most riveting entry, but I needed to start catching up! Part of the reason I am behind is this has been a very challenging week, for all the reasons I have been discussing this month, and I now need to sleep. So this is a bit rough, sorry for any garbled sentences.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
5 Minutes of Appreciation #reverb10
December 14 prompt: Appreciate. What is the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do express gratitude for it? -Victoria Klein
December 15 prompt: 5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in 5 minutes. Set the alarm for 5 minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010? -Patti Digh
I once again have been having health problems, so I am combining some prompts, and may do so in a couple of days again.
I received the Dec. 14 prompt, and I was beginning to feel like I was being asked essentially the same thing over and over. What did you like best about X? What was the best thing you did? Where did you have the most fun? I know it isn't quite that simplistic, or overly gooey sweet. I understand it must be hard to come up with prompts. But I wonder if the authors aren't becoming too engrossed in making their prompt as "deep" as possible. I can keep only mining that single, "deep" vein for so long. I thought about skipping the prompt outright.
But then I received the December 15 prompt. These kind of timed exercises have always helped me; as I have said, I do best with a line in the sand. Plus, I felt like if I just started spewing memories, the things I appreciate might naturally rise to the surface. So I set my smart phone's timer for 5 minutes, and these are the memories that "pushed through"
-
Oregon Country Fair-Avocado Dream Boats-The Ritz-spinach and cheese turnovers-glitter-Mount Shasta, the halfway point to Veneta-Driving near Corning for olives-Trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park-Mud Pots-Almost brain surgery-More and more seizures-More and more migraines-Violet and the root canal-mixed episode-hypo manic episode-Foot Surgery-Life on a scooter-DH gets new job-Quitting daycare-S, J and H-Emptying our savings-We end the year in the black-Making it through the tough times-growing closer-planning for our 10th anniversary-Job interview at a dispensary-coloring books-shopping for jewelry-Eni-thing-It's a Girl Thing-thrift shop hunting-starting to read again-learning cribbage-Happy 9th Anniversary-DH turns 40-Niece turns 3-"Sister3" turned 40-Oaksterdam University-Medical Cannabis-activism-Violet in the yard-riding a bike-car breakdowns-Crazyboards, and blogging-Blogger, and blogging-Told my mother to back off-My mother aged significantly-My father is sick
-
Now, I did corrects some spelling, and re-organize the list so it was a little more coherent to me. Out of the 49 I quickly counted (which means the actual count could be anywhere between 47 and 51), 16 (about a third) of the memories I came up with had to do with my husband's and my health and finances.
You can see by the things I italicized what was going on in our personal lives: Fears about health and money, surgeries, disappointment, and just overall stress. I know a lot of marriages are pulled apart by money and health problems. I have watched it happen to friends and enemies alike. Maybe it is because we have both spent our lives since puberty struggling with illness. Maybe it is because we both know what it is like to have negative worth, and that it is survivable: At one point right before I met DH, my finances were so bad, the FDIC wouldn't allow me to have a bank account. He had almost as bad a history. We have worked hard to build up our savings in our marriage, because we are both late to the land of "financially responsible adulthood."
For 11 months, we watched our savings dwindle. We actually were starting to think of selling parts of our 401k. I hate money. Hate. it.
So when my husband was suddenly hired at the end of August, literally days before he was scheduled to have brain surgery, it blew a hole in our plans, and I hate when there is a change of plan. Suddenly, there was not going to be brain surgery, but there was going to be income.
Much to my shock, I was torn. I had spent the entire month of August being tended to my psychiatrist, preparing myself for my husband's surgery. I wasn't intentionally trying to make it "all about me," but I just fell apart at the idea of something going wrong.
Yet when the surgery was postponed so he could take the job, I was angry at him for not doing the surgery instead. Since then, the threat of surgery has reappeared, but I have come to accept I cannot make this decision for DH. He will have it within the next year, it is just a matter of whether it is sooner or later.
So all of this depressing stuff has ironically made me appreciate my husband and my marriage more than ever. I am bad at expressing gooey emotions towards my husband. But we have had so much time together in 2010, that we were able to talk about our relationship and our marriage a lot, and no matter how difficult or thorny the topic. It never seemed to take a negative turn.
So this is not exactly riveting, but I show my appreciation for my husband and my marriage by keeping the lines of communication open, and trying to be brave enough to say things I am nervous about saying. So far, it is working.
December 15 prompt: 5 minutes. Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in 5 minutes. Set the alarm for 5 minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010? -Patti Digh
I once again have been having health problems, so I am combining some prompts, and may do so in a couple of days again.
I received the Dec. 14 prompt, and I was beginning to feel like I was being asked essentially the same thing over and over. What did you like best about X? What was the best thing you did? Where did you have the most fun? I know it isn't quite that simplistic, or overly gooey sweet. I understand it must be hard to come up with prompts. But I wonder if the authors aren't becoming too engrossed in making their prompt as "deep" as possible. I can keep only mining that single, "deep" vein for so long. I thought about skipping the prompt outright.
But then I received the December 15 prompt. These kind of timed exercises have always helped me; as I have said, I do best with a line in the sand. Plus, I felt like if I just started spewing memories, the things I appreciate might naturally rise to the surface. So I set my smart phone's timer for 5 minutes, and these are the memories that "pushed through"
-
Oregon Country Fair-Avocado Dream Boats-The Ritz-spinach and cheese turnovers-glitter-Mount Shasta, the halfway point to Veneta-Driving near Corning for olives-Trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park-Mud Pots-Almost brain surgery-More and more seizures-More and more migraines-Violet and the root canal-mixed episode-hypo manic episode-Foot Surgery-Life on a scooter-DH gets new job-Quitting daycare-S, J and H-Emptying our savings-We end the year in the black-Making it through the tough times-growing closer-planning for our 10th anniversary-Job interview at a dispensary-coloring books-shopping for jewelry-Eni-thing-It's a Girl Thing-thrift shop hunting-starting to read again-learning cribbage-Happy 9th Anniversary-DH turns 40-Niece turns 3-"Sister3" turned 40-Oaksterdam University-Medical Cannabis-activism-Violet in the yard-riding a bike-car breakdowns-Crazyboards, and blogging-Blogger, and blogging-Told my mother to back off-My mother aged significantly-My father is sick
-
Now, I did corrects some spelling, and re-organize the list so it was a little more coherent to me. Out of the 49 I quickly counted (which means the actual count could be anywhere between 47 and 51), 16 (about a third) of the memories I came up with had to do with my husband's and my health and finances.
You can see by the things I italicized what was going on in our personal lives: Fears about health and money, surgeries, disappointment, and just overall stress. I know a lot of marriages are pulled apart by money and health problems. I have watched it happen to friends and enemies alike. Maybe it is because we have both spent our lives since puberty struggling with illness. Maybe it is because we both know what it is like to have negative worth, and that it is survivable: At one point right before I met DH, my finances were so bad, the FDIC wouldn't allow me to have a bank account. He had almost as bad a history. We have worked hard to build up our savings in our marriage, because we are both late to the land of "financially responsible adulthood."
For 11 months, we watched our savings dwindle. We actually were starting to think of selling parts of our 401k. I hate money. Hate. it.
So when my husband was suddenly hired at the end of August, literally days before he was scheduled to have brain surgery, it blew a hole in our plans, and I hate when there is a change of plan. Suddenly, there was not going to be brain surgery, but there was going to be income.
Much to my shock, I was torn. I had spent the entire month of August being tended to my psychiatrist, preparing myself for my husband's surgery. I wasn't intentionally trying to make it "all about me," but I just fell apart at the idea of something going wrong.
Yet when the surgery was postponed so he could take the job, I was angry at him for not doing the surgery instead. Since then, the threat of surgery has reappeared, but I have come to accept I cannot make this decision for DH. He will have it within the next year, it is just a matter of whether it is sooner or later.
So all of this depressing stuff has ironically made me appreciate my husband and my marriage more than ever. I am bad at expressing gooey emotions towards my husband. But we have had so much time together in 2010, that we were able to talk about our relationship and our marriage a lot, and no matter how difficult or thorny the topic. It never seemed to take a negative turn.
So this is not exactly riveting, but I show my appreciation for my husband and my marriage by keeping the lines of communication open, and trying to be brave enough to say things I am nervous about saying. So far, it is working.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Body Integration: Where I end, is where I begin. #reverb10
December 12 prompt: Body integration. This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment that wasn't mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present? -Patrick Reynolds
I thought long and hard about this prompt. I was beginning to feel as if I was going to have to talk about the same thing I talked about for "Moment," which I had already cited again in my post for yet another prompt. Next I tried to think of one of my rare athletic moments. The few times I exerted myself, there was not any particular moment I got into some kind of zone, where mind and body melded.
Suddenly the phrase "mind and body" leapt out at me. How could I have missed that?
One of the dilemmas of being bipolar is determining the point at which one's personality ends, and the influence of the illness begins. Mental illness is a biological illness, but it manifests in our behavior and mood. Are our "real" personalities and our bipolar symptoms, which are, after all, largely behavioral, too intertwined to be teased apart? It certainly can feel that way, especially when you are in the midst of an episode. The fact that sometimes a particular mood will really bring out a troubling personality trait fills me with trepidation that I am directed more by my illness, than my own volition.
One of the things I have found on Crazyboards (which I mentioned in the "Community" prompt blog post) by listening to other bipolar patients' experiences, from childhood to the present day, so much of my life is an echo of theirs. From similar yet unusual childhood mishaps, to relations with our parents, to our delusions and/or hallucinations, and how they spill over into our day to day lives, no matter how rational and responsible we try to be.
So is the startling similarity of so many bipolar people's lives just a correlation, or do precursors of our first "official" mood episode start appearing way earlier in our lives than one would think? The traditional age of onset for bipolar illness is late teens, or early 20s. But while we may not have an acute episode until after our childhood, sometimes it seems as if our early behavior and personalities are strikingly similar.
And because bipolar illness is a genetic one, our parents offer suffer from mental illness of one type or another. So many if not most of us had unstable and chaotic childhoods. If anyone needs structure, it is bipolar people, and that kind of tumultuous upbringing often causes us to find ways of sabotaging and undermining ourselves. Crazy parents are often unable to provide the support and nurturing we need, through no fault of their own. The more regular our lives, the better we fare from day to day (although I will admit that I am very unlikely to impose structure on myself). I don't really know how a "normal" family interacts, but our family gatherings are almost always tense affairs, involving a great deal of teetering on egg shells.
Unfortunately, the mood episodes that make me feel most alive are mixed episodes, which are widely accepted to be the worst and most dangerous episodes in terms of the risk of a patient harming themselves or others. Rages, sobbing, over-sensitivity, self-loathing, sensory overload; the sensation of my body trying to crawl out of its own skin, the pacing, the inability to sleep. Things taste awful, so I stop eating. My frustration threshold is non-existent, and I can feel anger coursing through my body.
Mixed states are the most visceral and terrifying periods of my life. I hope that no one ever judges my overall personality based on my behavior during such an episode. But I would be disingenuous to tell people that mood episodes are somehow not a genuine part of me.
Just because I haven't added any media for a few days, and this is supposed to be a post of the uniting of body and mind, here is a picture I took of myself during my last mixed episode, in the early summer of 2010. Most of you of course have no idea how I normally look, but here I am drained of color, my face is set and furrowed with anxiety, and I look exhausted because I had probably gotten about 12 hours sleep in the last 4 days.
I thought long and hard about this prompt. I was beginning to feel as if I was going to have to talk about the same thing I talked about for "Moment," which I had already cited again in my post for yet another prompt. Next I tried to think of one of my rare athletic moments. The few times I exerted myself, there was not any particular moment I got into some kind of zone, where mind and body melded.
Suddenly the phrase "mind and body" leapt out at me. How could I have missed that?
One of the dilemmas of being bipolar is determining the point at which one's personality ends, and the influence of the illness begins. Mental illness is a biological illness, but it manifests in our behavior and mood. Are our "real" personalities and our bipolar symptoms, which are, after all, largely behavioral, too intertwined to be teased apart? It certainly can feel that way, especially when you are in the midst of an episode. The fact that sometimes a particular mood will really bring out a troubling personality trait fills me with trepidation that I am directed more by my illness, than my own volition.
One of the things I have found on Crazyboards (which I mentioned in the "Community" prompt blog post) by listening to other bipolar patients' experiences, from childhood to the present day, so much of my life is an echo of theirs. From similar yet unusual childhood mishaps, to relations with our parents, to our delusions and/or hallucinations, and how they spill over into our day to day lives, no matter how rational and responsible we try to be.
So is the startling similarity of so many bipolar people's lives just a correlation, or do precursors of our first "official" mood episode start appearing way earlier in our lives than one would think? The traditional age of onset for bipolar illness is late teens, or early 20s. But while we may not have an acute episode until after our childhood, sometimes it seems as if our early behavior and personalities are strikingly similar.
And because bipolar illness is a genetic one, our parents offer suffer from mental illness of one type or another. So many if not most of us had unstable and chaotic childhoods. If anyone needs structure, it is bipolar people, and that kind of tumultuous upbringing often causes us to find ways of sabotaging and undermining ourselves. Crazy parents are often unable to provide the support and nurturing we need, through no fault of their own. The more regular our lives, the better we fare from day to day (although I will admit that I am very unlikely to impose structure on myself). I don't really know how a "normal" family interacts, but our family gatherings are almost always tense affairs, involving a great deal of teetering on egg shells.
Unfortunately, the mood episodes that make me feel most alive are mixed episodes, which are widely accepted to be the worst and most dangerous episodes in terms of the risk of a patient harming themselves or others. Rages, sobbing, over-sensitivity, self-loathing, sensory overload; the sensation of my body trying to crawl out of its own skin, the pacing, the inability to sleep. Things taste awful, so I stop eating. My frustration threshold is non-existent, and I can feel anger coursing through my body.
Mixed states are the most visceral and terrifying periods of my life. I hope that no one ever judges my overall personality based on my behavior during such an episode. But I would be disingenuous to tell people that mood episodes are somehow not a genuine part of me.
Just because I haven't added any media for a few days, and this is supposed to be a post of the uniting of body and mind, here is a picture I took of myself during my last mixed episode, in the early summer of 2010. Most of you of course have no idea how I normally look, but here I am drained of color, my face is set and furrowed with anxiety, and I look exhausted because I had probably gotten about 12 hours sleep in the last 4 days.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Nasty Little Things #reverb10
December 11 prompt: 11 Things. What are 11 things your life doesn't need in 2011. How will you go about eliminating them. How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life? -Sam Davidson
1. Migraines. I will probably not ever be able to totally eradicate migraines from my life. But I am trying a class of medication I have never tried before for migraine, SSRIs. SSRIs are anti-depressants, but are used off label to control migraine. Cymbalta seems to be the SSRI I hear about most often in relation to migraine. If the Cymbalta doesn't work, I am finally going to risk hurting my neurologist's feelings, and ask for a referral to the Headache Clinic at UCSF Mount Zion. 35 years is enough with generalists, I need a specialist. Any lessening of the numbers or severity of migraines is quite frankly a quality of life issue.
2. Seizures. My husband's that is. 2011 will be the year DH has surgery to see if they can lessen the number or severity, or maybe even stop altogether, his roughly weekly seizures. This would be a wonderful change for both of us. He would be able to drive again, which would make him so happy. I would be so happy with any improvement. My life with DH will be wonderful no matter the number of seizures, but of course I want him to stop having them altogether.
3. The metal in my foot. In January of 2010, I had my left foot entirely reconstructed: My heel bone was severed, and pulled over; a ligament was pulled and pinned to help create an arch for my foot; metatarsal bones were moved, and either screwed into a new place, or were fused together. An X-ray of my foot reveals one HUGE bolt on the outer side of my foot, and a cornucopia of small screws holding my foot together, in an entirely different shape than it had been before the surgery. It looks like there is a porcupine in my foot.
My foot is much, much, better. But it turned out I am actually allergic to the metal in the bolts they used. I have had a peeling rash all over my foot since the surgical wounds healed. It looks like athlete's foot, too, which is embarrassing. The only solution is to go back in, and take all the metal out, so I am having another surgery in January or February. Getting rid of the metal will mean I won't have horrible itching and peeling anymore.
4. Mixed episodes. Mixed episodes (sometimes called agitated depression) are generally considered the worst kind of episode by bipolar patients. One has all the sadness and self-hate of depression, and all the energy and irritability of mania. It feels like you want to crawl out of your skin, like energy is pouring out of every pore of your body, but it is all energy directed into self-loathing and anger. My psychiatrist and I are trying to stop these by adjusting my medication. Not a very dramatic solution, but unfortunately, the only thing dramatic about treating mental illness is when the treatments don't work.
I only started having mixed episodes consistently 5 years ago, although my first one was over 10 years ago. I was diagnosed with bipolar illness when I was 24, and it is accepted that I experienced my first depressive episode when I was 18. Depression and hypomania are bad, and I don't like to experience them. But I am the most likely to harm myself or others while I am in a mixed state. The closest I have come to being hospitalized was during a mixed state, and in retrospect, it was agreed if I got that bad again, I would be admitted. Not having to experience horrible periods of disordered thoughts is once again a quality of life issue, for the very rudimentary reason that it would mean that I would be less likely to harm myself or others.
5. My current state of unemployment. Can't really do anything about this until the headaches stop, but I plan to find employment by volunteering with a couple of different Cannabis oriented non-profit organizations, in the hope of making the type of connections I need to find a good job in the Medical Cannabis industry. Working in that field would mean I was involved in a cause I feel strongly about. And I feel happiest about myself when I feel like I am doing something to change the world, however small the piece of it over which I have influence.
6. Clutter. Who's the world's worst housekeeper? I am. Add to that our place is cute, but tiny, about 700 square feet. DH and I are on a campaign to both get rid of stuff, and to find ways of organizing things so that there is at least a place to put everything: I can't tidy up if there isn't even a place for everything to go. Clutter depresses my husband more than it does me, so an attempt on my part would make him happy. But I am full of guilt about my lack of housekeeping skills, and finding a compromise would mean I spend less time ruminating about what a bad person and wife I am.
7. Compulsive planning. One of the things about being bipolar is I don't handle stress or change well. One way I try to compensate for this is by planning for every. possible. contingency. Ever. For anything. Work, trips, what to make for dinner, phone calls, when I will switch into the exit lane as I approach my exit. Everything. It might sound like that would be a good thing, but when I can't stop, and my mind is always racing through "what ifs," and "just in cases," all day long, it is enervating and exhausting. At the suggestion of my psychiatrist, I am addressing it by using the technique of Mindfulness. Just to free up the part of my brain that is constantly at work, vamping and revamping imaginary schedules, to feel quiet, and be able to accept things as they come, sounds wonderful.
8. Friends of friends. One of my tendencies is to try to expand my circle of friends to include the friends of my friends. But just because someone is a friend of my friend doesn't mean I have anything else in common with them, will like them, or be able to trust them. And eventually, if I don't like someone, I am going to say something nasty, although it is usually in response to his or her nastiness to me. I have to realize I do not have an obligation to make nice to people I am not interested in knowing, and who usually are flummoxed, or even intimidated by me. That sounds very, very snotty. And I am not as impressed with my accomplishments as others might be. But on paper, I am formidable. It's in person that I am a sickly, whiny, lazy hermit.
9. Compulsive shopping. This one is going to be interesting, because I think I may have already created a work-around for this problem. But it is equally possible I am fooling myself.
When I have mood swings, I spend. It might be on things I need, but it usually is not. I buy kitchen gadgets, and books, and Cd's, and DVDs, and clothes, and purses, and shoes, and gifts for my friends and family, and costume jewelry (an area of particular weakness, organic brain syndromes = love of SHIINEEE). It is easy when my mood is stable to pretend I have a plan for dealing with and preventing it next time, but to say that is to imply I can be rational when I am crazy. And mental illness doesn't work like that. If it did, I could just tell myself to "cut it out," as my psychiatrist will say when he is teasing me: He knows it isn't as easy as that.
Rather than a solution, I found a work-around: Thrift shops. I am in a thrift shop at least once a week, and when I am feeling well, more often. Sometimes I hit 3 or 4 in one day. But I can buy lots of items, and not spend much. And realistically, I do need clothes, as my work clothes used to be for working with dogs, and are basically stained jeans and t-shirts. But this way, I can spend very little, yet sate my compulsion.
I do realize this is at odds with my desire to cut back on clutter. I'm human, so sue me.
10. Dog nails that are too long. I'd like to take a quarter inch off the nails of the right paw of Violet, my French Bulldog. I use a dremel with a sandpaper bit to grind back her nails: She has black nails, and guessing where to press down with a blade is too risky. With a dremel, one grinds the nail back millimeter by millimeter, so one can see the approaching quick before hitting it. And if there is a small nick, the speed of the rotation of the dremel bit cauterizes it.
But as much as I like the dremel, it took me several years to realize that the way I hold Violet when I use the dremel (football hold, if you care) meant that her right front paw was at an angle that was extremely difficult for me to reach. Bit by bit, the two center nails of the four that hit the ground began to grow longer and longer. Now Violet has the equivalent of coke nails. This can be remedied by diligently trimming that paw weekly, while staying on my regular monthly schedule with her other paws.
This will make my life better because when Violet stands on my stomach, she will no longer stab me with her ridiculously long nails.
11. Obeisance to my mother. My mother and I have a very difficult relationship. We always have. I have 3 sisters who do not have the problems with my mother that I do, but see what goes on. They often run interference for me.
My mother has a diagnosed personality disorder, but only receives treatment for the depression that often accompanies the disorder. It took me years (and a few shoves by some therapists and psychiatrists) to realize that my mother treated me the way she did because while she loves me instinctively, she doesn't really like who I am, and isn't really capable of loving me unconditionally. That is heart-crushing.
All my life, I have tried desperately to win her favor. I wore the clothes she picked out. I took the courses she wanted me to. I went to the college she picked out for me, even though it was not my first choice. I went to law school because she told me it was the only possible next step after I got laid off from a teaching position. But it was never enough. And being the type of person who is almost never ill, she tends to think my chronic conditions are more gambits for attention that anything legitimate.
My craven attempts to placate her will be the hardest thing to give up, because her anger scares me. But my husband has urged me to stop deferring even the smallest of life decisions to my mother. I have begun to stand up for myself in little ways, and while my mother doesn't like it, all of my positions have been so clearly reasonable, she had no choice but to accept it. I know from experience there will be a face to face confrontation at some point; DH will have my back in the resulting shit storm.
Finally feeling like an adult member of the family, and not a cowed child, is a change I look forward to n 2011.
1. Migraines. I will probably not ever be able to totally eradicate migraines from my life. But I am trying a class of medication I have never tried before for migraine, SSRIs. SSRIs are anti-depressants, but are used off label to control migraine. Cymbalta seems to be the SSRI I hear about most often in relation to migraine. If the Cymbalta doesn't work, I am finally going to risk hurting my neurologist's feelings, and ask for a referral to the Headache Clinic at UCSF Mount Zion. 35 years is enough with generalists, I need a specialist. Any lessening of the numbers or severity of migraines is quite frankly a quality of life issue.
2. Seizures. My husband's that is. 2011 will be the year DH has surgery to see if they can lessen the number or severity, or maybe even stop altogether, his roughly weekly seizures. This would be a wonderful change for both of us. He would be able to drive again, which would make him so happy. I would be so happy with any improvement. My life with DH will be wonderful no matter the number of seizures, but of course I want him to stop having them altogether.
3. The metal in my foot. In January of 2010, I had my left foot entirely reconstructed: My heel bone was severed, and pulled over; a ligament was pulled and pinned to help create an arch for my foot; metatarsal bones were moved, and either screwed into a new place, or were fused together. An X-ray of my foot reveals one HUGE bolt on the outer side of my foot, and a cornucopia of small screws holding my foot together, in an entirely different shape than it had been before the surgery. It looks like there is a porcupine in my foot.
My foot is much, much, better. But it turned out I am actually allergic to the metal in the bolts they used. I have had a peeling rash all over my foot since the surgical wounds healed. It looks like athlete's foot, too, which is embarrassing. The only solution is to go back in, and take all the metal out, so I am having another surgery in January or February. Getting rid of the metal will mean I won't have horrible itching and peeling anymore.
4. Mixed episodes. Mixed episodes (sometimes called agitated depression) are generally considered the worst kind of episode by bipolar patients. One has all the sadness and self-hate of depression, and all the energy and irritability of mania. It feels like you want to crawl out of your skin, like energy is pouring out of every pore of your body, but it is all energy directed into self-loathing and anger. My psychiatrist and I are trying to stop these by adjusting my medication. Not a very dramatic solution, but unfortunately, the only thing dramatic about treating mental illness is when the treatments don't work.
I only started having mixed episodes consistently 5 years ago, although my first one was over 10 years ago. I was diagnosed with bipolar illness when I was 24, and it is accepted that I experienced my first depressive episode when I was 18. Depression and hypomania are bad, and I don't like to experience them. But I am the most likely to harm myself or others while I am in a mixed state. The closest I have come to being hospitalized was during a mixed state, and in retrospect, it was agreed if I got that bad again, I would be admitted. Not having to experience horrible periods of disordered thoughts is once again a quality of life issue, for the very rudimentary reason that it would mean that I would be less likely to harm myself or others.
5. My current state of unemployment. Can't really do anything about this until the headaches stop, but I plan to find employment by volunteering with a couple of different Cannabis oriented non-profit organizations, in the hope of making the type of connections I need to find a good job in the Medical Cannabis industry. Working in that field would mean I was involved in a cause I feel strongly about. And I feel happiest about myself when I feel like I am doing something to change the world, however small the piece of it over which I have influence.
6. Clutter. Who's the world's worst housekeeper? I am. Add to that our place is cute, but tiny, about 700 square feet. DH and I are on a campaign to both get rid of stuff, and to find ways of organizing things so that there is at least a place to put everything: I can't tidy up if there isn't even a place for everything to go. Clutter depresses my husband more than it does me, so an attempt on my part would make him happy. But I am full of guilt about my lack of housekeeping skills, and finding a compromise would mean I spend less time ruminating about what a bad person and wife I am.
7. Compulsive planning. One of the things about being bipolar is I don't handle stress or change well. One way I try to compensate for this is by planning for every. possible. contingency. Ever. For anything. Work, trips, what to make for dinner, phone calls, when I will switch into the exit lane as I approach my exit. Everything. It might sound like that would be a good thing, but when I can't stop, and my mind is always racing through "what ifs," and "just in cases," all day long, it is enervating and exhausting. At the suggestion of my psychiatrist, I am addressing it by using the technique of Mindfulness. Just to free up the part of my brain that is constantly at work, vamping and revamping imaginary schedules, to feel quiet, and be able to accept things as they come, sounds wonderful.
8. Friends of friends. One of my tendencies is to try to expand my circle of friends to include the friends of my friends. But just because someone is a friend of my friend doesn't mean I have anything else in common with them, will like them, or be able to trust them. And eventually, if I don't like someone, I am going to say something nasty, although it is usually in response to his or her nastiness to me. I have to realize I do not have an obligation to make nice to people I am not interested in knowing, and who usually are flummoxed, or even intimidated by me. That sounds very, very snotty. And I am not as impressed with my accomplishments as others might be. But on paper, I am formidable. It's in person that I am a sickly, whiny, lazy hermit.
9. Compulsive shopping. This one is going to be interesting, because I think I may have already created a work-around for this problem. But it is equally possible I am fooling myself.
When I have mood swings, I spend. It might be on things I need, but it usually is not. I buy kitchen gadgets, and books, and Cd's, and DVDs, and clothes, and purses, and shoes, and gifts for my friends and family, and costume jewelry (an area of particular weakness, organic brain syndromes = love of SHIINEEE). It is easy when my mood is stable to pretend I have a plan for dealing with and preventing it next time, but to say that is to imply I can be rational when I am crazy. And mental illness doesn't work like that. If it did, I could just tell myself to "cut it out," as my psychiatrist will say when he is teasing me: He knows it isn't as easy as that.
Rather than a solution, I found a work-around: Thrift shops. I am in a thrift shop at least once a week, and when I am feeling well, more often. Sometimes I hit 3 or 4 in one day. But I can buy lots of items, and not spend much. And realistically, I do need clothes, as my work clothes used to be for working with dogs, and are basically stained jeans and t-shirts. But this way, I can spend very little, yet sate my compulsion.
I do realize this is at odds with my desire to cut back on clutter. I'm human, so sue me.
10. Dog nails that are too long. I'd like to take a quarter inch off the nails of the right paw of Violet, my French Bulldog. I use a dremel with a sandpaper bit to grind back her nails: She has black nails, and guessing where to press down with a blade is too risky. With a dremel, one grinds the nail back millimeter by millimeter, so one can see the approaching quick before hitting it. And if there is a small nick, the speed of the rotation of the dremel bit cauterizes it.
But as much as I like the dremel, it took me several years to realize that the way I hold Violet when I use the dremel (football hold, if you care) meant that her right front paw was at an angle that was extremely difficult for me to reach. Bit by bit, the two center nails of the four that hit the ground began to grow longer and longer. Now Violet has the equivalent of coke nails. This can be remedied by diligently trimming that paw weekly, while staying on my regular monthly schedule with her other paws.
This will make my life better because when Violet stands on my stomach, she will no longer stab me with her ridiculously long nails.
11. Obeisance to my mother. My mother and I have a very difficult relationship. We always have. I have 3 sisters who do not have the problems with my mother that I do, but see what goes on. They often run interference for me.
My mother has a diagnosed personality disorder, but only receives treatment for the depression that often accompanies the disorder. It took me years (and a few shoves by some therapists and psychiatrists) to realize that my mother treated me the way she did because while she loves me instinctively, she doesn't really like who I am, and isn't really capable of loving me unconditionally. That is heart-crushing.
All my life, I have tried desperately to win her favor. I wore the clothes she picked out. I took the courses she wanted me to. I went to the college she picked out for me, even though it was not my first choice. I went to law school because she told me it was the only possible next step after I got laid off from a teaching position. But it was never enough. And being the type of person who is almost never ill, she tends to think my chronic conditions are more gambits for attention that anything legitimate.
My craven attempts to placate her will be the hardest thing to give up, because her anger scares me. But my husband has urged me to stop deferring even the smallest of life decisions to my mother. I have begun to stand up for myself in little ways, and while my mother doesn't like it, all of my positions have been so clearly reasonable, she had no choice but to accept it. I know from experience there will be a face to face confrontation at some point; DH will have my back in the resulting shit storm.
Finally feeling like an adult member of the family, and not a cowed child, is a change I look forward to n 2011.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Headaches and Hippies, #reverb10
December 8, and 9 Prompts:
Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different- you'll find they're what make you beautiful. -Karen Walrand
Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, and shenanigans. -Shauna Reid
Sorry to have been MIA. The reason for my absence is essentially what makes me different: I have been a chronic migraineur since I was 13. This has really thrown some huge curve-balls at me during my life, but I rarely am able to increase my slugging percentage.
The last two days I had a full blown migraine, with aura, photo phobia, vomiting, osmophobia, dizziness, and agonizing pain. Having suffered from such a bad headache, ending only a few hours ago, it is hard for me to find anything positive and beautiful in my experiences. In fact, they have been depressing and isolating. One of the quandaries of migraine (or in this case, migraine co morbid with bipolar disorder), is that it is a chronic, painful, but invisible and non-lethal. People think that I exaggerate how often and how severely I suffer from headaches.
Unhappy things that having 2-30 migraines a month for the last 34 years has taught me:
*Life isn't fair
*Pain is incapacitating, yet invisible, putting your claim of genuine disability into question.
*People are very willing to tell you what you are doing wrong when they have no idea what you are going through
But there are useful things I have learned as a result of my condition, too:
*Living a "conventional" 9-5 life life is not the only way to lead a happy life.
*Joy can be found in things as simple as an absence of pain
*Life isn't as linear as the average high school counselor would like you to believe.
In addition, using medical Cannabis to treat pain has exposed me to a new activist community, and a new cause for my lifelong civil rights activism
Overall, being a migraineur has had positive impact on my world view and approach to my life. I am intimately acquainted with the pit falls of having an invisible disability, and have used that knowledge in my activism, especially for IV drug users, and HIV patients. I have developed a hobby interest in neurobiology. DH's seizures provide more fodder for that interest, and the fact that my dad was a widely read psycho-pharmacologist, who did research in neuropsychiatry meant that I was taught about how our brains work by a world-renowned clinical scientist.
The amount of pain I experience for no valid reason, with no end in sight, makes me very empathetic to people who are struggling with their health, regardless of what condition they suffer, or what caused it. I have more insight into chronic illness than the average person, and unfortunately, learned about it at a much younger age than the average person who will develop a chronic disorder. This understanding of the bone-sucking weariness that chronic illness creates in its victims is what lead to my extensive HIV prevention activism, and support of people with HIV. Migraines are not fatal, but I can easily relate to those who feel poorly more often than feeling well.
Another thing I have learned is nothing is more important than keeping myself healthy. The rest of my life will go careening off the rails if I am not careful enough about looking after myself. I have the deeply held belief that if I had not come from a well-off family, and then met DH, who loves me with all my failings and lack of earning power, I would be homeless. So I tend to keep change in my pocket for the mentally ill and homeless people in the City.
One unusual fact about myself is my ability to interact with anyone, from the crack addict sitting on the stoop of my apartment building, to the members of the royal families I went to college with. When I lived in the San Francisco Tenderloin, which is a red light district, I had first name basis relationships with a lot of the homeless people that lived in the UN Plaza.
Being incapacitated by illness most of my adult life taught me the very important fact that life is a crap shoot, shit happen, and to remember other people in my world may also be ducking invisible curve balls.
****
Now I almost skipped the next prompt, because it is becoming a bit repetitive to say that the Oregon Country Fair was the social highlight of my year. But it was a very bad year, with a few peaks, and the OCF was my major excitement for 2010, but for a two day driving trip with DH in August. Those of you who are here for the first time, my December 3rd prompt: Moment blog post was about happenings at the Fair.
I basically describe the Fair to people who want to know as a convergence of dirty hippies, faeries, rainbow people, burning man aficionados, and the like, creating a Counter Culture space-time singularity each July. Music Bands from the well known, to the virtually anonymous play on various stages throughout the weekend, so there is music coming from one or many directions at any time. There is a non-stop drum circle, which was joined briefly by Bob Weir last summer (I realize now by looking at the Wikipedia picture that I actually saw him: I hadn't aged him in my mind since 1990, so I was looking for a much younger man). Puppet shows, acrobats, magic, mehndi booths, hair braiding booths, face painting, ice cream, and children with dread locks. All sorts of delicious food, caters to everyone from the omnivore to the vegan. Even though I fall into the first category, my favorite food item at the Fair is vegan, Blazing Salad's Avocado Dream Boats. I already know what I am having for breakfast on July 8, 2011. I wish I could tell you what is in it, so far I have figured out avocado, hummus, garlic, and hot sauce.
I discovered if you mash those ingredients together, you will have a filling, yummy sandwich spread. Eat it the day you make it, avocados don't keep!
And I haven't even talked about all the cool items sold there. There are great artisans and artists selling a variety of wares.
But there is far more to the fair than what I can list in one post. As I have said, the ambiance is a large percentage of what makes the fair great. Some concrete examples (if you will) of created ambiance: Parades with brass instruments and costumed marchers; the big juggling pavilion in Chela Mela; the singing around the sauna at the Ritz; the Women's lodge in the Community Village, an homage to estrogen; speeches on topics controversial and not; women rolling out rugs and dancing like dervishes to their favorite music, or the drumming circles' rhythms.
I hate to end this post this way, it seems unfinished. But I am hoping to get my Dec 10 prompt done before I go to bed tonight, so I am going to leave this topic for now.
Beautifully different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different- you'll find they're what make you beautiful. -Karen Walrand
Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, and shenanigans. -Shauna Reid
Sorry to have been MIA. The reason for my absence is essentially what makes me different: I have been a chronic migraineur since I was 13. This has really thrown some huge curve-balls at me during my life, but I rarely am able to increase my slugging percentage.
The last two days I had a full blown migraine, with aura, photo phobia, vomiting, osmophobia, dizziness, and agonizing pain. Having suffered from such a bad headache, ending only a few hours ago, it is hard for me to find anything positive and beautiful in my experiences. In fact, they have been depressing and isolating. One of the quandaries of migraine (or in this case, migraine co morbid with bipolar disorder), is that it is a chronic, painful, but invisible and non-lethal. People think that I exaggerate how often and how severely I suffer from headaches.
Unhappy things that having 2-30 migraines a month for the last 34 years has taught me:
*Life isn't fair
*Pain is incapacitating, yet invisible, putting your claim of genuine disability into question.
*People are very willing to tell you what you are doing wrong when they have no idea what you are going through
But there are useful things I have learned as a result of my condition, too:
*Living a "conventional" 9-5 life life is not the only way to lead a happy life.
*Joy can be found in things as simple as an absence of pain
*Life isn't as linear as the average high school counselor would like you to believe.
In addition, using medical Cannabis to treat pain has exposed me to a new activist community, and a new cause for my lifelong civil rights activism
Overall, being a migraineur has had positive impact on my world view and approach to my life. I am intimately acquainted with the pit falls of having an invisible disability, and have used that knowledge in my activism, especially for IV drug users, and HIV patients. I have developed a hobby interest in neurobiology. DH's seizures provide more fodder for that interest, and the fact that my dad was a widely read psycho-pharmacologist, who did research in neuropsychiatry meant that I was taught about how our brains work by a world-renowned clinical scientist.
The amount of pain I experience for no valid reason, with no end in sight, makes me very empathetic to people who are struggling with their health, regardless of what condition they suffer, or what caused it. I have more insight into chronic illness than the average person, and unfortunately, learned about it at a much younger age than the average person who will develop a chronic disorder. This understanding of the bone-sucking weariness that chronic illness creates in its victims is what lead to my extensive HIV prevention activism, and support of people with HIV. Migraines are not fatal, but I can easily relate to those who feel poorly more often than feeling well.
Another thing I have learned is nothing is more important than keeping myself healthy. The rest of my life will go careening off the rails if I am not careful enough about looking after myself. I have the deeply held belief that if I had not come from a well-off family, and then met DH, who loves me with all my failings and lack of earning power, I would be homeless. So I tend to keep change in my pocket for the mentally ill and homeless people in the City.
One unusual fact about myself is my ability to interact with anyone, from the crack addict sitting on the stoop of my apartment building, to the members of the royal families I went to college with. When I lived in the San Francisco Tenderloin, which is a red light district, I had first name basis relationships with a lot of the homeless people that lived in the UN Plaza.
Being incapacitated by illness most of my adult life taught me the very important fact that life is a crap shoot, shit happen, and to remember other people in my world may also be ducking invisible curve balls.
****
Now I almost skipped the next prompt, because it is becoming a bit repetitive to say that the Oregon Country Fair was the social highlight of my year. But it was a very bad year, with a few peaks, and the OCF was my major excitement for 2010, but for a two day driving trip with DH in August. Those of you who are here for the first time, my December 3rd prompt: Moment blog post was about happenings at the Fair.
I basically describe the Fair to people who want to know as a convergence of dirty hippies, faeries, rainbow people, burning man aficionados, and the like, creating a Counter Culture space-time singularity each July. Music Bands from the well known, to the virtually anonymous play on various stages throughout the weekend, so there is music coming from one or many directions at any time. There is a non-stop drum circle, which was joined briefly by Bob Weir last summer (I realize now by looking at the Wikipedia picture that I actually saw him: I hadn't aged him in my mind since 1990, so I was looking for a much younger man). Puppet shows, acrobats, magic, mehndi booths, hair braiding booths, face painting, ice cream, and children with dread locks. All sorts of delicious food, caters to everyone from the omnivore to the vegan. Even though I fall into the first category, my favorite food item at the Fair is vegan, Blazing Salad's Avocado Dream Boats. I already know what I am having for breakfast on July 8, 2011. I wish I could tell you what is in it, so far I have figured out avocado, hummus, garlic, and hot sauce.
I discovered if you mash those ingredients together, you will have a filling, yummy sandwich spread. Eat it the day you make it, avocados don't keep!
And I haven't even talked about all the cool items sold there. There are great artisans and artists selling a variety of wares.
But there is far more to the fair than what I can list in one post. As I have said, the ambiance is a large percentage of what makes the fair great. Some concrete examples (if you will) of created ambiance: Parades with brass instruments and costumed marchers; the big juggling pavilion in Chela Mela; the singing around the sauna at the Ritz; the Women's lodge in the Community Village, an homage to estrogen; speeches on topics controversial and not; women rolling out rugs and dancing like dervishes to their favorite music, or the drumming circles' rhythms.
I hate to end this post this way, it seems unfinished. But I am hoping to get my Dec 10 prompt done before I go to bed tonight, so I am going to leave this topic for now.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Community: Mentally Interesting #reverb10
Prompt #7 Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011? -Cali Harris
Even I am getting tired of hearing myself say that 2010 was a difficult year for me. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that it was.
Along with my DH's unemployment, and my long term immobilization by surgery, I started to have mood swings, and was frankly mildly depressed through the part of the of the year when I was most immobile.
And like some other people with bipolar, with the changes in the season and the changes of light, come more mood swings. In the spring, I become hypomanic. In the summer, I tend to have a mixed episode. Then hypomania returns sometime around Xmas (yes, I'm keeping an eye on it, but it can still creep up on you). Solstices, in particular, do not tend to be happy times for me.
I began to worry that discussing every troubling thought that crossed my mind with my DH was not healthy for either our marriage or us. But even if I wanted to go to therapy, which I did not, I was trapped in the house by my foot. I needed someone who could listen to some of my more crazy thoughts without freaking out.
So I turned to an online bulletin board on which I had lurked now and then, CrazyBoards.org. (CB) For the first time, I stopped lurking, and began to venture forth into the discussions, commenting, comparing, sharing my experience. There are people with all types of illness, and all levels of suffering. People living with anything from ADHD to psychoses (although I don't want to imply there is a hierarchy of mental illnesses). I have mentioned I am bipolar, and have migraine. My official diagnosis is Bipolar NOS, which is when the illness doesn't quite fit into either the Bipolar I or II compartments.
One of the great things about CB is that we don't have to play nice. It is accepted that sometimes people are crazy, and other times, someone might need a stern talking to, to get help. People don't hesitate to say what they think, however unpleasant. The oft repeated mantra is "we don't have to walk on eggshells here." That is in contrast to most of the other mental illness support boards. Those boards will ban people for confrontation or being negative. The average board for the mentally ill is a much more strictly moderated, polite, non-confrontational, warm and fuzzy place.
One of the first rules of CB's user agreement stipulates, "You won't find that your every post is responded to with feigned warm fuzziness and cyberhugs. Frankly, we think cyberhugs suck." Definitely the place for a mentally-ill cynic, who has dealt with too much shit in her life.
For that reason the CB boards are considerably more real, helpful, genuine, and brutal than the average milquetoast site. To be honest, it is a fascinating place. The population is generally very bright, and the more idiotic people tend to get run off rather quickly. The focus is on mental illness, and the forums are divided and sub-divided into conditions, or medications, but threads can and do take sharp detours. We discuss our relationships. We discuss our hobbies. We fight, we form cliques. And we confide and admit to each other our hallucinations and delusions.
My favorite feature of Crazyboards.org is the community blog. One of the really bad, crazy things I do when I am hypo-manic, manic, or having a mixed-episode, is I post information that is very revealing about myself, but also about other people interacting with me during these frenzies. I embarrass some people, and piss other people off to the point they break off friendships. Sadly, this is often to my benefit, even when I handled the situations anywhere from poorly to thoughtlessly. But until accidentally freeing myself from some of my relationships, I never realized how much I had been tamping down my personality, not to mention opinions, around people I considered friends. It is only in retrospect that I see that those friendships were already fraying at the edges, and the biggest red flag should have been that I no longer felt like I could be myself around them.
CBs provides a safe place to blog. One can control who can and cannot see with much more precision that one can on Blogger. I feel like if I am indiscreet there, it is a little safer. It is definitely a form of self-therapy.
Next year, I hope to dip my toes into the Medical Marijuana activist community. I know from prior activism that that is going to mean inserting myself into the community of activists working on that problem. My fellow dirty hippies. 2011 is definitely the year of Cannabis.
Even I am getting tired of hearing myself say that 2010 was a difficult year for me. Unfortunately, that doesn't change the fact that it was.
Along with my DH's unemployment, and my long term immobilization by surgery, I started to have mood swings, and was frankly mildly depressed through the part of the of the year when I was most immobile.
And like some other people with bipolar, with the changes in the season and the changes of light, come more mood swings. In the spring, I become hypomanic. In the summer, I tend to have a mixed episode. Then hypomania returns sometime around Xmas (yes, I'm keeping an eye on it, but it can still creep up on you). Solstices, in particular, do not tend to be happy times for me.
I began to worry that discussing every troubling thought that crossed my mind with my DH was not healthy for either our marriage or us. But even if I wanted to go to therapy, which I did not, I was trapped in the house by my foot. I needed someone who could listen to some of my more crazy thoughts without freaking out.
So I turned to an online bulletin board on which I had lurked now and then, CrazyBoards.org. (CB) For the first time, I stopped lurking, and began to venture forth into the discussions, commenting, comparing, sharing my experience. There are people with all types of illness, and all levels of suffering. People living with anything from ADHD to psychoses (although I don't want to imply there is a hierarchy of mental illnesses). I have mentioned I am bipolar, and have migraine. My official diagnosis is Bipolar NOS, which is when the illness doesn't quite fit into either the Bipolar I or II compartments.
One of the great things about CB is that we don't have to play nice. It is accepted that sometimes people are crazy, and other times, someone might need a stern talking to, to get help. People don't hesitate to say what they think, however unpleasant. The oft repeated mantra is "we don't have to walk on eggshells here." That is in contrast to most of the other mental illness support boards. Those boards will ban people for confrontation or being negative. The average board for the mentally ill is a much more strictly moderated, polite, non-confrontational, warm and fuzzy place.
One of the first rules of CB's user agreement stipulates, "You won't find that your every post is responded to with feigned warm fuzziness and cyberhugs. Frankly, we think cyberhugs suck." Definitely the place for a mentally-ill cynic, who has dealt with too much shit in her life.
For that reason the CB boards are considerably more real, helpful, genuine, and brutal than the average milquetoast site. To be honest, it is a fascinating place. The population is generally very bright, and the more idiotic people tend to get run off rather quickly. The focus is on mental illness, and the forums are divided and sub-divided into conditions, or medications, but threads can and do take sharp detours. We discuss our relationships. We discuss our hobbies. We fight, we form cliques. And we confide and admit to each other our hallucinations and delusions.
My favorite feature of Crazyboards.org is the community blog. One of the really bad, crazy things I do when I am hypo-manic, manic, or having a mixed-episode, is I post information that is very revealing about myself, but also about other people interacting with me during these frenzies. I embarrass some people, and piss other people off to the point they break off friendships. Sadly, this is often to my benefit, even when I handled the situations anywhere from poorly to thoughtlessly. But until accidentally freeing myself from some of my relationships, I never realized how much I had been tamping down my personality, not to mention opinions, around people I considered friends. It is only in retrospect that I see that those friendships were already fraying at the edges, and the biggest red flag should have been that I no longer felt like I could be myself around them.
CBs provides a safe place to blog. One can control who can and cannot see with much more precision that one can on Blogger. I feel like if I am indiscreet there, it is a little safer. It is definitely a form of self-therapy.
Next year, I hope to dip my toes into the Medical Marijuana activist community. I know from prior activism that that is going to mean inserting myself into the community of activists working on that problem. My fellow dirty hippies. 2011 is definitely the year of Cannabis.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Writing and Mindfulness, #reverb10
I forgot to include December 1st's prompt for my first blog post of #reverb10. But here is the prompt for Day 2/December 2nd:
"What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -and can you eliminate it?" (Author: Leo Babauta)
As I suspect it will be for many people, this was a really hard question for me to answer. Damn you, #reverb10, for throwing a curve ball so early! As punishment, this is going to be more of a process post, and less reflective.
When I began to ruminate on this question, I realized it was very difficult for me to come up with something I did daily that interfered with my writing. But I had absolutely no problem thinking of all the things I don't do every day, all the mind loops and stall tactics that I use to excuse the quality of my writing, or not writing at all. These are some of the things I thought of, when I tried to think of something I did daily:
By the same token, I never pull anything out of the big wooden keepsake box to revise or rethink, or insert into other, longer, writings. It is like that wooden box is a coffin for my writing. A coffin stuffed with notebooks, half used; journals with bi-annual posts; copies of legal briefs; and the few articles I have published. I should be pulling them out, dissecting them, and cannibalizing them for new, and hopefully better, pieces. It is as if they were lost to the mists of time.
That my approach to this prompt was immediately negative is not surprising to me. I have a very negative approach to my entire life, I am pensive, intense, and not a very sweet person. This makes my writing seem very self-indulgent, and inward looking, or at least that is how it reads to me. Part of what concerns me is that my writing is always memoir-ish, but makes no real attempt to make my experiences seem universal.
How do I turn myself around? How do I start to feel positive about what I write, and have written? How do I take my intensity and self-indulgence, and use it to write, instead of angrily ruminate?
One therapy to which I have been subjected is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I didn't really enjoy it, or the other people in my group. I was enrolled in the sessions as part of my course of treatment for bipolar illness, although it has since been found that CBT is of zero benefit to those who are bipolar. Nonetheless, it was helpful for anxiety, and to some extent, compulsive behaviors. But the most important thing I learned about was the quasi-Buddhist theory of mindfulness.
In my life, being mindful means living in the now, and listening to my thoughts, and what questions they raise. It is about finding the patterns of flawed and negative thinking, and being able to say: "I see I am beginning to follow my old negative thought pattern. I need to change my orientation." It is hard to do at first. No, I take that back, it is always hard to do. Mindfulness requires a lot of work, and it forces self-knowledge, whether you want it or not.
I am hoping this year to begin to obliterate the negative thought loops that hold me back from writing. My only weapon may be mindfulness. But it is a strong one.
"What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -and can you eliminate it?" (Author: Leo Babauta)
As I suspect it will be for many people, this was a really hard question for me to answer. Damn you, #reverb10, for throwing a curve ball so early! As punishment, this is going to be more of a process post, and less reflective.
When I began to ruminate on this question, I realized it was very difficult for me to come up with something I did daily that interfered with my writing. But I had absolutely no problem thinking of all the things I don't do every day, all the mind loops and stall tactics that I use to excuse the quality of my writing, or not writing at all. These are some of the things I thought of, when I tried to think of something I did daily:
- I don't focus enough on my formal, non-blog writing, which harms my development as a writer, and therefore the quality of my blog.
- I don't set aside a time, or set a timer at some point during the day, to just bang out whatever comes into my head. I know this is a good exercise if I want to get serious about writing, but I never seem to just start doing it.
- I never write down ideas when they pop into my head, even just a few words on the back of an envelope. By the time I sit down later, the ideas are lost.
- I haven't sought an outlet for my writing. I am one of those people who needs a deadline to really get anything polished. I can't bring myself to complete anything I start, without that line in the sand.
By the same token, I never pull anything out of the big wooden keepsake box to revise or rethink, or insert into other, longer, writings. It is like that wooden box is a coffin for my writing. A coffin stuffed with notebooks, half used; journals with bi-annual posts; copies of legal briefs; and the few articles I have published. I should be pulling them out, dissecting them, and cannibalizing them for new, and hopefully better, pieces. It is as if they were lost to the mists of time.
That my approach to this prompt was immediately negative is not surprising to me. I have a very negative approach to my entire life, I am pensive, intense, and not a very sweet person. This makes my writing seem very self-indulgent, and inward looking, or at least that is how it reads to me. Part of what concerns me is that my writing is always memoir-ish, but makes no real attempt to make my experiences seem universal.
How do I turn myself around? How do I start to feel positive about what I write, and have written? How do I take my intensity and self-indulgence, and use it to write, instead of angrily ruminate?
One therapy to which I have been subjected is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). I didn't really enjoy it, or the other people in my group. I was enrolled in the sessions as part of my course of treatment for bipolar illness, although it has since been found that CBT is of zero benefit to those who are bipolar. Nonetheless, it was helpful for anxiety, and to some extent, compulsive behaviors. But the most important thing I learned about was the quasi-Buddhist theory of mindfulness.
In my life, being mindful means living in the now, and listening to my thoughts, and what questions they raise. It is about finding the patterns of flawed and negative thinking, and being able to say: "I see I am beginning to follow my old negative thought pattern. I need to change my orientation." It is hard to do at first. No, I take that back, it is always hard to do. Mindfulness requires a lot of work, and it forces self-knowledge, whether you want it or not.
I am hoping this year to begin to obliterate the negative thought loops that hold me back from writing. My only weapon may be mindfulness. But it is a strong one.
One Word: Fraught to Healing #reverb10
When I first saw this challenge on nakedjen's blog, before I even finished the sentence, the word "Fraught" popped into my mind. It seems that in each decade of my life, there has been one year that is awful, stressful, disastrous. My decennial Annus Horribilis to steal a phrase from Elizabeth II. This appears to be the Annus Horribilus of my 40s.
This is indeed a year that has been fraught with drama and difficulties, as well as illness for my DH and me. In January of 2010, my DH was entering his 3rd month of unemployment, and I had just quit my job working with dogs to have surgery to reconstruct my foot. January 13th, I had the surgery. In early 2011, I will have surgery to remove the metal installed in the first operation.
DH was housebound while I recovered, because of his epilepsy (i.e., I am the sole driver in the family). My recovery was slow, painful, and depressing. Throughout the year, my husband and I suffered from worsening of our respective neurological illnesses. I also had several mood swings, which were particularly "fraught" with concern at the time, as I tend to spend money when my mood changes, and we had no income other than unemployment insurance, and our savings.
Our car broke down and needed major repairs twice within two months. We dedicated a credit card to the care of the car, and have been paying off big chunks every month, but we had always paid off our credit cards each month,
DH had a job in May for 3 weeks that was a disaster, and which he quit. His boss lied to the Unemployment Insurance dept, and said DH had been fired for cause, thus making sure my husband could not collect unemployment benefits. DH was too late getting his personnel records, which demonstrated otherwise, to file an appeal. At that point, we were living on savings alone.
As the summer progressed, DH's seizures became so severe, that we came to the decision that he was going to go ahead with a new surgical procedure that has a 50/50 chance of stopping or improving his seizures. Yes, he is at the point that those odds actually look good. The surgery was scheduled for late August. I began to fall apart, as my bipolar illness makes stress extremely difficult for me to handle.
Literally 6 days before the surgery was scheduled, my DH received an offer that was more than equivalent to his last job: It has better hours, clearer expectations, and better benefits than his previous job. It was such a relief. We spent the next couple of weeks purchasing items and paying bills we had been stalling on until we had an income again. The job was not willing to delay his start date for a few months so that he could have surgery, so he went for it.
So far this fall, he has had two seizures at work, both resulting in hospitalizations. I can't even remember how many hospitalizations he has had this year, and he goes in only for a tiny percentage of his seizures. His neurosurgeon has insisted that DH cannot wait until next fall to have his surgery. He will probably have it in early 2011.
As I have said, my neurological condition, migraine, and my bipolar illness have both been flaring this year, making it very difficult for me to even look for work. One more stone was that we had very expensive dental work done right before DH was hired. Even our French Bulldog, Violet has had to have a root canal.
And as the final insult, Friday, I was bitten by a Black Widow Spider. While not deadly to the average adult, the venom in the bite is a neurotoxin, and provides quite a wallop to the system. Headache, tremor, vomiting, heavy sweating, cramping, dizziness, diarrhea,
We have had at least 40 doctor visits between the two of us this year. Easily. I have had days with multiple appointments several times this year. The very fortunate part of all of this for us was that we were able to afford COBRA payments for our health insurance, a Cadillac Plan that included vision and dental. Still, copays for medications and doctors' visits add up.
But even in this terrible year, there were moments of contentment and joy that auger well for 2011. With both of us in the house 24 hours a day, we could have driven each other off the deep end. Instead, my husband and I became closer than we have ever been. This has been a year that has proofed our marriage. Oddly, we have never been happier.
In July I had the joy of experiencing my second Oregon Country Fair with one of my closest friends, nakedjen. It is hard to really describe the OCF to people, because so much of what makes it wonderful is the ambiance, which cannot be translated into words. But if you consider yourself a dirty hippie, a faerie, or a fan of yummy food, original performers, soul-refreshing encounters, and glitter, you should definitely take a look into the Fair. I can't wait until next July.
But it will come as a surprise to no one, that the word I hope to be using to describe the year of 2011 next December is "Healing." Not only from our many surgeries, but also emotionally from the stress and traumas of this year. At times it seemed the blows would never end. Also, more concretely, financially, as we used up our savings. We are fortunate to have saved so much, we needed every penny.
Healing is also a direction I may be pursuing professionally. I have attended a course at Oaksterdam University and intend to attend more, with an eye towards getting into the medical cannabis industry. As readers of this blog are well aware, I have benefitted from medical cannabis, and have recently become more active in the medical and recreational legalization movements. I don't know what I would do, yet. I liked growing it, but I don't know how I would get a job doing that. I would like to learn to cook with cannabis, and I could see working in a commercial kitchen. I also could see bud tending, which is being familiar with the different properties of each strain of cannabis, so as to help patients choose ones that target their conditions. But I have to choose one of them, I think. The weekend session I went to this past October was really fun, but unfortunately, I had a migraine for a cooking class I was registered for. I plan on taking another weekend session in January. A good start to the new year.
While not related to healing, there are more good things to look forward to: My French Bulldog turns 7 on New Year's Day. I plan to return to the Fair in July. But perhaps most importantly, July 21, 2011 is my DH and my 10th anniversary.
It is funny how one of the years of my life most fraught with disaster, is probably one of the happiest years of my life.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Momentum
One thing I have found about blogging is the longer you go without making an entry, the harder it is to start back up. So I am just going to catch everyone up in a short post, just to get myself moving again. No pictures today.
I do have a few random outfits and purchases to post. But it is by no means a daily record.
We have been having a really tough time. I have been having a lot of headaches, and DH has been having many seizures. This weekend, he battered his face against either the bed or the bureau, I couldn't see. But he has a big cut on his forehead, right above his still healing black eye.
Surgery has been post-poned, again. I still assume it will happen before next fall.
I am thinking of trying Cymbalta for my migraines if there is not a marked improvement in frequency or severity before my January appointment. It is an anti-depressant, an SSRI, but it is used off label in tiny quantities for migraine. My p-doc doesn't think it will be enough to interfere with my other meds, and that it will be okay if we go ahead with it. I had an SSRI induced manic episode when I was on Prozac, so I was a little worried. But he said the amounts were so miniscule that they wouldn't have any anti-depressant effect. That is one odd thing about psychiatric and neurological meds: Depending on your illness, you may take wildly different dosages. For instance, both DH and I are on lamotrigine (generic Lamictal). I take it for bipolar illness, and take 225mg daily. DH takes over three times the dose I do, since he uses it for Epilepsy.
Anyway, I have been using the propranolol for 6 months as of the 29th of November. This is kind of my last gasp with it. It is odd, because I swear it helped with my headaches when I was 20; I had to quit it abruptly because of side effects. But this go round, I was able to tolerate the side effects (it is 26 years later, bodies change), but it isn't working.
Oh, and our new insurance has deadly co-pays: $10 for generics, $60 for brand name! And we both take meds that are brand name: One of DH's is so new there is no generic, and I only respond to the name brand of a migraine treatment. Even though the molecules of medication are identical between generic and name brand, sometimes there is something in the binders that blocks absorption for certain people. For most of my meds, I can use the generic, but for Sumatriptan, a rescue drug, I have to use the name brand, Imitrex. I receive it in two different formats, a pill, and a subcutaneous injection. That is $120 copay for one month of migraine rescue medication.
There is nothing wrong with the healthcare system. It is double plus good.
You may have noticed my mood issues have receded into that background for the moment, while my migraines have come to the forefront. This is how it is with the combination of migraine and bipolar illness, one condition or the other always seems to be flaring. My focus flips back and forth between the two syndromes.
I am mailing Sister2's birthday present Tuesday. Hooray. I also plan to make a trip with Violet to explore a new independently owned "boutique" pet shop, Biscuits. I meant to go see it on Saturday, which was an official day set aside to patronize small local businesses, but I was busy being sick.
I have actually purchased a couple of holiday purchases. Also I am very excited about a gift my sister got for my DH for his 40th birthday, which is this week! Eek, I have to arrange for a cake! I have no idea what to get him, and I think he would like some input: It is a special birthday, and we were in France for my 40th (he went on business, but we stretched it out into a vacation). I had hoped we would go on a great trip for his 40th, but I guess our next big trip will be for my 50th birthday. That will be Australia, if I have any say. We also had hoped to go to Hawaii for our 5th, and I needed knee surgery. So we then retrenched, and were going to go for our 10th anniversary. That was before we went through our entire savings during DH's year of unemployment.
We are still going to have an amazing 10th anniversary: We are returning to the B&B at which we honeymooned, a very luxurious and fun place.
So, not the most interesting post. But I know from past experience it is important to keep up one's posting momentum when one blogs.
I do have a few random outfits and purchases to post. But it is by no means a daily record.
We have been having a really tough time. I have been having a lot of headaches, and DH has been having many seizures. This weekend, he battered his face against either the bed or the bureau, I couldn't see. But he has a big cut on his forehead, right above his still healing black eye.
Surgery has been post-poned, again. I still assume it will happen before next fall.
I am thinking of trying Cymbalta for my migraines if there is not a marked improvement in frequency or severity before my January appointment. It is an anti-depressant, an SSRI, but it is used off label in tiny quantities for migraine. My p-doc doesn't think it will be enough to interfere with my other meds, and that it will be okay if we go ahead with it. I had an SSRI induced manic episode when I was on Prozac, so I was a little worried. But he said the amounts were so miniscule that they wouldn't have any anti-depressant effect. That is one odd thing about psychiatric and neurological meds: Depending on your illness, you may take wildly different dosages. For instance, both DH and I are on lamotrigine (generic Lamictal). I take it for bipolar illness, and take 225mg daily. DH takes over three times the dose I do, since he uses it for Epilepsy.
Anyway, I have been using the propranolol for 6 months as of the 29th of November. This is kind of my last gasp with it. It is odd, because I swear it helped with my headaches when I was 20; I had to quit it abruptly because of side effects. But this go round, I was able to tolerate the side effects (it is 26 years later, bodies change), but it isn't working.
Oh, and our new insurance has deadly co-pays: $10 for generics, $60 for brand name! And we both take meds that are brand name: One of DH's is so new there is no generic, and I only respond to the name brand of a migraine treatment. Even though the molecules of medication are identical between generic and name brand, sometimes there is something in the binders that blocks absorption for certain people. For most of my meds, I can use the generic, but for Sumatriptan, a rescue drug, I have to use the name brand, Imitrex. I receive it in two different formats, a pill, and a subcutaneous injection. That is $120 copay for one month of migraine rescue medication.
There is nothing wrong with the healthcare system. It is double plus good.
You may have noticed my mood issues have receded into that background for the moment, while my migraines have come to the forefront. This is how it is with the combination of migraine and bipolar illness, one condition or the other always seems to be flaring. My focus flips back and forth between the two syndromes.
I am mailing Sister2's birthday present Tuesday. Hooray. I also plan to make a trip with Violet to explore a new independently owned "boutique" pet shop, Biscuits. I meant to go see it on Saturday, which was an official day set aside to patronize small local businesses, but I was busy being sick.
I have actually purchased a couple of holiday purchases. Also I am very excited about a gift my sister got for my DH for his 40th birthday, which is this week! Eek, I have to arrange for a cake! I have no idea what to get him, and I think he would like some input: It is a special birthday, and we were in France for my 40th (he went on business, but we stretched it out into a vacation). I had hoped we would go on a great trip for his 40th, but I guess our next big trip will be for my 50th birthday. That will be Australia, if I have any say. We also had hoped to go to Hawaii for our 5th, and I needed knee surgery. So we then retrenched, and were going to go for our 10th anniversary. That was before we went through our entire savings during DH's year of unemployment.
We are still going to have an amazing 10th anniversary: We are returning to the B&B at which we honeymooned, a very luxurious and fun place.
So, not the most interesting post. But I know from past experience it is important to keep up one's posting momentum when one blogs.
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