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.

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.

Crazy with a Conscious

Once, a little over 10 years ago, we received a catalog (we still shopped with catalogs in the 20th century). It was kind of a yuppy faux-eco clothing catalog.  This was just at the start of Green being equated with being "hip."

One of the items they sold was cashmere sweaters. But these sweaters were special:  The animals (and even the herd's people!) were treated extra super-duper carefully, and fed delicious things. We could feel good about wearing these cashmere sweaters, they were grown on such happy, healthy, ecologically sound goats. Scrawled across the page of the magazine, in huge, italic type, was "Sweaters with a conscious...." Once we picked ourselves up off the floor, we went around begging friends and neighbors for their copies of the catalogs, so we could each have a copy, and distribute them to a few key friends.

What led me to reminiscing about this story is a pretty good example of manic thought processes, so let's see if I can write my day out, so you can see what a disordered/disorganized thought process looks like.

Last night, I decided to record a three part series on a subject, that while often discussed on my blog and various places where I go by my real name, is still controversial.   I am sure you can guess what about.  I already recorded the three part series, a mini-course on medical cannabis for patients, and blue-toothed them over to my computer.  I spent all morning working on them, arranging materials, thinking through what I was going to say, running rough dress rehearsals.  I even changed my clothes, and made my hair look reasonably nice (one more day, tomorrow it needs to be washed).  I had also looked over the third segment, and decided it needed to be redone, and started pondering what I felt could be improved upon.  

I had awoken with a migraine, but that is almost par for the course these days, and this was SUCH A VERY GOOD IDEA!  It pushed the pain into the background.  In the first part, I discuss what medical cannabis is, why I use it, and how to go about getting a recommendation (nothing illegal).  I also go over civil rights, going over a few different scenarios where knowing your rights is important.  I even almost manage to hide my name while demonstrating what different documents looked like.  Almost.

Not that it is would be hard to trace it back to me, the real person:  Those of you coming from Facebook and Twitter either know me, or are following me because I use medical cannabis.  And anyone randomly coming across the blog wouldn't be able to identify me without at least affirmatively searching.  Plus, all my in laws are blocked on every social network to which  I belong (nice, I know.  I never said I was a sweet person).

Now, the second video goes over methods of ingestion.  Yes, with full on display of paraphernalia.  One accumulates a great deal of it when one has consumed cannabis for over two-thirds of her life (oh, yes).  I actually demonstrate one type.  Yes, with the real medication.

The third segment was showing different types of cannabis, some I have, some I have containers from when I had last had it, so I could explain types I didn't happen to have.  And of course, the real stuff.  Several strains, and some hash.   All on tape.

I was excited about it.  I planned to put it up right away, but decided to wait until tonight.  I'd wait until DH went to sleep.

Then the duvet from Nordstrom, the one about which I had been so excited, arrived.  I opened the first box, which was one of the shams.  It was so beautiful!  I excitedly opened the other box, but wait a second:  That wasn't the duvet I ordered, was it?  I hurried back to the bookmarked site.  SHIT!  What I had thought was the duvet was a coverlet, and I had assumed the actual duvet was a set of sheets; it was SO different than the shams and coverlet.  I didn't even really like this duvet.  Plus, it is ivory.  I have a stinky little dog, who has light brown hair.   We had already eliminated black as an option, just at the thought of her fur woven through each stitch of fabric.  This would show dirt as well.  I was back to square one, plus I was 100% in love with the shams. Shams!  Who would think?

Now I had to have something as close to what I had expected as possible.  Those shams, I wanted those shams.  I started doing frantic google searches. I got angry, then furious.  I was so angry at that stupid duvet, I felt personally affronted by it.  Now I was too upset to re-tape the third part of my series, and my head was killing me, all the "pain relief" of focusing on my narration was gone.   I had to go lie down, the continuity of the series was going to be totally fucked up.  Maybe I should start the whole thing over tomorrow?  I went to take a nap for a few hours.

DH called, and told me someone had been hit by a train, so he didn't know when he would be getting in.  As morbid as that is, it gave me time to calm down.  I woke up completely, and realized my head felt much better.  Maybe I could tape the last part over after DH went to bed.  I started to actually dress up, he had said at lunchtime that he would love to go out for dinner, if my head cleared up.

....DH wouldn't like that I was going to broadcast this at all, so better to tape it when he was out, or asleep, and post it, and never let him see it....

That was kind of weird.  I don't really keep things secret from DH.  Yes, I am hesitant about keeping him up to date about my spending, but frankly, he looks at our bank account every day, he sees what is going out (hence his recent expression of displeasure). I pushed my concern to the back of my mind, but it did niggle.

DH came home, and we spent about hour giggling and hanging out.  I was having "outbursts" of silly, but also weirdly hostile.  I genuinely thought I was joking as the words flew out of my mouth, but once they were out, I would think, "Geez, that was mean!" And  I would apologize.  But DH thought I was a laff-riot.  Still,  I felt uncomfortable, it was as if a filter were gone.   I might still have made those jokes if I weren't all at sixes and sevens emotionally, but I would have had the extra two seconds to think about what was about to come barreling out of my mouth, and stop it, if I thought it was unwise.

Those of you who know DH knows he has a very bizarre sense of humor.  I am lucky.

We went to dinner at an Italian restaurant as close to around the corner as you can get with a Jersey barrier down the center of our major thoroughfare.  We had never been before, but Yelp said really good things pretty consistently.  It was so close I couldn't believe we hadn't tried it, although I am picky about Italian.  Amilia's is a lovely mid-range Italian restaurant, that also sells a rather extensive list of more American-style sandwiches.

We wanted wine with dinner, so we shared a platter of bruschetta to start.  Now the reviews of their bruschetta had been raves, and I had thought, "Really?  Bruschetta?"  I mean, I have eaten a great deal of bruschetta in my day, inside Italy and out.  But holy shit, this may have been some of the best bruschetta I have ever eaten!  Nomnomnom.  Then I had a chicken penne dish with a cream sauce, spinach, mushrooms, fresh tomato, crisp pancetta, cubes of chicken breast, and perfect al dente pasta.  I was shocked at how good it was.  DH had Chicken Parm, and was also very pleased.  We each had a glass of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc, from New Zealand.  DH ate all his chicken, but couldn't eat the side of fettucine, or all his veggies.  I got through less than half of mine, but brought it home.  A yummy lunch (or more evilly, perhaps, a yummy midnight snack.  Hell, a midnight gorge, there is a lot).  


We came home, happy and full, and chattering away.  DH was happy, because he could tell he was going to get lucky.  I was happy because for once a migraine hadn't ruined a weekend evening out, for the first time in at least a month.  Thing went as DH hoped.  But I had a lot of trouble concentrating, and staying focused (you might not think that could even be an issue, but my mind is going a million miles an hour).  It was actually somewhere mid-fuck (sorry) that I began to really start to think about what I was planning on posting on the Internet.

But it was informative and instructive!  Everything I did was legal under California law, and de facto legal under Obama's administration!  I want to be a cannabis activist!  I have committed felonies on behalf of causes before (syringe exchange was a felony, can you believe it?)!

But this was all pre-Internet.  Not to mention pre-DH.  There is someone else to take into consideration.

No Fair.  Why do I have to change my approach?

Wait a second.   Haven't I been saying I am labile and manic?  I have been cleaning a lot, but today I was so busy taping, I didn't get any cleaning done.  In other words, I was still in a frenzy, it just didn't happen to involve cleaning.

And isn't one the classic symptoms of mania lack of self-awareness?  Maybe I am being a little hasty.  I can always post new, better, videos when I am feeling better, right?  I am too embarrassed now to even run the idea by DH.  I know it is the mania.  This is mania, not hypo-mania.  I don't know what to do.

So my conscious kicked in.   Cashmere goats may be raised so you can wear a sweater in good conscience, but what really matters is I got my self-consciousness back.

Even crazy people can be conscious.

Flounce

This is a total and complete whine, so if you want to maintain the illusion that I am more mature than a three year old, please skip this post.

Sister3 celebrated her 40th birthday this year. Sister2, who is very well off, took her to Africa. For a long time, I couldn't understand why that upset me, because while I do hope to go to Africa at some point, sub-Saharan Africa is way down on my list of places I want to go.

Well, of course, I realized while looking at the pictures (which are totally cool) what my problem was. It wasn't really Africa, it was the 40th birthday trip. Sister2 got a birthday trip that all the sisters were required to attend. Sister1 got a last minute exemption, because the baby she adopted unexpectedly became available, and she wasn't allowed out of NY State, but she had been expected to attend. She also got a birthday trip for her 40th birthday.

Oh, plus during Sister1's birthday trip, I arranged a special "sisters" spa trip to celebrate Sister2's engagement (Sister 1 was in on this, but did not pay), which Sister3 and I paid for We rented out the salon. S2 was totally pissed about it, because in spite of her prior insistence that she was footloose and fancy-free that weekend, She had made plans, and we fucked them up, and she made sure we knew it. I told Sister3 we shouldn't surprise her, but hey, I've only known them since birth, what would I know.

She still could have been a little more gracious, she never apologized for the way she acted.

So add to all of this expense and resentment on my part, my 40th birthday was totally ignored by all my sisters. Of course, at the time, it didn't even occur to me to be bothered by it. It was only after being forced to pay for Sister1 and Sister2's trips (and shower) that I began to realize what the deal was. I wondered if for my 45th, there would be some acknowledgment, but no.

It is under 3 years until 50. If it isn't acknowledged, I am serious, I am not celebrating any more 50th birthdays. The trips for my first two sisters were NOT as expensive as sister3, just to Sonoma. I don't expect to go to Africa, although I wouldn't mind going to Sonoma, and having my portion of everything paid for.

I know this is infantile, but if I don't get acknowledgement, they better not expect me to go on any trips or go in for any big gifts for them. This is a huge pattern in how I have been treated by my entire family my whole life. Even Sisters 2 & 3, who are cognizant that I got a raw deal from my parents (it was as if they were raised by different people, no emotional OR physical abuse), are willing to pile on.

I am sure I am annoying to be around, especially when I was depressed a lot. But their personalities are not so sparkling that I particularly want to spend huge amounts of time with any of them, either.

So this is a huge infantile rant, but it is my blog, and I have nowhere else to throw a fit about it.

By the way, if this post didn't give it away, I am labile, and irritable as hell. As bad as the spending is, I would rather be manic than in a mixed state. Let's hope this is due to mania, and is short-lived.