Tag: bipolar disorder

Post 1800

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

Post 1800

I just woke up from a three hour nap. It wasn’t planned but I was just so tired. Now it’s close to midnight and I can’t seem to go back to sleep. I keep thinking about the ex that wrote to me. There was no return address so I have no idea where she is living. The post mark is Boston but that doesn’t mean anything. The Boston zip code was cut off so I don’t know what part of Boston she mailed the card. Just when I thought my life couldn’t get more complicated, she shows up in my life. I hope I don’t hear from her again.

My psych called me back. She thinks I have a low level psychosis going on. She isn’t too worried about it. She think it will pass with time. I forgot to tell her I need a refill of trilafon. She doesn’t want me to take more than 4 mg/day. That is fine. I really don’t think I will need to take more unless I am really in a bad spot. But I will call her first. I took my meds early tonight, which is why I was so sleepy. I wanted to take the abilify so I could get some relief from the voices. I told my psych that it’s like static in my brain right now, like they are just mumbling and I can’t make out what they are saying. She says to try and listen to music and take the trilafon. Also to page her if things get worse. I see her on Friday. She was appreciative of me calling her. I only call her when I need to, outside our scheduled appointments. She is good about it. She knows I am having a hard time with the loss of my father.

My psych thinks that things are harder for me because I essentially have mental illness. It would be difficult for anyone losing a parent but with me, it’s harder because I have the depression and psychosis. She thinks it will pass with time. I hope it’s fast because I don’t like being psychotic. It scares me, especially when the voices want me to take more medication than I need to. Like tonight I had to take some Neurontin. I took two pills and the voices were like “take 4”. I didn’t need four pills. I am not in that much pain. I just needed at least 600 mg (2 300 mg capsules). I always feel like every decision I make needs to be “cleared” by the voices before I take action. It’s so annoying. Usually I ignore it but lately that has been very difficult. They are just harping on me left and right.

Saturday Blog 53

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

Saturday Blog 53

I got a sympathy card today. What is odd is that it’s from my ex that I haven’t spoken to in more than ten years. I have no idea how she got my addressed or changed my name as it was addressed to my current name. If she is reading this blog, that would explain some things but not all. Just creepy if she is keeping tabs on me after all this time.

I made coffee today. I was trying to enjoy it by reading my Dostoevsky book but my mother needed me to clean the bathroom drain. Yea, that was fun. I nearly gagged when I seen what was under the strainer. It was pretty gross. Of course, I have no idea when the last time it was cleaned. Probably never. The hard part was putting the damn screws back in the drain cover. Things wouldn’t go in flush like they did before. I didn’t want to strip the screw so I just left it as is. My brother in law can sort it out. My leg nearly gave way from crouching down. Then when I got in a kneeling position, my calf cramped. I said fuck it and gave up.

I still have my stupid menses. I am hoping tomorrow I can go back to mens underwear because wearing female underwear really irritates me in more ways than one. I just find it very uncomfortable as I am not used to wearing them. I think I would kill myself just for that reason alone.

The voices are still active so I paged my psychiatrist. I wasn’t going to but I got static going on in my brain and I am almost out of trilafon. I have two pills left so I need to ration it. I don’t see her till Friday. I don’t know how long these breakthrough psychotic symptoms are going to be around. I am also feeling agitated for no reason. Maybe the Zoloft is causing some of this but I think it’s more of a reaction to the grief that I am feeling. That coupled with the flashbacks I had earlier this week and I am on a fucking roll. I just hope my psych doesn’t want me to go to the ER. I would be stuck as there are no buses to the Square today or tomorrow and I don’t want to ask my sister for a ride to the hospital. I really don’t want to be hospitalized anyway. The most they are going to do is drug me up so I don’t feel anything. I can do that at home. I just need more trilafon to make it happen. The only down side to this is I won’t be able to read like I was hoping to because trilafon messes with my thinking. It kills ALL the voices including my reading voice. Without this voice, the words in the book are just words without meaning. I might as well just be reading a dictionary or something. It’s hard to explain. There just isn’t a narrative going on that gives me insight into what I am reading. I can read the words but they are just words on a page. It is boring and dull without the voice reading to me. It’s been that way all my life having this voice. It is male even if the author of the book is female, though come to think of it, I mostly read male authors so that might be why.

If my psych calls me, I will tell her I need a refill of the trilafon. I know she doesn’t want me to take it with the abilify but I need something with these breakthrough symptoms. I am very careful not to take too much. Hell, the script I have is more than a year old so that should give you some idea on how much I use it. And it was for 30 pills. I have two left. I thought I had more than that but I don’t. I could use the Ativan to calm down the agitation but Ativan wouldn’t help the static going on in my head. I have a shit load of voices talking all at once. It’s like a radio going on in my head at a party where you hear the murmurs of people talking but can’t quite make out what the hell they are saying. It’s hard to think with all the noise. I was listening to my music through headphones and that helped a little bit.

I had lunch with my youngest sister today. She made burgers, raviolis, and fries. It was really good. She cooked the burgers on the grill despite the rain. I love grilled burgers. They just taste so much better than fried. We didn’t talk like I was hoping to because my brother in law was doing paperwork in the kitchen. I just ate, showed her the letter I wrote for the hospice group and left. She said the letter was fine. My other sister thought so too, though she was wondering who I was sending it to. Sometimes she isn’t all there.

I was going to go to Walgreens today but decided not to. My ankles were really hurting me last night and I must have gone up and down the stairs a million times today. I am just going to spend the rest of the time on my laptop keeping track of the Sox game. They were leading 4-0 but the Twins tied the game. Our rookie pitcher gave up the lead. I am not too happy right now.

Did too much and paying for it

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Did too much and paying for it

Nearly every day this week, I have made a trip to Starbucks. And practically every night, I have been paying for it. I usually go every other day because I need a rest day in between. But I didn’t take a rest day because I felt “okay”. Now it’s the end of the week and I am hurting really bad. So bad, that it’s making depressed.

I wish I was seeing my psychiatrist earlier than next Friday. I feel like I am hanging by a thread today. The voices have been non stop since I let them in. They just won’t shut up. I don’t understand it because I haven’t been stressed and we were just having a normal conversation. Nothing stressful or triggering. Now my brain is just firing away and the voices are wicked loud. I am in serious pain and I just can’t quiet them down to think of what I can do to ease it. I have music playing to try and distract me.

I took some pain meds once I got a break. Then I was quizzed on how many I took and why I was taking them. They always want me to take more than what I need, like more is better. More isn’t better. It’s no more effective than taking a handful of Tylenol for a headache. They just want me to hurt myself. I will do it with other drugs but not my pain meds. I don’t want to die like my father, with liver problems due to the Tylenol that is in my pain meds. I am not stupid like the voices think I am.

I haven’t told my therapist about all this. Not much she can do about it anyways. Even if I text her to talk to her, the most she is going to say is for me to page my psych or go to the ER. If I go to the ER, chance are I will be admitted. I don’t want to be admitted so the ER is out. I can be admitted after the 17th when I see my psych and get my pain meds appointment. I really was hoping that I wouldn’t need another admission so soon after my last one. But then, I wasn’t expecting to become psychotic either.

Being in pain is not helping my thoughts. I feel really depressed and it’s feeding the suicide demons. For the first time in two months (?), I am thinking of taking my life again. It’s not serious. It is just in passing, like what if I would take my life? Then I think of the plan that I cooked up a few months ago. I can still go through with it. It could work this time. A more lethal medication. Only question is, do I actually have enough to kill myself. The LD is 10 mg and I am not sure I have it. I have to count the pills and I am scared to because it will just mean one more step closer to killing myself when I want to.

After my father died, I was thinking about getting a life insurance policy. I got a response from the one I applied for online. They want medical documentation for my illnesses. Nope. Not getting it. Chances are they will have this information just to deny me. I will find another policy holder. I thought it would be too easy to get on the first try. I never got life insurance through my work. I did have insurance in case something happened to me while I working. It was something like $100,000 coverage in case of injury or accidental death and it was for something ridiculously small amount of like $6/wk. There were higher amounts but that was the cheapest and in my line of work, the risk of me losing a limb was quite low.

I wanted to get the life insurance just in case something happened to me. Then my family wouldn’t have to scramble like we did for my father with arrangements and such. I do have a pension with my work but I don’t know what happens to it when I die. Maybe I should find out. It most likely will die with me.

Soon as the pain meds kick in, I will take my night meds. I was going to listen to the game but I don’t feel up to it. I will follow it on Twitter or the MLB website until I can’t fight sleep any longer. Or I might just read something so I can feel like I did something productive today. Today just feels wasted. Voices are loud now. They are pissed I am typing and ignoring them. Maybe I will take a trilafon, too.

Dentist and Other Things

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

Dentist and other things

I finally went to the dentist after a two year hiatus. I have a cavity that I kind of knew I did while he was cleaning my teeth. It was very painful when he was scraping that particular tooth. I have to go back Monday for the filling. I will need to take an Ativan before hand as I don’t like needles when they are pointed at me. It will just freak me out like it did the last time I had a cavity, which thankfully has been years. I had the dentist look at the corner of my mouth to see if it was a canker or a cold sore. It was a canker. So now I need to get some medicine to help it heal as it is painful every time I open my mouth. It was killing me while getting my teeth cleaned. I hope it’s gone by Monday.

After the dentist, I went to get a coffee. I tried writing in my journal but kept on getting distracted by a kid that was sitting opposite from me. He was so damn jittery. He kept on kicking the chair next to me. I was getting so damn annoyed. Then I decided maybe I would write the letter to the hospice place to thank the nurse and social worker. Nothing came to me. I hated the chair I was sitting at because it wasn’t the chair I usually sit in. I was facing the door and kept on getting distracted by all the customers coming in and out of the store. Today was a very distracting day. I couldn’t focus on anything. So I caught the next bus home.

While I was home, I was thinking about what to write for the hospice place and I finally was able to write something. Now I just need to show it to my sisters and get their signatures so I can mail it. I am glad it got done. One less worry off my plate. Now I just need to get in touch with the social worker so I can talk with her. I think it will be helpful so I am not taking up time with my therapist about my father all the time. I wish I was seeing my therapist next week. I’d really like to have a session where we talk about this face to face so I can get her impressions. See therapy goes both ways. She does her thing and I do mine and we call it a therapeutic exchange.

I had time today to call for a PT appointment but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with morons or to really talk to people. My case is very specific and I probably will need to talk to the director of the place to see if I can get the care I need. I don’t want the run of the mill therapist that just throws exercises at you. I need someone willing to work with me because I am injured in my other ankle. If that is too much, then I will just get exercises from the internet and do PT that way. I found 3 exercises that are made for the Achilles. Two seem doable to me. The third will be kind of hard because I will have to bear weight on my left ankle/foot (bad one). I read the prescription and it’s eccentric exercises that I need to do. I will google those later.

When I came home, I was wicked agitated. I sort of calmed down with the writing and talking to the voices. Some new ones have been added but they aren’t harmful. They just ask a lot of fucking questions and criticize what I say most of the time. They also are nosey and want to know what I am doing, what I am writing, what I am reading, why I am reading and not writing, etc. It’s tiresome. Tonight we were talking about going back to college, which is still a sore spot for me. If I had stayed at my job and didn’t move on to the research one, I probably would have got my degree by now. All the what ifs started playing over. The major thing was having a psychotic break in 2008 and not being able to return to college afterwards because the meds made my cognition so difficult. It interfered with my thinking. I couldn’t get off my meds so I had to take an incomplete for the class I was taking. Because I then dropped out, I got an F for the class. My GPA is probably in the negative or zero now, not like it was high to begin with. But now that I am not working, the voices want me to go back to school, probably so they can fuck me over again. I am not convinced I can go to school and still collect my Long Term Disability (LTD). I don’t even know what the stress of going to school is going to do with me. I am kind of scared but I don’t have the money for college so I am not too worried about it now. Unless I hit the lottery, then I will worry about it. But then, I wouldn’t have to worry about the financial things like that anyways. I need to play the PowerBall. It’s 140 million, last I checked anyways.

I canceled my Netflix subscription. I haven’t watched an episode of Friends in at least two weeks. I don’t know why I should pay for something if I am not using it every day. Or at least, every other day. I knew this would happen. I just am not a person to watch TV shows. I rather read books. And I got a lot to read because the pile keeps getting higher instead of lower. I just bought 10 books on Kindle. I have no idea why but I did. It was a once in a lifetime deal though. I got it all for $15. One of the books I have the hardcopy of so now I can read it either way. That is if I can get through the stuff I am currently reading. I have two books I am actively reading and one that is my “whenever I feel like it”. The 4th and 5th books are my leisure books. I read those when I want a break from the other stuff I am reading. I don’t know how I got to 5 books that I am reading but I did. It’s working out and hopefully I will finish all five by the end of the year.