Tag: schizoaffective disorder

Saturday Blog 56

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

I had woken up at a decent hour but I was in pain. I took some meds and went back to sleep. I slept most of the day. I just had some breakfast/lunch. I am not that hungry for dinner. I have a splitting headache that is making me want my pillow.

It’s been a cloudy day for the most part. The only time I went outside was to check for mail. I found that someone had moved my bags and I am pissed at that. My sister wants the space that my bags are in to put a cabinet for her toiletries. I like having my bags near the door because then I don’t have to forget it and go back up the stairs for it, especially if I am in a rush to catch the bus.

Despite sleeping most of the day, I am still wicked tired. I tried watching the game but my headache got worse and my allergies were bad as the pollen kept blowing in the windows in the kitchen. It’s very cool out, only about 60 degrees. It’s been nice but I am back to wearing winter PJs. I was going to take a shower but I don’t feel like it. I am too tired. Maybe I will try tomorrow.

Because I woke up really late, I didn’t make coffee. I was having a weird dream about my friend in South Africa. I dreamt he came to Boston and I was wheeling him around in his wheelchair (he is disabled due to CES). I was taking him all around MGH for some reason. We also went swimming. Just as I was starting to wake up, I was going to take him for coffee and dinner. I think that was why coffee was on my brain. If it was an hour earlier, I would have made it. I usually like to have my coffee before 1500. Any time after that, and I run the risk of not sleeping well.

I don’t know if this headache is going to turn into a migraine or not. I took some Excedrin to calm it down. I still need to take my meds but it’s too early right now. Think I am going to just take trilafon now and then take the rest of my meds later tonight.

Friday Voting

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

Friday voting

I spent most of the day voting to try and get my favorite second baseman into the All Star Game Tuesday. You could have voted via text, website, or Twitter. I mostly used text and Twitter because it was easier than registering my email address every time I opened a browser. And since I had a pop up virus of some sort on my phone, I haven’t been too keen on using the web browser. Results will be some time later today, I think. Hope all the texts helped him.

I saw my psychiatrist today and she is okay with me using the trilafon because it is helping me. I told her there will be days where I might have to take 8 mg because of agitation and stuff. Today I didn’t take it and was really agitated and psychotic after my appointment. I didn’t take any with me, which I guess I am going to have to start doing.

We talked about baseball while I was there. I told her my opinion on our “ace” pitcher. I think he is a loser and a player, not really sincere at all. He hasn’t pitched too well in his last three starts. I really cannot stand him. And the Sox are paying him over $30 million a year for him for the next three years. I told her I was voting for Pedroia, our second baseman. She really likes him.

I had some time to kill after I came home and was waiting for the bus. I decided to get a sandwich that I love at the Au Bon Pain. I saw they had red velvet cookies so decided to get a couple with the sandwich. I had it for dessert after dinner. I wasn’t crazy about it. It had white chocolate chips and I am not a white chocolate lover. It was okay but definitely would not be buying them again.

My sister asked me to babysit tonight. I told her yes. I was going to take a shower but now I don’t think I am going to. It’s kind of cold and there is no heater in the bathroom because it’s broken. My brother-in-law still hasn’t fixed it, though he keeps saying he will. I honestly don’t think he will until his garden is over with. He spends a lot of time in the backyard during the summer months. It’s his stress reliever.

I finally finished “A Common Struggle” yesterday morning. It is a good book, if you like hearing about how a Kennedy deals with his addictions and mental illness. He fought so that we would have equality among mental illness and addictions to be treated the same as physical illnesses. The problem is, there just isn’t money out there for the mental health budget as it’s the first thing they close. Or there just isn’t enough clinicians out there to treat the high number of patients who wait for months to years for a therapist or psychiatrist. From what I gathered on Twitter, psychiatry is not as popular a specialty as it once was. I have no idea if this is because residency programs are shutting down or what. One of my friends, who’s psychiatrist retired, was seeing a nurse practitioner and then she left her. I know it’s a harrowing specialty but why be a psychiatric specialist if you aren’t going to stay there. Granted more people have chronic illness as well as psych illness these days than ever. Even my psychiatrist was asking me how I keep all my meds straight as I am on so many. The only one they didn’t have on my med list today was the sertraline. She had to add it, again, with the right dose this time. Now I have plenty of it as the pharmacy accepted the script. It’s kind of odd because I just filled it last week. I have no idea how my insurance paid for it but it did. It’s only odd because they wouldn’t allow the trilafon to go through last week when my doc sent it. I had to pay out of pocket for it just to get fourteen pills.

My ankle is starting to hurt but I can’t take any pain meds because I am babysitting soon. I think I am going to try and see if my niece wants to watch the Labyrinth with me. If not, I will just watch it on my laptop. I am kind of scared to watch it only because as a kid I was scared of the movie. I hope now that I am an adult (or try to act like one anyways 😉 I can watch it.

Allergies and Other Boring Things

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

Allergies and other boring things

Since I woke up this morning, I have been sneezing my head off. No matter where I go in the house, I sneeze. My eyes have been watering like a hose has been turned on. I just put antihistamine eye drops in and they feel a little bit better. I also have been taking diphenhydramine all day. It’s been helping a little bit. Least the runny nose has stopped. I feel okay despite all this so I don’t think I am coming down with a cold.

The house is hotter than hell. I don’t know how my mother can stand it. I am worried about her because the last time it was this hot her sugar dropped. I am keeping an ear out but it’s kind of difficult with the AC running.

I haven’t heard back from my psychiatrist so I guess what I wrote was acceptable. I was nervous I was going to get a phone call after I sent it but I didn’t. I hope she liked the blog I sent her. I haven’t responded to my friend about the email she sent. I really don’t know what to say to her. Sometimes I don’t respond because there isn’t anything that needs responding to. I do give her encouragement when it is needed. I just wish I could write my book like she is writing hers. So far my book is about my psychotic episodes and how I deal with it with my medication. My first story is about darkness. I need to edit it some more because there isn’t some things that I like in it. But it’s hard to delete stuff when you are looking for a high word count.

Some of the stuff in my book, I posted on my blog. I was hoping to try it out on my readers to see if they liked it or not. Unfortunately, I don’t have many readers every day so I don’t get responses like I used to. This is mostly wordpress readers not internet. I think I get more internet traffic than WP, which is okay. As long as my blog gets read, I really don’t care who is reading it. I had a reader from Guam but haven’t seen him/her in a while.

My first book hasn’t sold too well. It went for around 100 copies, not including the books I sent out to potential reviewers that still hasn’t returned one review. I am upset about that. I think they were just interested in a free signed book.

So while I am trying to think of stories to write, I have been reading like crazy, well as crazy as the depression and psychosis will take me. For a while, I didn’t do any reading because my depression was so bad and my father was so ill. I remember reading a blog the other night that detailed how angry I was that he wasn’t taking care of himself. I gave him a year to live, less than that if he didn’t do what his doctors were telling him. He died a few months later. I still can’t believe how quickly he deteriorated. Less than twenty days in the nursing home. We did bring him home because that was his last request before he became non communicative. He just became a shell of a man. It was heartbreaking to see, even though I had a lot of resentment towards him. Anger as well. Actually, a whole lot of negative feelings toward him, even in his last hour. I had taken a picture of him while he was lying in the casket. He looked like he had a smirk on his face. That is how I wish to remember him rather than how he looked on his death bed. He died peacefully, in his bed, not at the nursing home. It took some doing because otherwise we would be paying a huge ambulance bill. I am grateful the nursing home doctor wrote that it was medically necessary for transport. I won’t forget that.

I hope I don’t have to see my mother die that way, frail and thin, almost skin and bone. She has gained weight over the years, which hasn’t helped her health much. But as long as she is eating and drinking, I know she is okay. My biggest fear is that she will get cancer of some sort because she was a heavy smoker. Thankfully, her chest CT was clear during her last admission.

Because I took Benedryl tonight, I skipped my Ativan dose. I also took some magnesium supplements for the spasms that I had in my back today. Every time I stood for longer than 5 minutes, I became hunched over and my seized up. It was awful. I helped my mother empty the dishwasher and it took me longer because I had to keep sitting down to ease the spasms. I haven’t done anything in two days so I have no idea why my back hurts. I hope it’s not because of the humidity because summer just started and I don’t want to be house bound. I have to go out tomorrow for my appointment or I will be charged a $75 no show fee.

My Sox are winning tonight. I checked the score on my phone and when I went back to the internet, it said my phone had a virus on it. So weird because I didn’t have the thing open while I was using it. I just closed the browser and opened a new one. Pissed me off though because I just had a system update that was supposed to fix the “security” of the phone. Yeah, right. And my last name is sucker.

psychosis, therapy, and other things

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

I had therapy today as usual. We talked more about the psychosis and how I have been dealing with it, or not really. I told her I thought I would email my psychiatrist today to inform her of an agenda for when we meet on Friday. I want to tell her that I think we need to get the psychosis under control. I sent her yesterday’s blog in the email so she has a better idea of what I am talking about.

We talked a little about my father. I told her I have been reading blogs about his treatment towards me and other stuff but I was very vague and don’t remember the incident I was describing. I had to look at the date I wrote it to know what I was talking about. He was a difficult man. Hard to believe it will be three months that he has been gone. I still haven’t cried much for him, if at all.

Then I get an email from writing friend today that thinks my psychosis is caused by the grief of my father. She doesn’t know what happened this weekend so I am dismissing most of what she was talking about. Plus she kept calling my father “dad” which just annoyed me. He isn’t a “dad” in any sense of the word. The guy only thought about himself. It was only in the last year that he started giving us money on the fly but even then we had to pay him back. I never wanted his money for this reason. There was always a catch to it.

In the email I sent to my pdoc, I also told her what I wanted to talk about that didn’t involve the hospital. I told her about what happened with my mother. She is stable for now but that can change in a week or two. Hell, it can change today or tomorrow. You just don’t know with diabetes, even if you constantly monitor your levels.

Today I am less psychotic because I took my meds yesterday. I spaced it out so I did take 8 mg of trilafon. Today I plan on doing the same. It seems to be working. I am not as paranoid or agitated. The AC isn’t speaking to me. I haven’t played music so I am not sure the lyrics have changed on me. Last night, I was listening to Bon Jovi. There were songs I had to skip because I didn’t care for them. Then the Sox game got hot last night so I listened for a while. The voices wanted me to read but there was no way I could listen to the game and read so I turned the game off. I was reading Patrick J. Kennedy’s book, A Common Struggle. I didn’t there would be similarities between us but there were, as far as our illnesses go in managing it on a daily basis. I don’t have the addiction issues he has but I know what it’s like trying to manage being bipolar and psychosis. Then I read the part of losing his dad just before my therapist called me.

I asked my therapist if she reads and she laughed, thinking I was calling her illiterate. She usually doesn’t read fun books, just professional stuff. I told her about A Common Struggle and how I was interested in it. I didn’t tell her the reason I had an interest in the primary author (PJK) but did tell her the background of the book. He pushed for mental health and addiction parity while in Congress, all while battling his addiction to drugs and alcohol and bipolar disorder. I really don’t know how he didn’t accidently kill himself but I think he was on that road had he not had treatment at the various places he went to. He was never really suicidal until his girlfriend said things were over between them. It was the first time he had such thoughts.

Anyways, we talked about the book in therapy and how it stirred up feelings about my father. Last night he was on my mind. I think he is always going to be on my mind even though he is gone. I am just glad I am not hearing his voice while being psychotic because that would be very dangerous.

I didn’t go out today, again. It’s too hot out and I am fearful it might spike another psychotic episode if I go. I don’t really want to be around people. Tomorrow I have to go out because I have an appointment with my neurologist. I haven’t seen her in two years, and not much has changed. I still have pain that is unexplained. The reason I made the appointment was because I was having nerve pain, but that seems to have resolved. I think all the standing I was doing the month of April and dealing with the impending death of my father just caused a flare up. Now that I am back to my regular routine, or rather no routine, things have calmed down.

I am missing my cold brewed iced coffee from Starbucks. I will have it on Friday when I see my psych. Feels like ages since I last saw her and it’s only been three weeks.