i'm scared.

I saw my psychiatrist and he thinks that ECT would be a good thing for me.  He referred me to one of his colleagues who performs ECT; I have an appointment with this other doctor in a few weeks time.  The plan is to do it in July. 

My psychiatrist wanted me to try taking lithium.  I took lithium for a few years in college and it did nothing for me, but he thinks something might have changed since then and that it's worth a shot.  In the first year of taking lithium, when I was nineteen, I went from weighing 125 pounds to 215 pounds and I've never taken that weight off.  But I decided to give it another shot.  However, if I gain more than ten pounds I'm stopping it.  So far I've done a week of half a dose, and two days of the full dose, and I've gained nine pounds.  I'll give it a few more days...

My psychiatrist also prescribed propranolol to reduce my hand tremors.  Strangely my right hand is doing pretty well, but my left hand is shaking like crazy.  Go figure.

    

This is me, right now

I've never felt this way before, that I have no options.  I am barely making it through each day, and there's no end in sight.  There's nothing to look forward to, no relief.  There's no thinking that "if I just make it through this phase..."  So much is wrong in my life, above and beyond my mental illness and I don't know how I'm going to turn it around.  I see my psychiatrist in two days time and hopefully we can figure something out.  If I could, I'd choose to do ECT immediately.  But I'm single, I live alone, and there's no one who can come help me out right away.  My parents live thousands of miles away, and I'm sure they would be here right now, but my mom is having back surgery next week and my father will be taking care of her over the next few months as she recovers from this extensive surgery. 

I imagine what would happen if I just stopped.  Stopped going to work.  Stopped paying my bills.  And let it all crumble around me.  My motivation, over all these years of struggle, has been to be able to support myself.  I've kept the same job for seven years, which is kind of miraculous when you have treatment-resistant bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder heaped on top of that.  All this time my main focus has been on getting up in the morning and going to work, and trying not to get fired each day.  It's a real challenge when you're mentally unstable.  When you're depressed, just standing up and walking twelve feet is a struggle -- to perform your job well and within a reasonable amount of time for eight hours each day is an agonizing feat.  But I've done it.  Add to that the challenge of faking that you're perfectly fine and not letting the depression affect your interpersonal relationships at work.  Thankfully I don't have manic episodes, but I do have hypomanic episodes -- racing thoughts, trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating, getting overwhelmed very easily, inability to complete one task at a time, sensitivity to noise/light/change,etc,  irritability, being prone to sudden and severe shifts in mood, speaking a little too loud and a little too fast, and making inappropriate comments and/or saying the wrong thing (the tiny bit of filter you have when you have borderline personality disorder is practically nonexistent when you're experiencing hypomania).

These past few weeks I've been rapid cycling between depression and hypomania.  Before now, for two months, it's been hardcore depression.  Not the weepy emotional kind of depression, but the depression of constant physical pain, constant fatigue (no matter how much sleep you get, or how much you rest) and the overwhelming feeling of I Can't Continue To Do This One Second Longer.  At first the hypomania was a welcome change, just for something different.  To have energy and desire to do things (I want to go skydiving!  I want to go to an orgy!  I want to adopt ten dogs from the pound!) is delicious.  You feel full of life and full of love, and you want to tell every single person that you come across that you love them.  Or at least that's what happens to me. 

But hypomania is the most damaging to your life.  Poor decision-making.  Erratic changes in interpersonal relationships.  Who talks like this?  Interpersonal relationships . . . that's SO therapy-ish.  Whatever.  You get the point.

Anyway.  To be continued . . .

Oh wait, I forgot to mention -- over the past year I've been stockpiling a few medications that mixed with alcohol are almost guaranteed to be lethal.  Unless I vomit them up, which is what scares me and has me thinking twice, or thrice, or a million times over.  The point being that I have the means to commit suicide.  I've never been suicidal before when I had the actual goods to get the job done in an efficient, effective, no muss no fuss way.  And it's a scary place.  It's very real.  Ugly real.  And I've scheduled vacation time off from work to get this done.  Properly.  With all of my bills and banking account info and my will and my internet passwords to important accounts and contact information and all that stuff that will make the job of finalizing my stuff (house stuff, debt stuff, etc.) much easier for whoever ends up having to deal with it. 

I don't know what will happen between now and then, the planned day.  If I'll change my mind.  Or chicken out.  Or decide to grasp at some other straw.  If it was all as simple as a light switch, turning the switch from on to off, I would do it tonight.  I wish that was an option.  But no, life is never that simple, is it?

a haunting

a haunting

a haunting

It seems that ECT is the next step.  I'm running out of options.  And I'm tired of everything.

I feel like talking, so I tried to log in to this blog but could not remember my blog's name, the email address it's associated with, or my password.  It's funny that being secretive and trying to be anonymous and creating a million different aliases only keeps things hidden from me.  If I had everything out in the open, my real name out there for all to see, would anyone even care enough to read this?  I sort of wish that there was someone in my life that I wanted to hide things from.  Because right now there is no one.  Just me.

Looking back at previous posts I see that I wrote quite a bit about meds, and about my bipolar and borderline personality disorder diagnosis.  So an update -- I'm back on all my old meds, the ones I was on before I desperately tried adding and subtracting and getting off them altogether.  Turns out the old meds work for me.  Enough so that I'm still alive and I am able to get up in the morning and go to work and pay my bills and be moderately stable.  My psychiatrist added Deplin about a year ago.  A vitamin sort of folate thing, that's recently been shown to improve depression.  I don't understand it exactly, but I trust my psychiatrist and I'm up for trying something new considering his next idea was ECT (no thanks).  Deplin is expensive and not covered by insurance.  Maybe $190 for a three month supply?  I was reluctant at first to spend that much on a fucking VITAMIN (or what the Deplin site calls "a medical food" but I've been relatively depression-free for this year that I've been taking it, so why stop now?

I'm not moodswing-free.  Far from it.  I've been swinging from baseline okayness to hypomania.  The hypomania is a nice change.  It's good to feel up, but with the elevation comes inappropriateness.  More on that later. 

Back to watching tv and drinking coffee.  Now that I know my blog address and password I just might come back to ramble more.

Hi blog.  It's me.  I'm back.  It's fifteen months later.  I'm still alive.  Crap.

Emsam patch

I should have done some research.  I was so excited by the possiblity of trying something new, hopefully The Fix, that I didn't do a price check on the Emsam patch.  $500/3 months supply.  What do I do now?  That's big money for me. 

Is it really possible -- the solution to my psychiatric predicament in a medication I've never tried before?  I remember eighteen years ago.  Right before bed.  About to take my very first anti-depressant.  Prozac.  I just sat there looking at the little green capsule in the palm of my hand, thinking "This is it.  This will fix everything."  I'll never forget that moment.  And here I sit eighteen years later, a day or two maybe before starting the Emsam patch thinking Wow, maybe this is it.  Dumb dumb dumb.  Medications just don't work that way.  At least, they haven't for me.  The best result I've had from a psych med is that things become a little less horrible.  Big freaking deal.   

I'm angry and I feel let down.  I'm tired.  Tired of being tired.  I just don't know what the point of anything is anymore.  Not in a woe-is-me I'm about to jump off a cliff kind of a way.  But really -- what's the point?  Tired.  I just said that.  Really really tired.  I wish I could . . . something.  Sometimes it's just too much, you know?  I just wish that I wasn't.  Or weren't.  I wish that I was nothing at all.  A lifetime is just so very long.

On Vacation -- Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

I'm on vacation in Arizona.  Big whoopdeedoo.  I'm supposed to be having a good time.  Supposed to be enjoying the weather.  Enjoying my parents' company.  I am doing none of these things.  I miss my bed at home -- pulling the covers up over my head and crying myself to sleep.  Here I have to get dressed.  Sit upright (sometimes stand!  and walk! egads!).  Stay awake for hours and somehow occupy that time.  Pretend that I'm somewhat normal.  I am counting the days and the hours and the minutes until I get back on a plane, back to my normal life of unconsciousness.  I miss that dark place. 

Suicidal.  And pissed the fuck off that something as simple as not taking a medication for ONLY SEVEN DAYS can take me to this place.  Two more weeks and I start a new antidepressant.  Yippee.  I am SO sure that it's going to cure me.  That I'll miraculously bid farewell to the mental hell I've been in for the past twenty years.  Yeah, I'm holding my breath on that one. 

I don't know how I'm going to manage the next four days of vacation.  Vacation -- what a joke.  But hey, it's Arizona -- I could always impale myself on a cactus.  Good times.     

blowing out the candles on the cake

I wish that I could erase myself.  Fully.  Completely.  Gone.

A change in meds, Again.

I had a good chat with my psychiatrist yesterday.  I think that he understands a little better who I am as a person, and what exactly I struggle with.  I feel less pigeon-holed.  But now he's questioning my bipolar-ness.  AGAIN.  I swear it's psychiatrists that are bipolar.  Make up your mind!

So maybe I'm not bipolar.  Fine with me.  He also suggested that maybe I don't have borderline personality disorder.  He asked "You don't cut yourself when a relationship ends, do you?"  Well no, not anymore.  But that's a pretty limited "understanding" of what BPD is.  It's got me thinking, is this a good doctor or a not-so-good doctor?  Who do I trust?  How many psychiatrists do I have to see in my lifetime before I feel I've got a really good one?  For now I trust him.  Because he's not pleased with where I'm at in life (and neither am I) and is really pushing change.  Previous psychiatrists were fine with the status quo of me being miserable.

Lots of changes to come:  Stop the Abilify.  Stop the Serzone.  Start Trazodone to deal with stopping the Serzone.  In March, after all the weaning from my anti-depressants, start using an MAOI.

I'm scared to go off the Serzone.  If I miss a dose I get these weird acid-trippy hallucinations.  Dr. H. suggested I take some time off work while coming off my meds.  Yeah, like that's an option.  I'm scared that once I'm off all the anti-depressants I'll go into a major depression.  That my panic attacks will come back.  That I'll lose my mind.  But.  I'm excited by the potential for good change. 

Exorcise me

For the past two weeks I've been taking a hard look at my binge-eating problem.   I've tried to stop the binging altogether.  But take away a self-destructive "coping" mechanism and the body and mind scramble to find something to replace it.  I've been trying my hardest to not replace the binging with a negative something else.  Meanwhile, in marches the foul mood, the self-loathing, the desire to do anything and everything bad to myself.  I swear, the devil resides WITHIN me.    


I have an appointment with my psychiatrist next week.  I'm going to beg going off the Abilify.  I'm convinced that it's the culprit for the rise in my blood pressure and weight.  It ain't cheap either.  I'm not sure why my doctor is so pro this drug.  The wean off Effexor is still slow-going.  From three tabs to two to one to a half and now down to a quarter last night.  And I still feel a bit of dizzy.  I'm interested to see what shrink-o comes up with at our appointment.  A brain transplant perhaps?

I Hate January

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the very worst day of my life.  Compared to most peoples’ worst day it’s kind of lame.  My house didn’t burn down with my dog inside.  My legs didn’t fall off.  My mom wasn’t abducted by aliens.  For the worst day of my life it could have been a lot worse.

In January, five years ago, my husband announced that he and my very best friend (of twenty years) had secretly fallen in love and were moving across the country two days later to start their new life together.*  Never to be heard from again.

Needless to say it was a shock.  I’m still shocked.  In retrospect it all makes sense.  I still don’t like it, but I get it.  I’ve forgiven.  Forget forgetting though.  And moving on?  It just hasn’t happened yet.  Five years later.  FIVE YEARS. 

The average non-psychiatrically-challenged person would have a hard time getting over something like this.  But for someone with borderline personality disorder it’s damn near impossible.  I already have the abandonment issues, the extreme sensitivity, the tendency to live in the past.    

I’ve done what I can to get over it.  I do what I can.  Hopefully one day I can lay the two of them to rest.  Whoops, that sounds sinister.  What I mean is that hopefully one day I can lay this pain to rest.  And hopefully it won’t take another five years.  Or the rest of my life.

*There’s a lot that I’m not saying here.  There are definitely two sides to this story.   Maybe one day I’ll write about all the fucked up things I did during my marriage.  How it was already over way before he left.  How I didn’t value what we had until it was too late.  How I failed.  But not right now.   

I'm choosing tonight to start thinking a little more positively and to start making some good changes in my life.   A little daunted by the next three days of nothing planned.  The option to hole up indoors all alone all weekend.  I promise myself that over the next three days I will lift myself up rather than tear myself down.  A small and simple goal -- first steps -- and I feel a change already.

The F Word

I am fat.  It’s true.  FAT.  This is not an oh-she’s-just-got-low-self-esteem thing.  According to the body mass index chart I am obese.  Like I need a chart to figure that one out.  Honestly, I could stand to lose a hundred pounds.  But I’d rather sit.  A few years ago I went through the DBT skills class (twice or thrice) that was offered at an eating disorder clinic.  Trying to kill two birds with one stone I focused some therapy on my binge eating, but the attempt was half-assed and I gave up on it.  I had bigger fish to fry.  Mmm, fry.  

It is now time that I give this aspect of my life another look.  The goal is to use food purely as a source of fuel for my body.  Not for entertainment.  Not to alter my mood.  Not to reward and/or punish myself.  This is my most immediate goal and I will have made SIGNIFICANT progress by the end of 2011.  Not exactly a new year’s resolution (I hate those – so cheesy) but, well, mmm cheese. 

 

Happiness is a Serious Problem

My mom gave me this book for Christmas:  Happiness is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual by Dennis Prager.  From the cover:  "This is the repair manual we should have been handed at birth . . . In order to be happy, we first have to battle ourselves." 

Well, duh. 

In the past I've had spurts of gung-ho-ness where I jumped into this, that, and the other in an attempt to change my way of thinking and as a result, change my life in the very best way.  Self-help books and tapes.  Therapy.  Meditation.  Prayer.  God.  So yes, I know that I have the power to change my lot in life.  And yes, I'm probably afraid of being happy; I stay in my little dark rut because I'm comfortable here.  And of course, if I gave it the slightest little effort, my life would probably rock. BUT I DON'T WANT TO.  Not now.  I'd rather wallow.  My pity party is not over yet.  I'm still celebrating.   

So there.  I'm not reading the book.  I'm not ready yet.  Bite me world.

(and now I'm afraid of lightening bolts and the earth opening up and swallowing me)

2010: It was a year

What was special about this year?  Not much.  It just kind of flew by, probably because I was asleep most of the time.  A brief recap:

In January I quit therapy, not because I thought that I was well but because my psychologist Marsha was no longer covered by my insurance.  I was still hella depressed but I didn’t think it was necessary to find a new therapist and start the process all over again.  I could have gone back to Gene, a previous therapist I’d gone to off and on for eight years, but my ex-boyfriend had started seeing him (yeah, what a great idea that was – referring him to Gene).  What if the ex and I crossed paths in the waiting room?  No thanks. 

A goal that I was still working on from the latter part of 2009 – to go out and do more things on my own.   I went to a ton of performing arts events – theatre, dance, concerts, opera.  As a result, my credit card bill shot through the roof and I began the year of no-spending.  Which meant not going out, not doing anything.  I ended a friendship in January, so the not going out part was easy.  I became housebound except for work and the occasional dinner with a friend I don’t like that much. 

I went on two first dates in May.  One with a guy I’ll call Peter (that’s actually his real name).  One with PR.  It was clear from the start that PR and I were not a romantic match, so instead of dating we had sex.  He was a little too blunt and critical, and I spent the majority of the five-month-long “relationship” feeling particularly bad about myself.  I proved to myself that I am a woman after all (surprise!)– that sex isn’t that great when there’s no emotional connection to accompany it.  With each time I became less and less interested, until I was just done.  I never told PR that I was done, but he didn’t question my withdrawing from him so I assume the feeling (or lack of feeling) was mutual. 

Peter and I went out five times.  We had sex on date #5 and I never heard from him again.  Wow. 

For the rest of the year my dating life was practically non-existent.  I’m actually consulting my calendar as I write this part because I can barely remember faces, much less names in this year’s First and Second Dates Club.  There was Christina.  We actually went out several times, but I felt nothing for her and, as friends, we bombed because she was just too busy.  What really struck me about her was that she hardly laughed.  And when I was being silly or making a joke she would ask “What do you mean?”  Then there was Gina.  She was someone I could see myself dating.  The problem – she’d just lost a hundred pounds and was on a quest to get the boys that she could never get as a fat girl.  Too bad, that one.  Then there was what’s-her-name (I honestly don’t remember her name) who, well into her forties, was sleeping with a bunch of 21-year-old emo boys.  She also had a phobia about driving beyond city limits, and lived with her mother. 

In my calendar there’s an entry for an 11:30 with Cindy.  I don’t know what that’s about.  Who’s Cindy?

Oh my goodness – Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwiches are really spicy.  I’m on fire.

Review over.  No wait.  Goals for 2011:  Continued no-spending.  Wear make-up more often.  Stop sleeping so much.  Give up the obsessions with French bread and butter, SpaghettiOs, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  Find the fountain of youth for Billy so that he’ll live forever.  Start putting the ice cubes in the glass BEFORE filling with beverage (it’s so damn messy otherwise).  Listen to music other than Ryan Adams.  Keep up the flossing regime.  And, last but not least, be happy.