Day 33 "Mildly Depressed Today"

Toda was an ok day.  I was just mildly depressed all day and kind of in a blah kind of mood.  The tiredness I first had when I took the Seroquel has decreased.  However, on Sunday night I jump to 300mg and I bet it’s going to hit me like a freight train.  All of these drugs I feel are just sedating me in to this whole other person that I don’t know.  Maybe I was out of control and had lots of mood swings but I wish I could feel like that same person just minus the anger and mood swings.  Before I was on a roller coaster going nonstop and now I’m like a zombie.

Day 32 "Today I Was Like a Zombie"

I felt the Seroquel about 3.5 hours after taking it last night and I had to go to bed.  I did notice that I craved food and I did eat a little before going to bed.  Tonight I’m just going to bed and that’s it.   I was successful today in tracking my food intake and sort of keeping on my diet.  The next step for me is to consume more vegetables. 

Today I got out of bed but all I did was sit in a chair where I was in and out of it all day.  It was another day of being somewhat low but most of my symptoms of being low today were because I was just so groggy all day.  My cousin came over this evening and we went on a ride and for the first time in a long time I kind of enjoyed myself.  So I would have to say that I had a stable evening tonight and it felt good.  Tomorrow is another day and I’m going to just go with the flow and see what happens. 

Day 31 "First Day On Seroquel"

Today started out about the same as yesterday.  I was depressed but had some anger and was a little irritable.  I went to see my psychiatrist and she upped my Klonopins to 3mg a day, left my Lithium alone, and started me on Seroquel XR 150mg that will go to 300 mg after four days. 

 
She said the Seroquel works well with the Lithium and that I needed the upped dose of Klonopin for anxiety.   However, she did say that if I felt I didn’t need that much Klonopin I could skip a dose or just take half.  I think I’m going to try and add just .5 more mg at first and see how I do on that for a few weeks.  Sometimes less is more and I will just have to wait and see. 

So I took the Seroquel about an hour ago and I’m starting to feel a little bit different.  I would imagine in the next hour or so I will be tired enough for bed.  I’m getting back on track with my diet tomorrow and going to walk with my sister in the morning.  I’m going to try and not gain weight on the Seroquel and I already know I can do well on my diet so it’s going to be a challenge but I want to get this under control period the end and have to do whatever.

Day 30 "Today I Was A Little Hypomanic"

I fell asleep around 5am this morning and I could tell because it was light out.  Anyway I got up at 10 this morning and took my AM pills then and decided to bump my PM pills to 8pm instead of 6pm.  I have a theory that I not being an early morning type of person could have something to do with the way I’ve been sleeping.  Anyway, I’ve been up since 10am and haven’t napped today which is the first time in weeks that I haven’t. 

I have been anxious all day having racing thoughts about how I’m going to ever be able to survive the rest of my life. I’ve also been thinking a lot about wanting to go back to work but knowing that I can’t for a while and if I get the chance to again who will ever hire me.  I started out in a very low state this morning when I first got up.  I felt very weak and wasn’t motivated and just felt really down. 

After lunch I still felt the same but I felt a little more motivated to make some phone calls and do some things I needed to do.  At the same time, I was feeling a little hypomanic and was irritable, didn’t need to sleep, and felt a little more self confidence in myself because of the phone calls I had made and things I had accomplished.  So the only bad part about the hypomania was the anger and irritability.  I can sometimes strike like a snake with no notice. 

Anyway, this evening I felt the best that I’ve felt in days.  I still felt really weak and still had racing thoughts about my future and a little depression but I didn’t feel like death.  I really never understood how bad my bipolar was till the mania stopped.  Tomorrow is my appointment with my psychiatrist and I’m going to ask her about her thoughts on keeping me on the Klonopin for a while longer or indefinitely, maybe trying a different benzo all together, my Lithium level, and possibly something for sleep.

Day 29 "Wet The Bed This Morning"

I woke up at 745 this morning to a wet bed.  I have only wet the bed one time since I was fifteen years old and that was when I had pneumonia in 1995 which was horrible.  I took the sheet of f the bed and got a large tell to sop up the wet spot.  I then took my morning pills with a glass of milk and went back to bed.  I woke up several times during the day but couldn’t get out of bed nor did I want to. 

I had dreams about my first job at K*B Toys and when my store was closing.  In the dream my boss   showed up and took control of the situation, fired a couple of people, and we worked on getting the store ready for closing.  It wasn’t a bad dream at all but was very vivid and real.  It was just the total opposite of the way things happened in real life. 

 Anyway, when I decided I could get out of bed I put my glasses on and it was after 6pm.  I got up and my Mom was just getting home from going to the grocery store.  We went and had some dinner and again like yesterday I feel a little off today.  I ache all over and I’m depressed.  It’s tiresome for me to be typing right now but I need to be able to recall my symptoms when I see my psychiatrist this week. 

I think it’s nice that my severe mania has stopped but I still have a lot of anxiety, depression, and some hypomania and it all happens at the same time.  I’ve done some reading and there are some people that say that Lithium is not the best course of action for Bipolar mixed episodes.  Anyway, I’m really tired and aching all over and need to get off here now.

Day 28 "Good Intentions That Went Bad"

I didn’t sleep again very well last night but I did get into bed around 3am which is great for me.  I went for a walk this morning that took about 45 minutes thinking I would feel better and it did nothing for my morning.  Today my body ached really a lot and I had a lot of anxiety.  It’s been the worst I’ve had since starting on medication. 

The afternoon got a little worse because I became irritable.  Everybody I encountered could go to hell, die in a fire, get killed in an explosion for all I cared.  There were just so many people that pissed me off and I wished horrible things on them.  I must have wished a dozen people dead.  There was a guy who passed me on a double yellow line and I hoped that I would drive over the hill and see his car in a pole. 

Like I’ve said before everyone thinks it’s funny when I get like that but that just makes me more upset and angry.  Jut typing that has made me start to cry which I ended up doing all evening along with being a little uneasy on my feet.  Today was an off day for me and sure hope tomorrow is better.  My bipolar effects me at any given time and I can’t control it.  In a perfect world I could live by myself in a nice quiet atmosphere and wouldn’t have to depend on others to support me.  I’m not saying that I want to be a hermit but I do function and feel so much better when I’m by myself which at this point I never see happening. 

I’m 41 years old now and haven’t worked for going on three years and every job I apply for is lower grade work than I did before.  My therapist said that I may want to consider applying for disability so that I can get this nasty evil illness under control.  Sometimes I will have a good afternoon or night and think to myself that maybe I’m just being lazy and then something will set me off and then it clicks in my head that I got a serious problem that I need to take care. 

I’m still in shock from being on that constant roller coaster ride I’ve been on for as long as I can remember.  I was on it for so long that my brain is having a real hard time adjusting to not being on it and the illness still sucks me in a lot.  I would just have to say that my mania has calmed down a lot.  I still think about sex a lot some days and even look at a lot of porn but I haven’t placed any ads looking for sex with strangers and then staying up for days waiting and constantly looking.  Anyway, my emotions and thought are all over the place today and I need to get off here.  I didn’t binge or purge today!  It’s a little after 2 in the morning and I’m going to bed.

Day 27 "Shift From Hypomania to Dpression"

Well, I didn’t sleep last night because I got working on those slides and I was in a frenzy to get them done.  My brain stopped being depressed and I just went to town.  There was no rush to get them done but since my brain was in hypomanic mode I was like let’s do this.  Anyway, I have to take my seven year old nephew to his swim lesson this morning because my sister and her husband are going to help his grandparents out today.  The swim lesson didn’t go too bad because I just messed around on my phone the entire time.   When we got home I drank a bunch of water and tried to lie down but kept getting interrupted because my sister’s kids were making so much noise. 

My mood shifted from that hypomania to being depressed and that’s where I stayed the rest of the day.  I didn’t have any crazy outbursts or want to kill myself but I got thinking about my future and wondered what I’m doing all this for.  Sometimes I feel like getting this treatment is all for nothing.  I know that I should be looking at it all different but I’ve had a hard time today.  I just want to survive on my own and be stable.  I signed up for Disability this past week and there have been a couple of moments where I’ve felt ok and thought to myself that maybe doing that was wrong.  Then I have days like today where I’m negative, have no hope for my future, have a lot of anxiety, can’t concentrate and have this feeling of emptiness that I can’t shake. 

This is when I realize that I do have a problem and what I’m doing is the right thing.  I’m not trying to make a big deal about anything but on the other hand this is a big deal to me and I’m not dealing with it all as well as I thought would be.  I don’t want my families pity but it sure would be nice if they could try and understand what I’m facing and going through.  With that said, the biggest thing would be if they could respect me being on a schedule.  Not one sole in my family understands that if I don’t get a certain amount of sleep that it sends me into mania.  They think its ok for me to go to bed at 2 am and then be up ready to go at 8am because God forbid we waste the day.  If I try to explain myself they tell me that it’s ok and that they’ll just have to do whatever by myself.  I’m trying to teach myself to say NO and it’s one of the hardest things to master and it also depends on who you tell it too.  Anyway, it’s 2am in the morning and I’m going to get off here and hopefully tomorrow will be better.  It’s the first day of the first full week of summer.