Well I went to work yesterday but had to get my husband to pick me up at noon because I was too dizzy, weak and lightheaded from my period that I couldn't focus or concentrate on work. I am still dizzy and weak today so I spent the day in bed watching Netflix. Interesting how the body will just FORCE you to lie down sometimes. This period came on real strange, kind of the way my periods used to happen BEFORE I went on meds: with a sudden bang, a sudden swing! I wonder if it's the Latuda up at 40 mg that has made this change or - ? Something else. I'm not sure I like Latuda. I don't know. I feel like it makes my emotions more intense and at the surface. That's not necessarily a bad thing but I don't necessarily feel like it's putting a lid on hypomania.

It's a shame to have to miss work and I feel self-conscious and embarrassed about it. I'm sure my boss and coworkers were confused as I appeared to be okay in the morning and it all just came on very suddenly in the afternoon. The extreme dizziness, weakness, etc. was preceeded by menstrual cramps that felt like early labour pains. And were accompanied by weepiness. I once went to the ER years ago with this same sort of thing (fainty-ness during my period with weepiness, feeling like I couldn't be upright, coming and going in waves). The ER doctor thought it sounded like an anxiety or panic attack but I didn't have the fear feelings (maybe because of the good meds on board and my body was just having the other symptoms)? Either way it's telling me to slow down.

Except I don't know how to slow down. I work FT with 3 kids. My house is always a disaster and I'm struggling like anything trying to keep up with the bare minimum such as making sure five of us have clean clothes to wear and plates/cutlery/glasses and meals. Sometimes I can handle the hectic pace just fine. Other times I just plod through the exhaustion and hectic pace and I cannot anticipate WHEN my body is going to decide to crash. It's like it just suddenly decides out of nowhere that NOW is crash time.

Dh seems to think my extreme mood-swings/irritability that are part of the PMDD are part of my bipolar 2. I thought they were supposed to be separate things. I don't think my bipolar is typical and I don't have clusters of hypo symptoms all at the same time, it's more like symptoms follow each other over the course of several days. Sometimes I don't even want to believe I'm bipolar. But it does explain a lot of things.