Early on I had to be my own doctor. At first I was seeing a GP because I didn't have mental health benefits. He kept trying more and more ADs and then changing when I burned out. Classic sign of bipolar but he apparently didn't know. Then I had a very, very bad psychiatrist. She thought that because I was a healthcare professional and had a master's degree that I couldn't be very sick. So every month she saw me for 8 minutes and documented that I was functioning normally. Every day I was coming home and crawling into bed in dirty scrubs and eating nothing but chef-boy-ar-dee. Even when I told her I was suicidal she marked high functioning. She had no clue and when I discovered by reading online that I was CLEARLY bipolar I dumped her immediately. I wound up in a clinical trial with 6 months of free care which was great and then I changed jobs to have insurance for psychiatric care and to get away from people taking advantage of me and leaving me on call 7 days per week for 3 weeks plus I worked full-time and never got my comp time from being on-call. (Which finally explains what I was trying to figure out the other day, which is why I don't remember paying hundreds of dollars per visit for my psychiatrist at the beginning; she coincided with my new insurance).

I've learned that if you go in and ask specifically for a med and say exactly why you want it you are most likely to get it. Your dr isn't making sense with your meds right now; you're on 2 weak mood stabilizers so no wonder you don't feel good. He's left out some of the most common and fastest meds, like zyprexa. It plain didn't work for me but I haven't heard that too often, usually it is a side effect that stops that one because it is quite effective. A lot of people find Latuda to be great. I was in a group after it came out and 2 different people got much better on it. I tried it but didn't give it a chance b/c I was in a dark place and didn't care so I'm really hoping it helps me this week, if my dr has samples. Otherwise it will be something else, probably something older.

And I forgot Saphris. It was in the part the cat tore off. Gotta request a new book.