Sorry this is all in one post, but I wanted to give an update and there are multiple subjects for this.

About me going IP: I kept hoping that my pdoc would change his mind and that I wouldn't have to go IP. I saw him today and he has not.

Well... I don't "have" to go, but he really wants me to, so I feel like if I want to do my part for the team effort, I should go. He wouldn't want me there unless he thought it would help him to help me. Beds are scarce and he has to juggle to get me in there, so I know it's important to him.

What I wasn't happy with was that initially he said he wanted me in there for 10-14 days and to start my next course of ECT IP. So I thought I'd do that and then finish the last few appointments OP.

Today, he told me he might want me to stay for 3 weeks!!!!! That is waaaaay too long... I do not want to do that :-(

Although I'm not as bad as I was a couple of weeks ago (I was probably not all that safe for a few days there), I'm still about -7.5 our of -10. He says he wants me in there because I'm not getting better.

There have been threads discussing bipolar and some people expressing doubt about their diagnosis. I'm pretty classic I think but today, in desperation I suggested that maybe I have BPD and MDD, and that I'm not bipolar after all.

The logic was that I could cure BPD with therapy, and have many more anti-depressants to choose from to treat the depression. I'm not excited about the meds I've been taking, and don't want to get fat again from increased Seroquel. I'm also very sensitive to drugs and get random uncommon and rare side effects so my choices get narrower and narrower.

He said no. He was very definite. He doesn't see any BPD traits in me.

I told him that my weight loss that had started from the WB abruptly ceased and I started to gain as soon as my Seroquel does was increased. Even when I was only eating about 900 calories a day because of poor appetite from the WB, I started to creep back up on the scale. Then the insatiable hunger came back and I feel like I've been doing nothing else but eat for the past few days.

He was emphatic not to worry about the weight. He said that sometimes weight gain is a sign that the patient is responding to the meds and that I have to worry about stability first, then worry about weight. He repeated the whole not worrying about weight thing a few times and was very definite about it. But he backed my Seroquel back to where it was before the increase a couple of weeks ago, and I'm happy about that. I hadn't felt any differently from it anyway.

Or maybe I did, since I was starting to feel a little mixed probably from the increase in WB. But we backed that off too once I had two nights in a row where I couldn't stay asleep, and clumps of hair were falling out, and I started getting lots of heart palpitations, some very painful.

After my WB increase, I had a night in emerg after I woke up with unbearably painful palpitations/tachycardia. It woke me up out of a sedated sleep (Seroquel and Zopiclone), and when I got up and was trying to get dressed to go to the hospital, I was blacking out. I was very scared and considered calling an ambulance.

They ran every test and were very thorough and my heart is fine. Nothing wrong with it. They told me that it must have been heartburn. Odd, to have heartburn that has your heart thumping out of your chest at almost 200 BPM, severe pain that wakes you up, and blacking out :-)

What they didn't ask, and what became clear to me the next day when the palpitations started again (in my pdoc's office-he said I was very tachy, and to go to my GP for follow up) was that I had recently started a new med. And two of the rare or less common side effects are tachycardia and palpitations. I dropped back my dose after not sleeping for two nights and haven't had an issue with my heart since.

Anyway, that's my update. My WB had increased but I cut it back and my pdoc agreed it was the right thing, and my Seroquel had increased at the same time, but we put it back today.

Next, hospital, groups, ECT and who knows what else? Oh well, I'm very happy to have a doctor who is so determined to help me. He is a lovely man and I'm very lucky to have him.