ffs that took forever. Wrote down what I want to say to the judge so I don't sound like a complete doofus. I get nervous then can't talk. I think I covered it all: back pain, bipolar, anxiety, ADHD, PTSD. Not sure if I should put BPD on there or not. Going to call my lawyer tomorrow and see if he'll look over it and ask him about the BPD. Fun stuff.

This is what I wrote. Yes my brain is working right now. lol.

Back pain- I’ve been living with back pain since I was 15 years old. I had a hemilaminectomy when I was 15 and it helped for a few years but the same disc herniated a few years later again. They also found out I have degenerative disc disease in my low back. In 2015 I hurt my back and couldn’t walk for 4 weeks and since then haven’t been able to walk or stand for long. My mid back hurts as well as my neck. I found out this year that there’s a herniated disc in my neck and degenerative disc disease. On good days I can sit in my recliner and cook a quick meal for dinner and maybe do some cleaning and possibly go shopping. On bad days I have to lay down multiple times and can’t cook or clean. It’s about a 80/20 split between good and bad, unless I try to do too much on a good day.

Bipolar- with bipolar I never know what kind of mood I’ll be in on any given day. Some days are fine, but more than not something is going on whether it be I’m depressed, mixed, or manic. My mood episodes can last a month to years. Mania for me is scary cause I don’t get the nice kind of mania I get the rage and irritability and it usually ends up with me getting psychotic and ending up in the psych ward. Almost all 7 of my psych ward stays have been because I was manic or mixed, got psychotic, and ended up suicidal. Sometimes when I have been manic I have felt good, but they ended up with a nervous breakdown as well with $100s- $1000s in cash spent. When manic sometimes I get delusional and paranoid and think people are out to get me. The paranoia can happen when depressed as well. The depression that I get makes me so unmotivated to do anything. There’s still things in my house from 2010-2012 when I was depressed and non functional for 2 years that haven’t been cleaned. When depressed I just lose all interest in anything. From being on all the meds and all the nervous breakdowns I have had my memory won’t work anymore. I can’t remember stuff that I did yesterday if I don’t write it down. I can’t remember appointments and other things I need to do if I don’t put it in my phone with a bunch of alerts to remind me. My long term memory has been affected too. So much in my life that I’ve forgotten. I don’t even remember how to do any of the jobs I did in the past. I am also fatigued all the time. I have worked with my psychiatrist to lower my morning meds as low as they can go in the morning and I’m still tired all the time. It takes a lot of effort to get things done.

Anxiety- anxiety makes it hard for me to do things because I worry that I’m going to mess everything up and work myself up and get caught up in the panic cycle. My husband works from home and when he is out I have to answer the work phone and it makes me have an anxiety attack. Last month he was gone for the month and had to take the work phone with him so I wouldn’t have a nervous breakdown while he was away. I changed my personal phone number so people would stop calling me all the time cause it was making me so anxious. I rarely talk on the phone because of this. I get anxious that bad things are going to happen too. When my husband is out some places I think things are going to happen to him. I also have health anxiety and always think something going wrong with me is the absolute worse that could happen. Social anxiety is rough too. I try to be around new people but all I can think about is fleeing from the situation like when we had a gathering at church where I knew the people.

ADHD- with adhd I have a hard time concentrating and focusing on things. I feel so spacey a lot of the time. Most of the time when reading things just won’t compute and I’ll have to reread the same passage over and over again. My focus jumps from thing to thing and doesn’t last for long. I’ll write things down that I need at the store and still forget them. Also will forget whole steps in recipes even though I just read it and have it in front of me.

PTSD- the ptsd has been bothering me more lately. I’ve worked on it a lot in therapy in 2015 but with the rise of sexual assault claims it’s a constant reminder of what happened to me. It’s not a good feeling. I get body memories and it feels like it’s happening again. I can usually get over it easily but it still affects me for an hour or 2 until I can get my thoughts under control.