Lamictal and Lithium are sitting at the pharmacy waiting for me. I have to get some bloodwork done before I am allowed to take them. I have a friend who told me she was taking mood stabilizers for depression stuff. I told her what my official diagnosis was and she said she has bipolar as well! Apparently our NPs are both very up on the latest research about this stuff which is cool.
I really had no idea about all the different forms of bipolar disorder. I thought you had to lose touch with reality during the mania to have it. Wow, my psych nursing class must have really stunk because that is most definitely not true! We spent all of 15 minutes on mania, most of which was talking about how bipolars will manipulate, be noncompliant, not care who they hurt...etc etc etc. And I really had no clue the SSRI drugs could trigger mania or hypomania. WOW there is a lot of ignorance going on in my profession...
Thanks for the support
Quote:
Originally Posted by Amazonmom
Geez. You go into the psych NP's office because you are depressed as hell after having a baby. You figure that some SSRI and some therapy will make you all better. You have always had mood swings, but some really sucky crap has happened to you in life, so you have always assumed the sucky things caused the depression issues. You've never lost touch with reality- you have two college degrees, do well at your job, never spent too much money, everyone has always told you that you are really super competent in life and they wish they were like you. Your spouse loves you and the relationship is great. You have never gotten professional help before.
You take the Zoloft. Great stuff. After a month the depression is gone, and you feel like your old self (only the sex drive goes bye bye). After 8 weeks you start getting more and more hyper, you pace all the time, you do 8 loads of laundry, all the dishes, vacuum the house, and wash the car in one day. You catch yourself wanting to shop all the time (but you stop yourself). Your sex drive is back, and stronger than it ever was before (hubby loves that). You wake up after three hours of sleep crying that you hate yourself and you should just die already. BUT you really don't want to die- you just feel like crap. You can't sleep after that. You are constantly in motion. You freak out over stupid crap.
Your postpartum mood disorder support group says you should tell the NP about this stuff. You don't want to, but you need to.
Great. Now I am bipolar, with a case of PTSD stemming from an attempted rape 12 years ago. Go in depressed, come out batshit crazy. Hypomania sucks so much.
Now what do I do?
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