[BeyondtheRainbow]

I'm about 3 weeks from starting to come off Seroquel to go on clozaril. And I'm suddenly very confused because the last few days I've felt different. Not good. Not motivated. Actually quite anxious and with the enormous stress in my life between my brother being sentenced for a crime and my struggling to accept how lightly he got off and my niece having to have eye surgery over the weekend so that I've been helping with childcare for the last several days (and my cat with a chronic illness had a flare-up today that was scary as well) there is a lot of adrenaline. And my therapist and I are deep into difficult stuff that is also making me anxious. But definitely not quite as depressed, but whether it is just masked or real I have no idea.

I did start lithium at a super low dose (225 mg) 2 weeks ago. There is a slight possibility it is helping. Except that many of the biggest symptoms are still there, like showering is too hard, laundry is too hard, etc. I still want to sleep all the time and falling asleep is still a battle (but that's 99% of the time anyway).

I really don't know how I feel. I tend to think I've just been bumped into a more hypomanic period here and I'll probably go backwards as I recover from this week.

But what if I got a last minute reprieve? What if the micro-dose of lithium is actually helping and the crying in therapy is actually letting out some feelings I've been crunching down hard? Going off 1200 mg of Seroquel is not going to be fun at all. So if I have a chance of not needing that it would be amazing.

I am so confused. Two other times in the last 12 months I thought things were improving and then they just went backwards rapidly. So I'm not going to shout I'm healed! for a long time. But maybe there is a change? I'm scared to do the depression inventory we use to find out. And asking my therapist right now probably won't help because of how hard therapy is. And he didn't agree with my pdoc's last dx of severe depression; he said moderate to severe but she had the list of ADL problems he didn't. He does know I was hallucinating last week but thinks it was not a big deal since it was once.

I just don't know. I guess I'll find out. I tend to get through Christmas on adrenaline anyway so I may not know for a while. I may be delaying clozaril one more month to see what happens after I get through Christmas and my birthday (a few weeks after Christmas and really hard too usually). Or that's just a dream.

I really hate bipolar and not knowing how I feel.

[BeyondtheRainbow]

Depression inventory says I'm still severely depressed and not even close to the moderate range. So I guess if it is valid (and my therapist has been using it to track this for a while so I assume it is) then I'm still where I was with those things. Maybe if i take it again and go with the best possible answer? But that's still going to leave me in moderate to severe, possibly still severe, territory. I just don't know.

Ugh.

[jacky8807]

You sound both anxious and Ms depressed which is a he'll combo.
You are going down a tough path because you have to come off that hugh seroquel dose first which will be tough and then start a tough drug
But!! If that is going to lead to stability and less torture it will all be worth it in the end!