Bipolar Check-In #78

with the way my insurance works, if I do not show up, I have to pay full price. The insurance does not cover no shows.

I feel miserable tonight. The depression grew 100x when I found out the plans I had carefully made for my birthday this weekend are not even close to what I arranged and expected. I'm sad about that but I can't change it. I I wish I could cry but my meds make me too numb to cry.I feel like the people who changed my plans don't' care about me or something like that. And I know that is not true. I just feel like I don't matter.
I could go on but it doesn't change anything.


I just want my med increase to kick in unreasonably quickly and until it does I'm just not going to feel very positive. I feel like I'll never feel good again though.

I know how it feels when you are numb and tears would not stream from your eyes. You wish you could get cathartic release from crying but it is inaccessible.

Yes. The last time I remember crying was in 2019 when I saw my father for the last time. I hadn't seen him in 20 years and had some things I needed to say to him. I left his room and burst into tears. Even then I only cried for 5 minutes though. i barely cried at all when my non-bio dad died 3 years ago and he was much more of a dad than my bio one ever was. Again, meds.

I need to see my therapist. He can sometimes help me get those feelings out or help me cry. But it needs to be in person. This week I messed up and slept until time to leave so we tried a virtual appointment but my new computer wasn't set up so we wound up with a phone call. And if we aren't face to face he doesn't know what is on my face.

Hopefully this year after the depression ends we can lower some other stuff so I go into it with more wiggle room next year.

@BeyondtheRainbow, help me understand what the part in bold means.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant lower some of my meds. Right now I take 1200 mg of gabapentin (along with 1.5 mg clonazepam, 25 mg topirmirate, 12 mg/day patch of Emsam, and 250 mg clozapine) at 8:30 and then another 500 mg gabapentin and 1 mg clonazepam at 11. That was the only way I could sleep last year at all and I never quite got stable enough to lower a dose last year. But that 11 pm dose packs a punch.

Now I understand.

I hope your med increase kicks in soon and helps as much as possible.

Well! We were supposed to get 6-10 inch’s of snow today! I woke up and no snow. They’ve amend the report to 4-7 inches.

I know what it is! I’m prepared for the snow. I ordered tarps for my windows. They came early. Just in time for me to put them on the car yesterday! Yeah, I am that powerful!! I stopped the storm! Ha ha ha. No, seriously the forecast changed overnight. They had closed everything in anticipation and the forecast was wrong! They’ve changed the start time from midnight to noon. But I’m betting it’s going to blow over and we might see a couple of inches!

I have this super weird feeling in my throat like its clogged with post nasal drip. Idk. Maybe I'm just having a panic attack. I woke up last night because I felt like I stopped breathing in my sleep. Then I started coughing a ton. So idk if its anxiety or my gerd or both. I just took a valium and I'm lying down. I do feel like I have post nasal drip

The anxiety and post nasal drip went away. I ate a sandwhich and now I feel like I'm.about to puke my guts out from so much nausea

I went to the gym again today, so that's 2 days in a row.

I was tired yesterday and am tired again now.

My anxiety is still up, but I'm getting better at managing it with Klonopin and CBD - I don't take both on the same day. I'm going to find out what they have for depression the next time I refill my CBD.

I canceled my appointment with my therapist today. Between that and missing DBT group yesterday she is NOT happy with me.

Managed to blow through a month's worth of 4 50mg tablets a day of seroquel in a little less than three weeks. Not something I'm proud of. Picking up my refills on Monday. Thankfully this time they only gave me a month's worth. Whew!

Friday already and I'm feeling the crunch to get my flash fiction or short story written. Feeling the pressure. Starting to freak out!!!! 🤪 MUST NOT FREAK THE **** OUT!!!!! Unconscious hasn't been throwing me any bones. All I've been having are weird anxiety dreams I can't use. Whatever. I'll figure it out. I'm sure at the last second!

I slept for maybe 15 minutes around noon and that was enough to make me feel better. Honestly when I feel sick like this a 15 minute power nap normally solves my physical stuff. I met with my therapist this afternoon. She says I'm doing well with the withdrawels and am doing well in general. I feel like I'm not ruminating on things on as much. She said maybe the Prestiq was not right for me. She doesn't think the withdrawels will get too much worse going down from 100 to 50. I'm tempted just to quit it altogether but I'm trying to follow what my doctor says.

@Mountaindewed

I wouldn't quit it altogether. I'd follow your pdoc's instructions, just to be safe.

My home gym is slowly getting there! We’ve got a treadmill, rowing machine and bike. I bought some weights and a medicine ball this morning. Long may the high last. I have so much energy It’s where I’m channeling my inner self. It’s harmless and good for me. I was close to mania last week but managed to stay grounded. Just. Dead people don’t follow me around this week they’ve gone away. Phew.

Ended up not going to work courtesy of the weather. Been freezing cold, wet, rainy and/or snowy and also windy. Like 30mph+ windy. My drive, while short (25 minutes), is along a winding, hilly road. I could've probably got there. Getting back, after dark, in the exact same conditions wasn't a risk I wanted to take. Luckily, my boss understood.

I've pretty much stayed home. Barring any apocalyptic weather tomorrow, I'll be back to work. My boss offered me the opportunity to do a whole stay early, leave later bit with my Saturday shift to make up some of the lost hours. Don't mind if I do!

Enjoy the home gym!

It looks like stopping my tegretol until talking with my pdoc was a good choice. I talked with him today and he said me feeling so much worse, with the symptoms I had, on the same day I upped my tegretol was probably a result of the tegretol. I only made it on that med 4.5 days....He said it is possble, but probably not likely, that risperidone is causing my low blood pressure. While my symptoms don't perfectly match, he agrees with my primary care that my symptoms do sound somewhat like POTS-I don't know that they fit the bill enough for this though. I will be willing to get this looked into if, after audiology/ent in a couple of weeks, looking into something like POTS seems like the logical next step.

If I want to test the risperidone/blood pressure possibility, he said I can try going back to .5 mg for a few days to see what happens. We talked about the risk with this though because my mood already isn't stable. Based on today, the rapid cycling is about to kick in full force again. Or, at least some mixed episodes. I don't really feel like I have a choice though if I want to try to truly figure out what is going on with my health. So, I'm going to take .5 mg tonight, Saturday night, and maybe Sunday night to see what happens.

I'm hoping my depression symptoms/unhappy thoughts don't get to bad this weekend. I no longer have anything to fill my time, or people to spend it with so, since I don't have the physical health to go do anything on my own, it really is just me and my thoughts until I go back to work on Tuesday.

To end on a positive note, I saw two students while out and about after school today. They both seemed happy to see me-this was a wonderful little boost to my mood!

It’s been snowing since 2 p.m. and isn’t supposed to stop until 7 p.m. tomorrow. I won’t be going anywhere most likely. I have to see my Pdoc Wednesday so I hope this is all cleared up by then. Crossing fingers and toes that the power stays on.

I imagine! enjoy!

I just threw up a bit in a bucket while listening to the song Roar by Katy Perry. My Gerd has been awful lately. I've been taking a lot of pepcids and pepto bismols.

Started my Lamictal taper... forgot I was even doing it until this morning and realized I haven't been taking my full dose for a couple of days now. Probably why I've been having periods of lightheadedness. Nothing serious.

I finally got 4 huge laundry baskets of clothes put away. I was just so umotivated and lacking energy before. I also cleared up a corner in my room filled with some cans of soda which I put in the fridge. I think the prestiq drained me of energy. I had some insomnia last night because of an upset stomach. But I managed a few hours of sleep. I woke up feeling really good and I felt good all morning. My stomach is feeling off now and I'm kinda tired. I've had soccor on today instead of CNN. I googled prestiq and weight gain and some people have gained weight from it. I have no idea where else these 40 pounds would have come from that started creeping up when I went up to 100mil Prestiq. And now my appetite is slowing down the more I'm getting used to the 50mil. So I'm guessing it had something to do with that.

Now I'm kinda nauseated and headachy. Idk what withdrawel symptoms I'm really supposed to be feeling. Maybe when I go down to 25 it will be worse.

I brought up to my pdoc the fact that maybe I'm not even bipolar. He didn't really get into it. I just wonder sometimes if I really am. Or if I just have bad anxiety and stuff.

Slept for 1 hour. Got out of bed. Slept for another hour. Feel good. Going to my partners folks place for lunch. Should be okay. Just chilling to music while I wait. Had my nails done yesterday. They look fabulous. Thanks to a great nail technician. Who coincidentally happens to be a nurse. She’s given me a healthy eating plan that she uses to go from 110kg to 66 kg. Inspired by her I really am 😊. I’ve met some amazing people recently!

Well I'm home alone this weekend. They're at a convention for writing and geeky stuff. I'd be there too but I can't walk that much and we lost the wheelchair in the move. My parents are finally stepping up to help my nephew. I'm so thankful they can. Victoria got kicked out of school for at least two months. We'll see how the appeal goes. I'm not to worried. She just didn't want disability services and it came back to bite her. Hopefully she wins the appeal gets disability services and this is just a hiccup. She's glad she has 2 months off if anything. Hopefully we can get her situated and back on track. It's hard when all her friends play games all day/night to convince her she has other things to do. She's 21 and desperately needs a job, any job, to get her out of the house. I haven't heard people breaking in or anything. I even ordered food.