Bipolar Check-In #78

She did decide to go ahead with a bathroom
reno that would replace the tub with a standing shower stall. She talked with the contractor about this about a month ago and this event pushed her to go ahead with it.

Grab bars in a standing shower are a great idea too. Get them built in. It’s great she’s doing that. Great self care!

Yes for sure!

I'm not sure what happened in my last post, but half of it is missing.

I was saying that the grab bars she had installed a couple of years ago helped a lot. And she's going to have them in her new shower, too.

I called her this morning and her arm and leg are stiff, but I guess that's to be expected. She's staying home for the rest of the week and will try swimming on Saturday.

I bought my CBD refill for both my mother and myself, so now I'm on that instead of the Klonopin.

Oh. my doctor got back to me about the high cholesterol on my last blood test - he said that is the good kind and that my regular cholesterol is just fine - that's a relief!

Wow! I got flowers from Chewy. I went on their site yesterday to cancel my auto order because I didn’t want to end up with all that food. Got to chatting with the lovely representative and she said everyone who works there is a pet owner. And just now there was a delivery man at my door with flowers for Sir.

You know this is the first time ever in my life I have been on 2 AD. I was very surprised he added another one but I have been depressed for over a year prior to this so it makes sense.

Not much is going on today. My mom is sick from my niece. My niece was over all day and is sick. I'm starting to get it. My therapist switched my session to telehealth anyways so I didn't have to make that decision.

I didn't want to open a pandoras box or whatever its called but I gently asked my therapist If she would push me more and not always agree with me on everything. We talked about what that looked like and she seemed to get it. I just hope she doesn't turn into a major ***** now.

The 25 mil Prestiq and 50 mil Lamictal are going fine. I just have some off and on anxiety and loss of appetite. Especially for sugary stuff. Like I'm eating a lot of plain canned vegetables for some reason. A can of beans fits into a coffee mug and you just heat it up for 2 minutes.

Everything else has been fine. Not sure what will go on with this cold bug my family is getting.

Hi everyone.

Dropping my risperidone back to .5 mg seems to be helping my blood pressure. It wasn't as low at PT earlier this week and was the highest it's been in a month and a half or so at an appointment I had today.

Despite the change in med dose, I haven't had to intense rapid cycling-very minimal symptoms (may it stay that way!). I'm super chatty tonight, and that sometimes turns into more severe rapid cycling symptoms, but it might also pass. My mystery physical illness is not helping the intense depression symptoms I've been having. I told my counselor about how worried I am about what would happen (work, friendships, etc.) if things got bad enough going to the hospital would be a good idea. She (kindly) put me in my place to remind me that my life is what is most important and that everything else can get taken care of after I would get the help I need.

They also make flip down seats for shower stalls that can improve safety. The ones I'm thinking of are wood and look quite nice. Statistically after one fall more will often come and showers are dangerous. The seats decrease the risk substantially.

I feel okay today. If not dare I say….normal. Whatever that may mean.

I highly recommend having Zyprexa PRN in your stash even if you only use it a couple of times a year.

I am hypomanic now, too. For me, it was caused by amphetamine (ADHD medication which I am taking for narcolepsy; I do not have ADHD). I will halve the dose of amphetamine tomorrow morning, even though I am already on the lowest dose. I hope it will calm me down. For now, though, I am enjoying hypomania and laugh easily. Fun times . @Crazy Hitch

Enjoy the high while it lasts and stay safe, play safe and see your psychiatrist if it gets too much 😊

Tonight I can't sleep. I don't know if it's the higher dose of Emsam, changing to a mixed episode, or what. I am ruminating over stupid stuff too which isn't helping the sleep. As I think about it last year we had to increase my gabapentin at night during the time I was depressed. I thought it was the depression but maybe it was the higher dose of Emsam. I guess I'll find out.

My PT cleared me for very light aerobics. I wanted to start today but realized I had the energy to do my PT or do the aerobics. So I chose the PT. I guess I'll just be sacrificing on that goal for a bit. I'm supposed to go to PT tomorrow but it looks like I'll probably be snowed in. One of the things I keep obsessing about is that I should join the Y. But until the depression is gone that's just a waste of money because I'd never load myself up in the car, drive there, work out and drove back home when I am tired and feel like I don't care. When I'm better maybe.

I think I'm getting sleepy. I pray I'm getting sleepy. Time to try to sleep anyway.

@Nammu
So sorry for your loss of Sir, I know how much you loved him. He had a long life with you as your friend and I’m sure he loved you as much as you loved him. You’re right, he’s in a better place and at peace now.

We had another snow day today. Nothing for two years and then two snow days in one week! Hopefully this will be it for the year. I really hate snow and ice, I hate driving in it, I hate cleaning off my car, I hate all of it. Plus I hate the cold. I have a countdown to spring in my phone to keep me motivated through the winter blues, which haven’t hit so bad except in Nov/dec.

It’s supposed to “warm up” next week, I mean I don’t consider 45 degrees warm but it’ll be like a tropical heat wave after this week.

On Monday we have a memorial service to go to for one of RS’s family members. I think he was a cousin. Poor guy just died out of nowhere of a supposed heart attack at 39. They’re assuming heart attack or possibly aneurysm. It definitely could be a heart attack even though he was so young, apparently he was a very heavy smoker and drinker and didn’t do much activity. Someone had seen him shoveling snow and I’ve heard sometimes people who are inactive can indeed die from a heart attack shoveling snow. It’s just too much strain on their body. I never met him as far as I know. I’ll go to pay my respects though, of course.

I was sick with a cold on Tuesday’s snow day so I stayed in bed all day but today I pledge to be more active. I might challenge CR to a snowball fight later. He’d love that. I’m trying to do things with him as much as possible before he really settles into adolescence and starts to think I’m lame lol.

Yes, @BeyondtheRainbow, thanks.

We just discussed that and she's getting the fold down seat too.

I finally got my haircut today after putting it off. I last got it cut in October. So it was a bit of a mess and I hadn't gotten my facial hair trimmed either since October. The lady was really nice. She seemed to really know what she was doing when it came to mens cuts. I got about 2 inches cut off. I didn't know it had grown that much. I like this place. Everyone I've worked with has been friendly. I do look a bit more younger than I did before I got it cut, but whatever.

The med stuff is still going fine. I've been a bit crabby today, but not anxious. I haven't taken 3rd valium yet, and I've had coffee and Mountain Dew without an issue. I think I'll go to 25 lamictal on Monday. Maybe 12 mil Prestiq too.

I'm having some pain on my left side of my chest where I had surgery. Its been going on for a couple weeks or so. I really don't want to get involved in anything but today it was hurting bad. And I was wondering if I should shoot a message to my doctor who deals with my gender stuff to see if he can give me a refferal to the doctor who deals with surgery things. Idk if it needs to be looked at or not. Again I really don't want to get into anything. But idk. It hurts.

I took 12 mil of melatonin last night and then some cough syrup an hour later. That was a bit too much...I was acting like I had tied one over for a bit today. Stumbling around and not being able to see clearly. I feel better though and so does my mom.

Does anyone else want to feel so alive right now. Or maybe they are or something. Idk. Why does it feel like summer half the time when I wake up. Intutive sleeping. Breakfast. Green. Finland.

I've got some more mania type warning signs still. Just like last night, I could not stop talking to my roommate once she got home (and I'm usually rather quiet). My brain is also moving pretty quickly and some demon paranoia kicked in when I was walking outside after dark. The weird new symptoms is me wanting to suddenly spend money. Before last month, this never used to be something I experienced.

I see my pdoc on Tuesday and my PCP at the beginning of Feb. Even though I don't see this as the ideal treatment route, I think I will talk with both of them about a less common treatment option for women. Apparently, some women benefit for using the same meds used for birth control to help stabilize their moods because the med can be used to help control the impact hormone shifts have on mood symptoms. This option would also come with its own side effects/risks of course but, with how much worse my depressive episodes and dangerous thoughts get each time I experience rapid cycling, it might be worth a shot since my body responds so poorly to so many meds and I need to put a stop to things before they get to bad.

I also need to read up on abilify a little more since my pdoc brought that up as a possibility before we attempted to add tegretol to my med plan.

@June08 I’m on abilify. It definitely helps with the racing thoughts. It’s probably dose dependent too but if you’re rapid cycling I’d say it’s worth looking in to.

Boy! I have the same insurance I had last year. But now they don’t want to pay for my latuda and it’s generic now. 3,179.80 for a 90 day supply! It’s the 20mg. I bet I know what’s happening. My 80mg was filled last month. Now they don’t want to pay for the 20 mg tablets because it’s the same name. Latuda doesn’t come in 100mg tablets. I think they want me to stop the 20mg and just get the 80mg. I’m tempted to do that. My insurance changed for the worse this year. They stopped having a OTC benefit. But I couldn’t find anything better.

Wow @Nammu that sounds crazy expensive I can’t believe it!

Last night I out of the blue decided to go out to dinner for the first time in over a year. I just kinda had it with beans in a coffee mug and CNN so I said to my mom if we could go to Outback around 4 I'd go out to eat. So she was super happy since she has been trying for months to get me to go out to dinner and I wouldn't go.

Dinner went well. The food wasn't great but the service was good. Some guy and the lady he was with were talking about guns and Alec Baldwin. Since we went at 4 it wasn't crowded.

Today I've been thinking I've been feeling fine and I was just tired but now I feel sucky physically and I think I'm getting sick. Probably just what my mom and niece has. Hopefully not what the hacking dude behind us has. But my mom feels worse then she did before. So who knows.

But I didn't realize how much my meds were holding me back. I guess they just made me too tired to do anything. Mainly the Prestiq. The withdrawels are still not a big deal.

@Nammu when I was on Latuda, my doctor told me that studies did not show additional benefit beyond 80 mg.

Caplyta is making me soooo sedated. I sleep until 3 pm after going to bed at 11 pm. But the self harm thoughts are on the back burner. I can only motivate to do basic and pleasurable things.

I wrestled with boredom today but got relief when i started listening to music this evening. It started out joyful with Matthew Good. Then it got emotional listening to Neil Young. His triple album "Decade" was the last gift my brother gave to my family before he died. My brother loved music. I was the only one of my family to listen to "Decade." I searched it for clues, and they are there.

"Decade" is my connection to my brother. I feel my chances for happiness were drastically reduced when he died when i was 14. My divorce at 29 certainly made it worse, but it wasn't the root cause of my unhappiness. I don't know why i am living. Inertia, i guess. An object in motion tends to stay in motion.