Bipolar Check-in #82

That song and video is amazing! The whole album is really. I won't lie and say I haven't sat at red lights raging along to Pistol Coyotes has a similar vibe (video as well) but it has a third person outside of being a human perspective rather than "we are having a fun time, but we're ****ing **** up, but whateves"

I like the Little Motel video if I need a good cry too.

The thing I don't like about Halsey is that she seems like she's been exploited and has no privacy. It seems like it doesn't bother her that much, but I don't know if she's just hiding it. Perhaps just a pop star thing, she's probably the most recognized artist I listen to.

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Over the past year and a half or so I've written a bunch of nature-based poetry, and I'm working on typing and organizing it. I have also discovered I have way too many notebooks, mostly half written in

Sending love to everyone

I tried going out today. The place I went to was packed. I gave up. All the Starbucks around are out of both their apple and pumpkin stuff. I'm hoping things are better by my trip tommorow. The kids will be back in school so places should be fairly calm. Hopefully.

I came home and took a great nap until a coughing fit woke me up. My mom came into my room and asked if I was ok. Then I got something from Walgreens that I'm hoping will at least stall my latest medical issue. I set up a doctors appointment on Thursday.

But my stomach and shoulder are ok now at least and my anxiety is fine besides a bit of legit health anxiety.

I took a legit shower for the first time in more then a week. I had no issue with my shoulder. It felt great. The doctor said the shot would take its full affect in 72 hours and thats about how long its been.

I got my new Kindle! It’s small, a lot smaller than I expected but perfect in my opinion. The case I picked out looks really good on it too! It’s so cute. I’m so excited. I can start reading my books again and not on my phone which I found really annoying to do because phones have too many distractions to really focus on reading.

Anyway, yeah I’m happy! I’m going to spend a lot of time reading tonight. I took a nap earlier so I’m really well rested between that and last night so I feel good. Tomorrow I’m going grocery shopping

Ohh boy! Said like Dr Sam Becket, in quantum leap. There’s a new man who moved in here. That’s fine we’re always looking for more people to join us at our games and such, but man he never shuts up! It’s exhausting to listen so long. I’m one of those people that are very comfortable sitting in silence . It’s a bit uncomfortable to be greeted by a person telling you their life’s story at the first meeting.

It was a good time though and thankfully all my hotdogs got eaten up. Tho at first I thought I was gonna have a lot left over. We kept calling people and inviting them down eventually most of the food was gone. Then we played games until I pleaded a break. Now I’m sitting in silence.

Waiting for dinner- lamb is cooking. Potatoes going in soon.

Had visions of passing out at work this morning. I don't think I breathe when I'm close to panic attacks.

Uh oh...
We're taking off again, but this time with a deer on the top of the plane. I know, I know, I just had a discussion on taking PRNs when things start getting "bad" aka "good" (or the other way around? I don't know, maybe they're the same. There's actually no such thing as bad and good. We need better descriptors.) I should I say mindbuster says to take a PRN if I notice symptoms rapidly increasing which when on the high end of the euphoric variety feels pleasurable to me, but is concerning to her and those surrounding me because it leads to situations no one would like to be in. I'm going to try my coping skills first though. Do coping skills keep you from psychotic mania? I don't think that's where I'm heading though. I'm just doing some post-episode fluctuations probably made more prominent by tripping balls the other night.

TL;DR, we ballin' til we fallin' again

I think I have oral thrush. Eating dinner tonight burned the entire inside of my mouth bad and I’ve got sores and inflammation. Took Benadryl and calling dr in the morning. I think it’s from having a constant dry mouth.

Found this:

Red type: This is less common and also known as erythematous candidiasis. The name comes from the Greek word “erythema,” which means red. In long-term denture-wearers, it’s normally seen as a stark red outline on the denture-bearing area. However, erythematous thrush can make the entire inside of the mouth look inflamed in patients who have chronic dry mouth, Sjogren's syndrome, or have received radiation therapy to the head or neck.

Today was another productive day, but I also had a lot of down time. I didn't do quite everything on my list, but that's okay. It hit me today that, since there was no school today, I don't have lunch duty this week since Mondays is when I typically do!

It was hard for me to sit down at times throughout the day, but I think that's because of general interior distress about some things I need to process. Hopefully, counseling on Wednesday will help. I'm still getting used to this counselor though, so we'll see. I'm not sure how much talk therapy she does vs wanting to lead me through different techniques. And, I'd rather talk about things in session and then practice techniques when I'm alone at home. I don't feel comfortable trying things that could make me feel a lot of emotions when I'm in front of other people.

This evening i enjoyed being out in nature with my dog. Now i'm inside doing my ceremony with candles and mood music. I seem to only like very low-stimulation experiences, probably because of the mild depression. I tried a new Netflix series called "KAOS" and didn't like it. I found it too zany and disturbing. It was about mythological gods, sort of a drama-fantasy.

Zeus was played by Jeff Goldblum who i have seen in person. There was a film scene done on the banks of False Creek near my home in Vancouver during the Summer of 1999 and i saw him sitting in a chair talking on a phone. I must have gawked because he waved and i waved back. Nice guy!

The daytime was wretched however, with long, empty, uncomfortable hours and only the occasional Scrabble GO game for distraction. I decided not to doze to "Ozark" today. Just found the thought of the story unpleasant. But that just leaves more of a hole in my day.

@Nammu:

I have a hard time with people who talk a lot too. Glad your food went over well and you're enjoying some well-deserved silence.

@Blue_Bird:

Congratulations on your Kindle! I hope it's everything you expect it to be!

@MuddyBoots:

Remember: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

The therapist thing keeps getting more stressful.....My pdoc had told me that she was there if I needed her and that she'd support me while I play the waiting game. I sent her an email a week ago telling me I wasn't doing great. Today she answered with a med adjustment and then said she's going to be out of town for 2 weeks. So much for that helping. Obviously she forgot about her trip when she told me she'd be there and I'll make it but it just wasn't the news I wanted.

On the good note tomorrow means I've made it another week and only have 4 to go. Later in the week I'll be halfway through the whole thing.

My anxiety got away from me today. Another shopping trip and I ended up in a cold sweat.

That's ok, not every time can be a win.

After a couple of months of dealing with hemorrhoids, I think I'm finally reaching a point where they're starting to improve because my anxiety is much better. Anxiety is not gone, but it's much more manageable.

I'm still depressed. I'm scoring 'moderately depressed' on phq-9, which is down from 'severe' a couple of months ago.

It's the the of summer and things usually get worse in winter, so I guess I'll see how things go from here.

My new phone is great but somehow I've lost all my contacts. Will try to fix that tomorrow. Also Waze and some other apps went missing when I transferred over.

Thanks @June08 and @Blue_Bird!

I’ve been chewing heavily on the nicotine gum. So addicted but it’s better than smoking or vaping. It’s hard to chew it in class because gum is banned at school. So there’s that. Anxiety is still high. Lots going on with work. I wish I could type it here but I feel like I would jinx myself. When the time is right I’ll let you guys know. I still feel so anxious at work but I shouldn’t. My anxiety should be coming down. Anxiety is my middle name.

Trigger warning: I’m talking about food (in a healthy way)

I went grocery shopping today. Woke up at 3:30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. I left at 6:30am and got home from the store on the bus at 7:35am. I got a lot of good stuff. Got some seasonal items too like apple cider donuts and Halloween cookies. I know it’s ways away but I love celebrating fall and Halloween as soon as September hits lol I read my kindle on the way to the store on the bus. It’s so compact it fits right in my purse.

Let’s see what did I get, I got all the stuff to make honey lemon chicken and broccoli, I got various produce items. Plus bagels and cream cheese, sourdough bread, staples like eggs, butter, etc. fruit, two packs of ground turkey, pasta sauce, buffalo sauce, blue cheese dressing, oatmeal, tuna salad, apple cider donuts, Halloween cookies that you can bake with the images on them, a very large container of caramel macchiato coffee creamer. Shredded mozzarella cheese

What I like to do with ground turkey is cook it with some like of that I forget what it’s called but short tube pasta with the ridges, and mix it together with pasta sauce, lots and lots of Parmesan cheese and melted shredded mozzarella cheese. It’s kind of like a deconstructed lasagna sort of. Anyway, it’s really good. I made it once just messing around trying things out and it turned out really delicious so it’s become something I want to make again.

The buffalo sauce is for a huge bag of chicken drumsticks in my freezer. I’m gonna cook them in the buffalo sauce in the crockpot. I’ve done that before and it comes out really good. And dip them in blue cheese dressing.

Happy to have a stocked fridge again

@MuddyBoots
You sound like you need to start using your prns now and not wait for things to get worse. It sounds like you're already going up and you need to prevent it getting worse.

@Blue_Bird
I love ground turkey too. You can sub it for ground beef in Mexican recipes easily. I make a southwestern turkey soup that is healthy and tasty. It also works well for tacos.

I'm having trouble reading all the posts and skimmingover some of the longer ones. I hope it is not a sign of hypomania especially since my spending was pretty high last month.

Something good happened yesterday. H is a founder of a nanotech company in India. He consults with the group every Friday on lab procedures and troubleshooting. It has been close to 10 years but FINALLY the company is making enough to pay H for his time. We got the first payment yesterday retroactive from January, and with that, H was able to pay off our smaller of our 2 mortgages. We still have the larger mortgage, but the smaller one had a pretty high interest rate too. So we now owe $11,000 less on our home which hopefully should work toward building more equity in our house. We still have I think 11 years on the larger mortgage though

That sounds good! I’ll have to try that out sometime. It’s a really good substitute for beef

I’m gonna have to permanently go back to 200mg of Thorazine because on 100mg I sleep maybe 4 hours at most then wide awake in the middle of the night. On 200mg I sleep a solid 8-10 hours without waking up randomly. Sucks because I was trying to get off Thorazine but sleep is important and my body can’t seem to sleep right without it. Maybe someday I’ll be able to. Idk

I started watching Kaos too! I only watched the first two episodes, but if 1oz prevention (we'll call it p) is equal to 1lb of cure (we'll call it c, and convert it to 16oz), so we can call 1p=16c, we can say p=16/c, and say that 16oz cure split up by 1oz prevention is 1 and therefore if I split prevention by cure in equal amounts, I'll get 1/16 and that's not an entirely small ratio.

It's like "which weighs more a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers?" and obv they're the same, but way more density and/or volume in the feathers, so do you want a couple bricks or a crap ton of feathers?

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This borderpolar shyt is hard. How am I supposed to know which episode is which and therefore when I should go to the ER based on whether whatever is going to last a couple hours or a couple months?

I’m sorry you need more meds, but I’m glad you realized you need it sooner than later. That part sucks but sleep like you said is so important. Smart move.

I managed to get on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I wasn’t really planning it but I’m anxious today and I figured it’d help my anxiety. Then vacuumed my whole apartment. I hate vacuuming. It’s probably just because my vacuum is monstrously large and a pain to drag around. I need to eventually get one of those really slim cordless stick ones. Glad I got it done though, I’ve been meaning to do it the past few days but I procrastinate a lot with cleaning. Other than that the only thing I have left to do today is practice violin and do a few other small cleaning things in my apartment. Then I’m done. I’m only practicing for 20 minutes today. I used to practice for like an hour at a time. But I fell off it and slacked for the past several months so I need to rebuild my stamina and I don’t want to overwhelm myself with forcing myself to practice for an hour straight cause that’s a sure way to discourage me from keeping up with the habit. First I need to rebuild daily consistency. Eventually I’ll add to the time and build back up to an hour but I’m taking it slow.

Rest of the day I plan on reading a lot on my Kindle I’m tired and want the day to go by fast so I can take the 200mg of Thorazine tonight with my other meds and get better sleep than the 4 hours I got last night.