On top of all else; memory loss and delusional?

As we say so often, “I’m losing it,” and “I don't know that I can take this any longer.”

I don't recall if I have posted anything here lately or not. I know that I have started notes with the intention of posted here and I think that there are tidbits of sentences that I may have posted here (or bits of phrases that I have meant to post) but I am having great problems with my memory and there's not much there from maybe September through the present.

I’m eating, grooming myself, etc., but my apartment is a mess and I won't allow my caregiver clean up anything but my bathroom and kitchen. My hypersexual mania is gone and my hypergraphia is fleeting. I feel the numb feeling. (No need to explain that, is there?) My audio hallucinations and delusions are soaring. I am having long conversations with my dad and am sometimes living with my father and stepmother and we have three puppies and a cat. I talk to the pets as well. The “reality” of these delusions usually only last for 20-30 seconds but I had one conversation with my dad that was real for almost 30 minutes. It was difficult coming out of that one, because it was bringing me so much pleasure.

I have an appointment with my doc on Monday but I’ve been unable to get in touch with my case manager to schedule a ride.

I’ve been back in therapy for seven months but I don't feel as if it’s helping. I feel like my “team” has been far, far too conservative in drug use. My case manager, I think, is beginning to think that I am no longer to care for myself and that frightens me.

I am beginning all of my sentences with “I”. That is common with the mentally ill, I have noticed. We are so anxious to describe to others exactly what's going on in our head that narcissistic communication becomes the only that we use. And while it's comforting to know that others have similar feelings, it's also… I can't think of the words. Okay, to me it sometimes feels as though I'm angry at others for letting their feelings overlap with mine. I'm also frightened no because I don't have a psychiatric term to describe what I feel. I’m not going to become a psychiatric hypochondriac, piecing together bits of symptoms to make a whole diagnosis. I am afraid of becoming perceived as such – it was depression and anxiety that brought me back to treatment for mental illness but, since that time, I have had “mini-symptoms” of so many other disorders.

We come here looking, first, for empathy, then help and, finally, just as a place where we can allow a kind of cheap confession. We can't (and I have either written or thought this many, many times) expect absolution. If there is forgiveness for mental illness, I guess that we have to forgive ourselves first. Just writing that makes me think of some kind of new age crap, some kind of CBT hogwash.

I am so frustrated that I have been unable to find any help. Everyone thinks that I should go into hospital for a month so that they can rapid-fire new meds, admitting that it can take six weeks or longer for a med to have any effect. You go in the mental ward, see a psychiatrist for 15-20 minutes (if you're fortunate) and spend the rest of the time in bed or participating in childish games to pass the time. Meal and med times are the high times of the day, because you sure as hell don't get a thing from the psych visits.

And if you go in for the long term? You lose your life again. I am too old to begin life over. I have it sweet right now, at 57. I don't have a year to spend inside and then another 12-13 years to construct another life, with a credit score of 892. I didn't know credit scores went that high but when I was negotiating my new AT&T contract, that was my score. And you get great deals with a good credit score.

I’m really anxious just now. I keep calling my case manager but get no return call, message or email.

The horror in this kind of situation is that there's nothing that I can do. I just tried the main office and just got her voicemail again. I think that the horror is multiplied by magnitudes when you're stuck inside your own head, stuck with no other stimuli outside of yourself.

This place is good in that it gives the illusion of talking to someone, even talking to a crowd.

My uncle, my last uncle, is going to be taken off of life support sometime today. My aunt, his sister, is supposed to let me know when it's over. His daughter, my cousin, has medical PoA and she said it's a lengthy progress. His son is a twit. He is three months older than me, 200 pounds heavier and looks as if he’s in his early 30’s. He is bright in ways that I am not and was the first cousin to hit a $100,000 salary. While his father is dying, he has spent the morning on Facebook reposting glib memes.

I need help but it seems that no matter how loud I scream no one can hear me.

it is very frustrating when you know what is going on and your team is not listening or taking action on your concerns. it very much sounds like a medication issue to me. either you need meds to fix it or the med may be causing those flashes. i too hate the idea that they want to hospitalize to manage meds. i did argue my way out of it with my pdoc once, saying i could do the same thing at home. (i had an important event that cost 500 dollars non refundable to attend). he agreed to let me, arranging for me to check in with him breifly every day. he know i knew myself and could take care of myself and trusted that. i hope you can get to your appt monday. i learned with pdocs you have to really be assertive in advocating for what you want. i went thru a lot of them at the clinic because i wasnt going to stay on meds that werent working. if they werent going to work with me, i requested a new doc. i finally found a doc that trusted i knew my body/mind and worked with me and we found the right meds to balance me out.

Hey, thanks so much for the reply. I am glad to know that at least one other person has had problems with treatment.

I have my ride set up so I'll be making my appointment tomorrow. I have two reasons, really, for not wanting to be hospitalised: it's worthless and I am scared to death of losing my life again. My doc knows about both reasons.

I'm going to to ask tomorrow about a more aggressive treatment and posit the compromise that you made with your doc. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm certain that I'll be back in the next couple of days. I'm really at the point of losing it with these delusions.

Thanks,

Good luck!

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Thanks.

Hey – I just got my first iPhone (6s Plus) and upgraded my iPad Air 2 to an iPad Pro and I see a lot of iOS folks using Tapatalk. I'm going to download it and look at it. I don't do much Internet chatting (just here, really) but if it uses the big Pro keyboard... I'll check it out.

Thanks again,

How was your appointment?

Was your pdoc accommodating and supportive of your decision to not go IP?


I'm sorry the delusions are kicking your butt right now, although I have to admit, I wouldn't mind being able to talk to both my dads right about now....


So its kinda twisted, but I'm kinda jealous.

Tripping,

It was a good appointment and, yep, hospitalization was recommended but I used kaliope's suggestion and my Seroquel was doubled and I have to call in daily (even weekends) and leave a message to let him know how I'm doing. I got my first hours of sleep last night and haven't had a hallucination or delusion yet today. But I've been up for less than an hour.

Tapatalk doesn't use the "full" Pro keyboard, unfortunately. But it's such a clean interface that I enjoy it more than Safari.

I went through a very difficult time after my dad died – my responses were the reasons for me to begin psychiatric treatment. But, oh, was I a liar back then! I couldn't hide my panic attacks but I didn't tell anyone of the hallucinations/delusions that I was having, not until July of last year, 30 years later.

I know exactly what you mean. Don't get too jealous, though... we don't have conversations – not like those times when I would drive around, my dad my passenger, and we would talk about shared memories, etc. The longest hallucination that I have is about 5 minutes but the delusions can go on for hours.

For myself I've started distinguishing between a hallucination and a delusion by calling a hallucination a short period of time where I am hearing someone talking to me and I usually respond but during or minutes later I realize that, well, that it's not possible to be talking to that person. Because they're dead. And I snap back to reality quickly.

But what I call a delusion doesn't involve seeing or hearing anything unusual, but rather a feeling that can't be real, a state of living, of being, in a situation that is impossible. I have a much harder time describing my delusions. One that I think that I have experienced more than once is an all-is-good, here I'm safe feeling that comes upon me when I'm in a state of living with my parents, being in high school, having my pets around (so far, in every delusion that I've had and in a few hallucinations, I have had pets – some generic cats and dogs, some that I really had) and I'm laying in bed doing my homework. As I said, it's a feeling of being in that state usually.

But I can have some doozies where I take some sort of action and that's what my psych team is worried about. In reality, I don't have legs and I have to use a wheelchair but I can have some delusions in which I don't know that, when I believe that I'm walking or have walked.

I'm trying to think if – yes, all of my hallucinations/delusions involve the dead mixed in with a few friends that I've not seen in over 30 years and even fewer "unreal" characters. I've gone through a couple of hallucinations since I started writing this. They are a constant, 2-3 times an hour sometimes. Just passed, my stepmother asking me to go out for a quart of buttermilk. I say okay then, snap, that wasn't real. They're just like riding the waves and my worry has become that I am slower to return to reality than I was a month ago.

It's like I'm sane enough but I'm not yet I am.

And the delusions are getting more and more outside of reality (I can still recall the touch of my grandmothers hand in mine as we walked, I think, to the kitchen the other day) and I can't tell how long they actually last. I'm not able to quickly note the start time or the end but I think that they could last up to four hours. I just don't know.

The content of my delusions can be a lot more disturbing than what I've written here, or what I've told my doc. But I think that what scares me most is not crazy content but rather the fact that it's taking me longer and longer to recover. I can still function, though. And this short term memory loss scares me. I don't know from one hour to the next if I've written the word "snorkel" ten times in the past hour or if I'm using for the first time today.

I like the word "twisted". Better than my b#tsh#t crazy. That old meme, do the insane know of their insanity? I don't know. I seem to be more than clear about having thoughts, etc., that are unreal and that I (eventually) recognize are unreal but I'm also afraid of getting "stuck" in a delusion and wanting to stay in my bed doing homework where I feel warm and safe and loved.

It's just as Father Bob says... a mystery.

I don't know how oth

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I'm glad to hear your pdoc is on board, and I hope the dosage increase helps ground you firmly in reality asap.


Keep posting, it may be the most accurate evidence and timeline of what's real and what isn't.


And if not, well, at least we are here to keep you company.