Roll Call Take Two

Here.

My back and hip have been hurting me a lot lately. Not sure what's up.

My bank ticked me off yesterday, so I'm moving to an online bank - ING Direct.

We're celebrating my nephew's birthday today. He turns 8 on June 12. I bought him this:



We have mice really bad this year too. I keep talking to the cats about it, but they're unmoved. I finally broke down and bought some mouse poison yesterday. A grim chore.

I also bought one of these. Don't know if it will work or not.

Here. Had a really bad night. I started listening to the Queen's Jubilee service from St. Paul's last week on the radio, but it freaked me out because it sounds a lot like the Triumphal March from the end of the old Star Wars.

Doing okay today. Son is still sick and cranky, but overall had a good time. He turned two today. 16 more years and I can kick him out, lol.

You sound a lot better. Glad you had a good time.

Here. Extremely triggered by the mentions of electroshock in last night's Mad Men. I spent four hours crying under my desk.

Here.

Don't want to go to work. Fantasizing about calling in and quitting. But not going to do it, of course.

Pissed off at my bank, so I'm going through the tedious process of moving everything to a different bank - which I'll probably end up hating too within six months.

My younger son's gf's mom was fired yesterday. She was pretty much supporting the three of them - my son, her daughter, and herself - because my son lost his job a few weeks ago.

Pavlov (me) rang the bell and Julia answered (me)
Am I still in control of myself? Is anybody?well
just got to keep on I suppose....Oh to be Rip Van Winkle....
...love jjulia.

I'm here. I'm diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder and OCD

Get to find out if I 'just' have epilepsy tomorrow...I doubt it. If anything I have something on the spectrum WITH epilepsy. My psychosis is too consistent to be caused by seizures, as I understand it. :/

Really hope I don't have epilepsy. I don't want to change medication again. >.<;

You might try a ketogenic diet if it's 'just' epilepsy. Some people find it controls the seizures completely or at least lessens the frequency and/or intensity. The cool thing is that most people whose epilepsy is controlled by a ketogenic diet can eventually resume a normal diet without the epilepsy returning.

Aren't the medications used for epilepsy much more straightforward and evidence-based than the ones used for psychosis? My cousin got diagnosed with epilepsy two years ago, but she's never had anything close to the roundabout-'o-drugs I had from psychiatry.

I don't know. I do know that before the meds were available, doctors prescribed a ketogenic diet. When meds became available the diet fell out of favor. When a child failed on medication, the next recommendation was surgery. In the mid-90's the ketogenic diet made a resurgence for medication-resistant epilepsy. If a kid fails on 2 or 3 meds, s/he may try the diet. Personally I'd try the diet before the meds - but I hate medications and think they should be avoided where possible. The true ketogenic diet needs a dietician to monitor and starts with a hospital stay, so your doctor would have to be on board. But some parents are finding their children respond to the modified Atkins diet which can be done without medical assistance.

Oh no, I like non-medication solutions wherever possible, myself!! (I'm sure you're very surprised .) I was just thinking that if Coyote does want to go the epilepsy medications route then maybe it would not be quite so fraught as the psychosis medications one is.

An interesting factoid: several of the bipolar meds started life as epilepsy drugs.

See also: ceramic glazes, battery acids and rocket propellant :P

I am still fighting my university (from which I graduated a year ago now) about redacting grades on some exams that I failed because I had to spend the night before the exams being monitored for heart problems in A&E. The uni lost the form I submitted confirming I had been in hospital. I just heard today from the hospital that they haven't got the records anymore.
Is it time to give up? I made it my life's mission to have every trace of the hell I was put through by psychiatrists removed from all my records, but it's wearing me down.

I'd try the diet, but I'd probably still have to stay on my anti-psychotics in the mean time, or at least until any seizures stopped for sure, since my psychotic symptoms are actually happening in between seizures (if I'm having any). I mean...I could see a 'boo' sort of hallucination being caused by a seizure, but....hours and hours of various hallucinations? That's either some BAD kind of epilepsy, or the psychosis isn't right before or right after or during the seizures, it's...they had a word for it. In between...just cause my brain hates me. :|

I don't know, honestly, I'm kind of terrified to go off of my Abilify, since for me all it does is make me crave carbs/sugar a bit more, and that's it, side-effect wise, but it reduces my hallucinations, delusional thinking, ect -drastically- at 15mg. 10mg barely touches any of it and 'they' will actually tell me to throw the meds away at that dose, but 15 just...bam, knocks it out. When I was in high school my psychosis was a bit more of the grandiose, 'I'm totally enlightened' type, with intermittent scary hallucinations, but mostly I was just in my own world talking to trees and animal bones and...well, a whole range of symptoms... Then I got on Abilify to help with my depression (because apparently if you say most everything in a slightly joking tone, nobody takes you seriously when you say you see shadow people, so I was just 'depressed') and...it was like I had a blank slate appear and my mind slowly unraveled over a few years on the stuff.

Then cue me going off of the meds like...a month before my most recent stuff. Guess who started seeing things again?

This time around, it's like I've -tasted- the real world now, and I don't want to leave. I know it. I can feel it, and my psychosis (or 'they', since really half the time I use psychiatric terms I do it for ease of communication and as a form of self-conditioning)is trying to drag me back kicking and screaming to how I was back then, into a world I'm not used to anymore. I don't have that cocky 'I can handle anything' attitude/delusion I had before that allowed me to deal with the hallucinations. I'm not like that now. I...don't like how I was back then, I...really don't.

I tried to pull a lot of people into seeing things my way then, because it was like...nobody saw things the way I did, the world the way I did. It was really lonely. I probably caused at least a bit of 'folie a' deux'. I was smart, and good at explaining things so that they -seemed- rational, and if nothing else I had some friends play along. But now I can tell how just...unhealthy for me and my friends that was.

Oh wow, did I just realize through type-venting that I have issues with guilt that make me desperately want something to blame for my behavior? I think I did. :|

...*coughs* Sorry for spewing all that. >.<; I guess...basically epilepsy alone wouldn't explain how/why I was psychotic/delusional in high school for like...4-5 years. And that raises a lot of scary questions and just...I don't know. I'm at a place where I -can- admit that I've been delusional, and might not know it all, and that I'm at risk for that kind of thinking, but I would have NEVER been able to even think that until recently. And I'm actually starting to -like- myself now, or at least stand myself better. Because if I know what's wrong and what caused my previous behavior/state of mind, I can guard against it. I can move forward, even if I need meds to do that.

I don't know enough about epilepsy to have that...comfort with it. What I've read about psychosis and epilepsy hasn't sounded good though. It doesn't fit my history/symptoms, and it doesn't really....make sense. I don't know.

Imma stop typing out a novel now. ^^;

Here. Stayed up too late last night attempting to make a low carb cheesecake - which came out tasty enough but flat as a pancake.

A stealth mode cheese cake, where the carbs can sneak up on you

Well, the only ingredients are cream cheese, cream, eggs, vanilla, lime juice, and Splenda. No crust. I really need a good crust.

Also I see I used too big of a pan. I used an 11" pan, and the recipe called for a 9" pan. Ah, well, first attempt's always a fail, eh?

Cheesecakes without carbohydrates to bind them are always going to fall -- it would technically be a cheese souffle.

You could try adding a leavening agent, though. Baking soda sounds about right, just less than a teaspoonful. If you're OK with adding a bit of carbs in, you could also use about 1 tablespoon of corn starch mixed in with your lemon juice and vanilla to make a paste before you add them.

Or google recipes for "Tophenkuchen", it's Austrian cheesecake, and basically what you are describing there. Austrians tend to bake theirs in pie plates, not springform pans, so that also helps with the falling.

And, I'm here. I had a terrible day at work. We have a new intern who is the world's worst plagiarist, and I had to have a talk with her about that and also how she was not supposed to wear sweatpants and a sweat shirt in the office.

oops. have just flooded back yard while filling kiddie pool for the dogs.

Wow... how does someone not know that???

I would blame it on her being 20, I guess?