Roll Call Four

Welcome Anne

Congrats Costello on being made moderator - we'll have to be on our best behaviour now! lol

I was naughty today and skipped my tutorial so I could have some more sleep. I've not been sleeping well lately. Anyway, sod's law, this truck was leaving a skip right outside my house and so I didn't get any extra sleep after all. Should've gone to my tutorial! Went to my other lectures though. Had one on Freud which is always fun - you sure can come up with some wacky ideas hopped up on cocaine



*Willow*

I'm feeling gassy lol.

erti gets points for honesty!

i am getting caught up. glad to see posts from fish and kureha!

i am hating all the dreary weather we are having here, but got a sunny autumn day today, so took the dogs for a long walk. that was very good.
still enjoying the patients where i work. one of them even set me up to play a joke on the new speech therapist.

lol... Can we help?

My son and I finished clearing a path over where we think the water pipe is buried. Hurrah!

Now my son wants to watch the presidential debate, so I've put on headphones and am listening to a book on tape. I can't stand to watch!

Lol, it's all good. Thanks Gr3tta

Congrats on being a mod Costello

I got home last night and my son had nearly finished mowing the backyard! Now I have to do something about replacing that limb cutter that was broken the night before last. He says the limb cutter "freaks him out" for some reason he won't tell me. He'd rather have a saw. Frankly saws freak me out. I guess he just wants a handsaw.

He seems to be struggling a bit. I never know how to explain what's up with him. He never explains it to me in a way I can understand. I don't know if he just doesn't have the words the explain it, or if he doesn't want to be too specific. All I know is something's up and it seems like it's shading into psychotic type thinking.

Yesterday afternoon I started getting a bunch of anxious type texts and calls from him. "Should I do this? Should I do that?" He tells me he was playing a board game at the peer support group. Spy Alley? He says he lost and it wasn't fun.

When I get home he says that someone at the group said to my son, "I am the voice of God, and you're on the right path." (My son thinks he was joking. Apparently he told someone else, "I am the voice of God, and you're being rude." I'm not sure if the guy's joking, or if he's delusional.)

Anyway shortly after the voice of God comment, my son decided he was tired of playing Spy Alley, so he deliberately lost so the game would end. He was thinking the game "wasn't important," but after he lost he started worrying that it was important - that it indicated something bad would happen. He kept asking, "Do you think I'm on the right path still?" Then somehow he got police tied up in this thought chain. I guess he made the connection between cops and spies. So somehow losing this board game will bring the police down on him? I'm not sure. He didn't make it clear.

Then he spent the evening dredging up bad memories - which is a favorite hobby when he's in this mood. I urged him several times to stop this train of thought, don't feed the mood, but he kept starting sentences with words like "I remember once when I was in fifth grade..." or "I remember these two guys from debate in junior high..." Followed by some minor bad thing that someone did to him umpteen years ago. Sigh!

Finally I got a little impatient. Even he could see the connections he was making were irrational. I told him he should put his mind on something else, and if he can't do that he should take a higher dose of his AP. I mean we all do this-- we get into a mood, angry or fearful or something, and that pulls up a memory when we felt this way in the past. And thinking about that memory makes the mood stronger. Then more memories of past pain come up, and pretty soon we've fanned the flames of a tiny bad mood into a raging inferno.

My son just can't afford to do this. Especially when he's shading into making illogical connections and seeing "signs" in things that are meaningless. On the one hand I don't want him to think he should repress his thoughts, but on the other, I couldn't see this thought train going anywhere good.

He stopped talking about the memories. (Well, actually he did start to tell me one more, but he noticed he was doing it before he launched into the story. I guess that's the first step in mindfulness: noticing you're doing something - even something you don't want to do.) I hope he actually stopped thinking about them. If he's going to think about them, I'd rather he talk about them too, so we can discuss them. He gets into real trouble when he gets lost with odd thoughts and doesn't get feedback from someone else. I hope I didn't just drive the thoughts underground, so to speak, and he'll still think them but not tell me.

Hope your son will be ok Costello

I'm anxoius about tomorrow - I don't trust the new nurse, she's a nurse - so she knows about medication, she knows how much is too much and it's easy for her to get.

I don't even know if she is with them and there are a lot of sleeper cells passing and weird stuff.
It doesn't seem right.

I can understand being anxious. I would be too - meeting someone new. But I think you should try to keep an open mind.

Thanks. I hope so too. I got a call on my cell phone this morning for him - a bill collector. Normally I refuse to help them locate him because I don't want him to be harrassed while he's still vulnerable, but this time I gave them the number for the landline - not his cell phone. He's getting to a point that he can deal with them better, and he's trying to clear up some old debts, so he can move forward in his life. He screens the calls to the landline anyway, so I guess it's okay for her to have that number. I'm just tired of getting so many collection calls on my cell phone.

Costello, I can relate. Gotta son w similar issues, it seems. Very difficult at times to deal with. Hang in there.

Thanks, Anne. It's nice to know there are others out there in the same boat.

Costello - I hope he can deal with it ok then.

Well I'm still alive, so the nurse didn't set me up, its the second time I've seen her without my ex nurse there and I still miss her.

Got followed the whole time by a helicopter and I showed her the surveillance house and I was telling her that I wanted to call but I was scared of being stabbed, she said in reality I'd be arrested for harassment.

Thats not fair they don't leave me alone, but it's like my side doesn't matter

I'm glad things are okay with the new nurse. It sounds like she's one you can trust. I think she's right about the harassment thing. I know it's frustrating, but you have to keep yourself out of trouble.

He seems to be. It's a little bit trickier right now. He's getting a little ... idk ... maybe not paranoid, but shading into paranoid, about some people at the peer support group.

On the up side, he's taken up running. He runs most days. He went something like a mile and a half today. I suggested he train to run in a 5K (3.1 miles). I don't know if he wants to. He didn't say anything in response. Just seems like a really positive thing to be doing, you know?

He sees his pdoc on Monday. He asked me if he thought he should ask to lower his dose again. I honestly don't think it's a good idea right now, but I didn't want to say so, so I kind of hemmed and hawed. He's just getting caught in these negative thought cycles right now. I'd hate to see him rush into lowering the med and then slide backward. On the other hand he is handling the thoughts and emotions - working through them. On the third hand, maybe that means this is the right level for now - low enough to give him something to work with; high enough that he's not swamped.

He did tell me last night that some of the suggestions I've made have helped. That made me feel good. I know he's really working hard and trying out some of the ideas I have. Sometimes I worry that I'm leading him in the wrong direction or not being helpful. So it's good to hear it's helping him. These things take a long time - breaking old habits and making new ones.

Well, he's off to his peer support place. I think I'm going to take a bubble bath, then go to town for a while. Buy some sausage and embroidery floss!

costello, anne & Kureha

I'm very confused... Mum came to visit yesterday and came with me to my pdoc appt today. She brought up about my mood swings and pdoc asked loads of questions and now he thinks I might be bipolar, which means he wants to totally change all my meds. The trouble is that what he wants to start me on (Seroquel/quetiapine) will likely knock me out for at least a week and I'm supposed to be in Uni. I'm not doing very well at the moment but, after much discussion between my Mum and pdoc, we decided to try and hold off on starting the quetiapine until I go home for Xmas, as I have 4 weeks off then. I couldn't really make a decision so I let them make it for me. Pdoc says that if I get worse though and aren't going in to Uni then I may as well start the quetiapine so he gave me a prescription in case I need it before I next see him. I have to stop my antidepressant and then reduce my aripiprazole/Abilify the week after, ready to stop and take the quetiapine.

IDK how I feel about this latest development. I'm a bit worried about weight gain and diabetes. I'm also wondering about what this change in diagnosis might mean to me and my life. IDK. I'm just a bit confused about what happened today. I feel like we did a complete 360 from when I last saw him 10 days ago

*Willow*

That sounds really confusing, Willow, but I think they're right to wait until the break to make the change.

Have you gained weight on those meds before? My son takes Zyprexa which is one of those meds where tons of people get huge weight gain. He did gain - from a very underweight 116 pounds to about 165. Then his weight started reducing as we've reduced the dose.

I guess what I'm saying is that not everyone has the same side effects. Unless you know you'll gain, hold off on worrying until you've started the meds.

You're right, I shouldn't worry about what may or may not be. I'm just in a state of shock I think. Even though I suspected it, it's completely different hearing the words come out of pdoc's mouth

*Willow*

Shock about what? The changed dx? The changed treatment plan?

Both I guess. I think I need a few days to process what happened and then I'll be ok again.

My housemate gets back tomorrow so no more home alone - yey!

*Willow*

Glad you'll have company soon, Willow.

I woke up a little depressed this morning. Not sure what's up. I'm struggling with making a good design for my small business. I'd like to have something listed for sale by my birthday - November 24. I'm not an artist, so designing something interesting enough to sell has been tough. I hope I have something someone will want to buy. I'm really struggling with figuring out what colors to use. My mom used to tell me I didn't have good taste for things like that, so I don't trust myself with it. And then I used to maintain part of the websites for my job, and everyone hated the main color I picked. How can everyone else hate a color I love? In short, I'm caught up stressing about colors.

Second reason for feeling a bit down: it's getting cold and I'm still without a furnace. Third winter in a row. I figured my financial situation would eventually improve, and I will have the main mortgage paid off in December, so that will free up a lot of cash. But now I have to fix that water line too. Ugh!

Third reason: I'm worrying about my son. His one friend Kevin has apparently abandoned him. Only he can't be upfront about it. Yesterday he said he'd meet up with my son but never showed. My son's struggling with some paranoia and could use a non-judgmental friend. The peer support group is just becoming a source of more paranoia, but being alone with his thoughts is even worse, and watching tv or movies is largely out because of some problem he's not articulating very well - something about not wanting to be exposed to violence and other baddies? So, he's left with his thoughts. No distractions. He's aware that he's obsessing but seems nearly powerless to do anything about it.

costello That sounds like a lot of things going on Hope you and your son pick up soon.

*Willow*

Thanks, Willow. I suspect I'm making a mountains out of molehills. So much positive going on now - I should be pleased not depressed.

It's one of my little habits - when things get too quiet, my busy little brain starts rooting around for something to be sad about. My son does the same thing. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I just have to notice when I'm doing it and try to working through it.

The little picture I stitched last night depressed me so. But when I looked it it this morning, I thought it looked good. Maybe I was just fatigued last night and needed a rest and fresh eyes.

At least you're aware that you do it. I think that's an important first step

I'm sure it looks really good, like the one you have as your avatar

I'm really looking forward to my housemate coming back tomorrow. Had an easy day today - went food shopping, walked the dog and did a few bits and bobs. Got a statistics test to revise for tomorrow though, which won't be fun.

*Willow*

I need a vacation from life to bring this irritability down. Just too much exterior noise. It overwhelms my senses.

cybermember

*Willow*

I go through that sometimes too. Last week I was irritated by the noises while I was on reference - students talking and the copy machine running. They're sounds I hear all the time and just tune out. For some reason they were rubbing on me last week though.