So Sick I Can’t Stand It

Today is about the lowest I have felt since I got so sick in October with the intestinal blockage. I woke up so sleepy. I ate breakfast quickly and just felt awful all morning. I realized i was freezing inside the house, so I put on a sweatshirt and full length blue jeans. (I was working from home because pipes burst in our building.) I was still cold and I climbed back in the bed for about twenty minutes.

I got up in time to sign in to work, and my second monitor was refusing to work. This is a recurring issue that our IT guy is puzzled by. But I got it to work and started in.

I got a series of the dumbest emails ever known to man. I replied to them with my boss copied in so he could see what I was dealing with. Then I got going on my other tasks, and the computer was randomly closing tabs and what not as I was working. I got up to refill my water cup I sip, and I started throwing up–just plain water, no food, just the liquid. So I told my boss I was sick and just signed off.

I’ve had a few popsicles, some toast, more water, and a small helping of chicken noodle soup and haven’t gotten sick again.

But my back aches–both across my shoulder and my lower back. Nothing tastes good or right to me. I’ve been crying on and off all morning. I tried soaking in the tub and I still ache as I’m actually trying to accomplish something. It feels like hot wires in my shoulders, and someone just flipped the electric switch. I’m still cold.

I don’t even feel human anymore. I’m sad and mad and achy and old. I hate feeling this way.

Brain Overload

I admit it. I’m getting old, and I need new systems to keep up with my appointments, etc.

I used to just keep it all in my head. Several years ago I started writing items down on a calendar. Then I started taking that calendar and posting on the refrigerator.

But all last week my brain kept tricking me that I had cancelled and rescheduled an appointment that I had on the calendar on April 12 and rescheduled it to today. But I couldn’t remember what time it was. So this morning I called to check.

Reader, I had not cancelled that appointment and rescheduled it. I had just blown through it and missed it.

So I guess I need to start putting it in my phone and setting an alarm like the rest of the human race.

It’s upsetting because I have always had a lot of pride in my good memory. I could memorize like nobody’s business, recite poetry and passages from books, and remember everything I read after one go. That’s how I got through school so well.

Now I don’t know if it’s just age-related, a side effect of the pharmacy of medications I take every day, or if I just have too much to keep up with in my head these days.

Excuse me while I go chase some kids off my lawn. . .

Back to Normal?

Maybe.

The rage is gone. The itching is totally gone. And the random crying is gone.

I had a good day yesterday and hope to be able to get going at work tomorrow bright and early. Lots to do still and that’s good. Because left to my own devices I’d just dissolve into a puddle of tears and shame for not pulling my weight and not being able to cope.

So we will see how long this stability lasts.

Turned a Corner

Today was kind of a white-knuckle day. I got some things done at work, but it was at a very halting and stop-and-go pace. I sat through a meeting and managed to pay attention to what was being said. So that was good. I felt such a weight roll off my back when I was able to sign out, though.

The itching is gone. The rage is just about all gone. And last night I had a lot of tossing-and-turning time before I finally fell asleep. And the extra movements are just about gone. So I am finally feeling better. I hope it’s a long, long time before I get that close to an episode again. I did not enjoy it in the least.

It’s been two months of just lots of med changes and coping mechanisms being deployed and some of them working and others of them not. I know Bob is probably tired out from hearing all my nature music over and over again, but it helps so much when I’m like this.

Keep praying that I’m on the mend. I appreciate all your support.

Losing it.

Yes. That’s what I’m doing. They finally added in an antipsychotic today to get the rage to recede. I hope this is what works.

I am trying to relax today ecause I can tell my temper is still high. Every time I make a typo, I want to break the keyboard. It’s raining today. We had a tornado go through Jackson last night. Suffering everywhere. And all I can hear in my head is myself screaming. No words.

I took the anti-psychotic when I got home and will take the next one when I eat lunch. I hope it calms me down finally. I don’t know what else I can do. I feel like if I call anyone and start talking I’ll just start crying.

Please if you know me in real life, DO NOT go out and talk about me and what I’ve written here. I’m not trying to worry people. I just need to get my medicine adjusted. Give me some grace here of not sharing it with other people. Or I’ll just have to take the whole blog, zip it shut, save it, and delete this from the internet. That’s already why I started slowing down on posting. It no longer felt like a safe space to share.

Just pray.

At wit’s End

So today while Bob was home at lunch, we set criteria for me to try to go to a crisis care unit in my community since the psych unit I used to go to is closed: if I wanted to just quit my job for no reason, if I wanted to run away or disappear, if I wanted to hurt myself, or someone else.

I’ve blown right through the first two. I read up on the website for the crisis center and I think I’d have to be past the third to get in. I’m calling my psychiatrist to see what he thinks.

He wants to see me first thing in the morning. We will see what happens.

At the Hospital

I’ve been in the ER for about four hours. Ever since Tuesday, I’ve been increasingly itchy, having aimless movements, and breaking into random crying spells rather than rage. So I came to the ER

There finally sending me home with a generalized itch medicine and I’ll call Dr Bishop tomorrow to see what he says about it. What a waste of time.

Consults

So I saw Tillie on Monday after work Monday and the Dr. Bishop before work yesterday. I got a lot off my chest talking to Tillie, and Dr. Bishop added a new med, increased another med, and cut back on yet another med. I feel like a blankety-blank lab rat. Why can’t I just be normal? God in Heaven, when am I ever going to be well enough to get off of all the meds? Now I’m having to have blood tests run to check levels and make sure my medication load isn’t hurting my internal organs.

On the plus side, I finally have work under control. We are two months ahead of schedule on most tasks, and I’m going to see if I can’t push it out to three months in advance. Then everything should be right on schedule and at a normal workflow.

Something is causing me a lot of pain in my neck, right shoulder, and down into my right shoulder blade. It feels like it used to when I would drive for a long time–my turning my face to the left to see because of my nystagmus was pulling everything else out of alignment. But it hasn’t bothered me like this ina long time–it got a lot better after i had that eye surgery. Pain meds don’t tough it, although I haven’t tried anything stronger than ibuprofen. I can’t take the good pain meds since I take benzos and have to be drug-tested at Dr. Bishop’s office. But I am suffering from that as well.

I guess when it rains, it pours. Hope everyone else’s week is going better. Good night.

Panic Attack?

f’m not sure what I experienced when I went to church today. The service was very, very crowded, and when everyone stood up to start the praise & worship, I just lost it. I couldn’t breathe. I went downstairs in the open lobby and sat there crying for a good twenty minutes. I hated not being in the service, but I hated the feelings of danger and anxiety more.

The missions pastor saw me sitting there and crying and came up to me and asked if I needed anything. My mouth had gone dry by this point, so I asked for some water. He brought me a cold water bottle, and that helped with the dry mouth and the anxiety. He sat with me for a while as I tried deep breathing exercises to calm down, still crying.

I finally settled down enough that I told him I thought I would be all right. I’ve had times where I’ve had to leave a church service before under similar conditions, but this was different in that it didn’t immediately disappear when I got out in the open. I am going to see if I can see Tillie next week instead of waiting for my regular appointment. Maybe Dr. Bishop, too, if it comes to that.

I don’t want to stop going to church or find another one. I love our church. But this experience was scary.

More Rage

This feeling of rage that’s unattached to anything going on in my life can go away anytime it wants to.

On World Bipolar Day I would love to say everything is golden. It really has been lately in many ways. But in so many other ways it’s just not.

Being bipolar for me means taking lithium, which causes a thirst that no amount of water can seem to put down.

Being bipolar for me means that good emotions are not to be trusted. Is it real? Is it good and true? Or is it a start of the insidious mania that flips me over into paranoia, self-harm, or rage that I can’t control?

Being bipolar for me is being convinced that deep down, the world is one huge grim cosmic joke, that the other shoe is going to drop any second, that everything I love can disappear in an instant when the moods shift again, and that I can make a mistake that costs me everything.

I’ve had that feeling once in my lifetime already–when I ran away from home, was diagnosed bipolar, and lost my sense of myself as a competent adult making her way in the world. I do not want it to happen again.

But I also don’t want to live in the paralyzing fear I’ve felt on and off ever since I was in the hospital in October. And I am so thoroughly sick of it that whenever I feel it, the rage at everything and nothing isn’t far behind.

I’m living in fear now. And I want it to stop.