I have two more days of summer school left. And I would actually consider doing it again next year... PROVIDED that things were a bit different. At least I would know what I was getting myself into and could come in as something of an equal partner instead of just going along for the ride. So for now I am still allowed to be super happy that... I have only TWO MORE DAYS of summer school. I had a brilliant thought the other day when I was driving home. I remember where I was... the intersection right by Groundswell Coffee. I remember that I had the windows down because the weather was nice. And I don't remember at all remotely what I was thinking about. But I know it was brilliant. I may have inadvertently (and by that I mean completely vertently) told someone that they should light fire to the old dried out tree branch that is intertwined with their fence. This seems like the sort of idea that seems like a great plan until it ends in disaster. This was not my brilliant thought. My brilliant thought had something to do with world view and chicken and egg stuff and something about the way people think. And there was some cosmic faith stuff thrown in too for good measure. It was probably after I just sang a bunch of god hymns. My fiddle player joked that I was going to become a Christian after singing so many hymns. Let's see... I need to get stuff set up to record so we can see what we sound like. Or hear it anyway. Tomorrow is our last rehearsal before we sing publicly on Sunday. (We'll get together for a last dress-rehearsal naturally). I need to figure out where I need to go and when. Also, something else. Can't remember. I've decided that my resistance to being on lurasidone (resistance now largely overcome) has to do with the fact that it is called an "atypical anti-psychotic." This makes it sound like
Now I did learn that psychosis is a symptom and not a disease. So I could sometimes have psychosis. It's just such a loaded word. And there is nothing all that great about being typical. So I guess I am fine with the atypical. Grateful Crap: TWO Equatorial Actions Ate lots of fruit Time with youngerboy ummm... posted almost slept enough P.S. My wonderwoman swimsuit arrived today. Still waiting for my invisible airplane (which might have arrived already for all I can tell) and my magic lasso... maybe I should bead a spiral peyote necklace out of golden beads... Counting down the days of summer school... Not that I'm anxious for it to be over... Does this make me a bad teacher? I don't think so.
An extra month of school is like the extra month of pregnancy that I had with child #2. Okay, technically it was that had 5 fewer weeks with child #1, who was born prematurely. But it feels the same way. FIVE MORE WEEKS. This is only 3 more weeks so I am just being extra whiny. It was hot this weekend, which contributes to my general whiny attitude. I went to see more Shakespeare yesterday at Great River Shakespeare Festival. You should go. They had live music with stuff composed just for the show and a really good cast doing As You Like It. Son #2 gave some commentary at intermission saying that he felt fairly certain that the plot was about to become more complicated because in most of Shakespeare's comedies the plot was {complicated hand gesture} instead of {straight line hand gesture}. This made Spouse and I laugh hysterically once we were out of earshot of said son. Not only is he familiar with several Shakespeare plays (and will see four of them this summer), but he is able to do commentary! My family is such a pack of nerdly scholars. I feel ill today. Kind of hot and cold and light-headed and headachey. And I am wishing that I felt ill enough not to go to work. But I will stick it out unless I faint or vomit or accomplish some other obvious feat of illness. (Students are taking a test right now which excuses my current delinquency in posting.) Grateful Crap: vision plan for the family... must remember to call so I can use the benefit before July 1. Tic... toc... Equatorial Actions: Meds antibiotic 20 mg lurasidone 300 mg lamotrigine fluticasone went "running" - back to Week 3, Day 1 of couch to 5K after missing so many days due to illness Still coughing, but not enough to keep me up at night. Spouse sounds terrible, though. I am afraid I shared the bronchitis. It is hot. I need to clean the air conditioner. And... spoiler alert... I will NOT be removing the GIANT window unit (now precariously suspended over an egress window) by my own self and doing this project without premeditation.
I am pre-meditating right now. ...ohm... Ha ha ha. Nerdy electrical joke. Okay, so anyway I sang today and it was good. Still it is the microphone that has me nervous, but if we have a plant in the audience who can help with balance, I think things will be fine next Sunday. P.S. I ordered a custom-made Wonder Woman swimsuit. It will be legendary. Epic. Super-heroic. I am hot and really need to not be wearing clothes right now. Feeling the need to move North. Or in a coastwardly direction so we are not as prone to the vagaries of midwestern weather. Because ugh. There is nothing worse than someone always complaining about weather in the midwest. And I am feeling very complainy. Grateful Crap: the vagaries of midwestern weather, which will bring about sudden shift in temperature in 3... 2... 1... Equatorial Actions meds 20 mg lurasidone 300mg lamotrigine (whatever antibiotic I'm on) fluticasone albuterol time with family singing adequate sleep I have been taking my meds. I have had bronchitis since May 5. They started me on anti-biotics on Wednesday (I missed a day of work due to fuzzy/light-headed/coughing) and I am starting to feel much better. I hate that it is not trivial to discover whether bronchitis is bacterial or viral.
I did a bunch of social stuff. I went out with a friend for dessert and met someone new. Then went to see Shakespeare in the park with a group of people (okay, the same friend and her family). It was a really enjoyable production of Much Ado About Nothing by Cromulent Shakespeare. You should totally go. Hmmm... I have fallen way behind on posting. Also on my running. I plead sickness. And full-time job. And... mostly sickness. I can start running again now, though. Breathing totally helps. This weekend I am rehearsing for FGC (Friends General Conference) where I will be singing with a fiddle player. I will be using a microphone, which is actually the part of the performance that has me nervous. Not singing in front of people. Not the fact that I've never really soloed on voice before. Not the fact that I don't have all the words memorized... the microphone. That is the scary part. I want to dye my hair. Okay, really I want to shave my hair in the back by myself RIGHT NOW because it feels long and shaggy. It doesn't look long and shaggy. I know. I looked at it yesterday while trying on swimsuits (#theninthcircleofhell). No luck in the swimsuit department, but the hair is objectively NOT shaggy. Okay, I had some luck in the swimsuit department, but it will require a great deal of fortitude on my part. Note: since last summer I have lost around 30 pounds and 3 boob sizes. Healthily and slowly; don't panic. However, this means that my swimsuit from last summer looks completely ridiculous and doesn't feel that great either. None of the one-piece suits I tried on fit very well or felt very comfortable. Never mind the fact that I am hyper-critical when viewing my body in skin-tight lycra. What ended up feeling the best (and really not looking all that embarrassing) was a two-piece beauty that I cobbled together with a modest bikini bottom and a really cute sports bra. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to bring myself to wear this in public. Certainly when I am "at the lake" with just my family around this will be an option. Otherwise I think I am too self-conscious about what other people will think when they see someone with my body (okay, I guess that would be me) baring my belly in public. Back to the crisis (ha) that is my hair... In the bad old days of hypomanic/mania I would have stopped mid-post to cut my hair. After discovering that there are no appointments RIGHT NOW for someone else to cut my hair. But I also want it to be blue. Or purple. Or maybe turqouise. Just in a few places. And I really don't want to do that on my own. I bought the permanent dye, though. And then... impulse control kicked in. Also, I can get a refund on the dye. Win win. Before you try to talk me out of the wacky dye job... this is so I will be able to let my hair grow out a bit. Which I would like to do for while. And if I have something else going on (like wacky colors) I will not be tempted to whack it off at the roots. Okay, not quite the roots. I last had it cut in April. And it is still not long. (I went a bit short last time). This is a very image-oriented post. I sometimes focus on external stuff when I am having internal angst. I doubt that makes me unique. Anyway, thanks to my extraordinary willpower, I managed to get a groupon for hair cut and highlights to my regular salon. AND make an appointment. For next Friday. This is how I will celebrate being DONE teaching 6 hours of math per day. (Sorry math... but you are just a tool.) Grateful Crap: colors of stuff. really bright colors Equatorial Actions: took meds
posted (finally) delayed gratification I just wanna sleep.
But I'll post. Gonna see a friend today. It's hot outside. No, it's not hot anymore. Now it is just pizza. Which smells unappealing. I'm tired. It feels like there is sand behind my eyelids instead of eyes. Left this house this morning without remembering to take my meds but I turned right around and went back to take them. meds 300 mg lamotrigine PM 20mg lurasidone AM Will go is in the room with my family while they eat pizza which smells very unappealing and wait to go out for tea/dessert which sounds far more appealing. i am grumpy. Anyone wanna come help me plant stuff? I have not been zombie gardening this spring/summer. But I also have not been regularly gardening. There is a bunch of stuff that really needs to get put in the ground and I can't seem to bring myself to do so.
It's all good, though. I'll rope my immediate family into digging holes this weekend. My main excuse? Hacking up a lung. Sick since... end of May. Ugh. This morning I woke with a case of Sad. Nameless, creeping sad in which I interpreted every person's actions, words and motions in the most meaningful and disastrous way possible. Which I knew I was doing at the time, which just made me feel even more Sad. Example: you walk into the room and say, "Those are really nice glasses." and what I hear is, "I'm trying really hard to find something nice to say about you... but it's hard because you are such an odious individual... so the best I can do is comment on your glasses... which are potentially the least offensive thing you are wearing." OBVIOUSLY not true. But it doesn't matter if it isn't true when the Sad settles in. The Sad just sort of settles in and makes up a bunch of crazy crap and leaves me to deal with the aftermath. By this afternoon I was feeling normal. Which made me think about what it means to be "ultra-rapid" cycler. It sounds like this would make me an excellent candidate for the Tour de France. But really it just means that my mood episodes might occur one after the other in a single day. Which makes it hard to treat, since most medications are for one thing (Depression) or the other (Mania) and you can't just switch medication protocols in the middle of the day. I'm trying to spend about an hour per day writing on book #2 of my romance novel series while I am waiting to hear back from Ms. Agent. She is currently reading book #1 and will get back to me some time in the next few months regarding whether she is willing to represent me as an author. Not holding my breath. Right. Here is my meds update. 20mg lurasidone in the morning 300mg lamotrigine in the evening Still haven't noticed any side effects. And don't know if the Sad and Switch has any ties to the new med. I guess the lurasidone has some sort of effect on levels of dopamine and seratonin. But the people who make it don't have any clue how it works. Crazy. I can use that word. My people have reclaimed it. But you probably shouldn't. Speaking of which, my chart at the doctor's office says that I am allergic to prednisone and beta blockers. I am not. They are counter-indicated because they can cause manic episodes. I think my doc put it in that way because she didn't want to have the stigmatizing "bipolar" label across the front of my chart. But here's the thing: when they go over the medications that I am taking, it becomes fairly clear that there is some sort of neurological thing going on. A recent visit to urgent care had a doctor reviewing my chart and asking questions about my prednisone allergy-- since I was in for asthmatic bronchitis, and steroids are sometimes given as a course of treatment. When I told him that I was not allergic, but did have bipolar disorder, he said something like, "Best to stay off the prednisone, then. Yeah, that stuff can make you CRAZY!" in a sing-song voice. If this was you, I recommend that you do not do this to other people. With or without documented mental illness on their charts. Just because my people have reclaimed the word Crazy doesn't mean that everyone can use it. It struck me as a rather clumsy and ignorant way of handling the situation. Just the fact that my general practitioner didn't want my bipolar diagnosis to be easily accessible in my charts is telling. And sad. grateful crap: only 11 more days of 5-hour-long math classes to teach equatorial actions: blogged ate well slept almost enough sang took my meds Can think of nothing clever. Today in an attempt not to not panic about my nebulous summer job I did the following things:
I am pleased with the results of my actions. While there may or may not be any significant change in my summer job, I can remember that it is very short term, that I am there for my students, and that I am unlikely to do any lasting harm. I figure that next Monday I can give my two-week notice, anyway. (Because at that point I will only have two weeks of teaching left for the summer!) On a slightly unrelated note, I think I might see non-work friends on purpose. Perhaps think about returning phone calls and venturing out of the house. Meds update: Third day on 20mg lurasidone Still taking 300mg lamotrigine at night. Haven't noticed any verse or adverse effects. Grateful Crap: gradually returning voice, Equatorial Actions: leaned heavily on other people's awesomeness; forcing them to use their powers for good instead of evil. took meds blogged ate healthy hunched over a tray of beads and then squinted at a tiny screen for hours at a time... oops. learned most of "Beach Spring" today. One hymn down, eleven to go. (singing at FGC gathering of Quakers) I have had some intemperate thoughts regarding my summer job. Meaning that I have had some of those "I can't find my lanyard... I should be quit my job!" type of thoughts.
But different. I am very uncomfortable with the fact that I don't know exactly what my job is or how to do it and so have a hard time telling whether I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. It is the down side of having flexibility. I got little to write today. My bronchitis is going away. I walked at the Y... not back on my running plan yet until my lungs are clear. I got the first decent night's sleep in two weeks last night. Perhaps chronic lack of sleep plays some small part in my crisis of jobhood. Of course it does. I have decided not to make any hasty decisions today or tomorrow or the next day. I have decided to table all hasty decisions until July. Day 2 on the lurasidone. Can't say I've noticed anything one way or another. I really wish that there were some impartial observer that wasn't me who could evaluate the effectiveness of different pharmaceutical protocols. I can't find my fitbit. My anxious wrist itches. I miss my friends from third lunch. I don't like feeling like the new kid. Even though the new people are nice. I am surrounded by nice strangers and feeling anxious and worried that I am not doing a good enough job. Which is what would make it easier to say that I can't do this--that I can't continue to do this job I agreed to do. For whatever made up reason. There is such a short time in this current situation... less than 3 weeks left... and I can certainly handle this without any kind of elaborate support system. It just means that I will need someone to talk me out of quitting every afternoon for the next sixteen weekdays Either that or I can figure out what my job is and determine that I am doing it to my satisfaction. What did it take for me to accept the diagnosis of bipolar disorder? This is part of the talk I give for NAMI in their In Our Own Voice campaign.
After having been misdiagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder for twenty-some years, it was difficult to make the switch to accepting a diagnosis of bipolar. I discovered that many people with bipolar have waited 10 or more years to be correctly diagnosed. One problem is that there are long stretches of "euthymia," which is a fancy word for regular mental functioning... not Depressed and not Manic. In a mental illness in which there are long periods of dormancy you can see why a diagnosis might be difficult. When I decided to kick Depression once and for all, I made sure I was very compliant with my medication. I enlisted the help of a Behavioral Psych Nurse Practitioner and a Psychologist. I started a blog. I tracked my moods... And several of my friends reading the blog commented that they thought I might be bipolar. So naturally, I went to Google University and looked it up on the internet. I read all the online descriptions of people with bipolar disorder and decided that they didn't apply to me. I took an online screening test (I just did this again, by the way) and the answer always came out "You have little or no symptoms of bipolar disorder." ??? This is because when I self-report, I downplay or even forget the worst of my symptoms. And when asked how much of a problem the symptoms are I always say that they are not a problem. Even though this is not technically true. I just don't (still) like to admit that bipolar is difficult to deal with. Also, I am not taking online screeners when my symptoms are at my worst. I am moving a cubic yard of dirt in the front garden using a toy wheelbarrow. Or giving myself a haircut. Or sleeping 20 hours a day. Or crying uncontrollably for hours at a time. After four close friends all told me (independently of one another) they thought I might have bipolar disorder, I finally admitted that I should at least look into the issue. They all had personal ties to bipolar-- either a friend or a loved one or they themselves had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Even when I got the diagnosis from the psychiatrist and was prescribed appropriate medication, I had not really entered the acceptance phase. Acceptance came when I suffered withdrawal symptoms coming off a medication that is COUNTERINDICATED for people with bipolar but works really well for people with Depression. Acceptance came when I responded well to a medication that works to treat bipolar Depression but does NOT work for unipolar Depression... And acceptance continues to come and go, depending on where I am in terms of my symptoms. When I am doing well... when it has been quite some time since I have had a significant "mood episode," I am less likely to embrace my diagnosis. When I am doing poorly I am forced to admit that there may be some truth to the label. One of the things that made it difficult to accept the diagnosis was when family members or friends expressed disbelief and doubt. That I couldn't possibly have bipolar disorder. That the doctors must be wrong. I think they meant to be supportive or... something. But they gave voice to the doubts in my head. And while family and friends are an important part of my support team, I realized that the single biggest factor in my acceptance (and thus in my willingness to be appropriately treated) is trusting in my mental health professionals to know what they are doing. This does not mean that they are infallible. Or that they will get the right answer the first time. However, I trust that my Psych NP and Psychologist will more reliably be able to identify signs of my bipolarism than family and friends. Because that is their job. And they are up on the current research. And I tell them more things than I tell all y'all. Medication Update: Today was day one of my 20mg of lurasidone. BMI 28.7 (only doing this on Mondays) Mood:
Grateful Crap: stone fruits Equatorial Actions: Eating stone fruits healthy foods attempting to get enough sleep 20 mg lurasidone am 300 mg lamotrigine pm 5Several decades ago I took a learning styles inventory in which the instructor read a list of words and we were to quickly mark whether we had one of the following reactions to the word.
I know I'm getting the choices wrong. But it was something like that. And clear down the entire list my reaction was #5. The sounds of the words. ONLY the sound of words. And I was pretty sure that the inventory was ridiculous and that everyone in the classroom would have the same answers that I did. I was wrong. Most people had more going on than just the sounds of the words. But I am hyper-auditory. That sound is where my brain goes naturally. There was one word that did not fall into the ONLY SOUND category... I had an emotional reaction to the word "tall." Spouse, by the way, is 193 cm. This is a tangent, but in a way it is not a tangent. When I am a bit flittery... on the anxious side, on the manic edge of hypomanic... I draw great stability and calm from Spouse. Which, as I have discussed with myself and others, is a fine coping mechanism so long as it is not my ONLY coping mechanism. Which is is not. I had a very amusing experience in a crowd recently where I was feeling flittery and anxious (for no reason other than being in a crowd of people that I don't know) until I spotted a tall friend of mine standing some distance away. So long as I knew where he was (and you tall folk are terribly easy to spot) I felt quite able to deal with the crowd. How interesting that this feeling of calm and stability has attached itself to "tall." Perhaps because I am adamantly not tall and so when I am trying to get out of my own way, I seek something opposite. Or maybe just because historically several of my close friends have been tall boys. Tall, quiet, calm boys. Starting summer school tomorrow, and I am already missing the routine of knowing what will be happening every hour... knowing who I will eat lunch with... knowing where I will sit. I have convinced plenty of people that I am a font of spontaneity, but I don't think that is strictly true. At all. Not right now, anyway. Okay, regarding my medication decision-- hastily made and ill-informed-- i think I have changed my mind. Psych NP wants me to try lurasidone (latuda) 20mg once per day to treat the bipolar Depression. It is possible that I would only need to take the lurasidone while experiencing Depressive symptoms, not as a maintenance drug. I read some study that found lurasidone to be an effective, well-tolerated drug for the treatment of bipolar Depression AND found that weight gain was typically less than 1kg. Which is NOT 10% of my weight. If it were, we would have a whole other problem! And so, I am going to follow the advice of Psych NP and I will start my own little drug trial tomorrow. I will be more faithful than usual in my posting, I will be tracking my mood, exercise, energy and weight. Then I will make an appointment to talk to Psych NP about the results of my study. Happy? I thought you would be. |
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |