Twice As Crazy

First off, before I get into the meat of my post, I just wanted to bitch that the Recent Comments widget I have is currently not working. It's annoying me but it has to do with the comments feed so there isn't anything I can do about it. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

Okay, now that that's taken care of onto the post.

As most of you who have been reading my blog for a while now probably already know, I'm bipolar.

I was diagnosed September of 2010. I wish I would have sought out help sooner, but I didn't. Not much to be done about that. Anyway, I have been on one particular medication for the full year. That medication is Lamictal. It is used to treat both people who are bipolar as well as people who suffer from seizures. I started off at 100 milligrams and was slowly but surely upped to 300 milligrams. Well, at the 300 milligrams mark I had some pretty fucked up side effects. I was slurring my speech, I was walking like I was drunk and I had double vision. Needless to say I called my shrink the next day. He told me to cut one of the pills in half, so I would be taking 225 milligrams. Magically, no more side effects. So that was great and that's where that medication is staying.

However, that is not enough. At first I felt fine, I didn't notice any sudden mood swings or anything like that. Well, not up until the past two weeks. Out of no where I would go into one of my more aggressive mood swings. I would want to suddenly just want to start throwing shit and wanting to scream just to let some of it out. Needless to say I couldn't do either. At work I'd be fired. At home I don't want to break our things and I don't need the cops called because I screamed at the top of my lungs, causing the neighbors to think someone was being tortured.

After that swing ended I would either slip into "normal" mode of I would become extremely hyper to the point that I felt like I was about to jump out of my skin. After talking with Master I decided to call my shrink.

He agreed that I shouldn't be cycling that badly while on my medication. He said that my current medication is not enough by itself. He's been thinking that for the past two appointments now but didn't want to mess with anything because I wasn't that bad. With this little update he decided to add another medication.

He added Seroquel. He wants me to start at 50 milligrams for two nights, then 100 milligrams for four nights and then finally reaching 150 milligrams and staying there. This will be the second night of the 50 milligrams. I've looked into the side effects and one of them is cotton mouth. I woke up with that this morning. Other than that? Nothing. Hopefully it stays that way.

I really am hoping that this does it. I'm hoping this is the magical mix of medications that helps me. So, within a week I'll be on a total of 375 milligrams worth of meds. Awesome.

It was one thing being on only one medication, but when I realized that it wasn't enough and I needed a second medication as well, it kind of made me feel... crazy as hell I guess is the way to put it. I know I'm not completely out of my mind, just a little left of center.

Tweaking the Meds

At my last shrink appointment (yes I call him my shrink) my medication doses were upped by 50 milligrams. It doesn't sound like a lot, and it wasn't really because I was already on the lowest "full" dose. So adding 50 milligrams wasn't much at all. But Dr. L wants to take is slow to see what is going to work the best for me instead of going as high as we can. I like that about him, even though it takes trial and error to do so. It's better than being over medicated in my opinion.

Well today I started feeling... down. Not depressed, but down. Master said I seemed vacant. That's actually a pretty good word for it. I was stressing out and as a result, instead of dealing with it I was shutting my mind down. While shutting my mind down I lose my personality, my sense of humor, etc. I can still function. I can still do my job just fine.. but everything else is pretty much gone. I believe it is some kind of self defense mechanism. It is my way of dealing with it without dealing with it, if that makes any sense. I pretty much become numb. Numb is not healthy.

Master said He was worried and I understood that. My next appointment with Dr. L is next Friday. Well I didn't want to wait that long to tell him. So I called his office and played phone tag with him for a little while until finally he called me back and I was actually at my desk. I explained to him what was going on and how I don't think my current dosage of 150 milligrams is enough. When my medication dosage is changed it works great for a little while because it is more than what my body/mind is used to. It's one of those drugs that has to be constant because it builds in your system, it's not an instant reaction. So this is where the tweaking comes in.

Dr. L asked if I still had some pills left. I said that yes I do. So he told me to take 1 full pill then cut another in half and take half of that pill. So basically I'd be taking 225 milligrams per day. I said I would do that. He said we'd talk more about it at my next appointment. Thankfully that's only 8 days away. But the fact that he was willing to help me right away by being creative about it was really comforting. He's a great shrink. I really like him.

Thankfully I have just enough pills to make that work. I'll run out exactly on the day of my appointment, at which time I should get a new prescription. So the timing works out perfectly. I would hate to have to refill the current prescription just to turn around and get a new prescription three days later. That would be a waste of a copay.

So hopefully this will work and be the right dosage. I won't know until I talk at length with Dr. L and see what he has to say about it. I'm just glad that I honestly don't have a problem talking to my shrink about my problems openly. I'm not embarrassed about it. I don't feel weak because I have to ask for help. And I'm glad that Master encourages such. He doesn't want me any more crazy than I have to be. ;-)