Outpatient Therapy, Day 23/Psychiatrist Appt #9

Today’s session went really well. My therapist said I had made such strides over the last seven weeks that she agreed that I could be discharged on the 18th. Today, in fact, we had some new people and some that have been in the group for a little while that had it rock bottom and the therapist used me as an example how things can really get better. I feel good about myself today—something that I did not foresee being able to say even a couple of weeks ago.

I have built up a small coterie of close friends that know me intimately—the ins and outs of my mental illness. This has become my support group, yet another thing I about which I did not even think about. I was isolating so much and vindictively pushing people away to purposely further isolate me. The ironic thing is that the majority of this small group is made up of people with whom I had gone to church. That is my next major hurdle—reinserting myself back into my church. I am feeling less anxious about it, but something is still holding me back. Perhaps it is because not everyone knows my complete story and I certainly do not want to share that with anyone who has not been along for the ride.

I still do not know what “normal” is, but I feel more content than I have for a long while. I have not had any suicide ideation for a while, but the main concern I have, feeling this good, is that I am not ramping up to swing into the manic dark side. I am carefully looking for signs, and my friends know what to look for, so they may see it before I do.

I am going to try to go grocery shopping by myself, cane aside, this weekend. I will see how I deal with being around a large group of people. This should be a good test for me. It has been the one hurdle I have not passed (aside from returning to church). I have gone shopping with a friend that lessened the anxiety, but it is time I try to do it for myself.

I also saw my psychiatrist this morning before group. He also seems pleased at my bipolar improvement. Now that I am getting about six hours of sleep these last two days he has agreed to start reducing my Zyprexa, yet one less pill to take. He is going to submit an extension of my disability (currently ending on the 16th) to return to work on Jan 4th for two weeks at half-time to gradually get accustomed again with full time beginning on the 18th. I hope they approve this extension, as I am simply not ready to return on the 17th. He is not sure if it will fly since I have made such improvement, but he is certainly going to try. He is going to send in the paperwork on Monday.

Well, folks, that’s my story for today and I am sticking by it!©2009

Outpatient Therapy, Day 22

Yesterday was the first day that I have driven anywhere outside of my own neighbourhood area for a couple of weeks, since I sideswiped the 18-wheeler on the interstate. I have not had one of those dissociative episodes when driving in a while, so I thought I would take a chance yesterday and drive myself. The weather was just awful. It was pouring and visibility was cut to almost 500 yards/457 metres. I left an hour early just in case and was quite anxious about driving on the interstate the whole way, but I got there OK.

Had the weather been fine, having arrived so early, I could have sat outside and smoked until group started, but I was relegated to sitting in our room for a while before some of the others started to file in. I had my daily check in sheet already filled out since I do it from home before I get there (gives me more time to think and try to remember the details).

After the huge group split we started out “sharing” routine. I volunteered to go first as I had to leave early since I had an early appt with my GP yesterday as well. I had a good report to share and even had a smile on my face that everyone made a big deal about. Afterwards, the therapist commented that I was showing marked improvements exponentially. I think it has a lot to do with my psychiatrist putting me on the Lexapro a couple of weeks ago. I asked the therapist if she could mark some time for me after one of our sessions as I want to talk with her about my discharge from the program. While I have made huge strides over the last eight weeks (it was eight weeks ago today that I tried to commit suicide), I knew it was getting to the point that I could no longer afford to be in this program. Yes, my insurance is helping, but 10% of this, that, and the other adds up with all of the appts I have been having. I feel that my seeing my individual therapist now, along with my psychiatrist should be enough to continue with my recovery. I do not necessarily want to leave the group, but I have to make some decisions financially.

I cannot believe it has been eight weeks since I tried to commit suicide. The whole memory seems like such a hazy nightmare to me. On the one hand, I want to forget about everything. Yet, I have to remember it all to keep where I am at now in proper perspective. I have made some huge strides since then and I cannot forget this. So much has changed for me. There are more evenings than not where I can be in my house all alone at night and be safe. I am not sure what “normal” is supposed to feel like, but I do know that I am not as profoundly depressed as I have been. It seems that my bipolar is slowly being reigned in. The positive aspect is that I haven’t swung onto the manic side since starting the Lexapro, a valid concern my psychiatrist has as giving anti-depressants to bipolar patients in a profound depression can kick off a manic episode since the anti-depressant can kick you over to the other side. I have been carefully watching for that. I am getting more sleep now than I have been, and my talking does not seem to be any more excitable than normal. When I am manic, that is the first sign I can spot. I will get on the phone with someone and not shut up the entire time and I talk fast and excitedly. So far, I do not see any evidence to that.

Could it be that my bipolar is finally coming into balance? I am almost afraid to think that one aloud. Once my bipolar is in check, then I can start looking at my borderline personality disorder issues that, for obvious reasons, have been put on the back burner. I can continue that work with my psychiatrist and individual therapist, although I am not sure how to begin that whole scenario. There are some deep-seated issues that I have to work out, and this is going to take some time.

Meanwhile I am socialising more. My friend A called me as she was leaving work last night to check in with me and I asked her if she wanted to stop by my house on her way home. She enthusiastically said yes and I thoroughly enjoyed having her visit for almost 90 minutes. It is so nice to have people with whom I can talk about every day things. This is one area that I have seen positive changes in me. I am not isolating nearly as much. Right now, all my socialising is one-on-one; I have not tried to be in a group of people yet outside of my group therapy sessions, so I am not sure how I am going to handle that. I am going to try to start attending the NAMI meetings (National Alliance on Mental Illness) that take place Monday evenings right around the corner from my house. It is going to be similar to group with a different twist. According to the facilitator I spoke with the other day, there are only about 10-12 people that attend regularly and I will not have to say anything if I do not want to. I imagine I will just sit quietly for the first couple of meetings until I can get the lay of the land.

I am still on full-time short-term FMLA disability, but that runs out January 18th. Right now I am approved through December 16th, but I am now going to have my psychiatrist (instead of the group therapist) put in for the remainder of the time to see if they will approve the extension. My psychiatrist does not think I am ready to return to work anyway, and he wants me to start back only working half-days. I’m thinking, with the deadline coming up (yes, I could always convert to long-term disability, but that’s only at 70% of my pay which I cannot afford) I could put a return to work start date for the 4th of January to work half-days until the 18th. I personally think I need more time than that, but I am financially constrained. To tell you the truth, what I dearly wish I could afford is to go on full time SS disability, but I cannot afford what they would pay out, and Medicaid will not kick in until you’ve been on disability for one full year. I cannot afford to be without insurance. Sure, I could get COBRA from my employer, but since I cannot already afford what disability would pay, there is no way I could also afford the COBRA coverage. Caught between a rock and a hard place.©2009

My Head in a Vise

So far, since being off my meds, my sleep pattern hasn’t been too off-kilter. The only time it appears that they are affected is when I am experiencing my short-acting manic phases, which, I guess, is a good thing. The “good” part in that the manic phases are short. I thought I was back to rapid cycling, but this time I am not too sure. My manic phases approximate a 36-hour interval between anything else—anything else being the rapid descent into hell, where it seems I am now having the wonderful fortune of spending greater periods. Given my options, despite the personal drawbacks, I’d much rather be manic.

The kicker, sleep-wise, has been the depressed phase. Ordinarily, while it doesn’t amount to anything close to refreshing, at least I do spend some time asleep. However, in the last three weeks I’ve noticed a new wrinkle. Every morning, far earlier than when my alarm normally goes off, I suddenly awake with a bone-crunching headache. The pain is searing and tears spring to my eyes. At this point, despite however exhausted I still may be (whether I’ve had three or even five hours of sleep), I simply cannot roll over and turn off the light. I’ve tried popping a few Exedrine (the one OTC that usually works), but, of late, it hasn’t made much of a dent. Due to some relatively recent oral surgery, I have a few Vicodin laying around, so I tried a couple of those. Mixed bag of results: the headache eventually wears away; however, I am left feeling rather drowsy which is often compounded by the fact that the quality of sleep I did experience wasn’t great. That won’t do during the work week. Can’t log onto the network if I can’t first log into myself!

I don’t normally experience headaches, so I am rather concerned at the turn of events. I also don’t appreciate the nauseous feeling I end up with after taking any meds so early in the morning on an empty stomach. I even tried eating a few Phenergan with either the Execdrine or the Vicodin, but that just compounds the ensuing drowsiness—hard to look sharp as a tack at work if you can’t talk without a thick tongue!

I don’t think it’s anything organic. My last major BP crisis in 2005 resulting from a failed suicide attempt that landed me in a psych ward for quite some time resulting in some rather uncommon after effects. This admission bought me a new diagnosis to add to the BP: borderline personality disorder. Oh goodie, yet another tag. Didn’t know so much about it at the time, but after doing some research, it sure did explain why I was so heavy into the self-mutilation for a while, even at the later years of my life. One new symptom I began experiencing (not that I hadn’t already—it’s just now that I know what to call it!) was states of dissociation. One particular incident brought EMTs to my house, ones I evidently called myself according to the taped recording of my 911 call.

I don’t remember most of what happened (hence the dissociation). I have fleeting memories of being on the floor in my living room trying to reach for the phone. That’s it. The next thing I can remember is getting into a taxi after being discharged from the ER the next day (according to 911, I called around 0200 in a panicked state mumbling something about passing out after bouncing my head off my heavy glass coffee table). When I got home, the house was a wreck. There were pieces of pizza all over the floor between my kitchen, dining room and living room. When I got into the kitchen, after following the trail of pepperoni and mushrooms on the floor, I found what appeared to be the dough from a frozen pizza tightly bound into a mangled ball. Whatever happened had been extreme…I just can’t remember any of it.

The ER did a CT scan that proved no injury. All of the medical notes from the intake nurse to the doctor’s comments proved inconclusive. The ironic part is that they all referenced having a normal conversation with me in that I did not appear too distraught and was able to answer questions. Mind blowing to me since 1) I can’t remember any of it, and 2) what the hell threw me into such a frenzied state in the first place that resulted in attacking a frozen pizza…a frenzied state that must have lasted a long enough time for the frozen dough to have become malleable enough to shape into a crumpled ball while traipsing through three large rooms of my house resulting in passing out and hitting my head on my coffee table. The level to which I attacked this pizza is mind blowing enough in and of itself.

The next day (or maybe it was two days later), armed with my medical records from my ER visit, I went to see my doctor. It was then that I began experiencing some dizzying headaches. My cause for concern was that the CT was clear, so why the lingering headaches? I was referred to a neurologist is fairly short order and over the next two weeks MRIs and EEGs also proved inconclusive (however, during this time period I evidently had a single-car accident which I cannot remember, although the front end of my Civic will tell you otherwise, so something was still going on).

To make a long story short, nothing organic was ever proven. After consulting with my p-doc, I decided to transfer from my current mode of therapy, CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy), to DBT (dialectical…a story in and of itself). I learned more of the impact of borderline personality disorder while now learning to handle these fugue states of dissociation—each event always accompanied by extreme panic disorder according to the wreckage evidenced in my house at a later time along with a headache and, of course, the absolute memory loss. The one precursor to the dissociation was the headache, and then easily handled by the Exedrine. After months of DBT, I never got anywhere with learning the cause-and-effect of the dissociative periods (the memory blackouts were distraughtful enough), much less anything BPD- or BP-related, so I quit. The dissociative states, after a while, disappeared (no, the memory loss is still permanent) and the lingering headaches eventually did as well.

OK, so now it’s 2009. No more dissociation (at least no evidence of it!). But, now, I’m being jolted awake with these piercing headaches. The quality of my sleep has lessened; I always awake exhausted even if I am lucky enough to have six hours of it. My almost-regular popping of Exedrine while I bolt down my morning hot tea helps me orient somewhat to my workday, but now I am beginning to question the headaches, their causation. I thought about going back to see my regular doc, but I’m not sure where that will get me. While I’ve never presented myself with drug-seeking behaviour, I certainly wouldn’t want him to think I’m just hitting him up for more scripts of painkillers. No point in pulling in another round of neurologists—that’s already proven useless and far too expensive. There are no other underlying processes going on to further define this malady. It’s just damned inconvenient and, truthfully, quite bothersome. So, now I face my bleak spiraled-down states of depression with a constant state of exhaustion. It’s truly as if I haven’t had any sleep whatsoever. Yes, my depressive states are always associated with exhaustion, but the state of exhaustion has worsened suddenly with the onset of the headaches.

This morning I have only enough energy to drink my hot tea, sit here, and write. In a few hours, I will go through the motions of getting ready to go to church, but even this morning I question why I will go. My mind won’t be where it ought; it hasn’t been for a couple of weeks. Yet I still feel compelled to go. I can’t escape the fact that God has blessed me quite graciously when I was laid off earlier this year. Regardless of what anyone wants to think, I know the circumstances that took place that resulted in my new job—to me, personally, is nothing short of miraculous, say whatever you will. But, my focus is shifting. My attention is drawn to the BP that is consuming me along with all of the questions suddenly surrounding me of who I really am. The queer question. The Christian question. Right now, I just don’t give a damn. My head hurts, I feel like I am going to throw up, and I just want to crawl back into bed and shut out the world. If only all these racing thoughts in my head would just shut the fuck up.©2009

What's The Point?

I don’t even know why I bother with anything anymore. I’m getting so sick of always having to be the one who makes the calls, sends the birthday cards or other type of “thinking about you” type of cards. With the exception of only one other person in my life, my one friend, no one ever calls me.

After not hearing from my son for almost a month now (we used to talk2-3 times/week for about an hour each), I finally decided to call him. It was such a non call. Hell, he’s 26 and lives in Mesa in the same city as his father. All he talks about is how much he and his father gets together, how much his father supported his endeavors with the band. I’m just second banana these days. He dropped a bombshell on me by telling me his is no longer in the band, something he has, to date, invested all of his time and money. I never knew him to be happier. I asked him what happened and he said it was a serious of things and now they are looking for a new bass player. I asked him exactly what happened and he just repeated the same thing, so I said, “Is that all you’re going to tell me?” and he that was pretty much it. I was bothered by the fact that he had just plain quit calling me all of a sudden, and now he just doesn’t want to talk to me about the one most important thing in his life. So, I guess I’ve just been trivialized down to just a “somebody.” I’m tied of dealing with the way he treats me. I figure, I called him after not hearing from him for a month and now he won’t talk to me. Sounds too much like how the rest of my family treats me…like I don’t count. My son never even bothers to ever take the time to actually ask me how I am doing when we do talk, or take any interest in me whatsoever. Well, I’m not going to intrude in where I’m not wanted. I’ve pretty much already resigned myself to not having any family to count on, reply upon, or even pretty much to have a relationship with.

So much for being manic. That cycle lasted just over 36 hours. Now I’m downward spiraling again. You know, to just be plain blunt, I am pretty fed up with the way everyone treats me. I just seem to be an after thought with everyone. About the only one I can count on is myself. It’s ironic, if and when I do decide to end it all, there won’t be one fucking person that I would have made a difference enough to that would actually give a damn that I am no longer around. So what’s the point in going on. I hate my life, because I don’t have one. I work 10-12 hours a day alone in my home, and then just gravitate to another room in my house. I never have any plans to do stuff with anyone. I just sit home and stare at these four fucking walls. Is that the way my life is to be? Because that’s not what I call having a life. With the exception of one other person, I really don’t have any friends. There is no one for me to even call to make plans with. And my concept of family has disappeared.

I am damn tired of always being all alone. I’m just stuck with all these stupid thoughts in my head. It’s a pretty sad state affairs to realize that I don’t make a difference to anyone. I haven’t made one single contributing effect on anyone’s lives that I can remember. So, what’s the point of even dealing with others.

Went to church today. Snuck in right after the service opened up and scooted out the door before anyone could flag me down. Hell, if anyone was so damn interested, why the hell don’t they just pick up their fucking phone and call me? I missed last Sunday and no one bothered to even ask why. Well, I take that back, my pastor’s wife texted me just wondering where I had been and hoped I was doing OK.

I have no one to lean on, no one in my corner, no one who cares. And I’ve reached the point where I no longer give a damn. If I mattered to someone, I’d know it. And I don’t.

When I get into conversations with people about suicide, those who have never been in that space, can’t comprehend the multitude of reasons why someone would resort to that. They always seem to take a selfish stand. They always comment on how their actions were selfish because of what their actions did to everyone else. Well, fuck everyone else. It isn’t about them, it’s all about the person who is in that space.

Why have a seriously contemplated suicide before? There isn’t one exact answer, but it basically boils down to not caring about anything any more. I’m sick and tired of living this stupid life, such that it is. I really just don’t see the point of wrestling with these emotions any more. Nothing is ever going to get better; nothing is ever going to change. Hell, I’m 52. I can certainly see the handwriting on the walls. Nothing has changed for far too many years. The last time I recall actually being happy with my life was when I was in a relationship with someone. I wasn’t alone ad I had someone I could share my life with. That’s all gone now.

Having God in my life should be sufficient enough for me, but right now, that just doesn’t seem to fill that needed hole. All I’ve thought about today was just chucking my relationship with God and returning back to my old life. I already know that the two are mutually exclusive. I can’t imagine that God would want me to be as miserable and alone as I am, but there is nothing he can do about that, unless the bible is re-written removing any references to my life being an abomination before him.

I question everything in my life right now: what’s important, what counts, what makes the difference. I’m just so tired of being all alone with no one with which to share my life. No one to come home to. No one to make plans with, being with one person who knows me better than anyone else. Face it, I’m damaged goods. Who in hell would want to be saddled with someone like me anyway. My BP has become all-consuming and I am no longer capable of riding out these storms. And I would have to be a rapid cycler. At least if my cycles would last two-to-three weeks at a time, I could settle into a groove, but this time around he BP is all off the map.

Even going to church today meant nothing to me. The ironic thing is the topic the pastor was preaching could have been specifically for me considering what I’ve been wrestling with for the last four-six weeks, but the scripture references really didn’t do much for me. After we finished praise & worship, which is such a special part of the service for me, I just sat down and stared ahead counting down the time when I could get back home. And here I sit, back inside my four walls staring at nothing.

So, why bother any more? What’s the fucking point? ©2009

If I Could Just Turn Off My Brain!

I’ve been off-line since my last entry five days ago. I almost feel guilty to have let so much time pass considering the content. Yeah, I’m still here. The BP is becoming so consuming. I’ve swung way back to the manic side again. I’ve been awake since 0400 and right now it’s 0040. Give me almost four more hours and I will have stretched “today” into a 24-hr marathon. Tired? Not at all. I worked for 13 hours straight—no breaks, no lunch. When I logged off the network, I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday. I talked a mile a minute. I barely let her get a word in edge-wise. Towards the end of the call, she actually told me that she was glad to hear how happy I sounded. Geez, mom, get a grip. It’s called being MANIC, not happy…LOL. Then I called my friend and did the same with her. At one point she begged me to shut the hell up. She said, “My God, you're manic, aren’t you?” Then it hit me. Another cycle. How long will this one last? It’s a bite to stay awake for the whole weekend. By the time Monday rolls around, I’m gonna wonder what the heck happened to my weekend OFF. You’d think after working on my laptop all day the last thing I would want to do is get on my personal computer and start banging away at the keyboard. My eyes do feel like sandpaper, but I can’t shut my mind off. There are all these jumbled, random thoughts just racing through my head. I can’t just do nothing. I don’t watch TV and right now, I don’t have the patience to read anything. And even though I am wired tighter than a drum (that metaphor just doesn’t sound right), there is nothing else to do at this hour (try to remember that I do not live in a major metropolitan city…hell this state doesn’t even rate that…LOL). After having lived in Atlanta and DC, Greenville, SC is quite the sleepy community. Well, despite all the stupid, racing thoughts, I just plain don’t have anything else to say. ©2009