Change Is Coming

It's inevitable. With hypomania it always is, but this one worries me. I'm driving a car without brakes. Right now it's fun - windows down, warm fall day, music playing, smoking a good cigar. Enjoying myself. If I can keep the car at a reasonable speed, I can maneuver without brakes. Downshift, gently slide into a curb, there are ways to slow down without doing damage. But it's just a matter of time before the inevitable crash.

As if the feelings aren't enough, actions are speaking loudly. I'm obsessed with the website I'm building, LivingBipolar.com. I'm trying to write the occasional column for BipolarConnect. I'm trying not to ignore the family, but helping with my daughter's algebra homework is causing an upward slide towards the dreaded mania. Only for a short period, then I'm back to hypomania. Those damn slope equations, while easier for me now than they were 30 years ago are still not easy. Throw in a major stressor - we're short on money because of Black Friday Christmas shopping and school obligations that seem to hit all at once this time of year.

I'm trying to handle all my projects, handle the problems, and break in a new medication on an average of 4 hours of sleep a night. And I need a sleeping pill to even get those 4 hours. It's been this way for about 2 weeks, one day a week I get 6 to 7 hours, the rest I get 3 to 5. I'm full of energy, yet impaired. That impairment randomly sneaks into my head and Bam! I'm forced to take notice. Last night was one of those 7 hours of sleep nights, and I was a walking bundle of energy today. Even after that much sleep I unfortunately didn't take the opportunity to roll over and jump the wife, (morning is the best time, and really the ONLY time before the rest of the family gets up) as I was too obsessed with my work on the website. Obsessions are strong right now. With all that's going on in my head, the urge to self-medicate is also incredibly strong. I have quit drinking (for now), but would LOVE to get my hands on a joint. I know, I know, hold the lectures, I won't do it. My damn common sense is still hanging tough. Besides, I wouldn't begin to know where to find it these days. This desire. while tempting, will pass shortly as all other's do.

Sure as shit I'll be going down. I really and truly hope it's a mild slide that stops at normal. My new med regime might just temper things enough. I raised my Lamictal dosage to 200. I started Lithium, and just raised that dosage to 600. So far it's made me manic-leaning hypomanic. This mood might have come about even without the change in meds, or it might be exacerbated by the change. All I know is we have Christmas, New Year, and my annual hunting trip all within the next month. I desperately want to be good company for all these occasions.

I'm tightening the seat belt, this ride's going to get a bit bumpier.

The Game Face

I am SO damned sick of fighting this disorder.

My medication dosage is not high enough to handle my symptoms, but if I go higher, I impact my ability to function at work. And I'm absolutely terrified of losing my income source, or of having it cut significantly.

Because of some personal stuff I went from hypomanic to depressed in a day. I know that can happen to anyone, but I can't concentrate on work, and will probably end up going home early. That's the kind of shit I (and maybe many of us) face: Under-medicated I'm not stable enough to be effective in my job, but more medication and I'm not mentally sharp enough to be effective in my job.

I know everyone has their cross to bear, but damn - I'm so frustrated right now, I'm not sure if I want to scream or cry. I'll do neither, of course, I'll suck it up, shove it back in my head, and do what needs to be done. I'm glad to have this outlet, the only person I can share this with is my wife, and she's over-burdened already.

Time to put the game face on and jump back into the mainstream.

A Positive Place

I woke up this morning, still under the weather with a minor flu that's kept me down for a day and a half, but finally with some creativity and motivation. These days my cycling comes around to give me ideas and energy way too infrequently. I'm excited, and hope to get caught up on blog posts, BipolarConnect shareposts, and making the rounds of other's blogs. I may even get a chapter or two written.

I love it when this frame-of-mind rolls around.

Hypomania

You know, hypomania's a bitch. Yes, it feels good at times to be so full of energy, productive, and fun-loving. But much of the time it's pretty destructive. For example, I didn't sleep at all tonight. It's 3:00 AM, and I'm up. I have to take my family to the airport in an hour, they're taking a vacation without me, I can't get off work. But after going to bed early and trying to sleep for 2 hours, it was too late to take an Ambien, I was worried about waking up after that. So I'm up all night. On the positive side, I tagged all my blog posts back to the first of the year.

I wish there was a way to tame this without being risky to my career. I'd love to find a way to stay on an even keel, but I'm afraid that would impact my ability to work. The lamictal takes care of the lows pretty effectively, so I tolerate the highs and try to use it to my advantage.

This Isn't So Bad

When rapid cycling brings me back to this level, life is very good indeed.

Normal?

OK, I’ve never experienced anything like this. In the last 3 days I’ve been manic, depressed, and today I’m great. No depression, leaning slightly towards hypomania, but not significantly so. I just feel great. Refreshed, clear head, ready to take on the day.

I’m completely convinced this “yo-yo effect” is due to lowering the daily dosage of Lamictal, my primary maintenance med. About 2 weeks ago I called my pDoc worried about recent memory loss. He recommended lowering the dosage of Lamictal from 200 to 150 mg daily, which I’ve done.

Lamictal is so innocuous, it doesn’t have any kind of narcotic effect, doesn’t cause drowsiness, weight gain, or any side effects I’ve experienced. It works slowly, taking months to really make a noticeable impact to mood. If you don’t get the dreaded Lamictal rash, you won’t even know you’re taking it. But make a significant change in dosage and you’ll experience the deceptively powerful impact of this drug. It’s really pretty scary.

Friday Shorts

I’ve had a rash of hits on the search string "Depaquel". Law and Order must have rerun the episode where they mention this fictional drug. Depaquel is not, to my knowledge, a legitimate medication. The writers most likely got the name from Depakote, and Seroquel, both medications used to treat bipolar disorder.

My current hypomania is hanging in there, and that’s a very good thing. SAD (seasonal affective disorder) could kick in at any time. Every summer depression rolls in and stays until fall. SAD normally impacts people in winter, but there is a small population that gets it in summer. It hasn’t always been this way for me, I’m writing a post for BipolarConnect about this. This yearly pattern is how I was eventually diagnosed. Every summer my wife talked me into seeing the doc about my depression. He always prescribed an anti-depressant, as I expected him to do, and after a few months I always got manic. I finally made the doc listen, and told him the antidepressants weren’t working for me the way that we expected them to work, and we needed to consider bipolar disorder. I knew I had it, but he couldn’t see how I could live into my forties without being diagnosed. But anyway, my next pdoc appointment is in early July, I hope the slide doesn’t start before then. I’m going to ask for an antidepressant, I know they can be taken when another bipolar medication is also being taken.

My last post was a music post, Emmylou Harris doing that haunting story "Red Dirt Girl". I hadn’t heard it for years, and when I heard it a few days ago it struck a chord and I shared it. Today I heard it again on KPIG.com. A coincidence? Is a higher power trying to give me a message? Maybe I’m just being reminded to buy my tickets to a show she’s doing in my area later this summer…

Speaking of KPIG.com, their program director and on-air personality Laura Ellen died the other day. KPIG is a California radio station, and a long way from the heartland where I was born, raised, and continue to live. But Laura Ellen always took the time to answer my emails, and was genuinely interested in the shows we got in my area, the artists who played, and the quality of the performances. KPIG is one of the most unique radio stations in the world. They are a commercial station, but are independent, and play a wonderful variety of music ranging from hard rock to hayseed. Check them out for a delightful change-of-pace. When you do, remember Laura Ellen for making that musical treasure possible.

An email flash just came in:
I earn my living in the telemarketing industry, many of you know that and choose to be friends anyway. I’m not actually the person who calls, my accent is too Midwest for that. I work in IS, working on the technical side of the business. But we just received instructions to block all calls to Alabama on Monday, Jefferson Davis’ birthday. Evidently it’s a state holiday. Jefferson Davis was the only president the Confederacy had, from 1861 to 1865, during the civil war. He believed that corruption had destroyed the old Union and that the Confederacy had to be pure to survive. Can someone from south of the Mason-Dixon line convince me that this holiday doesn’t have racial overtones?

For those readers not living in the US, I apologize for all the US geographic references in this post.

I could ramble on forever, but that’s enough for today. Everyone have a great weekend, and let’s be careful out there!

Hypomania Watch

Smilin' Bob says the hypomania is still up!

Clarification

I was asked what I'm looking to accomplish with the LivingBipolar site. The answer - I'm not really sure.

I started out wanting a way to quickly read through a long list of blogs. This it accomplishes very well.

Then, I added a little design to it.

Then, I decided to add news and resources to it. Once again, it works well.

Now, I stll have a hypomania going on with creative energy to spare and I'm thinking of other improvements I can make. When I was at work the other day I pulled up the site, saw the history entry and the title, and I realized I was showing my employer that I was visiting a site called "Living Bipolar". That's when I started thinking about a site without the word "bipolar" in the title.

And a little clarification. BipolarConnect is a major global health care website, a competitor of sites like WebMD. They invited me to be an "expert patient" on that site, and write regular columns for them. I'm honored to be a part of that, and don't want to do anything that could be considered a conflict of interest.

So hopefully that's a little clarification.

Friday Shorts

On the LivingBipolar site, I don’t see enough benefit – yet. I’d like to increase the benefit without duplicating the ideas of sites like HealthCentral’s BipolarConnect, which might be a conflict of interest given my relationship with Bipolar Connect. One of my primary purposes in building the site, besides an outlet for my hypomania, is to increase traffic to all of our blogs. The thinking being if we could bring in people who might not take the time to seek out our individual blogs, "click-throughs" to our blogs would result.
Here’s thoughts of a rough "to do" list at this time:

A mirror site where the name does not include "bipolar" so our browser history does not show "bipolar". This might be good for work or public computers.
A bipolar wiki of some sort.
An open group blog where anyone can post.
Displaying blog comments from within the site (but you’d have to click-through to make a comment)
A message board or chat room.

I’m always open to ideas or suggestions.

My hypomania is hanging tough. The frantic nervousness that gives me nervous tics and unbearable racing thoughts has mostly passed. But I’m still too energetic, too irritable, and too willing to spend money I don’t have. And I tend to irritate people when I get this way, as recent comments to several blogs may illustrate. Try to remember it’s not really me, at least I hope hypomanic me is not the true me.

I’m living a bachelor life for a few days this week. My wife takes girl scouts camping this weekend, then accompanies my sixth grader on a field trip to New York. It’s time to party! Not really, but it sounded good…

For those who are trying to get into shape, here’s an interesting article:
A Healthy Mix Of Rest and Motion. I started doing this today, and it kicked my tail, in a good workout kind of way. I’m going to do it once a week from here on out.

That’s for this week’s Friday Shorts. I really have to start blogging more than once or twice a week again. But when I’m "healthy" as I feel now, I find other things to do. Not that I want to abandon my good friends, and I hope it doesn’t seem like that.

Friday Shorts

My current hypomania has hit critical mass. I’m getting in great, intense, workouts, but I can’t sleep unmedicated. I’m hoping things are on the downward slide just a bit. I just hope it doesn’t go too far or too fast.

I am continuing to work on the LivingBipolar page. I love working on stuff like that, if feeds so many needs in me. Creativity, technical thinking, research, and so forth. I’ve expanded it to include news feeds and resources. I’ll be adding a link library next. Is there anything else that would make it more useful?

Kyle will be moving back in with us. I’ve just written a column about this at BipolarConnect, but it will take a week or so for them to print it. You can subscribe to my posts if you take a moment and create an account. It will be great to have him home, but I’m nervous about it. We’ve butted heads terribly in the past.

All my life I just assumed I’d never hit 65 years, thinking with my lifestyle I’d heart attack early. Now I have every intention of being active into my eighties. A book that I’d almost call life-changing is called "Younger Next Year" by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge. There is a men’s and women’s version of the book. If you need motivation to get your exercise and fitness regime going, this is the book. My workouts are working, I’ve lost 20 pounds, gained size and strength, and ran 4 miles Wednesday morning. Those of us in the bipolar disorder community have to be SO careful. Our meds, while necessary for our ability to live semi-normal lives, can also exact a price. This helps counteract that price.

Did anyone watch "The Office" last night? Could there be a funnier show? A disgruntled employee sabotaged an entire shipment of paper by putting on a watermark of 2 cartoon characters in an obscene act. This paper shipped to businesses, schools, and other organizations. One of the funniest episodes ever.

I hope everyone had a great week, and will have an even better weekend!

Hypomania

I haven't slept normally for weeks now. I get about 4 hours a night - the length of time my Ambien seems to work. Unassisted, I'd be up for days. This crash may be a tough one...

Let’s Run This Up The Flagpole

Would an annual "convention" of bipolar disorder bloggers be feasible or desirable? A way we could get together socially, therapeutically, and professionally? Maggs (I think), used to host a get-together a couple of years ago, and it sounds like they had fun.

Actually, "convention" implies a very structured event, and I don’t envision that, at least at this point. "Get-together" implies a very loose event, and I don’t envision that either. I’d like a way to bring people together, for a day or two at the most, with enough structure to keep people from staring at each other all day, but enough free time so we can get to know each other. I would envision round-tables on important topics, workshops, support groups, and perhaps even speakers. All put together by us, using our talents and resources.

This could be an aggressive, structured undertaking, or it could be a handwritten agenda in a spiral notebook. It all depends on how many of us are interested. If there’s 6 people interested, we get together in a motel coffee shop at a central location we can agree on. If there’s a hundred interested, we look for a hotel with a meeting room. This wouldn’t be limited to bipolar bloggers, I know we have hundreds of people out there that read our blogs and never comment. We have caregivers, health professionals, social workers. Anyone would be encouraged to come. If we get enough people we’ll attract corporate attention and sponsorship assistance.

Now I know what you’re all thinking, and yes, I am hypomanic. But this sounds like something that would not only be fun, but helpful as well.

Thoughts?

Friday Shorts

Kyle is my 22 year old son who also suffers from bipolar disorder. Since we paid him for cleaning our carpets over a week ago, he’s been gone. How his girlfriend puts up with it is beyond me. But we just heard rumors that one of his good “friends” had someone OD in his apartment, and is facing criminal charges over that death. We were worried that Kyle was there when it happened, but luckily, it sounds like he wasn’t. He has an appointment to make his application for General Assistance on Tuesday, hopefully we’ll be able to track him down by then.

While I know this is of no interest to anyone else, I’m excited about it so I’m going to brag. After 25 years without a serious workout regime I started working out 3 months ago. This morning I ran 3 miles! Even in the peak of my fitness, my teens, I wasn’t able to run 3 miles. I was pretty fast back then, but wasn’t a distance runner. I love to run, and I’m really fired up about this. I can’t run often, the pounding on my knees is painful, and is physically hard on someone my age. Given this I only run once a week or two, and use an elliptical trainer or bike machine most days. My goal is to run a 5 K race this spring, and it looks like I’ll make it. Also, I broke 195 on my weight! As of this morning, I was at 194.5. The weight is coming off very slowly, less than a pound a week, but it is coming off. Target weight: 185. Dream weight: 175. My weight in college: 165.

My frame of mind isn’t a lot better. I’m not really manic any more, more of a mixed episode. I’m slipping between depression and hypomania right now. At least I’m more or less free of the mania I had recently. That was awful.

The work situation is difficult, and that is contributing to my marginal frame of mind. Last summer I left a salaried job I enjoyed to move to a competitor through a consulting company. I was to be a consultant for 3 months, then if my performance was good I’d be hired on permanently. My performance was good, but right after I started the competitor announced a merger. All hiring, of course, was frozen. After the initial 3 months it’s been a series of month to month extensions. Finally they told me they’d like a 6 month contract then evaluate the situation at that time. Well, I don’t like this at all. I have to admit, as a contractor I’m making more money than I’ve ever made. BUT: My expenses are much higher. My family is not covered by insurance, and I’ve already paid several thousand dollars out of pocket for medical emergencies. I have to tell the family we can’t take a vacation this summer because the consulting company doesn’t offer vacation time. Because of medical bills I can’t make several necessary household repairs that must be done. Damn, I hate money problems, and I hate instability.

My girls have been begging for a pet. They’re in the unfortunate position of being the 4th and 5th of our kids. We’ve done the pet thing, many times in the past, many different critters, and have no desire to do it again. My youngest daughter has been writing stories about little girls and pets, not to get us to buy one, but because that’s what was in her heart. Well, through their persistence and downright cuteness, they won out. We now have a black and white bunny named "Lilly". It’s hardly left the arms of the girls since then.

Well, enough for now. I’m going to try to make it around to everyone’s blogs this weekend, hopefully my frame of mind will allow it.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Friday Shorts

I’m done with American Idol. The American masses don’t care about quality. They want cute, sexy, or attractive. This is exactly why I stopped watching all prime time music award shows many years ago. It’s all about packaging and marketing. Make the performer attractive to pre-teen girls and who cares if they can sing or perform – they’ll be successful. Disgraceful.

Kyle (our 22 year old bipolar son) called a few days ago and asked if we needed our carpets cleaned. We did, of course. Kyle can clean carpets better than any professional. We rented a cleaning machine, and he cleaned all day and into the night. We paid him well, he works so hard and does such a great job. My wife paid him in front of his girlfriend, we didn’t want to offend him by giving the money directly to his girlfriend. Kyle continued to clean well into the night, and he asked if he could stay with us that night. Of course he could. We got up the next day, and guess what? Surprise, surprise, he’s gone. Haven’t heard from him since. When will we learn, you don’t give money to someone with untreated bipolar disorder.

70 degrees in the heartland within a few days! Woo-hoo! I’ll get reacquainted with my deck and my humidor of cigars.

My mania is settling into a more pleasant hypomania, and I hope it stays for a while. Of course when I’m manic I slide between the two, but I’m REALLY tired of mania. I need to be able to accomplish something at work again.

USB memory sticks are everywhere these days, I’ve used one for years to carry things back and forth between work and home. I got one not too long ago that has something called "U3". This allows for programs to be run directly from the memory stick. Firefox browser, Trillian messenger, Filezilla FTP, Open Office, IrfanView, RoboForm, and many more free applications. This is a very cool piece of technology. Launch the programs with a single click, leave no footprints or trails on the computer you are using, securely store passwords, bookmarks, and so forth. I won’t work without one ever again.

I encourage everyone to jump over to http://bipolarconnect.com. My blog is located here. If you survive seeing my picture, take a moment and subscribe to my posts, it will help me out. Actually, the new design they have there is pretty cool, and makes it very easy to interact with others.

Finally, I got to thinking about the concept of a "community blog". A blog where anyone, named or anonymous, could post. A bipolar disorder theme, of course. You could plug your main blog, make announcements, tell others if a fellow blogger is in crisis, give those who just lurk or are intimidated by blogging a chance to be heard, and so forth. These ideas come a million miles an hour when I’m hypomanic, and can be difficult to implement or maintain when I’m "normal". But this wouldn’t be a big deal, especially with assistance from others. Thoughts?

Enough for now, everyone have a GREAT weekend!

Mania

Hey All – I’ve figured out why I haven’t been able to post more, or show any kind of significant support to anyone, or even return emails. I’ve got a mania going on. This is not a feel-good hypomania, although I slide into that from time to time. Unmedicated, I would be a true basket case right now. I guarantee I’d be self medicating and trying to do anything to get relief from this. Instead, I’m battling some racing thoughts and have the attention span of a 2 year old. Work is difficult right now, but I AM able to work. The Lamictal is doing it’s job. It will never take it all away, and it shouldn’t. But it makes life easier to live

Britney Spears and Bipolar Disorder

The buzz, for those that care, is that Britney Spears has either bipolar disorder or Post Partum Depression.

PPD my ass - that girl's got a MAJOR bipolar hypomania cooking.