Tag Archives: Bipolar

Thought of the Week: Lithium, One Month In

About a month ago, I wrote about being diagnosed with Bipolar Type I and the treatments I’m undergoing. Specifically, I wrote about adding lithium to my daily pill diet, and being both concerned and excited about this new treatment. I was afraid of the results, afraid of the side-effects; in particular, I was afraid of what it was going to do to me mentally. I was looking forward to the possibility of a more steady life, and afraid that I would become a zombie.

So now it’s a month later, and I’ve been on lithium long enough for the effects to settle in. The overall result? It’s really, really weird.

I haven’t noticed a wide array of different crazy side-effects, but there are a couple of things that are different that I can really only attribute to the lithium itself. The first, most obvious and noticeable effect is a significant tremor in my hands particularly, and in my body in general. Sometimes the tremors become quite violent, although they are mostly more subdued. For example, I spilled tea on myself and my mouse while writing this post because of a sudden shake. It’s even a little more difficult to type on the keyboard (thank goodness for autocorrect). I’ve also noticed a strange phenomena when I’m sleeping. Mrs. Satis has for a long time said that I shake or move uncontrollably when I sleep, but recently when I’m coming awake (that state between sleeping and waking) I begin to shudder throughout my entire body. It’s not painful, but is the most peculiar sensation I can describe. Every muscle in my body, it feels like, starts quivering rapidly, and this continues for several seconds before eventually fading away, leaving me feeling normal. I’ve started to become used to this, and I had something similar (but much milder) before starting the lithium, but it’s a little unsettling.

The second most obvious change is mental. Here, I can almost feel the lithium interfering with the chemical signaling in my brain. I have a constant fuzzy, numb sensation near the back of my head – right about where the cerebellum would be, I’d say – and emotionally I’m simply gone. I can still laugh in the presence of colleagues but I don’t actually find the joke very funny; I can still frown when Mrs. Satis is angry at me for forgetting to do something for the millionth time, but I don’t actually feel upset. I feel steady, certainly; almost like a see-saw that’s frozen in place.

There’s a good side to this. I don’t get nearly so angry, and I especially don’t get so depressed. This is a hard one to explain, actually, because I still feel a great lethargy, which was always one of the key characteristics of my depression. I still want to spend all day lying in bed, sleeping. (I got ten hours of sleep last night, yet I still felt compelled to have a nap all morning.) I can’t bring myself to do anything, never mind the important things that need doing every single day (like cleaning).

And there’s a down side, which is that I can’t react appropriately to anything. If little Satis is happy, I feel a little “meh”. If Mrs. Satis is angry I feel a little “meh”. It’s okay at work – reactions are governed by pre-scripted rules for social interaction, so as long as I respond the way work wants me to respond, I’m good – but at home it’s causing all sorts of problems. Which is ironic, because the whole point of lithium was to improve my quality of life.

It leaves me wondering what the point of any of this medication is. All I’ve done is traded a violent, abusive, depressed and lazy monster for a quiet, monotone, unfeeling lazy monster. And I have no idea which is better.

Do I want to go off lithium? I’m not sure. There’s the part of me that’s enjoying a bit of stability for once. There’s a part of me that hates the relationships this “new” me is forming with his loved ones. And there’s now a big part of me that just doesn’t give a f***.

Sigh. What would you do?

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Thought of the Week: The Darkness Burning

And so goes by another week of wasted time and workless nights; no writing, no doing, no thinking. Long evenings of dozing and watching Futurama and eating too many bowls of cereal, waiting to be able to go to bed and fall asleep, to forget the emptiness of yet another day.

I’ve been struggling with my maladies for many, many years, but was only recently diagnosed with (or learned of my diagnosis of) Bipolar Type I. I’ve already written about this, but it just all suddenly makes sense. Look at this graph:

Screen Shot 2013-10-20 at 9.24.49 PMThis is a chart of my mood over the past six months. As you can see, it goes up and down a lot. I haven’t had more than a week or two of feeling generally stable. What’s much more interesting is the pattern of ups and downs. I need more data to be able to see a genuine trend, but I’ve highlighted above periods of time where my average mood remained below a rating of “5”. They seem pretty evenly spaced, don’t they? A month of up, a month of down.

And so the cycle goes. I’m in a black phase at the moment, entering autumn and feeling overwhelmed with the work ahead of me, both in my personal life and with my novel, and although it seems like it’s lasted forever this time, I can see about that it’s only been about three weeks. Another week or two, and I might be looking up again.

Wouldn’t it be nice? What if I could predict my depression, prepare for it, set things in place to ease the way for myself and my family? “Well sweetie, in about two weeks I’m going to start making your life miserable again; we’d better prepare.”

It probably won’t work out that way. I’m unpredictable, and that’s part of the problem. Ignoring the averages, look at the variation in the above graph: I can go from a 9 to a 2 overnight, and back up again the next day. It’s not easy, believe me.

Unlike typical bipolar disorders, I don’t have especially manic phases. I don’t spend money compulsively, I’m not promiscuous, and I certainly don’t feel like I can do anything and everything in the world. On the best of days it’s a struggle to force myself to do even the things I want to do. However, I do have extremely difficult depressive phases. I’m on four different drugs to try and combat this. And as of this week, I’ve added a fifth: lithium.

That’s right – the dreaded lithium. The certain and dreaded proof, if any was needed, that I truly am bipolar. And I don’t know how I feel about it. If it works – if it softens the downs – I’d be very pleased. The side effects are worrisome, though. I have a mild hand tremor as it is from my existing drugs; lithium may make this worse. In my work I need to have pretty steady hands, and this could definitely cause problems. Weight gain? I gain weight when I’m depressed anyway – my nightly routine usually includes several bowls of cereal. I certainly don’t need to get any fatter.

Worse, I’m both looking forward to and worried about just simply feeling numb. At its worst, my depression nonetheless warms me, a kind of comfort in solitude, in trusting in a known quantity. I know my depression, it is me in the most basic of ways. It’s as much a part of me as my own hands. Drawing back into it is like curling up by the fire in the dark. What am I going to do without it? Will I be able to carry on working, writing, living without as much difficulty? Or will like become even more intolerable without even the escape of withdrawing into the dark?

We’re going to have to see. My doctor hasn’t exactly started me on a low dose of lithium, though there’s plenty of room for increasing it. Part of me wants it, just to see what it’s like – and part of me is terrified.

Which will win?

Featured image from http://quenya101.com/ainulindale-quenyanna/page-5-§§14-8/.

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Thought of the Week: We Apologize for the Inconvenience in my Head

I’m sitting here right now, doing my best to cope with my head’s decision to have a total breakdown. I assure you, it’s not a pleasant experience. I apologize if this is disjointed or nonsensical.

Downstairs, my wife is making General Tzo’s Chicken. She’s doing her best to cope with me. I assure you, it’s not a pleasant experience. It took me three hours to manage to cut up the broccoli.

I don’t know if I’d call it a panic attack; I certainly feel somewhat panicky. Overwhelmed; all the little things are too much. I don’t mean little things like cleaning the house. I mean little things like Lego figure heads, the scrap of paper on the floor, the itch in my left tear duct, the vaguely numb sensation of too much acetaminophen. The leaves on the trees that don’t line up, the hole in my underwear, the fact that the window I’m typing in on my computer isn’t perfectly centered in the screen. These are the little things that are all too much.

I end up on my hands and knees, rocking back and forward incessantly like a crazy person.

Wait…am I a crazy person?

It’s a rare lucid moment that’s allowing me to write this. Maybe it’s therapeutic. I missed my therapy appointment on Friday – I forgot about it. I haven’t called The Lovely J (to borrow a phrase) to apologize or reschedule. I don’t know if I can. I feel worse every second that goes by, and it’s stopping me from actually doing anything about it.

I don’t want to clean the kitchen tonight.

I don’t want to have Movie Night with Little Satis tonight, but don’t tell him – he’d be devastated. I think I’m going to have to force through it.

I think I must be crazy.

There’s too much recycling.

I have a friend who used to have panic attacks. She said it felt like she couldn’t breathe. I don’t feel like that. I feel like I can’t exist. I feel like I’m exploding, from the gut out. I had a crazy notion chopping the broccoli to ram the knife right into my stomach. There was a crazy flash of relief at the thought, but I didn’t do it, obviously.

I was playing Plants vs. Zombies…it was helping to still the storm, until I got to a level I can’t beat. Now that’s worse. Why doesn’t anyone make games that are just simply easy, all the way through? Wish Heroin Hero was a real game.

Maybe an episode of South Park will clear the crazies.

I feel an incessant, burning desire to work on something related to the The Redemption of Erâth, but there’s no way I’m in a state of mind to do anything about it. I tried another cover design, but I deleted it before I was halfway done. It sucked.

I’m so desperate for a cover design and I have no idea where to go for it.

I’m listening to Kamelot on Pandora. It’s fast, and kind of matches the spinning in my head.

This has helped. I apologize for the rambling, and I’ll be back next week with something more sensible.

Thank you.

I’m sorry.

Thank you.

~

Featured image from http://www.chesapeakehealthylifestyles.com/?p=1316.

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