Fuck Bipolar

I haven't been well. My silence over the last little while may have lead some of you who know me intimately to suspect this. I am ... angry. This is on top of the lingering depression problem. It has not been too the extent that I believe it is necessary for me to go into the hospital. It has, however, been enough that it makes getting my household duties done difficult. It has made getting out of the apartment and being in the community difficult. All the little things that my therapist says I should be going out and doing right now, I am really struggling to do it.

I have had this happen before. I mentioned it to my psych nurse way back in Spring. I think I posted something about how well that went. My kids were on spring break. She thought that putting me on another SSRI was a great idea. I went from depressed to suicidal in the span of about 3 days and then I was in the hospital for about a week while they fixed my medications. At that time, one of the psychiatrists that was treating me asked me how long I had been on the combination of Seroquel and Geodon. I explained I had been taking it for about 7 years. Cue him being offended and all around not happy. He was particularly not happy with the fact that my dosage was so high.

Next thing I know, I was taken off of a LOT of medication. I felt a bit better. A little time goes by and the mild sense of dysphoria grew more intense. I say something to my psych nurse. She tells me that my moods are not really fluctuating, it was just life happening. She tells me that my problem is the stress that comes from being with the kids when they are on break is causing my depressive symptoms. After a few months of this nonsense, she says 'well, let's increase your seroquel.' I voiced my concerns about this because upping my dosage of antipsychotics really didn't do anything to stabilize my mood, unless you counted mild zombification as stabilized.

At which point, she says that I'm being overly anxious and triples my prescription for Ativan. This all happens Monday this week. I start taking the 300mg Seroquel and problems become apparent. My coordination is off hard core. I was stumbling like I was intoxicated. When I got out of bed, I nearly brained myself on the door jamb which is a few feet away from the foot of the bed. It was awful. I couldn't walk across the room with out tripping (and this was with out kids toys in the way). I was exhausted and I had a massive headache. But, the part that really disturbed me is my vision changed. My close range vision is blurry now. My moderate distant range vision is what my close range vision was before (I have a mild astigmatism in my left eye so things are a bit fuzzy). And, things have a bit of a halo about them.

Cue a panicked call to my pharmacist who says that is all an indication that I am on too much and I should call my dr stat. Call the psych nurse and I don't get an answer back until the end of the day, despite the fact that all three of the messages I left clearly conveyed my distress over the situation. She says that we're going to press on with the increase in the antipsychotic, stating it will be a 50mg increase before a 100mg increase. (Originally, I was on 200 mg of Seroquel. Which I got put on when it became apparent that the Geodon was losing effectiveness as a mood stabilizer. And I was put on that when the Seroquel in the past was losing effectiveness as a mood stabilizer. And before that, I was on both meds ... and the drama and bullshit just goes back to when I began dealing with these people.)

So, Beloved and I discussed it. I was upset and afraid. We decided that I was going to go back to the 200mg dosage. The mind fog lifted to a significant extent, the coordination issues cleared up, but the vision issues remained. I tried again today to get ahold of my psych nurse. No one called me back from her office. So, I called my general practitioner. I gave the nurse I spoke to a quick rundown of the situation so I will be going in on Monday to figure out what the fuck we're going to do.

In the mean time, I'm going to feel like shit, be frustrated because I can't see properly, and want to crawl into a hole and hide from everything.

Fuck this bipolar business with a rusty chainsaw.