Mania, Meds & Awesome Shrinks

So if you happened to read my last few rather novelesque blog posts I would like to apologise for the format and the whinging. My mania escalated somewhat and after averaging around an hours sleep a night for quite a while there and being unable to hold my shit together in public an emergency visit to my psychiatrist ensued and meds were increased and Valium was added to help me sleep.

As I think I have mentioned before my psychiatrist is absolutely amazing, she is an empathetic and kind woman who actually provides proper talk therapy as well as writing scripts. She also takes the time to explain everything she is doing and her reasons why.

She and I both want me to stay out of hospital if at all possible as she understands my family dynamics and how impulsively I can act when I feel like I am trapped and agrees that that situation isn’t likely to actually help me but just complicate matters at this point. 

She also is acutely aware of the ‘higher the high the lower the low’ issue with bipolar and wants to bring me down firmly but steadily to hopefully reduce the depths of the low that will no doubt follow rather than with a sudden massive dose of meds as they would in hospital which will make me crash head first into depression.

We are very mindful of this particularly at the moment as I am getting very easily irritated and angry when my senses are overloaded and it is now the first week of the two week Easter school holidays here and we discussed ways of coping with having the four children home all day fighting and asking for things and – well, being normal children I guess! 

The other issue that was quietly hiding in the background and is now becoming a bigger problem again is my eating disorder. The tablets seem to make me nauseous and supress my appetite, although I was feeling funny & less hungry before I started taking them too so it’s hard to tell what is side effect and what is just a result of the mania.

I’ve lost 7kg (15.4Lbs) in the last 10 days.

On one hand this has me doing the happy dance, I fit into my nice clothes again and I actually feel good when I look in the mirror which is a very rare feeling. On the other hand, I am knowing that that it is extremely unhealthy to lose that much weight that fast and I have very quickly become trapped in the “now that I am this size I can’t gain weight again, therefor I can’t eat even if I do get hungry” mentality and I’m starting to blur what is side effect that will pass and what is eating disorder that will get worse.

It’s currently 8am on the first Monday and my daughter is the only one awake, she is quietly watching a movie in the other room. I slept last night, a full 8 hours too! But I am still quite jumpy this morning but more ‘very hypomanic’ than ‘manic’ as I was able to sit still long enough to write this. It’s going to be a big day, I have to take the kids to town to get hair-cuts and maybe do the groceries, depending on how I’m coping, then I have to drive into the city for my brother in law’s birthday dinner. 

Dinner. Shit. It just occurred to me that not only will I have to try and curb my outwardly hypomanic symptoms which is nearly impossible, I will also be expected to eat a regular sized meal. In the interests of surviving the day I am going to try and compartmentalise it and direct my anxieties to the first half first.

So that’s what’s happening here at the moment, thanks to everyone that sent kind messages. I feel very loved and I appreciate it!

The Facade of Living

Underneath the small talk, smiling hellos and comments about the weather lies my true self, the one I feverishly hide from the real world. People don’t want to hear about pain and suffering, they don’t want to know about the broken dreams and confused realities that haunt me. They want to know that I am “fine, thanks for asking”.

In my village I was seen as the girl who was caring and thoughtful but could sometimes be a bit too talkative, over the top, loud and annoying. I became involved in EVERY committee in the small town and surprisingly there are a lot of them. They puzzled because although I worked full time and had 4 children I didn’t appear to need food or sleep and then one day I suddenly disappeared off the radar for a month and returned more subdued and without proper explanation. 

When I got out of hospital for that manic episode, the longest and worst depression of my life followed and it hit me like a brick. I pretended I was fine for months, until I couldn’t.

My 2015 suicide attempt was a huge shock to all but a small handful of my closest family and friends. Most people had no idea I had ever suffered from depression. Many people still don’t know, I live in a place where stigma is still very real and I keep things like that on a need to know basis.

Even the people who say they want to be there for me through thick and thin, the ones who open their own hearts and souls to me can’t be expected to hear the inner workings of my mind day in day out. It’s not like I have a one off problem with a colleague that I can vent about and after some stellar words of wisdom from a mate it will simply go away again, this is chronic, this is for life.

Mental health is so often compared with physical, visible issues; yet unlike a broken leg it doesn’t go away after six weeks. After a while friends tire of hearing the same story day in day out, particularly when there is nothing that they can do to change the situation and half the time it looks like I’m not trying very hard to change anything either. 

So stigma aside, I can’t expect to be brought a casserole every day for the rest of my life or for friends and acquaintances to be there to take me to every doctor’s appointment because I don’t trust myself to drive, pick the shopping up for me because I can’t get out of bed that day. That stuff is for the short term, that stuff is for broken legs, not for chronic mental health conditions. 

Finding help for these needs for an ongoing basis steps away from the role of ‘friend’ and into the role of a ‘carer’. Carers are usually partners, siblings, children or parents; they see the ugly side, the repetitiveness and the draining reality. They bite their tongues, count out the pills and decide when to call the doctors. Even when I know I need it and I love the person doing it, I hate being ‘cared’ for. For me it reinforces the fact that I am a “burden” and increases my suicidal thinking. 

All in all, I think I cope better for longer when I’m hiding my struggles. After the 2015 incident I was open with some people for a while, but those closest to me just constantly worried analyzing every facial expression, calling daily to check up, they asked about my psych appointments and if I was taking my meds.

I felt like I had no privacy and even on good days I was being reminded that I wasn’t just Kate to them anymore, they no longer saw me, they only saw my illness. Slowly I have convinced almost everyone around me that I am doing great and they have relaxed, entire conversations pass without bipolar or depression being mentioned once, and I like that.

When I am down I keep my sadness to myself, I hide away, make up excuses and I write. The internet has given me a much needed outlet where I can privately scream from the roof tops to like-minded individuals and the blog is a platform where I can express my manic thoughts, opinions, fears or even suicidal ideations without judgement. 

So under a veil of “I’m really well thanks, and you?’ and for as long as I can, I will keep on, keeping on. Quietly.

Hypomania or helpful?

I am wondering if I am starting to show a few signs of mild hypomania, I’m not euphoric by any stretch but I’m not depressed and I am irritable. I’m still an insomniac but I am less tired in the mornings than I was, I have also been getting bouts of paranoia, I’m speeding in the car a lot more without realising it, ‘oversharing’ to strangers, feeling the need to listen to dance music loud and I’m more impulsive - yesterday on a whim I decided to cut my long hair short and dye it “bimbo blonde”. 

The hair salon I go to is managed by a friend of mine and is located at a large public hospital in the city. A lady in her 30s sporting a baby pink dressing gown came down quietly and asked for a cut and colour, she looked worn out and very unwell, her story unfolded as my friend’s colleague Catherine put the foils into her hair and it was clear the poor woman had been to hell and back. 

Suddenly a look of horror appeared on the ladies face and she said “Oh my gosh, I never asked… how much will this cost?” Catherine did a quick tally up and told the lady the price. She started crying and said “I am so sorry, I should have asked before… I can’t afford this, you will have to stop.” Catherine’s expression was one of ‘oh crap, I don’t know what to do, and you have ¼ head of foils in, it can’t be left like this!’

 So without thinking it through I immediately offered to pay for the ladies haircut, which I just “knew” was the right thing to do – I mean the poor women really needed the pick-me-up after all that she had been through. The lady started crying and was so thankful that it made everyone else well up too, in the end another client that was there chipped in some money and both Catherine and my friend did as well and the lady left feeling much happier.

Now, I like to do nice things for people, it makes me feel good to change someone’s day for the better the only trouble is that I wasn’t really in a financial position to be making that kind of offer, I did it impulsively the way I tend to make decisions when I am hypomanic. Luckily the others had decided to chip in and I had spent less on groceries this week so I was able to make it work but my good intentions seem to come out of my mouth before I have thought about the implications.

I’m torn because I am currently reducing my meds starting with the anti-psychotic, I have cut back from 80mg a day to 20mg and I’m not sure if this mood shift could be totally unrelated, related to the decrease or a withdrawal based thing. I don’t want to go back on that drug due to side effects and I really don’t want to numb away any chance of creative thinking or potential euphoria – I was depressed or flat for such a long time, I just want to feel good again and the fear that that could be potentially destructive scares and saddens me. I hate this illness, I question every thought that comes in my head, I don’t know what’s real anymore… 

What do non bipolar people experience? What is ‘normal’? I wonder if half the time I’m just overthinking things…