June 2, 1999 - two weeks after diagnosis
I'm so sleepy. I guess it's the Depakote, or maybe it's that my coffee is now 3/4 decaf instead of only 1/2. Or the Seroquel hangover. All these PILLS!
I did really well with the pills the first week, because my schedule stayed fairly regular. Get up and take a Wellbutrin, that was around 7:00-8:00 a.m. At 9:00 I'd have a diet shake and take Depakote and all my vitamins and supplements (Fish Oil, Vitamins A, B complex, C and E plus a multi-vitamin, and one coated aspirin). Lunch around 1:00, take another Depakote. The second Wellbutrin would come 8 hours after the first. Dinner generally around 7:00 p.m., along with the last Depakote of the day. At bedtime, Zyprexa.
But I was having trouble sleeping, and was worried about putting on even MORE weight because both Depakote and Zyprexa were associated with weight gain. To help with the sleep issue, Dr. Meyer switched me to a timed-release form of Wellbutrin; because of my concern over my weight, he wrote a prescription for Seroquel.
WELL - Seroquel is a hell of a lot stronger (for me) than Zyprexa. I am still going to bed around 11:00 or 11:30 pm, but now I am sleeping until after 9:00 a.m. Then this morning I got off-schedule immediately because I had to go get blood drawn before eating anything - so I wound up taking Wellbutrin around 10:30 a.m. and didn't have my breakfast shake with Depakote and assorted supplements until after eleven. Now I will want lunch around maybe 2:00 or so, but Mom and I want to go to a movie that starts at 2:10 - oh, I guess I can take a shake with me - and a Depakote.
UGH! My life has turned into a pill routine!
I am also having a lot of trouble with water retention. If I sit a lot during the day - which often I do, I make my living here at the computer - by evening my feet look like sausages, just waiting for the skin to burst in one long slit like the split in a cooked hot dog. This, too, is a side effect of Depakote. It may pass.
I think I have been so busy dealing with side effects that I have not thought a lot about my psyche.
Write It All Down...
The doctor asked me to write up my psychological history, and that turned out to be a difficult and depressing task. I put it off until the day before my appointment, then had to do it all at once. I was able to see, looking back, that I have had at least one major manic episode - even if it was clear back in 1981!
But still I asked him, at my last appointment, what his thinking was. My life history was so much one of depression, so little of mania, and it seemed to me all the times I could have been described as "manic" (all but one or two were hypomania, too) were responses to outside stimulus, rather than spontaneous. Dr. Meyer explained to me that bipolar disorder can start that way - episodes, especially manic episodes, don't arise on their own, they happen because some life event triggers them.
That made me feel more comfortable.
Now, though, I have new concerns. The thing is, my experience with hypomania - if that's what those good times were - well, those weren't dangerous times. They were good times. And they were rare times, except when I first went on Prozac and felt cheerful and confident for most of the first 18 months.
I drew the graphic here to illustrate how I perceive my personal bipolarity. It seems to be comprised of mostly long stays at one pole or another, the depression deep and paralytic (though it has never been suicidal), the hypomania productive and, with luck, creative. I have no idea what "normal" is for me - it's just a green line on a graphic!
Anyway - now I'm taking Depakote. It's called a mood stabilizer. And maybe like many of you out there, I'm already thinking hey - I don't want to be stabilized at the green line. I want to stay above it.
Next: Emotionally Precarious
