Skip navigation

life goes on, it happens every day

Life goes on, it happens every day … simple words sung by The Kinks (now I’m really showing my age!!). This is how it feels though. Nothing changes, I just feel crap everyday. I don’t want to get up, I don’t want to face the day, I don’t want to go out. I make myself because that is what is expected of me. I spoke to my pdoc last week about how I can be smiling and responding to someone yet still be feeling the gaping hole of nothingness inside me. The emptiness is so physical it hurts. I feel like my feet are stuck in thick clay and every movement takes a huge effort.

I’m still going to the meditation class and we have covered a few different types of meditation, all mindful but some sitting and some walking. I find the walking meditation very difficult. You have to walk very slowly (preferably barefoot or in socks), looking about 2m in front, being mindful and aware of every step — the way your foot moves, the pressure as it touches the floor, the way you turn at the end and so on. My mind wanders and I find myself concentrating on not falling over!

The sitting meditations are easier although I can’t say I’m proficient at them. I actually find it more beneficial to relax the way my pdoc showed me through controlled breathing. I’ve been getting very bad tension headaches because my anxiety level has been up and I’m holding my shoulders tightly upwards. Breathing and relaxing helps.

Medication-wise I am now taking 250mg Pristiq along with Epilim, Lamotrigine, and Avanza. I’m still hoping for improvement.

medication and meditation

I’m now taking 200mg Pristiq daily and have had slight improvements followed by crushing downs. My pdoc says that it is more helpful to look at my mood as a trend on a graph rather than focus on the daily changes. Obviously what I want is an upwards trend, a graph line rising steadily until stability is reached. Along the line there will be short term ups and downs. I’m not sure whether I have reached this stage or not yet as I am having such horrible down periods and very small positive changes. I hope this will change soon.

As another way of treating my own condition I have started classes in Mindfulness Meditation. The class provides a guide and I then practise meditation twice daily for 20-30 minutes. The two meditations I am currently using are Breathing and a Body Scan. I am finding it quite relaxing to meditate but I am only just beginning to explore the possibilities of changing how I react to the world around me and the feelings within me.

One of the main emotions I am hoping to let go of is anger. Anger at myself for being who I am and irritation with the world around me when I have hypomanic episodes. To be able to balance out my highs and lows through meditation would be wonderful. I would still have these episodes (unless my medication works well) but by using Mindfulness Meditation I hope to be able to give them less of my attention and to focus on them to a lesser degree, so that they are not the major driving force of my behaviour that they are now.

treatment resistant depression

One good thing to come out of my last session was that my psychiatrist told me about a conference he had recently attended and a paper that was given there. It was on treatment resistant depression and the latest findings are that a combination of Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) and Avanza (mirtazapine) or Effexor XR (venlafaxine) and Avanza seem to work as the best combinations. This is good news for me as I take both Pristiq and Avanza. I hope the combination works soon. I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who has experience with these meds.

apparently mistaken

At last week’s session I mentioned about the shortness of my previous one and was told I was mistaken and that I DID have a 50 minute session. Ho-hum, not much point in going on about it but I know neither my watch nor his clock nor the waiting room clock could all have been wrong and set to the same time.

the 50 minute hour becomes 30

Today was the first time I’d seen my psychiatrist since his 5 weeks away. I needed to go; there were issues I needed to talk about. So, first of all he was 30 mins late. OK that’s not unusual and sometimes people need a bit more time. I’m a patient patient! But then he only saw me for 30 mins instead of the 50 min (psych’s hour) standard appointment I have. What is more he charged me for 50 mins!! Yes, I should have said something but by then he was seeing the next person so I did comment on it to his secretary.

What made it worse for me was that I never got a chance to even touch on the issues I needed to discuss. The whole 30 mins were just about fiddling with meds and asking me about my lymphoedema treatment. What a total waste of time. I left very upset and feeling unworthy of being heard. These specialists seem to be a law unto themselves. I thought I had a good psychiatrist but recently I’m beginning to wonder. I may as well go to the GP just for scripts.

So there goes my attempt at writing a positive blog — on the other hand, it IS positive, positively peed off!

negativity & positivity

I feel like I’ve lost my way.

When I started this blog I had hoped to include positive life events as well as those associated with having bipolar. Recently everything I type seems to be negative. A whinge about my life. I had not intended for it to be this way and feel I need to rectify this.

On the positive side, taking Pristiq has had some effect. On a couple of occasions I have forgotten to take my daily dose and have really noticed the difference, so I guess it is doing some good. I have my fingers crossed that it will continue to improve the depression in spite of other things dragging me down.

Another positive is that on July 30 I am starting a Mindfulness Meditation course. Anything to help, right? Maybe I will discover a better way to cope with being bipolar or maybe I will just find a way to relax, either way it can’t be bad.

As yet I don’t know what else I can do, but I do know that I need to get out more. I have become very isolated since giving up former activities. Even going out alone for coffee is a huge achievement for me at the moment! Finally, I have decided on a quit day for smoking so all around me can expect some mood fluctuations around July 19 :) :)

rock-bottom

If it isn’t enough having bipolar depression, along comes another thing to send me spiralling further down. I’ve been having lymphoedema treatment for my legs (massaging, laser and daily heavy bandaging). After four weeks of treatment I now have compression stockings that I will have to wear forever. They are very thick and you need to be some sort of iron-woman, which I’m not, to get the damn things on.

 Not only that but they severely limit the type of shoes I can wear. For a start, I always have to have shoes or thick socks on — no going barefoot. Summer shoes are out because they won’t fit over the stockings. “Slide” type shoes are out because they cause too much wear on the stockings.

I’m imagining summer and having to wear big clumpy trainers all the time and not being able to wear light summer clothes and shoes. For someone who absolutely loathes the heat this is bothering me a lot.

So today I hit rock-bottom yet again. The whole deal is costing a small fortune (which I don’t have), and all I can see is a dismal future. This coming on top of already being so depressed is making me feel like I can’t go on.

Today someone said to me “well think of the others who are worse off than you”. Telling someone in the depths of depression something like that does NOT help! I know there are others worse off but that doesn’t help me.

My pdoc comes back next week and I know he is cutting back his hours, so if he tells me he is retiring soon, I won’t just be at rock-bottom, I’ll be tunnelling through it.

GIVE ME MORE MEDS!!

things i miss

Something I hate about this horrible bipolar depression is that it robs me of enjoying the former pleasures in my life. I love reading, or I did. I used to read a book every one or two weeks, yet since the depression has been at its worse I haven’t been able to read. I start a book and find myself reading the same page over and over with no comprehension. I have a stack of books waiting to be read and no ability or motivation to read them. For me that is sad.

Music is something else I’m missing out on. In good times I have music around me most of the time. I listen to the radio or my iPod in the car and my iPod at home. But at the moment music is just too triggering for my emotions.

As anyone who has experienced major depression knows, it is a destroyer of motivation. Everything becomes an effort and interest in even the simple things in life just disappears. Getting up and ready for the day is a huge effort when all you want to do is hide in bed and let the world go by. Then at night sleep is hard to come by as you sit blankly in the dark wondering when this feeling will end. Either tears, or sometimes the loss of the ability to cry, become your constant companions. A sense of nothingness overcomes you. All you want is your life back.

Solian out, Rivotril in

Today I told my stand-in pdoc that I had stopped taking Solian and that my restless legs, while still occurring, had lessened in frequency and strength. He agreed with my decision to stop taking Solian as it has the known side-effect of restless legs or akathisia. He also suggested stopping the Benztropine  I was taking for the problem and he gave me a script for Rivitrol instead. I’m just hoping this doesn’t make me sleepy the next day as I have been so tired lately and I’d like that to change.

Other than the discussion about meds, my stand-in pdoc did not go into any of the issues that have been adding to my depression this week. It has been a bad week but he puts it down to my restlessness. I’ll be glad when July comes and my regular pdoc is back because I really need to talk through some stuff. Added to everything else, I was told today that my regular pdoc is cutting another morning from his schedule, meaning he’ll only be working two and a half days a week. I think he is easing himself into retirement and this makes me very anxious. I have never been able to trust anyone in the way I trust him and the thought of having to see someone new in the future is something that is so hard for me to face.

discontinuing Solian

I saw my stand-in pdoc Friday and he suggested cutting back the Solian as it seems to cause restless legs. I decided that I couldn’t face another sleepless night so I stopped taking it altogether. Probably something I’m not meant to do but it is that or accept being exhausted and having unbearable leg jumping. I slept well last night for the first time in a couple of weeks. It was lovely! My pdoc won’t be impressed by my self-medicating (or de-medicating) but he doesn’t have to put up with the legs and exhaustion!!

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 31 other followers