Maybe it’s because I was speechless at my appointment with Dr. H but sometimes I wonder if there’s anything even wrong with me at all. Am I really unwell or is that just me being… I don’t know. Something else?
Dr. H made me feel as though he expected me to lead the conversation and I couldn’t. He asked me what I hoped to get out of therapy and I had no idea what to say so I told him I don’t know how to answer that question. I told him everything that happened to the point where I started to see Charlene. Dr. H asked me what I felt I needed to work on and again I didn’t have anything to say. So I told him that the medicine Melissa has me on works wonderfully – when I take it. My symptoms are muted if not absent. I’m sad all the time but life is sad, I suppose. I get angry but it’s a different kind of angry, there’s fear in it. Fear that I will become the lunatic I was before the chemicals. But the chemicals, they help me but I don’t know who I am with them in my system. I sat there on his couch and I asked myself if I even needed therapy, what was I doing there? I sit here now and I’m asking myself the same question. What Am I Doing?
As awkward as it was I think I might like Dr. H. We talked about dogs and how I have become immersed in the volunteer work lately. How did I learn that saving animals was a passion, why do I think I feel the need to save them, he asked me. They don’t have a voice. They can’t save themselves. Their whole life is dependent on human choices. I want to help them. At the end of the long conversation about dogs, specifically the ones I’m close with right now including my own kiddos, he told me he suspected trauma in my life and most likely during my childhood. Fuck. I knew that was coming. So I explained that I didn’t consider it trauma, I call it life. But I did tell him, quickly and without as many details as possible, about my childhood but then the greatest thing happened:
Dr. H didn’t apologize for my life. He didn’t say “oh no, that’s awful, so sorry”. He didn’t tell me that I was “strong” and that I’m a survivor.
And because of that I think I like Dr. H.
Today I had my appointment with Melissa, I don’t remember if I’ve wrote about my plan to ask for completely different medicine but because I can’t commit to sleep as much as I should I wanted my mood stabilizer to be separate from my sleep medicine. And I didn’t want sleep medicine. I didn’t consider my not wanting sleep medicine to be a manic symptom but Melissa pointed it out and it does make sense.I feel rushed, like I have a lot to do but I really don’t. I feel like if I’m sleeping I’m missing something and putting myself in a bad spot. But I really don’t trust myself with sleep medicine. I misuse it and I almost killed myself on Ambien so I don’t even want anything close to that. But, Melissa says I need to sleep. I am human despite it all.
I’m officially done with Seroquel and hopefully the weight it caused will start to come off. I’ll still take the Metformin to balance the insulin out so maybe that will help with that. Lithium is still part of the cocktail as is Lamictal.
In place of the Seroquel she prescribed me Vraylar, 3 mg to begin with. I haven’t looked up much about it but I do know it doesn’t have a generic so the cost is high but I have a free trial coupon for a 30 day supply and she gave me a four week trial pack at the office. Along with all of that a savings card was given to me that is supposed to help with the copay that will come along with it. The website says it’s made for Bipolar and Schizophrenia Disorders and the side effects are minimal. Weight gain made the list but at 1.3 pounds over two studies.
Melissa says if this works well I’ll be able to come off some of the other medicines and just take one pill for it all… and of course a sleeping medicine because I think that will be a struggle for my whole life.
For sleep she prescribed me Restoril. I don’t know anything about this either, I’ve not looked it up yet. But I have heard its name around and haven’t heard anything too bad about it so hopefully it’ll work.
Now… somewhere between the time I woke up and now two people recommended I start smoking weed again. I used to smoke to help me sleep and to ease some anxiety off me (not as a social thing) but I quit right before I started talking to K with the intention of asking her on a date. I didn’t know how she would feel about it and she meant more to me even then than self medicating. So it’s been over a year since I’ve smoked or really even thought about it. But two people mentioned it today. And all day today I’ve been wearing my D.A.R.E. To Keep Kids Off Drugs shirt, I didn’t notice the hilariousness of it until K mentioned it to me after I told her.
After my appointment I went to see a friend for a while and we were talking about life and I don’t know if she’s bipolar or anything but I know we both share a similar past. She told me some of the medicine she’s on and I told her about what I’m on and we compared what we’ve been on and the different ways it made us feel. I expressed my hatred for chemicals because they take away my creativity and she said she understood. We talked about if it was better to be manic or depressed and we both agreed mania was our preferred choice.
We finished talking about prescribed medicine and started on a different topic of how to treat an animal with severe PTSD, I mentioned that if it were legal I think a capsule with a small amount of weed would probably help the anxiety and that’s when we transitioned over to her telling me that she smoked to help with her issues because the medicine just lacked something. I told her that somebody had said that I should do that earlier in the day and we discussed that a bit.
That’s something else to think about. It’s legal in some places and not in others. It’s a big debate on if it helps or not. I know more than a handful of people that use it to ease their mental illness symptoms.
Afterward I went to K’s and told her about my day and about the recommendations. She found it entertaining and pointed out the irony of the shirt I had been wearing. I was expecting her to weigh in her opinion but she really didn’t. K used to stay high in her college years so I don’t think she would tell me no, don’t do it but if she did I wouldn’t give it another thought.
Love, Pacie 