Category Archives: Learning Curve

The Finish Line

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Last week my life as I had blissfully known it, for the past year at least, came to an end.

I have been struggling very hard to write something to update everyone, and failing, and failing, and failing.

I wanted to explain more of the situation, but that’s not going to happen, so here are the bare bones.

I can no longer take Carbatrol, which has been my mainstay in mood stabilization.  Not ever again.

It's the Great Big Book of Everything, with everything inside. . ."

It’s the Great Big Book of Everything, with everything inside. . .

I have been through every drug and then some; when I stopped counting in 2010, there had been more than 70.  So I am at a point of patching together what I call the “least worst” solutions for my future.  I have a three-inch thick binder filled with my notes, my doctors’ notes, medication inserts, pharmacy info, articles from different websites, and I’m basically using that, along with a grip of reference books, to decide which drugs were the most effective and the least intolerable.

It’s only been five days, but things have really gone incredibly badly to start.  I don’t want to talk about it.

I’m actually very well-equipped for this, in one way, in an important way.  I have been through this fire, for five-and-a-half years I went through it, and I came out the other side alive.  I know what to expect, and I know that I can get through again.

The thing that is knocking at my infrastructure is that I honestly and truly believed that this was it for me, I had found my cocktail and that was what I would be taking until I drew my last breath.

Also, there is the added element that I’m giving serious thought to looking for a new psychiatrist.  I am undecided here, as I need to sit down and discuss some things with mine first.  Additionally, I went through this process a little more than a year ago, for the first time since I’d sought help in 2006.  I got my first psychiatrist on the second try, and I didn’t know how lucky I was.

When I went through my search last time, I had very few doctors recommended to me, because my then-psychiatrist and my primary just didn’t believe there were many equipped to handle my case.  And, in fact, of those few, all but two said that they didn’t think they could help, because they honestly didn’t know what could be done that hadn’t already been tried.  I appreciated that frankness.

Essentially, what that means is if I do need to find a new doctor (still a big if), there is more than likely only one whom I can go to locally.  And that’s if he is still around, and still taking new patients. I do have information I saved on several national options, but there are enormous practical and financial considerations there. So, we shall see.

My parents are being very supportive, in their way.  After Thursday’s appointment, I told them I am no longer going to discuss with them what medications I am taking, because the last thing I need to be thinking when trying to figure out how to make the best out of a bad thing is, ‘Mom and Dad are going to freak out about this one.’  That really should not be in my mind at all.  Mom took it surprisingly well, she understood completely; Dad, well he will learn to deal with it.  He just loves his baby daughter and worries about me so much.  They both do, after these past years of seeing me hysterical and blanked out and taking me thrice weekly for ECT and rushing me to the ED many times and sitting up nights watching me because they were worried I would stop breathing.  Those are memories a parent can never erase.

So that’s the gist of it.  That’s how my life changed completely over one Thursday in January.  I was one month and four days shy of a perfect year.  But I’m glad I didn’t know that time had an expiration date stamped on it, because if I had, I wouldn’t have loved it as carelessly and blissfully as I did.  I wouldn’t have assumed and made plans and, yes, taken things for granted.  Taking things for granted is not always the monster it’s made out to be, my loves.  And if I have to spend another six-and-a-half years, or the rest of my life, striving for eleven months more like these just past, I will say that it’s worth the trade.  The reward is worth the fight.  More than worth it.

 

The rest of the crew.

More of the crew.

I’ll get through and find something, but it’s probably going to be an endless road of different drugs and dosage adjustments and changing this for that.  I won’t say I’m delighted, but neither will I sit here and wonder and wail that I can’t deal with that prospect.  To me it has never been a question of “how long” or “an end” or “too much”, it just is and I keep going, because this is the life I am living, and that is the only choice I have.  To keep going, to plunge ahead, to try something else.

I will always keep myself afloat, even if it means clinging to the fin of a shark.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

On Being A Bitch

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(I really wanted to first write a post on all the sweet comments and commiserations and sympathy I got from the lovelies who responded to my most recent post, but I guess this needs must come out now.) 

My mother and I were heading upstairs a few minutes ago, her to go to sleep, me, apparently to write this post (though at the time I had no thought nor intention, the fact that I am now hitting the keys with a formed idea tells me it was a forgone conclusion).

Mom said to me, “You’re so sweet.”

I thought about it, and struggled for half a moment, before responding, truthfully, “Sometimes.  Sometimes I’m just a bitch.”

My lovely mother responded with something like incredulity (on my behalf).  ”What, like I’m not ever a bitch?”

You would have to know my mom and me and have been privy to years of us in our most intimate moments to follow the rest of the conversation.  But the gist was about how when my mom is a bitch, it’s in an ‘I’m tired, I’ve had a long day/week/month, I need some space, I’ll snap at you’ way.  Every man, woman, and child had been a bitch like that.  And yes, through the years, she has sometimes upped her game and been a real bitch, but it has been rare.

Even at her worst, though, her most intense, out-of-control-bitch-ness, I don’t think she has ever come close to me (and she agrees, though she loves me much too much to outright say so).  My level of bitch cannot even be explained away as mood disorder related, though on some occasions that has added fuel to the fire.  I am something that there isn’t even properly a word for, when I am a “bitch.”

Because when I am a bitch, I am intense, intelligent, persuasive, subversive, focused, relentless, forceful, and ten million kinds of dangerous.  I could probably do more damage than an H-bomb.  Seriously.  Ask anyone who has known me intimately and at length. Actually, don’t.

I don’t bring out the bitch very much any more.  I keep her in check, because I know well the harm she can do.  She can destroy nations (though her work typically runs on a slightly smaller scale), because she has a pretty spotless history.  All of her crusades have been honest, informed, and honorable.  How powerful is that?  A bitch who only ever fights for causes that are noble and worthy of her faith, and who can stand up to everything that is dished out at her and still walk away without a spot or a stain.  Gives me chills.

Liberty Leading The People ~ Eugene Delacroix

So yes, I have reined in the wrath, and I have learned to wield my power responsibly.  And I have gone from Liberty Leading The People to La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Which has actually brought me full circle in a way that is not worth my words to explain.  

I present, instead, a visual for all of you. I’m not sure whether to be proud of myself or frightened. Probably both.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci ~ Frank Cadogan Cowper


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Admin’s Block

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Everyone knows about writer’s block.  I personally know a great deal (although once I get past the dam, the ideas flow like Niagara).  But since I have been working as an author and the Admin on A Canvas Of The Minds, I have learned about a new form of idea backup – Admin’s Block.

One of the authors suggested a really great and seemingly straightforward to implement idea for that blog.  But for some reason, I spent about five days completely stuck on how to fit it in and best introduce and promote it.  I also had another thought of my own, and while I knew exactly how to integrate it, I just somehow couldn’t.

Then, a bit after a nap yesterday, BOOM, it all came flooding through me like the Falls.  I was literally working on two main pages, six drop-downs, a post and an email to the Canvas bloggers explaining the mishigas all at once.  I didn’t create a new universe or anything.  But it’s my nature.

As I explained to another blogger, I have all of these really great, inspired ideas – no, seriously! – such that I constantly have to prioritize and re-organize and remind myself, Slow down, Ruby.  One thing at a time.  If I try to get it all done at once, well things get so clogged that pretty much nothing gets through, and the little that does doesn’t get due diligence.  It’s a matter of continually breathing very deeply and reminding myself that both Canvas and this blog are projects.  They are ongoing, they are always going to be growing (I hope!), and by their very nature they are dynamic and not static.  New inspirations and suggestions and ideas and dimensions will be constant, and I need to adapt my mindset for that or my brain will explode!

I’m lousy at this and I know it and I’m working on it and I’m trying really hard to establish balance and pacing and boundaries.  These are skills that could make my life so much calmer, were I to hone them, but they are antithetical to me and the way I live.  I dive in headfirst without looking at depth, and if I take something on, I do it all-or-nothing.

Yes, my moods can exacerbate these tendencies, but I think that really they’re legitimate aspects of my personality, not a result of any mental differences (the kind that come with a label and diagnosis).  I am an extremely dedicated, passionate person, and I simply cannot do things by halves, e.g. my kids.  They aren’t mine, biologically or legally, but I never for a moment held myself back or kept myself reserved or them at arm’s length because of that.  I still don’t.  I love them, and that’s something I defy anyone to do – love someone by halves.  You think you can do that?  Guess what, you aren’t actually loving them.

People speak of unconditional love and it baffles me, because there is no other kind.  The minute you put conditions on your love, it ceases to be love.  Uh-oh.  There’s a rant coming on.  I think I’ll shut up now.

Moral of the story:  Find what works for you.

On a tangentially related note, it might appear that I have done away with my Blogroll. I haven’t, not really, but it was getting long so I wanted to organize it some.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Sleep? What Sleep?

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Day five.  Twelve hours spent asleep, 121 awake (and counting).  To give you some perspective, most people spend one-third of their day asleep.  These past five days, collectively, I have slept about one-twelfth of each, if you average it out.  Or eight hours versus two.  I am keeping records, best I can.

I suppose this experience was always a possibility, looming out in the Universe.  I won’t say inevitability, because I still maintain that it’s a manifestation of post-traumatic stress.  But I also never really thought much about the reality of reaching a moment where there would be no new pill to knock me out.  I should have, none of the newer sleep meds helped, the older and less commonly prescribed meds were usually effective in the beginning, but I would need higher and higher doses, and even they would fail eventually.  It feels like my body’s drug metabolism is increasing exponentially with each new medication it discovers.

But I always figured there would be more pills to try.  And there are, but I have yet to find a doctor who will write for them (well, there’s one, but I have to speak with her more on the subject).

I don’t even know so much that it would matter if I took an entire bottle of phenobarbital at once.  I’m fairly certain it would kill me, but I doubt it would put me to sleep first.  My unconscious has determined that I have to listen to it for a change.  And after approximately three decades of me shoving everything in my life into it, it has a whole lot to say.

I think it would be very interesting if there were actually some way for a specialist to study me, to test and somehow independently verify how quickly medications clear my system, versus the half-life that is the standard.  Perhaps there is.  But as interesting as it would be, I’ve felt like a lab rat for far too long.  This would be one area where experience, self-interest, and emotion would overrule my curiosity.

Sarah, who has been most directly privy to my struggles these past days, and who has walked with me, given honest but kind assessments of me and my situation, nudged me gently when my thinking has been compromised, but most of all just held my hand, today asked me how I was feeling.  I answered with complete honesty.

“Very flat.  Very, very flat.  I think that right now my brain is conserving all of itself for the vital functions, so the ups and the downs and the anythings fall by the wayside.  All in all not a bad compensation.”

I don’t mean flat as in adhedonia, the loss of all pleasure and interest that is a symptom of depression.  There are things that can keep my interest and keep me busy.  Thank God for my incredible movie collection and the projects I have that I can work on in bits and pieces.  I’ve kind of established a pattern of doing the automatic, easy tasks until I start to get weary.  Then I’ll put in a movie, and with luck start to drift into a bit of real sleep.  After a reset of a few hours, I wake up and use what I have recovered for anything that requires thought and creativity.  After that fades, I go back to the automatic, and the cycle commences again.

There is a part of me that thinks I should call my doctor about this one.  But I know he can’t do anything.  Moreover, a much bigger part of me feels like for the time being I just have to keep everything, quiet, calm, and soothing, and let my body make the decisions.  Until I feel it shouldn’t anymore.  For as much of a hard-head as I have always been, I have learned a lot, quickly, about letting my reactions direct me.  It has always been the other way around in my life.

Although something else my body seems to really be pushing me to do is get pregnant. Ha. No. That one is a decision made, and non-negotiable.

Moral of the story:  Let go.  Just let it all go.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.