Tag Archives: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Repression: More About ECT

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“Of all the unicorns, she is the only one who knows what it is. . . to feel regret.” ~ from The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

Sweet, lovely, wonderful SummerSolsticeGirl gave me a trail of a thought, a thought which I followed to its logical if fairly uncomfortable conclusion.  Which is way up from paralyzing.  See?  Progress.

I already wrote a fair bit about ECT.  In the spirit of a nice, cheery, start-to-the-weekend kind of way, I’m going to re-post some here, along with the original links (the first especially is a bit long and doesn’t come to the focus for a while).  There are more of them, I know.  I also know how to find them, but I won’t, not today.  Today is already splendid, and getting splendider (yes, I said splendider) by the minute, so I’ll do more of my post-traumatic electroconvulsive therapy explorations another time.

I have to say that I honestly hope some of you take something valuable from this.  I needed the dam to break for me, but my drunken writing of the other night is allowing me to take something else back, too.  Perhaps I’ll discuss it another time.

These posts were written in immediate succession, all in one long writing excursion.  After which, things got really, really bad.  More so than I can yet explain. . .  Hence the word “Repression” in the title of this post.

Here goes.

From Fair Warning (The Chameleon Post) ~

. . . I feel like I kind of “got my brain back,” I guess would be the best way to put it (maybe another post – one day I’ll look for all of my maybe/another post references and make myself actually write about them, that should give me material for about a month).  Aside from my girls, my brain is probably the thing I love most in this world.  It is decidedly that which I cherish, adore, and appreciate above all other things that make me the specific and unique Homo sapiens sapiens which I am.  And ever since I emerged fully from the ECT haze (not to be confused with the long-term effects the experience bestowed upon me, those are still thriving), once again able to fully utilize my fervently adored synthesis of gray and white matter, I have not had more than a week or two where it hasn’t given me some reason to worry.  That’s damn near a year straight, and I’m not counting back to the beginning of the ECT, when I should have been extremely worried (that would tack on another eight months, for a lovely round 20 months, or well over a year-and-a half).

Had I known then. . .  Actually consulting my notes, I was extremely worried at first, but not for the reasons that ultimately still plague me.  After a few treatments, I basically progressed into a rapid-cycling, delusional, completely unaware, and even at times clinically psychotic haze.  The psychosis was a very strange, oddly curious experience, honestly.  I was hallucinating, full-blown hallucinations.

The background being that I have had very mild tactile (affecting the sense of touch) and olfactory (related to the sense of smell) hallucinations for years, but literally so mild that the first few times I startled and looked around (tactile), or asked anyone near me if they smelled what I did, usually food or smoke (olfactory).  After that, the disconnects didn’t bother me, which probably seems very strange. . .  And still, to this day, if I smell something and there is someone in the vicinity, I’ll ask them if they smell it, too.  Honestly, I do it completely out of curiosity and an attempt to be aware and monitor the things that go wonky with me (much in the same vein as the plea above).

But the ECT hallucinations. . .  I was seeing things (visual), hearing very distinct noises as well as voices – not in-my-head telling me things voices, but someone calling to me from another room (auditory).  And of course the tactile and olfactory increased.  What makes this very odd and interesting to me, is that while in one part of my brain these were absolutely real occurrences. . .  It was almost as though my mind was split.  As real as they were, and as gone as I was (and believe me, I was gone), I knew as I experienced them, with a very faint but absolute certainty, that they weren’t actually real, external stimuli that existed.  They were strictly a product of my wildly out-of-whack mind.  I knew that no one else could see/hear/feel/smell what I did.

It’s. . .  I don’t know, I guess unfortunate is the word I will choose, in retrospect.  I was still semi-cognizant of reality, but not quite enough so to make the connection of, Hey, if this kind of shit it going on, maybe it’s a signal that it’s fucking my brain up instead helping it.  The hallucinations were fairly early on, but as I’ve written about in previous posts, by the time I even consented to the shocks, I was so psychologically and emotionally worn down, desperate, and in my doctors’ thrall. . .  Add to that repeated shocks to my brain. . .

I can honestly say that is the only time in my life that I ever “let” anyone force me to do anything.  I researched the treatment very thoroughly, considered it very carefully, made an informed decision, and said to my doctors (vociferously, and without doubt or hesitation), “No, never, absolutely not, under no circumstances.”  I expressed this determination explicitly to five doctors.  Repeatedly, for three solid years.  I have a written report from one of them who had suggested electroconvulsive therapy as an option for me, more than two years prior to my “consenting” to it.  I know this isn’t important to anyone but me, but it is so important to me.  Please be kind and indulge me.

The psychiatrist in question is regarded as the best of the best, the doctor for bipolar in the whole of my state.  I won’t detail his credentials, due to my rule of not disclosing identifying details about anyone in this forum, but they are extremely impressive.  He doesn’t even have a regular practice, he is one time consultation, and by referral only.  Translation:  He is the doctor to whom the utterly confounding, seemingly hopeless, inarguably treatment-resistant patients are sent.   A few months ago I was granted a second consult with him.  I say “granted” not in a snide manner, but because to my understanding, anything more than one visit is nearly unheard of, and it took some string-pulling, as well as genuine kindness and sympathy for me on his part.

His relevant assessments on my “Mental Status Exam,”  (direct quotes).

  • “-cooperative, insightful, thoughtful”
  • THOUGHT PROCESS:  ”Logical Directed”
  • COGNITION:  ”Normal Cognition”
  • INTELLIGENCE:  ”Above Average”
  • JUDGMENT:  ”Intact”
  • INSIGHT:  ”Good”

Direct quote regarding ECT:  ”-Consider ECT.  Ms. ~ and I discussed this.  She is currently not in favor of this strategy, though it has proven remarkably effective for many patients.  She is aware of the primary side effects, cost and commitment to 6-8 weeks of intensive treatment.”

Psych speak for, ‘She’s intelligent, she lacks neither judgment nor insight, her thought process is ideal, she understands concepts without any distortion, she takes her time and considers things carefully,’ (Mental Status Exam).  After doing some research on the Mental Status Exam and the terms psychiatrists use to complete, or “score it,” if you will, I can put it much more concisely:  I passed with flying colors.

Next, ‘As far as ECT as a treatment, she has researched the shit out of it and refuses outright to even put this on the table as an option,’ (quote about ECT).

Couple the two, and what you get is, ‘She is cognitively flawless, and has made an informed decision about which her position is absolutely unyielding.’

How did I deteriorate from a lifetime of being that woman to one who was helpless, easily manipulated, and so drugged that I ceased to think at all – I just listened to what my doctor declared was best and regurgitated it as my own idea.  To guild the lily, I’ll point out the period that ends the previous sentence is deliberate, no error, because that is a question for which an answer does not exist.  Thinking back, I feel as though I was living my life in Brave New World.  Close to three decades of an exceptionally strong will and independent mind occluded in two-and-a-half years.

As I said, it’s the one time in my life when I was so broken and desperate that I allowed someone else to make my decisions for me, if you honestly believe that in such a state I was capable of doing so.  The word “allow” implies that one has thought about something and given their consent.  Two of the Merriam-Webster definitions, “permit; to give consideration to circumstances or contingencies.”

Of everything that I have lived through, it is the one and only thing that I would ever go back and undo, if I could.

Moral of the story:  Don’t ever let someone decide things for you.  If five professionals are telling you one thing, all the same thing, but your instincts are telling you something else, listen to your instincts, damn it.  If you can manage to hear your mind over the sound of their insistence, there’s a reason for that:  You know what’s best for you, because despite the combined 160 million years of training and experience of these people, you are the only person in the entire world who has lived your entire life in your body.
 
 
And immediately after came Holy. . . What The. . . HOW??? ~

Something just blew my mind completely, and it pertains directly to my last post.  I was so hyper-focused on that thing -

You all know the expression ‘Can’t see the forest for the trees.’  With me it’s reversed, I usually ‘Can’t see the trees for the forest.’  As in I miss things that are directly under my nose because I’m looking at everything at one time, even when I look at the object or whatever I’m looking for repeatedly.  Apparently I was especially good at not seeing exactly what I was looking for pertaining to my post, or more correctly not seeing it accurately.

I made reference in my last post to a psychiatric consultation I had.  The report was all typed up nicely, in a binder in my lap.  I went looking for the date of the appointment.  I read the year as 2007.  I was flawless with everything else I saw in the lovely Outpatient Evaluation, and got everything right, except for the date.  I was spot-on with the month and day, but I screwed up the year – and I honestly looked at the date, specifically, at least three times.

This consult was in 2009.

That isn’t what shocks me, actually.  I had a moment when I noticed it, but I have this sort of issue fairly regularly.  Even if I didn’t, something like that would pale by comparison to the actual impetus for what I still feel resonating through to my core.

I also discussed my severe mental decline in the original post.  And while I couldn’t answer what caused my disintegration, not specifically, I could almost “get” the progression and generalization of a severe decline over two-and-a-half years, because I lived through it.

Six months.  In six effing months, I went from confident, independent, thoughtful, and resolute, to. . .  Well mush is all I can come up with because of the degree of the shock.  Mush-brain, mush-decisions, mush-me.  In every way that mattered.

How the hell?  I wouldn’t believe it if it weren’t right in front of me.  Six months. . .

This could be really bad for me right now.

Moral of the story:  If you find yourself on a ledge, where you’re already teetering, and something comes along and does everything to push you into the abyss, you fight, you claw, you scratch, you kick, you cling for dear life, but you resolve that you will not let that motherfucker push you in.  Fight with everything you have, but don’t let yourself fall.  Don’t even consider it a possible outcome.

© 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.

The ECT Post

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So you want to talk ECT?  Let’s, then.  Let’s, then.  I can’t tell the truth about it when I am sober, it’s still too scary.  It’s even a little scary while I am drunker than I have ever in my life been.  Does that give you a preview?

You ask me if I would tell you to have ECT, “If I wanted only your best interest. . .”  We’ve been over the best interest part.  I have, anyway.

Do you know how simple the conversation about ECT would be, if I had only you to think about, someone I love and know intimately?  Were it only you, I would say outright that ECT is evil, it is the most fucked-up thing I have ever, and will ever encounter in my life, I do not doubt that; and if it were you and me only in this world, that it should be banned, outright? Made illegal, a form of torture, a war crime, a crime against humanity, whatever the very worst thing in this world that would bring forth the worst retribution could be?

Yes.  It’s that bad. Honestly.  So bad that I think I may have to have another blast or two, then take my vodka into the bathroom and write this there, because I am feeling sure anything else will make me throw up.

But I need to get the truth, my honest truth, out to you.

Fuck.  It’s a fine line, because once I start puking there will be no more typing.  But I need to maintain a certain degree of inebriation to be able to let this out.  More than two years in the making.

ECT is the Devil, Em.  Capital D, Devil.  It is the worst thing I have ever experienced in my very intense life.  (And wow am I wishing I had never eaten those potato chips right now.  The fear of vomiting is less to me if I don’t taste first what will come up).  Fuck don’t close your eyes or you’ll get the spins.

I have said before that I cannot explicitly say that I am 100% for banning ECT, because some people claim it has helped them.  And perhaps so they feel it has.  But it would help you exactly the way it did me.

Which it didn’t.

Would you find some temporary relief?  Perhaps.  Because it would numb and destroy the pain.  It would numb and destroy your brain.  And the pain would come back, but your brain wouldn’t.  And you are so incredibly intelligent, Em, that at some point in your life you would notice.  Lots of people don’t, and so hooray for them, because they never ever know what they have lost.  They live forever in mindless oblivion, and so hooray for them, because of their ignorance, they are happy.

But you wouldn’t be, as I am not.

I have found peace, this is true.  I have gotten back what I can possibly retrieve (which is more than most people, and now I know why I was never an alcoholic), but few days go by, if any, when I am not reminded of what is forever lost to me.

Forever.  Forever.  And ever and ever and ever.  I may finally have reached a point where I have decided to live with what has happened (consciously, I have made the decision), but that doesn’t mean that I am ‘okay’ and am moving on with my life.  In the broader sense, yes, but in the more exact sense, I will never be okay with what was done to me.  What I said, ‘Okay, do to me.  Please, please.  You said it would help, you said it would fix me.  Dear God, fix me!  Make me better.  Please make me able to face another day, another moment.’

I’m sobering up, I think that’s all for tonight.

Except for two words:  Self-blame.  (One word, it’s a hyphenate.  I think I’m going to vomit up that Grey Goose now).
 
 
(I have edited only major mistakes for the sake of clarity.  I will not allow for comments on this post, because I am in a terror at the possibilities.  Please respect that.)

© 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.

What Goes On?

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You tell me.

I spent another night in the local ER because of panic so intense it was like nothing I have ever experienced.  I knew it was a panic attack, but that didn’t help.  Neither did the Xanax I took at home, nor the Ativan, Benadryl, Valium, and more Xanax they gave me in the hospital.

I’m losing huge chunks of time.  I’ll realize I’m somewhere in the house and have no idea how or when I got there, or why, or what I’ve been doing.

I’m falling down the stairs again, only this time I haven’t been so lucky.  I have a very colorful bruise on my arm about three inches in diameter, a deep purple spot on my lip from it hitting something (I didn’t think you could get a mark like that on your lip without splitting it, but you can), and I wound up with the first big egg on the back of my head I have probably had since I was six.  I look like an assault victim.

I woke up in the recliner in the living room the other night, my mom was across from me on the couch.  I have no memory of how I got there, but she was watching my breathing and had almost called an ambulance.

And the hallucinations.  I’ve had hallucinations before, okay.  Not like these.  It’s like I suddenly come to in the middle of a conversation with one of my parents.  Only no one else is in the room.

The EMDR was a bust, so no relief from the post-traumatic stress is predicted.  My depression is at its most profound right now, and I know that my only option is to wait it out.

And (while I try not to) I think, of course, of the years I lost to ECT, the memories that will never come back, the cognitive impairments, the piles of unread books, the complete and total violation and destruction of my identity that took place.

Even writing this. . .  I don’t know.  Is it worse for me to let everyone know the gory details and cause them worry, or is it worse for me to ignore emails and phone calls and comments and text messages and cause them worry?

I have a psych appointment tomorrow, but I have been at this too long to expect anything from it.  I’m not going to give up, because I have been at this so long; I know it will remit eventually, for a little while at least.

It’s just the waiting.

© 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.

Soul Shocked

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I confess that I have been feeling this way lately.  It’s that special time of year again, the time the creeps up on me, not without my knowledge, but at least this time without my preparedness.  The post-traumatic demons caught me, in spite of my best efforts.

You see, it was about this time two years ago that I started my course of what would ultimately be 16 shocks to my brain.  Forget what you have heard or been told by your doctors or read about the safety and efficacy of ECT for a moment and just think about it.  Think about allowing yourself to be anesthetized, given a muscle-paralyzing agent, and having someone administer an electrical shock to your brain.  Think of that, not in terms of what science says is appropriate or therapeutic, but as the actual, terrifying, barbaric procedure that electroconvulsive therapy is.

I know that ECT has helped people, and I am happy for anyone who has achieved a better quality of life, but it destroyed so much of mine.  It obliterated great pieces of my mind and of my soul, pieces I have to fight to reclaim again every single day.

You may not have a sense of it from the posts that make up this blog, but I have always lived my life as a very independent woman.  Even when my manic-depression and anxiety were at their zenith, I still fought on my own two feet.  I don’t yet know what happened inside, what caused me to “consent” to undergo a procedure I had researched thoroughly and had been vehemently against for years.  But it changed me in ways I am still trying to wrap my mind around.

The Thursday before last, I called my psychiatrist and my mom called off from work.  My father was at home as well, but I was simply too distraught to be left.  I spent the greater part of that day curled up in my parents’ bed, alternating between crying, sleeping, and taking my next dose of alprazolam.  My mother watched over me, sometimes just sitting and talking or holding me, other times peeking through the gap in the doorway at me as I slept.

I had come to a crossroads of sheer terror that morning.  It was An Unspeakable Dilemma all over again, minus the seizures.  I knew I couldn’t continue to live the way that I had been, but I also knew I wasn’t ready to confront and work through the trauma that was holding me hostage.  I had no direction in which to flee, monsters surrounded me at every turn.

But somehow, between my mother’s love, my doctor’s care, the soporific effects of the Xanax, and the oblivion of sleep, I passed the time.  I saw my psychiatrist the next day, and we discussed the issue very generally.  He doesn’t know all of the gory details of the situation, he hasn’t been treating me for very long.  But he is a kind and extremely knowledgeable man. He prescribed more alprazolam, 2 mg t.i.d (three times a day), and we discussed a more comprehensive plan.

He wants me to see a psychologist and be treated with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (you might read the article EMDR-Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety,Stress,Trauma & Self-Sabotage for an explanation of this technique).  Generally, I don’t do well in therapy, but I underwent EMDR years ago for a different issue and found it tremendously effective.  I also found the process itself incredibly distressing.  You have to relinquish control (which I am terrible at), trust your therapist completely (which I am equally bad at), and be prepared to be hit by memories, feelings, and thoughts that you had no idea were even disturbing you (I’m no good at that one, either).

But.  Something’s got to give.  I really feel that with all of my Alphabet Soup diagnoses, post-traumatic stress disorder is the most horrible and virtually impossible to deal with.  Right now I have fallen back into patterns of insomnia (I haven’t slept since Friday night), I am reactive and irritable, I am scared and anxious, and I am in danger of becoming the ugly, hurtful, hateful person I found when I reread much of this blog.  The woman who lashes out at those who love and support her, the woman who dissociates and creates different identities just to get through the day, the one who suffers from strange forms of paranoia.

So I am taking steps.  I have finally worked up the nerve to begin to read an excellent book I have on the subject of PTSD, and I also just purchased a text on EMDR, written by Dr. Francine Shapiro (who “originated and developed” the therapy).  I even had a really brave moment and made an appointment with my psychologist for later this week.  I can’t say with any certainty that I am ready to start this therapy, but as least she is someone I trust (mostly) whom I can discuss my options with.  And I have another appointment in a day or so with my psychiatrist.  He’s keeping a close eye on me.

And, oddly enough, I’m not really doing so terribly.  I am keeping my mind occupied and surrounding myself with supportive people.  I’m journaling and doing a great deal of housecleaning, both literally and figuratively.

Moral of the story:  

“We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.” ~ Marcel Proust


© 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.

I Put The HOT In Hot Mess

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Of course, and on a more important note, I very much put the mess into it, too.  Actually, ever since that expression started to become common in our culture’s vernacular, I have felt it describes me pretty exactly.  I am one hot mess, if you use the two words together, or if you use either of them separately (of course the degree of each varies from day to day).

Getting down to it, my mixed episode has become severe ultradian cycling (switching moods in less than one day), with a healthy dose of post-traumatic stress disorder mixed in to season.  My yesterday, which lasted from when I woke at approximately 6:30 am until I hit the wall at around 10:30 pm (I’m not including the hours from then until when I actually fell asleep at about 2:30 am, because that technically runs into today) follows.

Here goes.  I spent about the first 30 minutes in something very loosely resembling euthymia, but I also was still mostly asleep.  Then:

  • mania, which within less than an hour became
  • depression (with distinct PTSD features as well), switching straight to
  • mania, escalating to
  • horrible bitch irritability-doesn’t-even-begin-to describe it mania, transitioning to
  • depression, featuring prominent anxiety and helplessness, and slowly (relatively speaking) wound up into
  • mania and then some, not irritable, but just this side of needing a shot of Thorazine up, and capped the day with a virtually instant (literally fewer than three minutes) collapse into
  • exhaustion (I can’t imagine why)

That was the worst it has been, but that’s how things have been for me recently.  I still prefer ultradian cycling to a mixed episode, but in a lesser of two evils kind of way.  And right now, very slightly lesser.

So I’m doing what it is that I do best when things are really intolerable within, I’m fortifying the walls that surround me, I’m retreating deep inside myself.  I was thinking earlier today about how I didn’t want to stop blogging, because it’s been good for me during difficult periods, and it seems that what I write during these times is of value to some people who read it.  Which is also good for me.

But right now it’s truly different, I am focusing everything in me on maintaining the integrity of the (presently) so-thin-it’s-invisible thread that connects my mind with my spirit.  It gets stronger and weaker depending on many things, but at the moment I can’t remember a time it has been so slender and fragile (I know it has to have been before, but mercifully I have forgotten those times).  I cannot allow it to break, you see, because that means the total obliteration of Ruby as you – or I – know her.

Maybe forcing myself to write this will turn out to be good, and I will keep blogging through this.  Maybe my keys will be silent indefinitely.  I honestly and truly don’t know.  How do you know what you’re going to do tomorrow, when you don’t know who you’re going to be in an hour?

Moral of the story:  

“I have these moments of weakness

 But I’ve had a lifetime of strength

 And I know I will defeat this

 But that’s not what my heart

 Wants to think.”

 ~ Trisha Yearwood


© 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.

Something Else Happened

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During my course of ECT treatment.  While I was in the care of the doctor and nurses at the hospital.  Something discrete, something additional, something specific.  I’ve been trying to cope with the PTSD, and I’ve attributed its genesis to loss of control and manipulation and lots of things, and I’m not wrong to do that.  But there was something more, I just read some of my writings from that time period. . .

And I did everything I could at the time to try to find out what it was.  And I had no success.  But just because I was told nothing happened, doesn’t make it so.  I can’t necessarily detail for you the reasons why I know it, at least not right now, but I have no doubt.

There was definitely something more.

Moral of the story:  Somehow this will either destroy me or help me.  Maybe both.  But I would rather know than not.

© 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.

Effing PTSD, Effing Sleep, Effing Brain

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So I thought I had myself figured as far as sleep issues.  Usually it was pretty impossible, but once I finally passed out I would sleep extra-long so my mind could catch-up on shutdown time.  Occasionally I would have periods of sleeping 16+ hours a day.

My newest sleep problem has gone thus:  Woke up late morning Thursday.  Did not sleep at all Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, most of Saturday.  As in no naps, no drifting off, zip, zero, nada.  No mania or anything, just an almost complete brain shutdown by Saturday morning.

Late afternoon Saturday I got a bit of a reprieve.  I finally slept some, two-and-a-half hours, max.  Was up for a bit, then I got myself to the in between place, you know, drifting in and out but never going fully to sleep (thus in no way allowing my brain to recover).  Two hours tops there, not that it matters because it didn’t help at all.

I’m blaming the PTSD for this.  Lately, dramatic changes in behavior, reaction-sensitivity, and all things in any way tied to my mind (and often body) can be traced back to this, even if I can’t give an exact linear progression.  Also, I’ve been grinding my jaw horribly (bruxism), both while awake and asleep, which I have done while awake before, but never in my sleep.  That started with the latest post-traumatic stress episode.

My mind is completely blown (and not in a good way).  I have no idea what to do.  The only sleep meds left for me to try are barbiturates.  One doctor brought it up entirely on her own as a possible, my two regular docs (PCP and psych) had previously said no way, and I get why.  I may just try to get in touch with the one who suggested it.  I know the risks and certainly don’t want to develop TD (tardive dyskinesia, I’ll explain it some other time), but I am getting so desperate here.  I cannot understand why two doctors who know me and know bipolar well don’t view this with serious concern.  Even if I don’t go manic, sooner or later I will start hallucinating hard-core and progress to full-blown psychosis from lack of sleep.  In the meantime, my mind is pretty useless in general, and completely non-functional about the important stuff.

And this is really important stuff.

Also, I want to hunt down all of these assholes who publish anti-medication, anti-sleep med “articles” (none of whom I have found to be professionals – probably at anything) and who insist that you can manage everything “naturally” and that you just have to “reset your body’s natural rhythms” and make them spend a month with a completely unmedicated me. Let them see how insane and desperate I get, and how hard I struggle. Really I want to kick the shit out of them, but, well I was going to say seeing me in my deepest desperation would be more effective, but you can’t change the minds of ignorant reactionaries who are so used to listening only to themselves that they can’t hear or see anything else, no matter how true.

Moral of the story:  
“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;”
~  William Shakespeare, Hamlet

© 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.

Written All Over My Face

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It seems that the PTSD has found a new, surprising, and extra-fun way to screw with my head: agoraphobia.

For those of you who don’t know (or those of you who think you know but are wrong), agoraphobia has its roots in both Greek and Latin (which nobody cares about save me).  It more or less translates literally to “fear of the marketplace.”  More exactly, in modern days, it means fear of open spaces.  However the popular, understood meaning has become fear of going out anywhere (particularly anywhere with people) throughout the years.

I woke up a little while ago to my alarm (anyone remember when you didn’t wake to an ‘alarm,’ but an ‘alarm clock?’) because I have a doctor’s appointment today.  It was scheduled as a follow-up after the ER thing, but I thought, okay, I need to kick his ass into gear about the referral to the seizure clinic for my pseudoseizures.

When I became conscious a bit ago, and thought about getting out of bed and going out, I was absolutely stricken.  Frozen, could not move, no way I could go anywhere, utterly horrified at the thought.

This is a completely new sensation for me.  I’ve avoided going out before, but because I was depressed or tired or didn’t want to deal with people, and yes, there may have been an anxiety component, but not like this.  Not a completely rigid, paralyzing panic at the idea of going just to see my doctor, my doctor of half my life in an office I’ve been to a million and one times.

So I lay in my bed thinking (with this almost dissociative feeling), Oh, lovely.  So now my post-traumatic stress disorder has decided to manifest itself with agoraphobia.  And I thought and thought and thought, debating whether I should call and cancel the appointment, whether I should just hide under the covers from the world and not do anything, whether I should take this one head on and not only go to the doctor’s, but run as many other errands in as many public places as I could.  There is no middle ground in my life.

So I got out of bed and went downstairs to get something to drink, which in itself was difficult.  I leaned outside the back door where my father was to ask him a question.  I was in the process of closing the door and he called out to me.

“Ruby?”

“Yes,” I answered him.

“Do you want me to drive you?”

I was a little confused by this, but I figured I knew why, so I answered with my own question, “Because of the pseudoseizures?”

He responded with something very out of character, especially for my father.  ”Because of that,” he paused, “or anything.”  I thought this was kind of odd, but told him thanks, I could do it, and went back upstairs.

And then it occurred to me.  I must have been standing there looking like I was frightened out of my mind.  It must have been really apparent.  Not to disparage my dad (you all know I do that openly and don’t hold back if I’m going to), but he doesn’t pick up on subtleties.  Or even the obvious things, often times.  So for him to have noticed that there was something very, very, wrong about my affect. . .  Well it must have been vivid in everything about me.  Posture, face, tone of voice, etc., everything.  And I won’t omit the fact that I am grateful that he would do that for me.

So, we shall see.  I’m getting ready to go get ready, and I’ll take it from there.  My very beautiful friend has offered to help me through, via telephone (I couldn’t describe to you what she means to me).  I’m going to try to conquer the world, let’s see if I make it past the car.

Moral of the story:  I don’t know what it is yet, but I do know that I’m beyond grateful for people who love and support me.

Addendum:  I wrote this in its entirety before I left the house, but I didn’t have time to do all the behind the scenes editing, tagging, etc. crap.  When I was out conquering the world, two random people said things to me about driving carefully (although not in such a grammatically correct way).  I asked someone else with whom I was talking if I had some weird frightening look about me that screamed, “Unfocused, dangerous driver,” or something, and she said no.  WTF?

© 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.

Fighting Dragons

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So I am officially making a post for everyone in my life who has struggled (and no one hasn’t), supported me, and helped prop me up and regain perspective.  Whether I have known you forever or just a short time, I really appreciate the support you have shown me.  Thanks especially to the beautiful woman I spoke with at great length today on the phone.  Oh, yeah, and you, Always.  Bitch.  Also, I’ve missed you.

I don’t feel like I know what tomorrow will bring.  I don’t even know what the rest of tonight will bring.  But right now that’s something I can deal with.  Right now.  The only certainty that exists for me is uncertainty.  That’s the crux of PTSD.  It’s forever, and you never know when it’s going to come fuck you up.

Now I don’t claim to be okay with this, not by a long way.  I have to figure it out and figure out why and conquer it, goddamnit.  You would think I would have learned with the bipolar that it doesn’t always work out that way.  Well, I did, but only specific to the bipolar.  Also it took me six years.

But focusing on the positives right now.  A major step in my life this past week has been reaching a point where I’m even beginning to consider that accepting the uncertainty is the key to it all.  Yes, I still want to work on what in particular triggered me at this moment and to this degree.  However, I also need to take this one in bits, and be vigilant for warning signs.  These need to be noticed for two important reasons.  First, those little things that start causing me to react in any way need to be noted, if I’m going to have any chance of wading through this.  Second, post-traumatic stress disorder is the absolute antithesis of anything I have ever dealt with.  The worst thing I can do is to fight it, head-to-head, refusing to back down, completely unarmed.  I need a great deal more insight before I can confront anything.

The other part, which is a killer for me, is working on accepting that I may not be able to figure it out.  And that even if I do, that’s this time.  The very beautiful woman I referenced above reminded me that sometimes you have no idea what triggers reactions.  That will be my biggest challenge, I suspect.

But at this moment I can take it on.  Lately, when I have lost myself, someone (often multiple someones) has seemingly popped out of nowhere to help me to find that woman whom I have mislaid (which also reminds me that she is not lost, just temporarily missing).  Ultimately, I know this is something I have to do alone.  But it makes an amazing difference when I have people reminding me of the fact that I can and will.

Love and kisses to you all.  And please actually click on and watch the video.  I had to make a concession to the wobbly camera, but you have no idea how hard I worked to find the best version possible.  Well, one of you does.  ;)

And “May these memories break our fall.”


(This song and video are solely the property of their respective owners and artists. Absolutely no copyright infringement is intended.)

Moral of the story:  OCD can be a good thing at times.  But people who truly care are always far better.

© 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.