I will try to keep the background info short here but I am verbose in general so bear with me.
I have bipolar I which is essentially refractory. Most psych meds I can't take due to reactions that land me in the ER or medical hosp, and the rest have zero impact on my illness. I've tried multiple ones from literally every class... and failed. Easily 25+ For multiple personal reasons, not the least of which is that I am also a chronic headache patient, ECT is not one of my options.
So finally this fall I got my community mental health agency to realize where I was and authorize weekly therapy and I also switched to a more reliable case manager. Things had been looking up or at least peeking up.
Then the plague. First my Dad got pneumonia. I live at home and my mom is disabled as well so I had to help out with him. No big because he is still able to do a lot for himself, but the entirety of the "house" stuff fell on me. All of the cleaning, cooking, shopping, picking up prescriptions, getting the mail, dealing with the dumpster, plowing the driveway with the snowblower, just everything landed on me because my mom couldn't help. It was a lot. Especially considering I've had my own health issues for over a year so I haven't been very active as of late.
Then everything started to break. The snowblower broke. The gas fireplace broke. The dimmer switch in the kitchen broke. I am blessed that my parents have the resources to get these things fixed but then I was dealing with repair people.
Through all of this I started having to cancel my appointments in order to keep up with their stuff.
Then my mom got sick. She got a respiratory deal (which hasn't turned into pneumonia yet) but it exacerbates her asthma. So she will cough so hard her lungs will seize. I had to take her to the doctor on my birthday and then to the ER a day after Christmas.
I am also sick from the same stuff now. Mine has a fun gastrointestinal component as well which is lovely.
Somewhere in all of this, I just fell apart. It was maybe around 12/10 that I knew a downswing was looming. I tried to keep it at bay. By the 19th or 20th, I knew it had arrived.
Then Carrie Fisher died. Then her mother. I don't know how to make this sound not shallow but Carrie was a hero to me. She laid all of her stuff out there. She didn't hide. She used her pain to help people and to make them laugh. I aspire to do the same when at all possible. I'm not normally impacted at all by the loss of celebrities, but the loss of her hit hard. It still hits hard. I'm not coping with it well. I probably would handle it better if I wasn't already down and sick.
Anyway, I cannot tell you how much it sucks to be sick, in a house with other sick people that need help (although we did get a little help in for a few hours a week to help w laundry and things), overwhelmed by depression (but not to suicidal, just to hating everything), and knowing that there isn't anything my psychiatrist can do to help me with this.
I only can see my pdoc every 8-10 weeks anyway, but I do happen to have an appointment with her on Tuesday. Mostly we just kind of check in since there isn't a lot she can do. She does help with some anxiety stuff and partners with my neurologist on my migraines. It's just very frustrating to have mood episodes that she can't do anything about.
I obviously need to see my therapist (also on Tuesday) and hopefully will be well enough to do that. I am just overwhelmed.
I don't really know why I typed all of this. You are a very patient person if you got this far. Thank you. I am mostly just complaining. I'm sad. I feel sick. I hate things. I keep crying. Boo.
Submitted January 01, 2017 at 11:19AM by ivybelle http://ift.tt/2hZiP4f
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