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Friday, March 27, 2020

March Madness -Game Time

The medication game.
This is a fun reality that comes along with a brain like mine. I am just kidding about that, if you didn't catch my sarcasm implied by italics.
The medication game can be difficult. It is especially difficult for my dads daughter (me) that hates taking any medication for anything almost as much as her dad does.
But for me, at times in my life it is necessary- medication that is. Well, if I want to live any quality of life anyway.
So my recent and most complex cocktail yet has consisted of several vitamins and supplements including (but limited to) a thyroid support, biotin, and fish oil, and the perscritptions: quetiapine (generic for Seraguel) at 200mg extended release and 50-100mg regular release every night, dextroamphetamine sulfate (generic for Adderall) at 15-30mg's daily and escitolapram at 15mg nightly (generic for lexapro).
Prior to the second TBI causing car accident of 2017, I was managing well with only the vitamins, supplements, and Adderall at 10-20 mg's on most days, but not all. I did not take it on days that I had nothing going on or nothing I needed to worry about focusing for. I do believe I was coming out of a bit of a depression but I had not needed medication for it. I think out of 100% (100% meaning no depression or anxiety) I was about 70-80% fine in terms of depression and 90% good on anxiety. (90% of the time having none, 70-80% of the time, not depressed at all or only very mild symptoms of depression were present).
Then the blow to the head instantly flipped it. It was like someone took the thread that had me almost completely stitched together and yanked it unstitching me all the way down to 10% held together against anxiety symptoms and 20% held together against depression symptoms. I was an emotional mess.
After one week of working and trying to be fine I was a mess. I could not remember things, my brain was foggy, I was emotional and anxious, AND I had developed a sinus infection. After my concerned chiropractor diagnosed a concussion I scheduled an appointment with my regular family doctor (who could also treat the sinus infection).
He immediately put me on Lexapro.
I cried.
Like I had everyday since the car accident and like I would everyday until about day 5 of being on the new anti anxiety and antidepressant medication. The anxiety started to be a bit more manageable as well.
Fast forward to now. If you have followed you know the insane story that has me now on 3 medications for my brain. There has also been a suggested 4th; an anticonvulsant due to the possibility of  seizures that the EEG was suggesting.
While I have had some undeniable seizure activity now, they have still been very minor and only when I am asleep (with one exception that happened just after waking up), so I just can't do it. I can't add a 4th drug to my mix. At least not before consulting with a neurologist that actually treats and has experience with treating people with TBI's. But that appointment has taken months and I am still waiting.
So in the meantime - because I am resourceful and maybe also because I refuse to be be a victim or wait around for everyone else to figure it out for me- I have wondered if maybe dropping one of the three medications could solve the tiny baby seizure problem.
I presented the idea of dropping the Lexapro to my psychiatric PA. She is on board with the idea and guided me in how to proceed, making sure I know and will respond appropriately if I start slipping into depression and/or we find that the Lexapro may be "doing more than we think."
The team work is nice.
So I started the weening process a couple of weeks ago and last night made the big decision to not take the lexapro. I have been taking 5mg for at least a week and it has not seemed to be adversely affecting me.
... but today, with none in my system, I feel it; that I am once again playing the medications game.
Going off medications like this can be difficult. I actually went off the Lexapro for a couple of weeks back in March or April of last year when I was still under the care of the negligent Neuroscience Institute. At that point I was not on the Seroguel, just the Lexapro and Adderall (but Adderall only when I wasn't feeling high). I went off the Lexapro because I wanted to know what my baseline was since Dr. Concussion was being so... conservative?... in her treating me and kept wanting me to hold out to see if I would recover without changing or adding medication. (that was really stupid of her, btw, because I was literally fading, which in the bipolar brain IS dying -it'd be the equivalent of having a diabetic try to wait it out to see if their pancreas will magically start producing insulin again and balance out the glucose- probably not an intelligent risk to take)
Even though I weened easily last year, I felt an increase in irritability and a decrease in patience in addition to the mood instability that was still playing out so I had decided to go back on it.
This time, today, I feel a more familiar going-off-medication kind of feel. It is like a weird lightheaded feeling that comes on sometimes. Like in grocery stores. In fact as I think about it I am wondering if the weird lightheaded feeling comes on more in when their is an added element of stress. Not that stores are stressful but rather I don't seem to experience it so much when I am just hanging out at home working on nothing out of the ordinary or of significance. Of course this is only the first day off. I will have to pay attention to this. Sometimes these feelings can intensify, letting you know you went off too fast. Then the prudent and typical course of action is to try half of the 5's and maybe every other day. But if the lightheadedness does not intensify in the next couple of days I will endure until it resolves... or until  I tire of the weird feeling and start taking it again to try weening slower again.
Sometimes it can be pretty ridiculous, like with Paxil -holy cow, that one is stupid hard to get off of. This feeling is similar to that, but like 1 or 2 out of 10, Paxil being the worst weird lightheadedness at 10 ... Paxil has a world-is-shaking-and/or-spinning too. I'd be down to about the equivalent of about a lick but every time I'd stop the shaky world and lightheaded weirdness would start and not stop. I'd try to endure and out last it but after 2 weeks (or more) I'd cave. I finally was able to get off, but it took going onto a different medication, Welbutrin, to get off it.  Weening off the Welbutrin was nothing.
So it is medication game time again. As I am reflecting I think I do remember a bit of lightheadedness the first day or so when I tried going off the Lexapro last year.
We'll see how it goes this year.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Haunting Predictions

So here is an interesting article: 'Who lives and who dies': In worst-case coronavirus scenario, ethics guide choices on who gets care

As I am reading I realize, in the event that I contract this Covid19 virus and need to be hospitalized, I probably better avoid any IHC facilities because they have providers that have already "ethically" discarded me and that have already decided I am not worth saving.
And since I have been vocal in my disagreement with their judgements and decision and because now I know that it was negligence, malpractice and/or mistreatment and I have no intention of shutting up about it until fixes are made, I am certain they will simply allow me to die instead of treating me.
But if this corona virus thing is as bad as they are making it out to be then I am not the only person this will happen to.
"People don't get pissed until it happens to them"....
In preparation I might like to say to so many people who have said to me, "just get over it" or "you just need to let it go" try not to get to pissed if the medical providers decide you or a loved one are not ranked as highly in their "ethical" guidelines and I promise not to say to you, "just get over it" or "you just need to let it go."
If our medical providers do have to start making decisions like this I hope people will understand the difficult position they are in and be forgiving. Under the circumstances it might become necessary.
I will also hope that people will then understand how difficult it is to be "ethically" discarded and how wrong it is when there is no tragic event like this corona virus, but rather the decisions are made as a form of defensive medicine by medical providers that are sacrificing you for no other reason than to try and hide and cover mistakes they made with you.
So in the event that I find myself with no choice but having to seek treatment from an IHC facility and I do die under their care, please look into if I was actually given care because I am predicting they will not. I'm predicting, based on patterns from the past, that they will happily take advantage of the opportunity to watch me die so that there is no chance they have to accept responsibility, admit their wrong doing, and actually have to face some form of consequences or accountability for their irresponsible actions with me when there was no Corona virus. AND I bet they would even go so far as to use the evidence of their negligence and malpractice with me as evidence of justification for letting me be an "ethical" casualty of this pandemic. The evidence being the results from MRI and EGG they did not order done by the neurologist they would not give a referral for and the diagnosis of mania and bipolar they denied and refused to discuss with me and even tried to hide. (Now I know this may sound like a conspiracy theory but it's actually the reality that I have been living. Thus it is not a theory at all but rather this is a predication based on established patterns.)
Once again, I'd rather say it and be wrong than not say it and be right.
In reality I don't think this will happen and I will avoid IHC facilities at all cost, but in the event that it does I'm going to shamelessly boast from the grave, "See! I told you so!!"
...And then I think I will do some IHC haunting just for fun :)
(okay, not just for fun, but because I'll probably be even more determined to expose and hold them accountable or to stop them... but I will also have fun with the haunting too)

Monday, March 23, 2020

Moments analyzed and the fight for survival

I have been thinking about this a little. And when I say a little I really mean a little. Especially considering times in the past when the racing and ruminating made thinking about anything all consuming. At least that is how it would seem to a normal mind. This is something that is hard to explain and hard to understand when your brain is not manic. But even though it would have been present in thoughts a good majority or the day the thoughts of the rapid cycling racing mind are running so fast and so broad that you can be consumed with many things and still be thinking non consuming thoughts about approximately one million other things at the same time. (one million may be a slight exaggeration, but it also might not be. Truly, if people were smart they would stop fearing the manic mind and tap into instead.) So while I am certain I have processed this before it is now in my more calmed and stable mind on occasion just enough that I think it might be well to pay it some mind and time.  It is likely something that needs processing to keep me moving forward on my journey of recovery.
In my last blog entry I tackle and confess this:
"Until the realization filters in... "He really never loved you." That therapist that broke me. He simply used my intensities and my feelings to protect himself from the mistakes he had made with me. I was nothing special to him, simply a rebound toy of flattery that he used to stroke his own ego."
After posting I remembered this:
"This is something Dr. She initially was trying to help me see."
I thought to add it but just never got around to it. Maybe because it deserves its own post of analysis.

Even before Dr. She suggested this to me, I could logically see the aforementioned, but my messed up chemistry kept me from fully understanding this. Ironically I seemed to understand this as a logical possibility most clearly at the beginning, when I was most intense and most certainly manic.  But I remained in messed up chemistry for far too long and it kept me from fully accepting or understanding this. This is likely hard  for others to understand, believe me it is very confusing. It was very confusing for me too -maybe especially. However, Dr. She has explained this too; If it is authentic/true bipolar mania then rational/sane thinking continues to decline without proper treatment. Yep. That was happening.
So I could see it and understand it logically yet I could not fully understand or accept it.
Let us now analyze why.
I think it was due partly (and maybe largely) to the intensity of mania.
My feelings were SOOOO intense and he used manipulative or careless tactics to imply that he had developed feelings for me. My logical mind saw that these things were implied and picked up on the other parts of communication that told me he was scared and more than anything concerned about how his boundary violations could get him into trouble, maybe cost him his license. I believe it is most likely that he implied these things in an attempt to gain my sympathies so that I would not report or "come after" him. I understood this then and throughout but I also felt very strongly the emotions that I had felt.
It is possible those feelings were just my feelings being projected and then reflected back at me. This is type of a therapist trick after all,  and I even pointed it out to Dr. He "so basically I am supposed to expose myself completely to you while you sit behind a mirrored mask penetrating my thoughts. AND I am not supposed to get into your head. That's screwed up."
Therapists have a tendency to say things in implied ways so that you can interpret it how you will. I knew and saw this right off too.
But still I could not accept that he did not reciprocate the intensity of feelings I felt toward him.
And I believe a huge part of that was simply a form of self preservation as everything that was happening physically and biologically was really too much. I was not capable of grieving that loss and even less able to handle the harsh rejection and malpractice/negligence of the whole deal. I was far too vulnerable and far too broken.
PTSD had me processing as a child and as an adult while at the same time bipolar and increased mood instability were rearing their ferocious heads. The decreased mood stability was and is most likely due to the added brain injury that actually shows up on MRI and in the mirror location to the TBI from my youth. A location that has been tied to -dun, dun, dun- mood stability and even impulse control.
These physical problems were manifesting but the Neuroscience Institute and other providers had failed to order an MRI so they did not have this information. These physical manifestations came in conjunction with the work Dr. He and I had been doing to uncover my buried story and to embrace my perfectly imperfect self, which was way more significant than likely anyone knew since it was through dealing with and learning about TBI that I was realizing so many things about myself and just how broken I really was and why.
...Then, add to that relationship problems, my low self worth, and that I have had a tendency to put myself in the second class position to friends, family members and just about everybody ...
it starts to make sense that I needed to believe that he couldn't handle me because he loved me...
But that was not real and I knew it and needed to see it to break the spell that would keep me cycling in the insanity of the manic fed delusions.
In reality I did not need to believe that he loved me the way I loved him, I did not even need to believe in the counter transference; what I needed was to see that the countertransference was not real or at least not in the way that my mania was grabbing onto. I needed him to be real. I asked for this when I didn't dare explain things because I was afraid he would get into trouble that could possibly cost him his license. I was afraid of this because he had said it to me.
 I needed them to see how compromised I was and I needed to be treated accurately and fairly. I also needed to be listened to and my experiences and efforts regarded with intelligence and respect, not ego and fear. I needed them to be my allies working with me to help me solve it. I begged for this and I trusted them again and again when they suggested this was also their intentions. Unfortunately these suggestion were also manipulations and attempts to simply cover their legal asses. Thus it is fraud.
The thing is, while I have not been through anything like this, I have managed through other situations that had some similar characteristics and I have learned what works and what helps. I am not perfect at it and I have lost friends and relationships over the years in my attempts. But still I had complete confidence that with their claimed expertise and if they could just be honest with me we could get me through and figure out what was really going on with my head. They failed. They failed me. They are likely failing other patients in their ego's, pride, arrogance, ignorance, and fraudulence.
I know I speak boldly and that scares and angers people. But I speak the truth and the truth of the matter is, I would still rather help them than file a lawsuit against them.
So, though I know it is likely they will only read this to try and find things to hold against me and to use to cause further harm to me, I am still inviting them to listen and resolve this with me.
Even as I fight, I will keep holding out hope that they will see, this whole time, I have not been fighting against them but rather I have been fighting to save me.

Friday, March 20, 2020

moments

I think I am good. I think I am fine. "I'm pulling out" I say to myself. "I'm regaining my confidence" I pretend.
Dr. She understands: it is hard to have confidence when you can't trust it. When your confidence has betrayed you with mania.
And I procrastinate
because in actuality I am still very shaky.
Literally.
Like this morning -these days it is often hard for me to wake up, to get up, I am not entirely sure why-
but this morning I forced myself up and as I started to stretch I froze and everything went shaky
In a new way.
"I just had a seizure" says my head.
and I am not scared
but I am.
And just now as I was painting -instead of all that I planned to do-
I feel the things that have been hurting in a softer way.
Until the realization filters in... "He really never loved you." That therapist that broke me. He simply used my intensities and my feelings to protect himself from the mistakes he had made with me. I was nothing special to him, simply a rebound toy of flattery that he used to stroke his own ego.
I suppose there is some form of flattery to me in that. And I did catch on. So I am also intelligent and those things I can utilize to re-stoke the dying flame of my confidence. So I will try to focus on that as my throat knots up and tears flow again and I try to hide it from my children. I will try to remind myself of the good that I am as I grieve the loss of my faith and hope in the professionals and institution that is not what it claims to be, experts in the tragedies of head injury; my tragedies.
...
This is taking much longer than I'd like and it is still difficult but I can be proud of the progress I have made as I remind myself that slow and steady are okay.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Finding myself again.


No doubt this blog has become my processing and venting through hard times. Times that people,   mostly cannot understand, and often don't want to try, unless they have experienced similar or have family who has. As one fine person said to my dear friend RenĂ©e, "people don't get pissed until it happens to them."
And I will tell you many people would be very pissed if even half of this shit happened to them or a loved one. 
...Or dead. 
A lot would be dead. 
It has been damn hard and I just don't think people realize how difficult it can be to bounce back when you have to fear your confidence and ups. Maybe I don't have to fear them but I have to be hyper aware, it is scary, and it causes all sorts of difficulties when you know you cannot entirely trust yourself and your positive emotions...
but then again, this is where I just may be very much ahead of most! I am at least aware of how and when I cannot trust myself, and I am aware that most, in reality, cannot be trusted. I have learned that firsthand and harsh now. I also know that regardless, trust is a choice and we have to choose to trust even at times when we don't. We have to keep getting back up and opening ourselves back up. We have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable time and time again. 
and in so doing I am finding myself again. 
I am very grateful for the medication that is helping me bounce back easier than I currently can without it. I am grateful for the people in my life who are still loving me and helping me. Those who are not deciding to jump on the band wagon of those powers that be that say shit about me and get away with it because they have and do hold all of the cards and they can. So I am rambling much more than I meant to and probably it is a cathartic need I am still needing as I try to ramble back to the me that is worth celebrating, loving and being. 
I am finding me and being proud of who I am. Even if they are simple things. I am working on building me up. This is why I decided to take a picture of my messy craftsmanship.
One thing I can tell you about me is that I am not afraid to try things and I am not afraid of making a mess in the process. 
Learning is messy. 
There are no two ways about it, it is messy. 
And through trial and error we learn. 
We do not fail, we learn. 
and I think that is something very beautiful and special about me that I care to admit right now. So I am sharing a little snapshot of how I often work. 
The other day I noticed that the backsplash behind my kitchen sink needed to be to be re-grouted and/ or caulked. The fact that I knew what needed to be done and how is something I can be proud of. The back splash and granite were my choosing, the backsplash my work. I had help -that I was and am very grateful for- but ultimately it was started and finished by me and I love it. 

To fix this I first went to our on hand supplies. As luck would have it we just happened to have a textured caulk that matched so I found the caulking gun re-punctured the hole and got to work. It went on a bit thick but I knew how to handle that. Others may be able to do this with out making the mess that I do, but I don't really care, I know how to smooth it out, make a mess and then clean it up so it looks just fine. And I am proud of this.
I can make messes, but I can also clean them up and turn it into a fit and functional finished product.
And maybe that is just part of who I am and I am okay with that. Even proud.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Silver Linings

One thing I can say about all of the crazy in the world today,
is that when you have fought and conquered a crazy in your head
the stuff outside is really no big deal.
Corona will pass and people will die
because that is what happens in life, the only guarantee
maybe you and maybe me
and if it is people close I will be heart broken for sure,
if it is me I will be gone
but still we are humanity
and the only thing we really have to fear is fear it self
so all of this crazy
may shake me
literally
but my mind is not shaking
and I am hardly effected and hardly scared because
I already know how to handle life threatening crazy
:)


Sunday, March 15, 2020

trying to stay ahead of dead

What to do when everyone is playing games except you?
You have to play too
if you want to make it through
...I guess
what mess.
Yesterday in conversation with my 16 year old daughter she is telling me, "if I do get married I'll know not to marry a guy like that," in reference to a "friend" that is being quite a jerk. But she tells me more, "and I couldn't marry a guy like dad either because he is too emotionally unavailable," she says.
We both love him very much, but she is correct. I think I may have said something like this to therapists before but I am fairly certain my daughter has never heard me say it. Her observation about that and other things she says tug at my heart strings. She is not saying it to be critical or complaining, it is just a matter of fact observation she is stating that she hopes to not have in her own potential marriage. And though this conversation causes mixed emotions it so very nice that somebody else sees and understands this, because it is hard and lonely often.
And that is all I have to say for today.
At least written here anyway.
Next I try to handle the fallout of things said
before going to bed
when my head
was fighting to stay ahead
of dead
...actually, at this point, I know there is nothing I can do to undo my broken moment.
If history and previous handling has taught me anything it is that it will be used against me and I knew it then and didn't care
so that is what I'll face.