I saw Dr. Brain yesterday. I was a bit nervous about how she would react to my reducing my Depakote dose. I had emailed her and she didn't respond; it turned out she tried but her email wasn't working.
Dr. Mind had initially scolded (but not yelled, which meant he wasn't TOO alarmed), then after I made several points basically agreed that I'm trustworthy and that I have such a long-standing and intense relationship with Dr. Brain that this probably was OK.
Dr. Brain was fine. She agreed that it was worth trying before letting my life be wrecked by what amounts to side effects at this point when I just don't need so much medication. She told me that it was ok, not me being (as I'd called myself) a "bad bipolar" because what I face is just such a medically complex form of illness and now that I'm better it's starting to be hurting my life in opposite ways as it used to. These ways though are much more fixable.
She did tell me the anxiety issues need to go. On my range of anxiety this isn't exactly block-buster territory, but it's noticeable, it's uncomfortable, and basically she implied I need to suck it up and take anxiety meds. So I'm back on 1 ativan/day around the worst anxiety time of day. For some reason I always resent needing to treat my anxiety. For those who haven't been around for some round of this, I have SEVERE anxiety issues. Which makes sense; in my time I've been diagnosed with: depression, primary insomnia, generalized anxiety disorder (severe), PTSD, OCD (sort of a variant), and of course bipolar. Even one of the hardest bipolar symptoms for me to handle is really anxiety: paranoia. But anyway, most of those diagnoses are anxiety related. It's why it was so very hard to diagnose me with bipolar. The OCD came later, Dr. Mind thinks I have a form of this, and that this is part of why I'm hard to treat. Sure enough, as we treated OCD-like symptoms I got better. Go figure.
Anyway, I took my ativan today and low and behold I felt better. So I guess I did need that.
And to show how good I feel I actually was productive without exhausting myself.
So it was a good weekend overall. Just too short.
10 days until I leave for vacation!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
I have a similar problem with the anti-anxiety medication. I can't understand why, but I just want to resist taking it. It helps! I don't have aproblem taking anything else! So why do I let it go on? I hear you (and have a good vacation!)
Post a Comment