As soon as I got there she asked immediately "so is this cycling?". Which is logical, and explains why she'd hold off on giving me anxiety meds because without assessing me for that first it would just make the situation worse. And I understand why she wouldn't have wanted to get into that discussion via email because she has to see me to know. She knows me well enough to know in 30 seconds in person, but especially since I first called this cycling then changed my mind (Dr. Mind never thought I was cycling), I can see why she would be hesitant to just accept my word for it. Plus I haven't experienced cycling on the new med cocktail and so it might be totally different, I suppose.
Regardless, she listened to some of the difficulties of late and how we are addressing things in counseling, and agreed with my self-diagnosis of PTSD I don't know how to handle because there was also something worse than PTSD, and even if PTSD was a main culprit at some times it often was still easily called and treated as cycling. Although really I don't think PTSD has entered the picture in the way it has now with the recent things I was trying to talk about since long before I was diagnosed.
So, not only did I get the more Klonopin I asked for (and total approval for my taking a whole extra one yesterday, something I had no idea if it was ok to do but which just became obviously the only thing that was going to help), I got an extra dose mid-day of more than I'd been willing to ask for because I was afraid she'd think I was getting dependent, which is when I'm really struggling, and also an increase at night. Which means I'm on a LOT of Klonopin, but as she said there is every reason to think this is temporary and that's ok. I think also that for someone in my situation that it's inevitable I'm going to be on a benzo. I'm maxed out of Seroquel, I can't take most alternative anxiety meds because they interact with the MAOI (just like all meds), I failed a trial of adding the other form of seroquel in a low dose, and I need to stay fairly calm to prevent the bipolar from taking over everything. Plus the MAOI has the effect of agitating me.
I remember back when I met Jean Grey and we first talked about some of the similarities in our experiences and she explained her strategy of using antipsychotics at (I think, sorry if I'm remembering wrong Jean) at a higher dose to allow her to take the amount of antidepressant she needs as strange. I have a lot of tentativeness about antidepressants and bipolar because my experiences with high dose ADs in the years before diagnosis did a lot of harm to my brain that caused some of the things that made me so hard to treat. (I also felt the same way when the med that is a blend of Prozac and Zyprexa came out. My experience on prozac was such scary mania that everyone thought I was going to be hospitalized, right up until I realized what was going on and that my doctor was clueless and stopped it cold turkey. Prozac takes a long time to get out of your system and during that wait I came within inches of being involuntarily committed, stopped only by my throwing terminology around that showed I knew enough and how to fight, but this was after the pink slip was out and partially filled out and I was being told that if I didn't agree to sign myself in she would call the police to take me. I cannot imagine prozac and bipolar even though I know plenty of people are fine on it. For me, Prozac ended all attempts at antidepressants for years, until I failed 2 antipsychotics with frightening reactions and I've been on them since, with different levels of response and lots of changing around.) So purposefully taking lots of antidepressant and then fighting those issues seemed odd to me. And now I find myself in the same position.
I'm really tired. This is not easy to read. Sorry.
My other decision today is one that is limited to "I'll ask", and if Dr. Mind agrees then we'll proceed.
Thursday was a weird session. Partly it is weird because my anxiety reaction and events in my life have left me totally hanging on what we had been discussing, sexual abuse. I was just getting comfortable talking and asking questions that were helping me understand things a little more (turns out that some of what I am fearful of and remember as bizarre things can actually make quite a bit more sense if someone with an understanding of sex that is more than the biological how-to I possess can give information in the form of "do you know that _________ can happen and would seem very much like what you are describing to a child" makes gaps fill in. Sure there is no way to know if the explanation is right or my memory is right, but at least it makes sense if you add in things I just don't know. But it was also weird because we wound up talking about a memory I have of a discussion after I was released from the hospital that appears never to have happened.
I have so much leftover anxiety from the hospital, and I think I may ask if we can try something, namely comparing my writings about it to the hospital notes that Dr. Mind has. I need to find out how much is grounded in reality and what is just my confusion. I have no idea what he'll say, but I need this to become just something that happened and if I know more facts than just what my journals/blog say I might handle it better.
We shall see.
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1 comment:
I don't know if your plan is going to give you the certainty you are looking for. Don't expect your hospital records to really reflect what was going on. I got my records from one hospitalization because I was applying for disability. They said I was sleeping on nights that I didn't, that I was fine on days that I was not, and that I was a danger to myself on days that I was not. Things that may have been very significant to you may not even have made it into the record because someone didn't remember to write it down during the rush of note time.
That said, I think you should still go for it if it is that important to you. Just don't expect too much from you records.
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