Bam

I had a migraine that started Friday and Tuesday was the first day without any symptoms.  Sometimes migraines make me a little hypomanic, probably related to a lack of sleep.  I had at least one night and maybe 2 when I felt too bad to sleep.  I ignored how I felt until today when I realized I was EXTREMELY irritable and also getting quite paranoid.  My hypomania had become a mixed episode.

I think that I noticed it more quickly than I might have in the past because this respite has been the first in so long.  The paranoia was significant though.  First I was very upset because gold hardware/knobs were used on the interior doors in my house when I requested silver because I do not like gold.  It's just a me thing, gold isn't my favorite.  I had requested this several times and I felt totally ignored.  I felt myself blowing it totally out of proportion.  At absolute worst I spent $30 and spend a day redoing it.  Life goes on.  Then I called my mom at my sister's and she was weird on the phone and texted about "something going on" or something.  At first I was sure that I had done something terrible and would never see the girls again.  This in spite of the fact I'm scheduled to watch them Friday.  I even thought about the suicide attempt that would go with that.  It scared me.  And then it got even worse because I became certain that Geraldine's tumor markers were back and were elevated.  That led to a crash course in recurrence of her tumor.  It recurs more than I'd like but not for months after surgery.  So I can relax there.  I'm not sure they even test for the markers yet.  It turned out to be a very stressed sister needed help being 3 places at once.

It seemed strange for topamax to be the culprit because I've been doing well on it for about 3 weeks and was ready to increase the dose.  I emailed Dr. Brain who said that I needed to remember this is my biochemistry and I should be careful and lower the dose if this continued.  By med time I was pretty sure that I was too mixed to risk it and so I lowered the dose.  I had mood response on this dose before so maybe it will be ok.  Or it won't and if it was this med holding me and another trial of the higher dose fails then we'll know it worked but not well enough.  And so my break from symptoms is over.  7 weeks is huge after the amount of time I was so sick but I thought I might maintain this.  But unpredictability is the name of this annoying game.