Hello, it’s me again.
Some things haven’t changed.
- I’m still here.
- I still have a job.
- I’m still mentally ill.
- Trying to manage my mental illness via medication is still a wild ride.
What’s new:
- I got a small promotion at the end of August. I was hypomanic at the time, so was totally excited and had no questions about my qualification for the promotion.
- Now I have more responsibility at work. Sometimes I wish I had said no to the promotion.
I’m feeling exasperated with medication. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a period of time longer than about a month when I felt good due to medication.
I think I feel a little better in some subtle ways at times, but it’s hard to know if it’s worth all the side effects and reactions I’ve had to live through.
Such as:
- I have palinopsia, every time I wake up from sleep. (It’s the seeing of “trails” of moving things. I recognize it from film representations of psychedelic experiences.)
- Last week I went to the ER because I had symptoms consistent with metabolic acidosis. I didn’t have that, but the ER doctor looked at my medication list and said, “It’s just too much. Why are you taking all that?” I hated feeling like I needed to defend my medication list. Don’t ask me, ask my psychiatrist! I don’t like it either, but I’m trying really hard to follow my psychiatrist’s directions.
- I didn’t have metabolic acidosis, but I was severely dehydrated and potassium deficient with no apparent cause other than that I’d been feeling crappy and hadn’t been eating the same as usual.
- So now I’m coming off a mood stabilizer per the instructions of the ER doc. I’m told that there are no withdrawal symptoms, but I don’t know why else I’m having so many attacks of sleep paralysis every night since I started reducing it.
- Last November I had exploding head syndrome whenever I would try to fall asleep. I had to go off nearly all my meds because we didn’t know what was causing it. Late November is not the best time to have to go off all meds for me; the seasonal thing kicked in and I got dangerously depressed in December.
- Not to mention the mundane things like weight gain (so I starved myself), acne, body odor, hand tremor, and what have you.
Comment with your own side effect battle stories…
Microquake 