La La La.....

Last week I had my medication changed. I wasn't sleeping any and I had started to sweat like a pig. After two days of calling I finally go them to give me some free samples of Zyprexa. The first couple of days it was working like a charm. I was sleeping through the night and the excessive sweating had stopped. The ADD like symptoms of my manic episodes are more pronounced but I think that may be because I'm more aware of them.

The last couple of nights have been rough though. I've gotten back to where I wake up at least once a night. Great. Just what I needed and wanted. I had started to enjoy my sleep again.

My next appointment isn't until the 30th so I'm going to give the meds until then to settle themselves out before I freak out on the poor nurse again. Bless his heart, he really was a trooper during those two days I kept calling.

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I have a job interview tomorrow. Everybody cross your fingers that they like me so I can get the hell out of my wonderful office. I've had it up to you know where with that place. I'm going to be dancing my way down the long hallway to the parking lot on my last day.

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On a lighter note...

My mom rode with me to pick up Little Man the other day. On our way home he was singing something in the back seat. I don't know what he was saying but he kept repeating it over and over again. My mom asked him to stop and he asked her why.

Grandma: Because it's annoying.
LM (in a sing song voice): I'm annoying you. I'm annoying you. I'm annoying you. I'm annoying you.


That little youknowwhat is definitely my child.

Random Little Man Conversations

The other day we were in the store getting some groceries and we were talking about having tuna fish sandwiches for dinner.

Me: Mommy’s going to put some pickles on your tuna fish sandwich.
LM: Really?! I like pickles. Is Grandma going to have some?
Me: No, Grandma doesn’t like pickles.
LM: Grandma, you need to try pickles again. You might like them.
GM: I don’t like pickles. I tried them when I was little. They’re yuckie.

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Yesterday morning we made some strawberry milk to drink with breakfast. I poured Little Man a glass and asked him to try it.

LM: This is yuckie mommy.
Me: It’s not yuckie. Just try it.
LM: Grandma says pickles are yuckie and she didn’t try them.

Needless to say I poured him a glass of regular milk after that.

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When I picked Little Man up from his father the other day we were supposed to meet Grandma for dinner. She was supposed to get off work at a certain time and she wasn’t answering her phone. I finally decided to call my sister and make sure I had the right time.

Me: Mommy’s going to call Aunt Amy to make sure Grandma was supposed to get off at 7.
LM: How are you going to call Aunt Amy mommy? Do you have her number?
Me: Yes baby, I have her phone number.
LM: Mommy, do you have my daddy’s number?
Me: Yes baby, I have daddy’s number.
LM: Mommy, when I go to daddy’s you call me at daddy’s number so I can talk to you okay? Is that a deal?
Me: Yes baby, that’s a deal.

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I took Little Man to the Halloween store last weekend to pick out his costume. He had his choice between Spider Man, Batman, Iron Man, Superman and a Power Ranger. He picked the blue Power Ranger costume. The costume is padded to look like muscles. When he put it on he said......


"Mommy!! I have big boobies!!!"

7's & 9's

I had a very good session with my therapist this past week. I mentioned to him that my manic symptoms seem to be more pronounced now that I'm on medication. He explained to me that manic episodes and ADD are very similar. That really explained a lot to me because I've been jumping from thing to thing a lot lately.


Tonight Bananer took me out for a "date night" of putt-putt and bowling. Here are some random thoughts from tonight.

1. I suck horribly at putt-putt. I used to be better at it but tonight was typical of my putt-putt playing skills of the last few years. I finished the game at 11 over. Bananer was only 1 over. I unfortunately taught some little girls how to cheat by just picking up my ball and carrying to the other side of a tough hole. Whoops!

2. I had a severe case of the 7's and Bananer developed his own case of the 9's when we were bowling. We could not get away from them. It was almost scary. If I had not gotten that strike in the first game I would have had that score sheet printed to show all the 7's.

3. Is it just me or is it strange to see 10 year old boys wearing Nirvana shirts? This kid wasn't even born when Nirvana was popular. I wanted to ask him if he even knew who Nirvana was or if he just liked the shirt.

4. Why is it that running into old friends from high school is awkward? It's like you want to be nice to them because you were really good friends in school but you don't want to talk to them because you don't have anything to talk about anymore. Sometimes it makes me sad because I miss those friends that I had back then but then I have to remind myself that people grow apart over time and not every one stays friends forever. I think I got an email like that one time. Something about different friends for different seasons of your life.

5. Bananer really is a trooper for putting up with my shit over the past 2 1/2 years. He's doing a very good job at hanging in there while I'm trying to deal with my newly discovered mental disorder. I really don't know what I would do without him and I am eternally grateful that he has stood by me through all of this.



That's it boys and girls....time for bed.

Bad Day 101

Today is a bad day. I’m tired and I feel myself slipping down the slope that is my mood. I’m irritable and I’m thinking negative thoughts again.

And on top of all that I’m extremely jittery. I’ve had to deal with a lot at work today and I feel like getting up and bolting out the door. By lunch time I was having a hard time focusing and it hasn’t gotten any better.

I’m tempted to not answer the phone when my coworker calls anymore today because I feel like I might snap at her at any moment and it’s not her fault.

Last night I did a pretty good job of sticking to my sleep schedule. I was in bed at 10:03 and read my book until 10:30. Of course I woke up several times during the night so it was extremely difficult to get up at 6:45 this morning. I let myself lay in bed until 7:03. I am extremely tired right now and I’m about ready to snatch the radio off of the desk of the person in the cubicle behind me and throw it down the hallway.

Sleep....wonderful sleep....

It’s amazing how much clearer you start to see things when you know you have a mental disorder. You start to notice patterns in your behavior and how certain things affect you. My psychiatrist told me that a rigid sleep schedule is very important to a bipolar person. He said that it was very important for me to go to sleep at the same time every night and get up at the same time every day even on days I don’t have to get up. I laughed because I like to sleep in on the weekends and the thought of getting up at 6:45 on a Saturday morning cracks me up. But I have been trying to make a conscience effort to improve my sleep schedule.

Last night was a late night for me. I was up until 11:30 playing Tiger Woods 09 on the Wii. It was very hard to drag myself out of bed at 6:45 this morning and the lack of sleep is taking its toll on my body and my mind. I’m having a rough day today and I’m trying not to fall asleep at my desk. I’m to the point that I just want to go home and crawl back in bed. I don’t want to sit here at my desk for another 3 ½ hours and try to deal with this mess.


I’ve been thinking all day about how it’s the lack of sleep that’s making me cranky and I started to think back on the past couple of months and the number of days during the week that I would tell Bananer I was just tired when he would ask what was wrong. I’ve come to realize that it was just about every day out of the week and I see now what my doctor means about a rigid sleep schedule being important to my biochemistry.

So….I’m going to try my hardest to stick to my new sleep plan. I will try to be in bed no later than 10 every night and asleep no later than 10:30. I will try to be up no later than 6:45 and in the shower no later than 6:55 every morning. Wish me luck!!!!

Abilify....

Tired. Fuzzy. Hot. Head filled with cotton. Not able to concentrate.


I don’t know if this is because of the medicine or what but I do not feel like myself at all today. I found myself sitting here at my desk trying to figure out how to enter something and all I could do was stroke my fingers across the paper. Nothing I read was making sense at all.

I feel like my head is stuffed with cotton and I have a “fuzzy” feeling going on. I got up to take a break and my coworker said she could tell something wasn’t right. I know I must have a crazy person look going on right now because the look she gave me said so.

I feel like I could pass out at any moment and I don’t know why. I slept last night. Not anymore than usual but not any less. I’m not unusually tired. I just feel like if I sit still too long I’m going to crash on my keyboard.



Hopefully my coworkers will wake me up if that does happen.

Light at the end of the tunnel

For years I have thought there was something just not quite right with me mentally but I always dismissed it because I was too scared to admit I needed help. After watching my "situation" worsen and seeing it destroy the person I love I finally admitted that I needed help.

My first appointment with my therapist was one of the hardest days of my life. It was very hard for me to sit there with someone I had just met and spill all the details of my inner most thoughts. Thankfully he is great at his job and did nothing but listen to me talk and hand me the Kleenex. After detailing our 8 session plan for teaching me how to stop the negative thinking, he set me up for an appointment with the M.D. He told me that he thought I had an anxiety disorder and he wanted me to be reviewed for medication.

The 3 weeks between that appointment and my appointment with the M.D. were really rough. I was noticing that my "situation" was getting daily and it was really starting to scare me. I was flying off the handle at the slightest things and I felt completely out of control when it happened. I could hear myself screaming in my head to stop acting like that but I just couldn't. I felt trapped.

At my appointment with the M.D. I told my story again and when I said one thing in particular his expression told me he was on to something. He started asking me a more detailed set of questions and when he was done he said "I think you are mildly bipolar".


Ding! Ding! Ding! Folks we have a winner!!!


He assured me that he did not think I was as bad as some other people who suffer from live with bipolar disorder and that he thinks we can control it with medication.

They always say that hindsight is 20/20 and now that I know that I've pretty much been living with this my entire life I can look back at certain things I did and go "wow, that was a manic episode". Say, for example, the time I drove 120 mph the entire 3 hours to Atlanta. Yeah, that's not something a normal person would probably do.


So, I am going to use this blog to detail what it's like to live with bipolar disorder. I'm still learning how to cope and I've only been on the medication for a few days now but I hope that being able to share with the internet what I'm going through will help me cope with it.