It has been a long time since my last entry.  Good news is I am officially off the Zoloft.....the bad news is that I am officially off the Zoloft.  I had 4 days and nights of insomnia followed by another 4 days of mania followed by a very deep depression.  I finally got to see my psychiatrist and he upped the Wellbutrin like we had discussed and he said I should be feeling the effects in 3 or 4 days.  So I hung on just a few days more AND........nothing.  Not a damn bit of difference.  I don't understand!  Usually when we up it I do better then I find a dose I can live on and life goes on per usual....not perfect but manageable.  I guess the joke is on me.  Some might say that the holidays can be a trigger and I can see why they might say that.  I am a wife and mother of 3 so I am all about making Christmas as perfect for them as possible and my best is never good enough so imagine my disappointment when I am not even close to my best at the moment.  My husband said everything went off without a hitch and yet I can find many things that could have been better......if I had been better.  In the past couple of weeks I have found myself on the bathroom floor crying hysterically just because I don't want to feel this way anymore.....it's not fair.  If I wasn't sick then I could do everything a perfect mother would do to make Christmas perfect for my family.  But if I stop and think about it....who wants perfection, really.  Perfection must be boring, being a supermom must be fulfilling but how challenging is it. These  moms who can fly all over town getting kids to their appropriate places on time without forgetting and have amazing plans for dinner and pay just enough attention to their husband so he has his needs met....let them walk a day in my 3 inch stilettos and see how it feels.  Try and deal with the hundreds of thoughts that pass through my head about failure and falling short and not being enough and they deserve better and etc.  Try having to talk yourself off an invisible ledge everyday, sometimes many times a day just to get through it.  The bipolar in me will never be close to perfect but if I can show my kids that everytime I get knocked down by this hell of a disease, I get back up and wait for more....because we all know, there is always more.  But we get back up to show the ones we love that they are worth it.  Don't get me wrong, it has been HELL trying to get back up everyday, to get out of bed every day, to fall asleep at night knowing I will have to deal with another day in the morning but I do it because I choose to.  Sometimes it makes me physically ill but I do it.  My head still tells me I am inadequate, I fall short, they deserve better and guess what, they do but while they want me around, I will be here, fighting everyday to survive, maybe even do a little bit better than survival but no promises.  I hope my rantings help you understand that you are not even close to alone out there and I am always here if you want to talk, just leave me a comment.  Love you all!!!!

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WITHDRAWAL

So as I stated earlier, I am in the process of trying to get off some of my meds.  I have officially stopped taking the Zoloft and am now in the wonderful world of withdrawal.  Now I have been off and on many, many medications and I have never really experienced any withdrawal symptoms.  Looking back now I see maybe it's because while I was getting of a medication I was also getting onto something else.  This time my doctor didn't increase  and dosage of my current meds or add a new one.  Well I have stopped taking the pills and didn't bother reading the withdrawal symptoms, thinking that I just wouldn't have any.  BOY WAS I WRONG!!!  I found out it would take about 2 weeks for it to leave my system.  I was expecting a little discomfort but was not prepared for what I was about to experience.  Week one was insomnia.  That was awful!!  The anxiety every night about when or whether or not I would sleep and how much I would get was terrifying.  So let's play this out- I'm not sleeping which can cause me to go manic, I have anxiety every night that fuels the insomnia which fuels the mania.  Then I am hit with week two and crippling depression.  See I have lost one of my antidepressants and my doctor wanted to make sure it was gone before upping my other one.  He was afraid it would cause me to go into a manic phase.  Guess he didn't have to worry about that, the insomnia did that for me.  My week two depression also corresponded with the week my husband was out of town so I am dealing with depression alone and trying to take care of my three kids.  This has been one of the hardest weeks but I survived.  You do what  you have to for your kids.  I won't lie, there were a few suicidal moments but I hung on.  The moral of all this is to just hold on.  When things look like you just can't deal, just hold on.  There could be hope around the corner.  I see my psychiatrist this week so hopefully he will tinker with my meds to give me hope for a change.  Everyone just hang in there.

So I am in the middle of changing psychiatrists.  Is there anyone out there who finds this as scary as I do.  I've been displeased with my old one because I have been "off" for over a year now and the meds they have put me on don't seem to help.  They took me off the mood stabilizer that I love (Geodon) and put me on another then added another antidepressant to off set the other one (Wellbutrin) that I have been on for awhile and absolutely love.  When I don't respond to the new meds they are using all they do is increase the dosage-they never tried anything new.  They also put me on Xanax and Klonopin for my anxiety disorder that had reared its ugly head.  I wanted another perspective on what I was taking so I found another doctor.  Now actually going to him and trusting what he said is hard for me to do.  Let's put it this way, I don't handle change well.....at all.  Well to end the suspense, I LOVE my new doctor.  He told me things that I already thought but was afraid to bring up.  I thought I was on too much antidepressant and he agreed with me.  He started weaning me off the Zoloft.  When my old doctor started weaning me off the Lamictal and putting me back on  the Geodon I found my mood was better......that is until the Lamictal was out of my system and the Geodon was all that was left.  I wanted to stay on both but my old doctor thought that wasn't a good idea.  My new doctor thought that if it was helping so why not do it.  So he is slowly getting me back  onto the Lamictal in conjunction with the Geodon.  All of this to say that I am now in the middle of psych-meds roulette.  I'm afraid to see the side effects of being off the Zoloft and I am trying to get off of at least one of the anxiety meds but they are very addictive and it will have to be a SLOW process. 
If your meds don't seem to be working and you have been trying for months, go ahead and take a chance and get a second opinion.  It's just like with any other medical condition, the rule is to always get a second opinion.  I don't know how this will all turn out but it is worth the risk.  If you are having the same problem, write me and let me know how your are handling it and how it all came out.  I want to hear your thoughts and opinions.  I hope we can share our experiences and help each other get the best care we can.  I will keep you updated on my doctor change and my med changes.  What I will say now is that I am petrified of what to expect with the change in meds and how the transition will be.  Keep your fingers crossed. 

What is normal?

Normal- what is normal and who defines it.  I have always been viewed as a person who walks to my own drummer.  If I were to be honest it's more like I have my own band.  Someone once said of me that if anyone was going to say anything inappropriate that it would be me and that I could get away with it because of who I am.  I have also been told and have experienced that you either love me or you can't stand to be around me, there is no in between.  I definitely find this to be true.  So it came as no surprise when I was diagnosed as bipolar in 2006.  I had known all along that I was different.  Bipolar does not make up my personality, it just ramps it up a bit.  I am considered an outgoing person with a big personality and a tell it like it is attitude.  I try never to mix words, I will speak my mind even, if it gets me in trouble.  When I'm manic, my personality gets bigger, I become more outgoing and speak my mind to the point of possibly even alienating people.  When I'm depressed, it is so much more than sadness or feeling down.  It can be crippling.  Depression is reaching the end of your rope and then being dropped.  When I am depressed, every thought, every breath, every conscious moment is agony and I just want to run away from myself....but where is there to go.  Mania on the other hand is almost defined as a lack of control.  Mania manifests itself differently for every person.  I will do everything I can to not be cooped up in my house.  I will make up errands to run.  I don't sleep that much....maybe 4 hours a night for many nights in a row.  I come up with wild ideas for me, my family, my friends or even my house.  I become very creative and can sit and write for hours.  I also go WAY OVERBOARD on the shopping.  Now I love to shop and always look for deals and since identifying that shopping sprees are a symptom of mania, I try and be very very careful of my spending.  But a few years ago it was COMPLETELY  out of control for many months.  Now at the time I didn't realize how bad it was and I didn't attribute it to mania.  I even tried to justify my spending.  Let's just say that there were months ago that I was completely out of control.  For most people this is not normal behavior but the people like me who  live with bipolar disorder, this is what we deal with every day of our lives.  Sometimes we have remissions but we will never be cured. 
Why do I tell you this?  I want the people who suffer with to understand that they are not alone.  I want you to comment on what I  have said and give me your opinions and thoughts and help me through the maze of this disease.  I will go into more detail as the blog goes on but I just wanted to let you know that there is someone out there who gets it.  For those who don't suffer with it but might know someone who does or who just wants to know more, I want you to feel free to ask questions and leave comments.  There is a stigma that goes along with mental illness and I want to shed the truth on what is real and what is exaggerated or even an outright lie. 
I hope everyone finds this helpful in some way or another and please leave comments or questions.  I  would love to get to know others who suffer from it or who wants to learn more.