Janice M Cali
Mind in Chaos
Brain on Fire
For the past six months, probably more, I've been on an emotional railroad, up one day down the next. Many think this is a fun, being without control of your emotions. I know in the 1960's many used drugs to achieve this state, and some still do, but mainly they use drugs to dull their minds.
I'll have to admit that I didn't want to lose control of my emotions, I feared and abhorred the idea, I still do. The thought of dulling my mind was equally abhorrent and continues to be so. Unfortunately both of the states have been achieved, without my willing, or sometimes knowing, participation, over the past 20 years, at least.
Without my knowledge, diagnosis and without my will, I've been unwittingly sliding into the illness called bipolar. This is something I've dreaded over the past few months, that this diagnosis would become a reality, not knowing that it had been true for the past 20 years.
It started when I had to have a second surgery on my back back in 1989, I'd been in a nursing home for several months, and the experience was hellish, then I had the surgery, I was run down, physically and emotionally, the nerve in my back badly damaged, and I almost died on the operating table. How do I know? I felt it when I woke up and there were two nurses and an aide in the room taking my blood pressure every few minutes, a specialist came in to check something, that I don't remember, and my doctors were both scared. This was a hint.
I'd been out of control of my life for several months, in and out of the hospital and nursing home, not capable of taking care of my life, my bills, my home or my career. So it was inevitable, when I got out of the hospital, back at work, living my life, I lost control of my spending habits, something I'd never experienced before. Buying things felt good, and I felt good. Then the depression, the panic and anxiety started. That was my first experience with having Manic and Depressed mood swings and with PTSD. As I've stated in other posts, I'd suffered from depression off and on for years, but not the manic moods, now they were starting.
When I had to file bankruptcy, I regained control, for a few years, at least of my spending. Not my depressions, but I didn't go into a manic phase for a good while. After my car accident, I lost control and went manic again, I spent $4200.00 in three days on a shopping network, buying gems for jewelry I wanted to make, but didn't yet know how to do so. Not the brightest thing I'd ever done. It took several years to work my way out of that hole, but I did, and I didn't slide into Manic again for a while, but did suffer depressed states frequently, some that lasted for years.
I started going into a major manic state at the end of 2007. I had to have the front of my building rebuilt, and I'd decided to open an art gallery. Silly me, but I started spending money, and it got out of hand, completely. After the gallery failed due to circumstances I couldn't control, I, again slid into a depression, but this didn't last long, due this time to my involvement with greyhounds, and their needs. I saw the chance to have an on-line business, one that sold all types of things for dogs. This failed too, mostly I think because I tried to have too many things, didn't finish the web site, plus the economy failing didn't help.
Since those days, I've been up and down, a continuous fight between my manic me and my depressed me. I managed to spend, with the rebuilding of my facade approximately $27,000.00 between October 2007 and February or March of this year. That's less than two years. I was amazed at how stupidly I behaved. Only a maniac spends that kind of money with a very limited income. And the key word is maniac, the word actually means a person who is manic, that would be me. But it wasn't until last week that a doctor finally confirmed something my therapist and I have been discussing for months, I am Bipolar, aka Manic/Depressive. I can experience a manic faze for moments and a depressive one within the same hour, fluctuating several times within a day. This is not fun.
I continue to be amazed at how long it has taken my doctors to realize this, and me, of course, but you see when you are in the midst of being manic you don't really realize it, and when you're depressed all you focus on is your depression and your search out of that dark state, or giving up.
Last week was a low spot in my life, one I hope I never reach again, I wanted to die and was almost willing to make that happen. I admitted myself into the hospital, again. This time a different one, one that specialized in mental illness, not one with just one small unit dedicated to this horrible disease.
Something many people, including my elderly parents, seem to forget, mental illness, in all it's varied and diverse forms, an illness, a disease, several diseases, all about chemical imbalances and genetic disposition, etc. These illnesses run in families, some more than others, but an interesting statistic, every family in the USA has at least one member who has or will have a mental illness, and I suspect this statistic is carried throughout the world, some more than others.
The major problem faced by those of us with mental illness is treatment, diagnosis is a problem and can be a major one, but treatment is still the most difficult for us. Many of the ways to treat these illnesses involve many anti-psychotic drugs, these drugs can cause problems, mainly horrible side effects, in and of themselves. I'm fortunate, I'm now, on two drugs and some very strong vitamins that are not causing me too many side effects, one can and does cause me a major headache if I don't sleep it off, it helps with sleep, and sleep in someone with bipolar disorder, a term I now despise, can be rare and very hard to come by, I need at least six to eight hours of sleep to sleep off this drug and when I don't get it I find that I'm grumpy, have a headache and become manic more easily.
These are two drugs that I was on before I went into the hospital I was already on, so what's the difference? I'm not on one that I was on when I went in, I'm no longer on Diazepam, aka Valium. I've been on Valium since 1999 or 10 years. The dose for more than six of those years was very low, no more than four milligrams, then the doctor upped it to six milligrams a day, or two milligrams three times a day. By the time I went into the hospital this time I had been on 12 milligrams a day, against my own judgment I want to add. I'm not sure when my psychiatrist upped my dose to 12 milligrams but I remember that he did so because of the frequency of the panic and anxiety attacks I was having and the severity of my depression.
Blurred Confusion
Another problem I was having and was complaining about especially to my therapist was my lack of focus, I couldn't concentrate and over the past two or three months this was getting worse and worse, along with my ability to think clearly, function at the levels I'd been used to, for the past few years, my ability to think clearly, to function at a high mental level had been decreasing.
It had never occurred to me that these two problems, severity of depression, fluctuating mood from manic to depression and mental functioning could be attributed to the Valium, but it could be. It hadn't occurred to me until lately that maybe the drugs I was on could be contributing to these problems, but a few weeks ago, it began to be an obsession, I wanted off all my drugs for my depression, all of them, and I decided that this was going to be my goal, it had to happen because I no longer knew what drugs were working and which weren't.
When I went into the hospital, I stated this wish, the doctors there agreed but only discontinued Valium, it took them seven days to discontinue it, with loads of B12 shots, it seems that B12 is used for detox support from many drugs, and Valium is one of the hardest and most dangerous to detox from, alcohol being the top in the most dangerous, at least it used to be, I haven't checked lately. The good news was that just my body was addicted, I didn't care if I took the drug or not, but my body did, it was necessary physically, not emotionally. Mentally it was causing more problems than not.
Valium, I've decided had become highly toxic to my system, it was one of the main causes of the constant shifts in mood, it was the cause of my mental inability to function at the levels I had been used to, and it was the cause of my inability to focus on one thing for any length of time. Am I completely clear of Valium? No, that could take months, but it is happening. Have I had any cravings for Valium? Yes, one or two, but not enough to even tempt me to take any, ugh, to that. Am I functioning at a higher level? Maybe, but not completely. Am I more focused? Almost, not there yet, but achieving more focus daily.
So, the lessons of this post, know your own body, take part in your treatment, if your doctors don't talk to you about your drugs, what they can do, and what they may do to your body and your mental functioning, make them tell you the facts.
If your doctor doesn't talk to you, there might be a problem and you might have to insist that your doctor be more communicative. Take an active part in your treatment, research your drugs so you can know the most common side effects, don't dwell on these, just be aware of them, and what your body is saying when you take them.
The single most important thing, in my opinion, know your body, be aware of what your body says to you daily, hourly, minute by minute. Your body, your brain will always tell you when something is wrong, sometimes it takes us longer to hear, to listen or even be aware, but eventually we will hear, and we must be willing to trust our own instincts.
If your body or mind is telling you that a drug is causing harm, then talk to your doctor, tell him what you feel, make him listen!
Not all doctors want to listen to what you feel about their medical advice, if you have one of those, one who, even after you have insisted he listen refuses to believe that you have knowledge beyond his expectations, it might be time to change doctors.
I don't, and wouldn't, recommend this lightly, but what good is a doctor who doesn't work with his patient? Who isn't willing to believe that, just maybe, his patient might know what's happening in his body more than he does? If you are in a mental state that doesn't allow you to have good judgment about your body or mind, then have an advocate work with you with your doctor if you feel that something isn't right with you and with your relationship.
Finally, don't stop any drugs without the advice and assistance of a doctor who is well versed in withdrawal from that drug. An example of wrong, is my current, but soon to be past, psychiatrist, he recommended that if I wanted to stop Valium, I could do so by cutting the dose in half for three days and then stop. This is extremely poor advice, and without support from B12, and perhaps, other drugs, would have been impossible.
It is my sincere hope that someone learns through these posts. I don't do them just for me, I do them for others who might have the same problems, but different, we are all different, so differences pop up in the way we need treatment.
Next post will give you a look at the inside of a modern (?) hospital that specializes in mental illness and addictions. Stay tuned, it might take some time, focus is still difficult but I'm getting there.
“Blurred Confusion” photography copyright 2009 Janice M. Cali
“Brain on Fire” photography copyright 2009 Janice M. Cali
Painting, “Agitated Confusion” copyright 2001 Janice M. Cali
Painting, “Fire Fronds” copyright 2008 Janice M. Cali
