Tag Archives: lorazapam

The Weather

Don’t panic I am not going to go into the mind numbing minutiae of how good the British weather is.

But for the first time in as many years as I care to remember my mood has taken an up swing during this latest spell of good weather. Normally you would have me cowering in the coolest part of the house… even though my ass is to big for the freezer I would usually gladly stick my head in there for the duration of the Summer.

I think the layout of our garden has a lot to do with it though. We have a little courtyard type area just outside the back door where we have set up a few garden chairs and a Picnic table and we have been going outside to smoke and being able to sit down has made it just that little bit more relaxing and not so rushed. Leading off the courtyard area is a medium sized grassed area that I am actively putting off mowing. That gets the full sun up till about 3.30 – 4pm. But the courtyard after 10am it’s nice and cool in the shade.

This holiday weekend has been the busiest since Christmas. As I said in my last post it was Mum’s birthday on Friday so we B-B-Qed and Sunday we had the Family over again for a full roast Turkey dinner with all the trimmings. The Kids had an Easter Egg hunt in the garden and it was fun watching them scramble around the slightly overgrown grass looking for mini eggs and not so mini eggs. Mum cooked so the food was really nice. I hate it when I cook I never feel like the food I cook is nice. I always end up not enjoying it and moaning about it later. Mum did really well and my Nephew really enjoyed his Turkey (I think given a choice the boy would eat turkey every day given half a chance.)

I decided yesterday that I would risk a couple of glasses of wine if I spaced my pills out well enough and the Seroquel was out of my system by the time we sat down to eat. So in reality I spent 24 hours planning for two glasses of red plonk, not that I am Anal or anything. But I had my two glasses and it went down well and I didn’t have any real after effects of having it. I did feel a little tired once everyone had left, but I had a couple of strong cups of Coffee and I was back to my fighting strength.

Last night my medications were changed again down 1 Resperidone up 100mg of Seroquel, Which if my crude maths is correct means 2x2mg daily of Resperidone and 400mg nocte of Seroquel. When I made the move from 200 to 300mg I was dopey as a mother fucker for the whole past two weeks. Last night I take my pills at the normal time of 10ish and was in bed by just after 11pm. I thought I would be out for the night, only to wake up at 02.30 this morning wide awake… so I did what I normally do, come down for a smoke and then see if I want to head back to bed. Last night I did, god knows why I bothered I was awake again 2 hours later and I have been up for the duration.

One plus point from yesterday (well it’s a plus point after the fact.. it could have been disastrous) Linda forgot to put any Lorazapam in my morning pills. So I went through the whole of yesterday without Lorazapam and I didn’t melt down. This is a good thing. Friday I had to take extra to get me through the afternoon, but as I mentioned before, I was having a bad afternoon confidence wise.

I hope everyone has had a great holiday weekend and are looking forward to the next one ion ohhhh 3 and half days.

Until Next Time…

Tough Day

It’s been a bit tough around these parts today. It’s my Mums Birthday. We hadn’t made any real plans for it. I was going to cook whatever she wanted for dinner and we were probably going to watch a movie this evening. Somewhere along the way this week it evolved (I am starting to hate that word) into buying a Bar-B-Que and having a little family get together. I thought this was a great idea, Mum doesn’t get bored and the food will be “different”

The plan this morning was for my Sister In Law to come around at about 11.30 and for my Brother to follow once his church service had finished and then Mum and SIL would go out and buy the Bar-B-Que and requisite items to go with it. Then once the hardware was bought it would get ferried home by Taxi and they would head to get the food part of the day. All good so far. This all went off to plan. When the hardware arrived my Brother set to putting it together (he is better at things like that… fuck he’s better at most things than me… but that’s just my general fucked up view of things… it’s supposed to be the older brother who leads the way.. not in this family.) It took him about 30 minutes to put the Bar-B-Que together… I would still be fighting over the legs 12 hours later. Once Mum and SIL arrived home with a metric tonne of food to be cooked we had just about gotten to the stage of lighting the damn thing. According to those congregated it was my job to set the fires going and to cook the food. I fought for thirty minutes trying different ways of getting that dam thing burning properly. We, in the end, used about 2/3 of a bottle of lighter gel and after about another thirty minutes it was raging like a trooper.

Needless to say my brother had taken over after I had all but admitted defeat at the hands of the charcoal briquettes . I did however take over the cooking and managed to cook some pork steaks and not burn them. I moved on to the food on skewers and managed to singe a few sausages. I knew I was on to a losing battle as my anxiety levels were gradually creeping up. The kids were hungry and things just weren’t moving fast enough to keep everyone happy. I started getting that feeling you get when everyone is watching you judging every move you make.  I handed the cooking tongs over to my Brother and he was in his element cooking away with a beer in hand. (What I wouldn’t have given for a cold beer today, but with the Seroquel and extra Lorazapam I had taken it just wasn’t wise for me to drink as well.)

My brother handled the rest of the cook duties for the afternoon with a plomb. the only things that looked a bot weird were the sausages.. they went from Brown to Black…but perfectly edible. They weren’t burnt at all and I had two or three of them so they must have been allright.

I guess it’s my inadequacies that I foster and imagine that make my success in anything where my brother is concerned all the worse. I have written before about how he is better at virtually everything we have or have had in common. I honestly can’t think of a single thing that I do “better” than him. He is Musical he is a tech guru (He can build websites from a blank notepad page and make it look good.. he is also a great parent something that I am sure that if I was in the same position wouldn’t be the case. I may be the funky uncle but I am sure I would make a shit Dad.. probably wise that Linda and I couldn’t have kids then.)

OK this is just turning into one big fucking Pity Me party so I am gonna go and wallow in bed and try not to wake up until after Easter is all over.

Until Next Time…

Yet Another Year Gone.

So, it came to pass that 2010 has come and gone and yet again I pretty much failed on keeping the blog up to date on a regular basis. To be fair not a great deal has happened over the past 6 months. Now with the move I have a whole new slew of challenges ahead of me. Fitting in with the new CMHT in this area dealing with,what is looking more and more probable, E.S.A change over. So to that end I make this (semi) promise that I will update more often and make it more focused on not just the day to day minutia of my life but to become more active in the political and awareness aspects of Mental Health.

I’ve said before that I don’t make resolutions for the New Year as I very rarely stick to them but this year I have to make an effort to stake my mark on life and get myself out there more. Now that I have moved to a “safe” are of the country for me, I fully plan on being back in work at some point this year. That will be a whole new kettle of fish. I have been out of the work place for over two years now and I think I find myself in a bit of a rut. I am set in my ways and I don’t have the “willingness” to push myself. That has to change and I need to find new boundaries and continually push them to make myself, somewhat, better.

Onto local news. Since the move on the 15th right through Christmas I felt pretty good. No mega stressers. I handled Christmas Day with my brothers kids really well. We had a great day. I didn’t retreat to my PC all that much. I had music playing through iTunes and that was about it. I managed to have a few drinks over Christmas and not freak my ass out. A couple of beers and a bottle of red wine split with my Brother over Christmas dinner. He was a bit surprised that I was drinking as he thought I didn’t drink with my meds. Which in all honesty is true, but I know that the amount we were going to be drinking over the day wouldn’t really affect me all that much. I spaced the meds and alcohol out evenly so I wasn’t drinking straight on top of the pills. It all worked out pretty well and I didn’t wobble at all. I will probably have a couple of beers whilst watching Jools Holland on New Years Eve and that will be me until the mood strikes again later in the year.

Having said how good I was over Christmas, this period between Christmas and New Year has been harder. I have been taking extra Lorazapam to get me through the evening time as I am finding it hard to cope. Anxiety through the roof for no particular reason other than my mind rebelling against the good work that’s being achieved. For the moment I am taking it one hour at a time and not taking the extra Pams unless things get to unbearable. I just hope things pick up soon. I was enjoying the good patch so much it reminded me of the days before Bipolar was such a big thing in my life. Those were great days where I was ruled by the alarms going off to remind me to take my pills, or the drugged up feeling I get every morning that lasts until the second cup of coffee kicks in and the previous nights drugs have worn off.

Oh well enough moaning. Positive thoughts from here on in.

I hope everyo0ne had a great Christmas and that your New Year brings everything you could possibly hope for. Here’s to 2011 and the good vibes it should bring.

Squeak at ya Next Year Folks

Until Next Time…

Worms… Your Honour

So it’s been a couple of weeks but nothing much has changed. I am still fluctuating between rage at the world and maddening depression. One day I want to rip some ones head off and piss down the throat of my victim, the next day I don’t want to get out of bed and function in any way that would even resemble normality. I am dealing with it the best I can. my Psychiatrist has taken me of the promazine and started Lorazapam again twice daily with an optional third if I need it. All the time I spent during last year getting of Lorazapam has all been undone in one phone call. It wasn’t until someone mentioned to me that I had Medication Management to get off the bloody things before that I put two and two together. Oh well, at least I am not a zombie for the whole day just most of the AM period with the Zopiclone.

I have noticed that my “normal” everyday drugs are making me more drowsy. I don’t know why or how I am noticing this because the Zopiclone masks so much of what I feel. But there have been days where I haven’t taken Zopiclone and have still felt whacked out by the drugs from the night before. I am losing weight, maybe that has some effect on the side effects. The weight has been coming off for over two years and I am now down to my lowest weight in years certainly since I came back from the states in 2002.

Talking of weight loss, last Wednesday I started taking twice daily injections of a drug called Byetta. If you can’t be bothered to read all that guff and to be honest I got lost a few times getting through it, Byetta is a diabetes drug that is pretty new to the market and is kinda unique in my drug regime… It induces weight loss. The way it works is that you inject any time an hour before you eat and as you eat signals are sent to your brain saying that you have eaten enough and are getting full, thus making you eat less. This in theory is great but when you don’t gauge how much is enough you end up with a delayed bloating and you can feel very uncomfortable for several hours afterwards as I have found out most of the past week. Tonight is probably the first night where I haven’t felt uncomfortable, that’s mainly because we only had grilled ham and cheese toasties for dinner.. which is just two ham and cheese sandwiches and that wouldn’t normally phase me but tonight I feel like I have eaten a full meal. It’s a learning curve and no doubt by the time I go back to have my dosage increased I’ll have another two weeks of getting used to it. I just hope it’s doing the diabetes side of things good too. Eating less is only part of my struggle though… for it to be truly effective I have to start actively trying to keep fit. I don’t like the sound of it but I may have to dust off the exercise bike and try putting in a few miles on that thing.

Well That’s about all from me tonight.. I leave you with a little Pinkness.. Run Like Hell from Knebworth in 1990… my mate Nigel was there… Lucky Bastard.

Until Next Time…

Round and Round

I would have written sooner but ya see it just wasn’t flowing. I have about ten partially started in my drafts folder that one day I may finish. I am doing fairly well. No major things going on. I seem to “Just Get By” most of the days lately.

I recently told a friend that I was BiPolar and it wasn’t a big thing for me or her. She was sympathetic to the fact that I lost my job last Octopber but there was no poor you. This my friends is a good thing to know that my friends from back in the day still accept the Grumpy ol bastard that I was back then as still the Grumpy ol bastard that I am now.

They have discotinued the Medication Management Clinic at my local MHT. This means that the long drawn out recovery period has been drastically cut short and I have only been weened off of two drugs. I was expecting to come down to mono-treatment as I was on a duo-treatment (and for the most part still am). They took me off the Flupentixol and Lorazapam and put me onto Diazapam and now they have weened me off that. I really wanted the cahnge so I felt that I had to go along with the changes that were put forward even though that in little under a week I willl be totally without anti anxiety medication all together. They have refered me to a lady at the Bungalow in town who specializes in Relaxation and anxiety management techniques. So that could help but I dunno I have been medicated so long I am a bit afraid of going it alone.

On a  final note…  if any of you read this just keep a thought in your heads for aethelread from http://aethelreadtheunread.wordpress.com/. He’s been MIA for a couple of weeks and some are getting a little worried about him.

Keep the Faith.

Until Next Time…

Breathe

I am having problems breathing. I don’t know if it’s a panic thing or if it’s a congestion thing. I can breathe through my nose fine but if i do I feel like I am drowning… hence I am a dreaded mouth breather today and that makes for interesting listening when I am on the phone.

I have a plan for a second blog…. in fact it’s already in place. It has been for several months, I just don’t seem to be able to get up the ooommmppphhh to get it started. Once I start it it will run itself. Well, not run itself but once it’s running I’ll be more motivated to post more often. If anyone reads this sporadic blog will know my track record is not a good recommendation for starting a second one.

I am still going through medication management and we have now gotten me off of Flupentixol all together with very little negatives. I am off Lorazapam and on Diazapam. We have reduced it down to 2mgs a day with the option of a third mg if needed. Today is the first day I have needed it in the past week. I really miss my little blue friends at times. I probably shouldn’t admit that as it probably shows a certain degree of reliance on them… or if you want to put in in plainer terms I miss them because I was getting or had gotten addicted to them. Wow that was a weird thing to admit in the open.

I haven’t been writing much of anything lately… updates for here… my medication management diaries, they have all gone for a burton. I just haven’t had a creative urge in ages. I have all but given up on entering the Art exhibition later this year as I don’t think I will ever be able to come up with anything remotely worthy of displaying to the public. I could drag something up from the archives but that just seems like it’s cheating and no effort has been expended for the occassion and they deserve better than that. But who knows things may change and I’ll have a creative spurt and ream off loads of new stuff and I’ll have an abundance of stuff to offer… ooohhh look mummy pigs are flying in the sky.

Well that’s it from me for now… I can’t think of anything else except I feel blurgh and ack.

Until Next Time…