Tag Archives: pills

Breaking In A New Doctor

Yesterday we went and met our new GP for the first time. All three of us went en mass to see him, we booked three 10 minute slots with him and needless to say we were there over an hour. I bet he didn’t get home for his tea on time as by the time we had finished with him at 5.30pm his waiting room was filling up nicely.

Now let’s get things straight from the start. He seems like a nice bloke. He is Dutch and is easily understandable. I think once he gets used to the way we work with our primary carers he won’t be so quick to jump on small matters at a rate of knots.

Mum saw him first and she was in there a good 20 minutes (remember the ten minute slots) and once she came out she was suitably impressed as he had given her a few things to think about and had changed up her meds a little to make things a bit easier on her. This should have set my mind racing straight away but I was sure that A GP wouldn’t mess around with another Doctors prescriptions bar making a few changes to the type of pill being taken (Slow Release Metformin for Diabetes as an example.)

Another chap was a few minutes late for his appointment but they put him in after Mum had come out.. so I had a few more minutes to wait, but being the dumb arse that I am I wasn’t putting two and two together and getting worried that I may need a back up plan for my appointment. The chap that went in before me must have been a real simple case as he was in and out in 5 or 6 minutes. No waiting around… his style is one out one in. Not like my old Doctor who would let one person go and then wait ten minutes for the next patient to be called in.

I was next to be called in, and seeing as I can never be trusted to see a doctor on my own when I forget so much Linda came in with me. He offered his hand and I shook it (good start methinks.) I sit down and we get the small talk out of the way and I hand him my repeat prescription to show him the cocktail I was on. This, folks, is where the alarm bells began ring loud and fucking proud. He picked up on my taking Risperidone and Lorazapam at the same time. For those who don’t remember (and why should you) the Risperidone is for the Psychosis, the voices and hallucinations and the Lorazapam is for the anxiety I get just getting out of bed in the morning. Lorazapam is one of the drugs I was weaned off of early last year but had a hard time staying off of them and was put back on them pretty soon after I started losing my shit on a regular basis during the summer of last year.

He looked at the repeat for a moment or two and then totally off the wall started to suggest that he take me off Risperidone. Just like that. I was dumbfounded. I had not been in his office for more than 5 minutes and this dude had decided that one of the most stabilising drugs I take was surplus to requirements. I flubbed, hummed and arhhhed for a second or two and said “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” For the life of me I couldn’t get the words out to explain why it wasn’t a good idea, just that “it wasn’t a good idea”

In the 7 years after being diagnosed with Bipolar my GP has NEVER suggested anything like that. MY old GP would only make changes when someone had fucked up somewhere along the line and it needed fixing so I didn’t start a meltdown. If he had pushed the situation I would have walked out there and then and looked for another GP. I made it quite clear that I wanted to be referred to the CHMT in the area and he stated that he had already set things in motion for that. MY heckles went down a couple of notches and we moved on to my Diabetes treatment.

The rest of the appointment was a bit of a blur, I do remember that I mention my last retinal screening threw up some irregularities on the back of my eyes, and he has referred me to the local retinal screening team to get my eyes retested and get new pictures done. I think more than anything else… (BP aside) my eyes are my main worry. If I lose my eyes I am screwed. I would make a terrible blind person. I can’t touch type with out looking at the keyboard… which kinda defeats the object of touch typing I know but hey it works for me. After he had finished with me I just wanted out of his office. I left Linda in there to deal with him for herself.

Before I left his office he suggest a couple of changes to my medication… both changing types of release drugs for my diabetes and Seroquel. Both are now on a slow release prescription and I have no problems with those changes as I know the drugs are going to do the same job just over a sustained period of time and for a change I may not get the hit of being wiped out by a 200mg hit of Seroquel in the evening and I may not feel so tired in the morning.

I’ll give him his due, he seems to know about his medication. Talking to my Brother and Sister In Law this afternoon, it turns out that this fella is anti medication. Well he is shit out of luck with us three and we are on enough pills to start our own Pharmacy. I know any small changes made to my regimen can send me off the deep end and I think that’s what worried me the most about this guy just changing my script without any of the facts. I am not currently under the CMHT and would have no where to turn if things went tits up in the interim. I am not willing to put myself or my family in that kind of position. I guess I should have been more on the ball in the appointment but you drugs and all that dull the brains kids… This is your brain…. This is your brain on drugs SMOOSH.

On the whole I have been holding my shit together mostly, I do feel a little abandoned as I have no where to turn, this has caused my mood to dip noticeably over the past week or so. I am putting it down to the fact everything is up in the air and the new year blues. It’s nothing that others aren’t feeling this time of year. I was hoping that my head would allow me to get out and do more things independently once the big move had been made, but so far I am still hiding away and still have trouble with Supermarkets. I avoid going into them if at all possible and would rather stay home and wait for a phone call saying Mum and Linda need help with the bags from the Taxi. I know I need to make changes but it all seems so hard at the moment. I just can’t do the normal things yet and that is really bugging me. I need to start to find excuses to go out and follow through on them. Going to the Library seems like a good place to start. Will look into this next week. One of my non resolutions is to read more this year. I need to expand my mind more than just surfing the internet and playing on Facebook and Twitter (NOT that I plan on giving them up for one second… but there has to be more to it than just that.)

Oh well this is almost 1500 words.. and I have waffled on long enough, so if you’re not sick of hearing it yet, Happy New Year and I hope it’s all good for you or at least less bolloxy than last year.

Squeak at ya’ll later.

Until Next Time…

Another Day

Yep just another day in my life. Well not exactly JUST another day but it’s been pretty mundane. I have been freaking, as usual, about something way out of my control. This morning when the postman delivered our mail I was presented with the IB50 form from the Incapacity Benefit people. I knew that getting IB was to simple. This is just the start i tell ya, it’s going to end up with me having to go to Stalag 13 and have a medical and then my benefit will be stopped because they will find out that I am a fraud and am not really ill because I was having a particularly good day on the day of the medical. See what I mean, Freaking out of my own head. I have tried to pretty much keep this to myself but I don’t think I succeded to well. Mum being the form filling demon that she is had a look and said it was a cake walk to fill in and half of the forms don’t apply to me. We’ll see… I have a bad feeling about this.

After my ponderance yesterday about my CPN making an appearance sometime soon, I got a phone call this morning and she has asked to see me tomorrow afternoon at 3pm. No doubt I will get the usual health lecture about my weight and lack of exercise. It’s a bit difficult to excercise when you can’t face leaving the house unattended. Hell I can’t even walk to the shops just around the corner on my own without having a panic attack. I would take more Lorazapam but I am afraid I will become addicted to the stuff. I only get enough for 2 pills a day for a month. I take one every evening and have one spare if I do have to go out. If I went out the amount that is suggested by the doctors and CPN I would run out by mid month and be screwed for the rest of the month. I guess I will have to ask the GP to up the amount of pills he gives me or really start to suck it up and start going Lozzie free.

That’s about it from me this evening.

Until Next Time…

Finality

I have been thinking a lot about death over the past 70 hours or so. I know my mum is going to get out of the hospital in the next day or so but her being away has made me rethink what I would do if anything were to happen to her or Linda.

I find the concept of losing either of them a total mind fuck. They are both big parts of my support system and my life in general. I only have Three close personal friends and I am related to all Three of them.

There is my mum: She is there for my moral and centre balance (as is Linda). If i am feeling suicidal she would and is the first person I go and see. She tries to talk me down and take my mind of things.

Then there is Linda: She keeps all the pills in order. 99% of the time I couldn’t tell you the dosage amount of any given drug I am taking. It’s all taken care of for me by Linda. Maybe that should change so I at least have some idea what I am taking when i go see the medication management people.

And then there is Nik: He is a great leveller he will say what he is thinking and be truthful with it. If I am wound up I can talk with him and it’s all gonna be alright any time soon.

That’s they way it’s worked so far and hopefully the way it will continue to work.

Getting back to the concept of death. I have a recurring dream that Mum and Linda will die within a short space of time of each other and my being left alone with no one to make sure I don’t do anything silly. I truely think that if that situation were to ever arise that would be my time to check out too. I would either do that or I would drop out of society and become a bum living on the streets and kill myself that way.

I am a big burden to those around me, they are to nice to admit it, but having to accompany me everywhere is a pain in the arse. The constant pill changes and the changes in mood it brings is a pain in the arse. Putting up with my constant mood chages can be as draining for mum and Linda as they are for me going through them. Having a Manic Depressive as a pet is no fun for the owners… we may not pee on the rug so much but the drooll makes a nasty mess after a while and chasing the cars is hell on shoe leather.

When i wasa kid there was a “crazy ” cousin we were not supposed to go anywhere near. We were told that he drank to much scrumpy cider and it sent him Mad. In hindsight and being slightly more grown up I know this guy had a severe mental illness (he was always hospitalized). I guess my folks and grandparents had their reasons for saying what they said but I just hope that Nik and Esther don’t ever feel like they have to say that about me. I would rather walk away and be forgotten than have them feel that they have to lie to their kids to protect them.

Anyway enough of the maudlin I am going to try and sleep beofre i have to go to the dentst at 11.30.

Until Next Time…

Sleep

I don’t know when it began and I don’t know how it began but I haven’t been sleeping at all well of late. I have been getting plenty of sleep just at the wrong times. I have been getting up at 10.30/11 o clock and feeling so wasted from my medication that I have been going back to bed after eating something and taking my pills. I usually sleep until 2pm or 3pm and then I will be up until 2am or 3 am. Then the cycle starts over.

Now your probably saying to yourself that “It’s not the medication that’s making you feel wasted it’s your f*cked up sleep patterns.” Well that’s what my CPN who visited me yesterday suggested. We talked it over and she suggested that  take my evening medication MUCH earlier than I normally would.(ie 6pm) and then go to bed at about 10pm and try and get myself back on to some kind of *normal* sleeping pattern. I agreed and last night I complied. BIG MISTAKE.

I went to bed at 9.45 and duely fell asleep pretty much straight away. I did however find myself awake at 1am unable to go back to sleep. So i come down stairs and check my email and have a glass of milk to try and help me get back off. I went back to bed about twenty minutes later and did get back to sleep pretty much straight away. All was going well I thought to myself as I dozed off again….that was until 4am when my eyes pinged open and stayed that way for 30 minutes until I could stand laying down no more. So up I got and came back down to have a cigarette and to check my email again ( I check my email an unhealthely amount each day… it’s a habit I can’t break). This time I was up for close on two hours I watched an interesting film on Hallmark about teh Enron thing, it went well with the bowl of Coco Pops I had.

I had planned on staying up for the duration but by 6.30 I was ready to try for at least a couple more hours.

I woke up at 10.45.

The medication was not really a problem this morning I don’t think as I had taken it plenty early enough. I took my morning pills and got on with my day. But by 2pm I was knackard again. I should have stayed up but my eyes were closing on me. So I wimped out and went back to bed. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s not as if I am overly depressed about anything at the moment. My anxiety about going out is still in full effect but the mood has been pretty stable.

I have been up now for the rest of the day and I have taken my pills at around 10pm so hopefully I will get to sleep at some reasonable hour. I know I have to get my sleep patterns sortedout but it’s always easier said than done.

Until Next Time…

Looking up

Today was suprisingly uplifting day. We travelled back from Kent this morning and I made a concious choice not to take a Lorazapam this morning, just to see how far I could push myself without snapping. I had my extra pills with me so I could slip one in if things got too much. But they didn’t, I made it all the way home unaided by (extra) medication.

This whole weekend has been so relaxing for me I think it has done me more good than I realised it possibly could. Even Mum had noticed the change in me. I am hoping this wave of feelgood feelings hang around as I don’t feel hyper and I don’t feel particularly down, I feel just about as stable as I have for a while now.

Am I ready to go out on my own? Not quite. Am I getting closer to having more confidence? Absolutely

Until Next Time…

Good days and bad days

I guess one could say that my mood and my mental state is improving. I have my good days and I have my bad days. Heck I can have a good hour and a bad hour. One thing that triggers a bad hour is the thought of having to go back to work. I just know that no matter how many pills they change and how much the dosage is altered I am never going to be ready to go back to work. Now Never is a mighty big word and I don’t mean that I never want to work again, because that would just be stupid and a reckless thing to wish for. The only way I could possibly stop working period is to win the lottery, and aside from the odd tenner we don’t have much luck on the old 6 balls dropping.
I wish I knew what kind of work I could do without the stress that working for my current employer hands out. I would love to work with computers in some respect. I would love to learn how to build websites properly and make a living from doing that. There is a problem with that idea though… and that is you need training and qualifications to do that kind of work… that or an amazingly artistic streak that I don’t have. You have seen some of my art work on these pages and they are nothing to shout home about. I don’t know how to use industry standard tools like the adobe suite of tools, I chose the easier option of learning Paintshop Pro. I think I am too set in my ways now to start to learn anything else. I have fun doodling with what I know but I need something to be able to step up to the plate and do more with.

I’ll not go on with my little ramble about work, just so far ask to know that I have three weeks to make a choice about what to do next.

I spoke with my pdoc on Wednesday and we decided that I should come off the Aripiprazole and increase the Reboxetine by another 2mg. I m fine with this and I think my body has become used to the reboxetine as I am no longer getting the Insomnia I was getting for the first ten days I was taking the drug. It was getting to the point where I was waking up at 3.30 am and being wide awake and not being able to sleep again until 4 or 5pm that afternoon and then going back to bed at midnight and doing it all over again. Touch wood I am over than now.

That’s it from me for now.

Until Next Time…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.