Category: episodes

Turned a Corner

Today was kind of a white-knuckle day. I got some things done at work, but it was at a very halting and stop-and-go pace. I sat through a meeting and managed to pay attention to what was being said. So that was good. I felt such a weight roll off my back when I was able to sign out, though.

The itching is gone. The rage is just about all gone. And last night I had a lot of tossing-and-turning time before I finally fell asleep. And the extra movements are just about gone. So I am finally feeling better. I hope it’s a long, long time before I get that close to an episode again. I did not enjoy it in the least.

It’s been two months of just lots of med changes and coping mechanisms being deployed and some of them working and others of them not. I know Bob is probably tired out from hearing all my nature music over and over again, but it helps so much when I’m like this.

Keep praying that I’m on the mend. I appreciate all your support.

At wit’s End

So today while Bob was home at lunch, we set criteria for me to try to go to a crisis care unit in my community since the psych unit I used to go to is closed: if I wanted to just quit my job for no reason, if I wanted to run away or disappear, if I wanted to hurt myself, or someone else.

I’ve blown right through the first two. I read up on the website for the crisis center and I think I’d have to be past the third to get in. I’m calling my psychiatrist to see what he thinks.

He wants to see me first thing in the morning. We will see what happens.

I Can Feel It!

I felt so much better today heading off this mixed episode. I could actually concentrate on one thing and do it all day. I took breaks and lunch, but otherwise I was pretty steady and finished the task right before I left for the day. Whatever the plan is meant to do, it feels like it is working.

Waiting on Bob to get home and we can fix a quick dinner and have a quiet evening. My youngest is going out with her boyfriend tonight so we will have the house to ourselves. I plan to maybe do another writing sprint on my own on another project and see how I do. Not sure if it will work as well as if I had someone to report to at the end, but I may as well try.

I’ve been listening to Charlie Brown/Peauuts soundtrack music the past few days. It calms me and makes me feel nostalgic for when I was young and then when our kids were young. Just some nice cool jazz to relax and work to. It certainly seemed to help today.

I am thinking much more clearly too. No more spiraling or racing thoughts today. No more hopelessness and feeling down. So I’m glad of that. It got pretty bad there for a while. But no more wanting to swing a baseball bat in the house and break everything. So that’s a good feeling, too.

Godspeed to all today.

A Plan!

So Dr. Bishop jiggered up my medications because he said if the Otezla was helping me as much as I said it was, he didn’t want me to stop it. So I got a med I’ve taken before and will drop another med in about a week while giving the new med time to take me out of the spin. He said I was acting like I was heading for a mixed episode. I asked what the plan was if I needed to go inpatient, and he said he would refer me to Merit Health Central. I asked about Brentwood, and he said they were all rehab beds now. So that was depressing to know.

So I decided on my way back out to the car that I was going to work at home the rest of the afternoon, and that was the right thing to do because I ran into road construction traffic on the way home and started crying because I was so upset and frustrated. I worked from home today again also such as it was.

The mixed episode diagnosis made sense–the impulsivity, the scatterbrained attention span, the anxiety. So now my job is to not let it get worse. I am going to work on my meditation techniques and that kind of thing. I have been eating all day, but it’s been good food, like fruit. Until I signed off work and wanted a Coke. So I ran out and bought one. But we will see. Please pray for me that I will settle down with this new medication without throwing me into depression. Or that I just don’t bring depression on myself frothing at the mouth about all of this. It’s too much.

I think I am just going to try to relax this afternoon, cook dinner, do Facebook after that, and just go to bed early. Maybe I will wake up on time tomorrow.

Waiting

I’m sitting in Dr. Bishop’s office waiting. I filled out the questionnaire and completely blanked out on my meds. Unbelievable. I am feeling worse by the minute.

I do NOT want to go to a hospital. Not now.

I just hope I remember everything I have to talk about: the violent thoughts, Otezla, and the surgery.

I think that’s all. I feel calmer having listed those out. There will be a plan, I know it. That’s what I am paying for. That’s what he is trained for. It’s going to be all right.

Jackson, Mississippi Hospital Closes Mental Ward

I am so angry and devastated and heartbroken I can barely type.

The hospital that I owe my life to, St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi, has closed their behavioral health center as of 7 a.m. this morning. They say it is a cost-saving measure, that the unit lost several million dollars a year in the past three to five years. (I thought St. Dominic’s was a non-profit hospital. Apparently not)

I found out through a Facebook post from my psychiatrist’s professional web page. He said that the St. Dominic’s closing its mental ward did not affect his private practice–he was still available to patients.

I was so shocked my legs went weak as I read the hospital’s press release.

This hospital is where I would go when I needed protection from myself.

St Dominic’s Behavioral Health took patients from all over the state. It had a geriatric psych unit for the elderly patients and an acute ward for adults. And it’s just–gone.

They saved my life in 2006.

And 2007.

And 2008.

And 2009.

And 2011.

Again in 2016.

Again in 2018.

And again for the last time in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the first time I was homicidally angry at the world and scared I would kill random strangers walking down my street out of my paranoia.

What can we as mental health patients do to stop the world from thinking of us as people that can just be thrown away? That’s what St. Dominic’s is doing here. Throwing people away. People like me, who can work and raise families and contribute to society–as long as we have good treatment options.

I am not a Medicaid patient. I pay for Medicare and private health insurance. And we have still spent well over $50K over the past seventeen years doing business with St. Dominic’s Hospital. I am not asking for charity here. I am asking for simple human compassion on suffering people–like me.

I understand that caring for the mentally ill is a job that no one seems to want to do. Not the private sector, the public sector, the courts, the jails, no one. But I don’t think people understand that people are going to DIE as a result of this trend of closing mental hospitals. People who can’t think of a reason to live will DIE. I have been that person. I can’t believe we have devolved as a society that we can just throw people away like this.

I just don’t know what else I can say.

Rage

I talked to Tillie about some rage obsessions that had come on me while my oldest and her family were going through the whole homebuying-process/fiasco. I fell into one while they were flailing around trying to find something, anything they could get approved for in July, and another one while the banks were taking so much time to process the checks we sent down.

They were very similar to the rage obsessions that had put me in the hospital last year at the end of my manic phase last year, when I finally felt it spiraling out of control. These don’t feel manic; I don’t feel manic, but Tillie says they sound like a manic symptom to her. She wants me to talk about them with Bob to see if he has noticed anything else strange lately. She said they seem to be born out of frustration and helplessness for me–but that anger is always a covering for fear. So.

I’m not doing it anymore, but it seems to be a pattern for me and for characters in my fiction–that they can solve their problems through suicide or homicide or threatening either. Either threat gets attention paid to the problem at hand.

Anyway.

Today has been pretty good–I’ve just seen Candy and Christy this morning, then gone and seen Tillie and then taken Bob to get his car at lunch and he took me out to pizza since we were on that end of town. I’ve been really busy, and I can feel it. I’m very tired and out of sorts. I think I am going to lie down for a bit.

Hope everyone can be safe and careful with the virus. Godspeed.

Woke Up Better

I talked to Bob last night and he was a good listening ear about my anxiety and reminded me that he had my back. So that was good to hear so much of the anxiety has passed on. I’m not quite in as good a mood as I was before seeing Tillie, but I think I’ve bounced back some. Maye I can get some work done today too. Finally turned in my MCIR story last night. Don’t know how good it really was, but it’s finished. I expect her to send back with some questions–I’ll be shocked if she doesn’t. But maybe not.

Had a bad string of weather yesterday and last night–tornadoes in different directions really messed up parts of the state. God bless, we were safe and so were mom and dad. They’ll be back with my youngest one soon–sometime after lunch today. I think she has enjoyed her time with them. Then tomorrow night she sleeps over with a friend before a flag guard contest so we won’t see a lot of her this weekend either. But she is young and having fun. That’s what we want.

So many things to catch up on since I took yesterday off. I need to do laundry. I will be cooking tonight since my youngest is here. But I still feel super tired from not resting well. I may continue to goof off this morning and get it in gear after lunch. I don’t know. I’m about tired of making promises to myself and to people since lately I am invariably missing the deadlines. I don’t want to wear out people’s generosity. I like deadlines–they spur me on, but obviously not as much as they used to.

So we will see what happens today. It’s such a murky day out–I hope the sun comes out again soon. I need it.

Love to all. Thanks for listening.