Daily Archives: May 20, 2015

****Without coming off as a simpering fool, I’d like to apologize to anyone I *may* have offended in the last few weeks. Reading back, I was seriously altered with and after the Latuda. Not an excuse, but when I spouted off, it was what I was feeling at the time, right or wrong. Rationality and mental illness are not close friends. That being said…I still need to vent and so I am going to and if I’m coming off nutsy kookoo…Copy and mail it to my apathetic shrink who seems to think I’m dramatizing how bad things are.*****

Following the post-Latuda effects on my brain and the death of my kitten…I retreated into this “no matter what I say it’s gonna be wrong and I’m gonna sound like a jerk and I am so sad and I can’t handle all this right now, I need my bubble and blankie…” place. It’s an odd place to be for a 42 year old woman with a child. I sure as hell never thought I’d end up here again and again. I figured it was just something I went through as a teenager and it was sparked by all the bullying. Mind you, it’s not literal like it used to be when I would take to a dark bath tub or closet with a blanket and sob myself senseless or quiver in terror. This was more metaphoric. Feed the kid, feed me, feed cats, retire to dimly lit bedroom, no internet just tv shows, and a pile of warm blankets and my kid beside me.
Under all that was also the “starting a new med” dread, never knowing it if will keep me awake, knock me out, make me drool and stumble about. It’s scary stuff. But around 8 I took the Trileptal and snuggled up with my kid. (Good to keep her near in the event the med makes me loopy.) That was when the phone rang, of course. I feigned being a civilized human with my dad. Mentioned Castiel’s death and rather than some sympathy, he just said, “Yeah, well, we got lots of kittens here that are alive.” Helpful.
After that I tossed and turned, and my mind settled into this numb space. Like the hypomania had crashed into a depressive abyss and I had nothing left to think or do or even feel. When the new med failed to knock me out immediately, I went ahead and took half my bedtime dose of Xanax. I began to drift off shortly after. Then just as I’d fall off, I’d jolt awake. That’s been happening a lot lately, as if my own body is scared of sleep and jars itself awake. Makes no sense. Finally, I slept.
Only to be wakened by the phone at nearly 10:20 pm. R,of course. I was half asleep and feeling numb and out of it. Think a little drool may have been involved as I sat up and held the phone with oven mitt feeling hands. He talked. I was silent. But my mind kept wondering if the Trileptal was what had taken me out, was it the xanax, the combo. Shrink told me to take it in the morning so I assumed it didn’t cause sleepiness but I wanted to be safe with my kid on the loose. And of course, in my mind I kept seeing Castiel’s lifeless body and trying not to tear up (and I did tear up for a bit earlier, but my affect is so far off, I’m not even sure I am human anymore, my emotions don’t work properly.) He prattled and I was quiet and he got a little irked so I just told him about Castiel. (I didn’t mention the new med because his attitude towards my mental illness makes me want to throat punch him.)
He asked if I wanted company, said he could pop by and we could watch The Flash and it’d distract me from my sadness. Plus he dangled the Mangorita…And I didn’t even have to think twice. I said NO. Not hatefully, just…Not my normal “Um..Okay.” I wasn’t wishy washy. He was definitely surprised, guess his wife was staying with her daughter up north and he didn’t want to be alone until he’d had enough beer to pass out. Well, for once…I didn’t capitulate. I didn’t feel obligated to do so. Because I am so dead inside, so resigned to feeling this way forever, that there is no point in trying to mimick human normality. I am irrational, my logic is absent at times, my anxiety is in the panxiety zone…I’m not fit for public consumption, so to speak. I need to be in quarantine. I’m toxic in my current state.
And I am just gonna let myself be in isolation until my brain sorts out. Coming off one med with heinous side effects, starting a new one with no idea how it will work out, weeks to wait before it all levels out to some sort of balance…
Taking a few steps back is necessary.
But hey, I went right back to sleep after the phone call (it’s gone from 80 degrees down to 40 this week and I was so cold, the only thing that appealed were the warm blankets, which is the biggest part of my seasonal depression, once I get cold, my body and brain go on strike.) When I woke three times during the night, it became clear that even if the trileptal or trileptal/xanax combo did put me to sleep…Once again, it wasn’t keeping me asleep. Night after night, waking multiple times, sometimes rolling over and going back to sleep. Sometimes getting up to go pee. Other times getting up for a drink and to smoke a cigarette because I was wakened by a weird dream that unsettled my nerves.
And lately, the dreams have been very very weird. Which prior to Latuda, I barely remembered my dreams. Hell, aside from the morning hangovers and comas, it was those scary bizarre dreams from Seroquel and Trazadone that made me not want to use them.
No happy medium, even if I want one desperately.But this is flux time, things could work out if I just tough it out.

Hit snooze twice this morning. It was so cold, I didn’t want to leave the blankets, didn’t want to face the day because R wants me to visit him at the shop and I am feeling anything but social or even…civilized.(Oh but I am earning those points to get the screen replacement for the laptop.) But I did get up. Watched the finale of The Flash. That got my blood pumping, twas good. Managed to get my kid to school without a traffic freak out. Came back home because…I am not ready to paste on the shiny happy people face. I don’t feel it. And some days, we should just be allowed to be sad and withdrawn without being poked with the stick of “cheer up”. It’s been a bumpy month, two dead kittens, the Latuda nightmare, now a new med, and the weather which impacts my moods is taking me down to winter level instead of up to summer level…
I should be enittled to feel sad and withdrawn and lick my wounds for a bit.

I’m not checking e mail. Nor wordpress. I am in total shutdown here. Miserable and stressed as I am, I managed to turn down Mangoritas for the last 5 days even when they were being bought by someone else. When you get this far down, it would stand to reason you’d want to escape with some alcohol numbness, depressant or not. Yet…I won’t even allow myself that escape because it comes with guilt and there’s no reason anyone should have to feel guilty for having a drink or two. And maybe because I have been so erratic and become the thing I hate- judgmental while declaring judgment evil, I don’t deserve even an hour or two of dulled suffering.

I have so many questions, so many things up in the air…Yesterday I was out of Focalin because the pharmacy had run out and owed me 20 pills. And I wonder if that’s why I was so far off the rails. Abruptly missing a dose of that stuff, coming off Latuda…Maybe it had an impact? And now I am pondering how to balance it all.
250mg Lamicta
.5 Xanax three times a day
20 mg Prozac twice a day
300mg Trileptal twice a day
When do I take them all for optimal results? He was useless. I pointedly asked him if this one had the sun sensitivity like Lithium does. He flat out said NO. I got the pharmacy insert and there it is, a gazillion possible side effects and that was one of them. Just like he did with the Latuda. I have to question if he knows what he’s doing at all. I realize not every possible side effect can be told by a doctor and they do base their knowledge on what is common in their patients on the drug. But to ask such a specific question, especially going into summer where getting too much sun may become an issue, he should have told me of the possibility, even if minute. Instead, I have to read the six page insert my pharmacy gave me.
It’s scary. I miss Dr. M more than words can say, she was so good. She knew her stuff, she listened even if I was talking gibberish or bringing up side effects she’d never heard about.
And honestly…When you’re taking multiple meds together, how can anyone know the side effects from the combo when the studies focus on ONE drug in particular. Is the reasoning “well no one’s reported a toxic reaction to these two drugs combined, so there are none.”
Last night I was in such a dark place I thought about calling the local counseling place and asking for their on call person to call me back. I needed to talk because it feels like I am coming undone and I have no one and nothing. Meanwhile, I have to put on the shiny happy people face because mental illness makes those around me so uneasy…Counseling helps very little when your primary issue is medication and reactions. Yet…It was there. Of course, I realized they’d want my first and last name and…What if Yoyo is back from maternity leave and she’s on call and I get stuck with her again? I don’t trust the woman. She seems very upbeat and likeable, but she broke my trust, she basically invalidated my former therapist’s diagnosis after only two sessions, and she flat out told me she has kids removed from parents if they so much as give them a slap on the butt. There was NO way that woman was ever going to get past my shields. I don’t want to do that again. And there was little point because she only wanted to see me once a month.

I’m fucking lost. Scared. Fearful I am losing my mind. Losing my intelligence. Maybe toxic to my kid.
I haven’t showered in days. My stomach is in knots. And I can’t get the image of Castiel’s lifeless body out of my head. It haunts me, screams WHY DIDNT YOU DO SOMETHING???
So maybe the shrink was right and I was hypomanic following the Latuda stop. Now I am onto the next cycle of racing thoughts, dead affect, paranoid anxiety that one more tiny stresser will shatter my tenuous grip on myself. And none of it the doctor would listen to. He knows all, I know nothing. His response to me having suicidal thoughts was laughable. Most doctors ask, “Should you be hospitalized for your own safety?” He didn’t even mention it, just said stop the Latuda, start this, hypomanic, blah blah.
I’m pondering having some papers drawn up. That way if I do lose it and hurt myself, I have it on record that I told the doctor and he blew it off. Let my family sue him for all he’s worth so my kid can grow up decently as far as materialism goes.
I don’t plan on losing it.
But I never planned on any of the shit that’s happened with all these meds and doctors and therapists.
Mood stabilizers and Xanax saved my life, as did the doctors who saw fit to properly medicate those things.
But the depression, paranoia, panic, the ADD, all the things the doctors have blown off, refused to treat…
Negligent even without intent.

Or I’m insane.
I’d be the last to know, wouldn’t I.  Rant done. Hope I made an ounce of sense. I’m not sure I even do to myself these days. When a med manages to make you much worse after only a few weeks on it…More people need to speak up. Latuda, while it may work great for some, is doing a lot of damage to others. Let your voice be heard. Then let’s sue Novartis for putting the shit out there  but not educating the doctors on just how bad things can go.

For those who have experienced bad results with Latuda, the FDA number to report them is 1-800-FDA-1088.