After my last nurse doc appointment, it became clear to me that very few professionals can distinguish an attention deficit disorder as authentic if you’re already diagnosed as bipolar or with anxiety issues. I am not going to debate this because it is a losing battle. The professionals, at this point, have harmed as much as helped me. None of them can agree on anything, they just muddy the waters and fill me with more self doubt and confusion. Am I ADD? I believe I am, and Dr. B said it was often a secondary component of bipolar disorder but the nurse doc made it seem that all my ADD symotoms are byproducts of anxiety. Wtf?
So this post isn’t going to debate the validity of having/not having ADD. Instead, I’d like to focus on the bane of my existence: racing thoughts. It is never ending and the meds do little to help with this symptom. My brain spins constantly, I wake up in the middle of the night with racing thoughts and a rapid heartbeat. I can’t focus enough to talk myself off that ledge, and just trying to focus on one thought stresses me out so much and I feel like such a failure for not being able to slow them down…it’s hellish.
Yesterday was a good mental health day, at least for the first half. Then some misbehavior from my child, as well as the problems my sister’s family is having with financial constraints on burying their dead, my mood darkened and I started snapping. In my defense, the kid stepped on the kitten and damn near crushed him, then lied twice before fessing up that she had done it. Accidents I understand. Lying twice to my face then having zero concern for the kitten, but only caring about saving her own butt…Bipolar or not, I find this a triggering matter for the calmest parent. It just crushed me for part of the day to go so well, and it was- I felt shitty for feeling good considering what my sister and them are facing. But I also loved feeling good because it’s a rarity in a turmoil riddled mind. To have it crash down into me being a snappy anger filled monster…it was crushing.
Today I was going to at least go to the grocery store after my kid was off to school…Except I woke twice during the night from bad dreams with a racing heart and racing thoughts so my sleep was not good. Then at 6 a.m. I woke and checked the time, saw I had email, and it was from the school saying due to low temps, they’d be doing a two hour late start day. And that sent me into a further panic, because I was already scared after 2 weeks of sleeping in, I’d miss the alarm and make her late. Now I had to schedule our routine two hours later and I figured I’d screw that up too, so this created more anxiety. Even after she had gone…I felt drained and tired. And it was single digits outside until noon when it hit a whopping 12 degrees so I didn’t really feel like battling the car and its dying fits. So I stayed in, did nothing, and by the time she got home…I felt more calm and better balanced.
We played dollhouse. We watched two of our favorite sitcoms. But by 8 p.m. after all her demands for more toys and her litany of physical ailments because she had a cold and a cough lingers and oh, the noise at school gave her a migraine so she needs to stay home tomorrow…and I just get so tired of hearing it. If I took her to the doctor every time she asked me to due to ailment of the week, they’d have me up on Munchausen by proxy charges. Yet I also live in fear that the time I write it off as drama llama behavior, it will be the one time she’s truly ill and I end up being neglectful. This daily balancing act is grueling. Earlier, I thought I might sit down at the desktop computer and stare down the blinking cursor, try to get back into my fiction writing. 5 hours with my kid’s constant complaints and demands and utter lack of gratitude or empathy…
I just want to sleep.
Except once I got her down, my scumbag brain started in with the racing thoughts. Anxiety over my coming appointment with Dr. B and how to handle it without seeming erratic and well, bonkers yet make him understand how serious things have been for me while under the doc nurse care. I worry about my sis and them and how devastated they are with K’s suicide.
Oddly, all this stress and anxiety is still more preferable to the stress I was subjected to under the thumb of he whose initial will not be typed.
Racing thoughts are a cruel thing to have and to have them discounted repeatedly angers me. It does keep me from normal life, normal relationships, even reading a damn book or staying on topic in a journal post. Inability to shut the thoughts down and focus makes it difficult to play with my child or even watch a movie with her. And the racing thoughts play hell on falling asleep and staying asleep.
Focalin helped with this. It didn’t make me hyper or high. The fact that it simply made it easier for me to slow the thoughts and focus was what lent credence to the ADD as a secondary diagnosis to bipolar. If you don’t have the disorder, the medication will either have no impact or it will make you high, right? Unfortunately, doctors and insurance companies fail to see this. I am still furious that I can’t get a drug I could desperately use and it’s not even lack of a doc writing a script. It’s because insurance won’t pay and even as a generic, I can’t afford it. Something so vital to helping my mental state and quality of life shouldn’t be unobtainable. The fact the professionals do so little to help us figure a way around the cost (like writing the manufacturer and asking for a discount rate) tells me that racing thoughts and an inability to sit still for long or focus on a ninety minute movie or a 300 page book…
I just don’t think the professionals care anymore. About any of us. But then I am cycnical and I have had some pretty lousy experiences though I don’t even harbor as much resentment for the quack who damn near killed me by not sending me to a psych hospital due to a near fatal reaction to Nardil. That was lack of communication between doctors and hospitals and basic ignorance. They didn’t intend to harm me. This nurse doc…maybe harm was not the intent, but it was the result. And no, I’m probably not going to let it go any time soon because this woman really, really messed with my head.
Bottom line…sometimes, I just want my brain to shut up. I am tired of the thoughts and feelings and how extreme it all is, or sometimes, lack of extreme because I can’t feel anything. When your biggest hurdle in life is your own brain’s unwillingness to cooperate…it sometimes feel like I am doomed no matter how hard I try.
And to that distorted thought from scumbag brain, I have only this to say:
Fuck. You. You. lie.
I’m only doomed if I quit fighting because some psych professionals are really lackluster at their jobs. I won’t quit fighting. I will go down swinging. Ya know, if my brain slows down enough to remember to swing.
