Mixed episode. Take 1.

August 9, 2018

Mood analyzing myself constantly. I was hospitalized for my second time for the bipolar. I have a plan of action for mania but not so much for depression. The problem was I wasn’t really depressed. It was a mixed state. Fun times if you have never had one. This was a combination of highs and lows all within a 24 hour time period. I wasn’t necessarily feeling low but I was weepy. I felt high and loud and sing songy.

 

I felt scared with is what ultimately led me to the hospital. A pervasive fear of hurting myself to the point of killing myself intruded into my brain. I felt powerless. I felt like I would burst if I did not harm myself. I just wanted relief. I knew if I cut open my arm with a knife or razor blade, the pain and voice inside me would quiet. As the blood would flow, so would the pain that was racing through my mind.

As a child I cut myself all the time. Didn’t know I was a baby bipolar then but I was always in a state of depression as a young child. This could stem from the sexual abuse and the family inheritance of the crazies but it always felt better after the first cut.

 

I did not cut myself this time. I burned myself twice with a lighter. Immediately the pain of the depression lapsed into a calm. The screaming inside my brain quieted and I felt at peace.

 

Then I woke up the next day feeling hypomanic. I swung from one tree to the next. One mood shocked into another. This hypomanic episode felt different. I felt spacy. I felt elevated but not overtly happy. I felt if I moved I would not be able to stop. I had no concentration. I could not watch TV and could not focus enough to read a book. Which super sucks because I’m on the last novel in a series. I could do nothing but sit and watch the birds and the chipmunks.

All of this was happening while the eerie voice inside my head kept telling me to grab the fish knife and slice open my wrist. Just do I lightly. Just enough to make it bleed. The thoughts became harder to ignore but I did ignore it. I surrounded myself with people.

I spent the first week of that episode with my friend at the cabin.  But not really there. Just existing because I was afraid I would be found out. Found out that I was not right in the head. So I did nothing. I sat. Drank my coffee. Smoked my cigarettes and just observed nature. Tried to channel that calm into my mood.

Elevated the thoughts and desires became more intrusive. The fact I had already hurt myself made me realize I didn’t really want to do it again. It didn’t stop me from almost doing it again and again. Each cigarette I smoked, I considered hurting myself.

I again returned to the cabin to spend time with my family. I felt out of sorts but I kept hiding the darkness that was returning. We spent three great days together. The day they left I was to spend another two days by myself, isolated with my birds and destructive thoughts.

 

Within minutes of their departure, I gravitated to the sharpest knife in the cabin. I picked it up and started crying. I didn’t really want to hurt myself but I saw no other way out of the hell I’d been in for weeks. It scared the shit out of me. I cleaned up and packed up and left the cabin for the three and half hour drive back to Vegas.

 

I called for help. I left messages,. I cried. I listened to music. Finally someone called me back. I bawled hysterically. I couldn’t communicate what I was feeling. I felt scared and isolated. I wanted to hurt myself. I was driving at 80 mph. I didn’t want die. I didn’t want to be hospitalized. I just wanted to be in my own bed curled up in the dark.

 

But with as much as I wanted to isolate, I knew what I was feeling was not normal. I needed help. I called the one person I knew would not hold back any punches and make me get help. I knew I would end up in the hospital even if I didn’t want to.

 

I got home safely and tried to stop crying. My friend and her family took one look at me and suggested the hospital. They found an emergency room that had a pysch ward at the hospital in case I needed to be admitted.

 

There is nothing like a pysch ward to make you feel sober and normal. It’s the snake pit effect. Within an hour of being admitted with blood pressure 199/111, I felt calm. The urge to hurt myself had dissipated. But I was still waiting to be assessed.

ER pysch wards are greatly lacking in services. The room was set up with no bathroom, no water, no TV, no access to phones. Just four gurneys and nurses shouting, “Back to your bed!”,  if you moved to the doorway.

After several hours of feeling normal, I was assessed and deemed not a harm to myself or others. I was released back into the wild under the condition I see my doctor ASAP.

I am currently under a medication switch. Titrating down one set of meds- the Geodon- the antipsychotic and upping the new meds of Latuda which I don’t think is covered by my insurance. Should be interesting to find out.

I am out of work for two weeks pending the med change and mood stability. Today is the second day. Decrease and new meds. The first day I felt hypomanic. I was busy. Couldn’t focus. No books or TV. Only slept four hours. Last night I got about 10 hours of sleep and feel less manic but no focus still.

I’m upset I do not get to start the school year with my kids. I’m upset that I got to pay for an 8 hour hospital stay that did nothing but give me a time out. Overall I feel better, like I could work, but the unknown is the unknown. I could freak out tomorrow.

 

The upside… no staff development days.