the episode

ok. the new episode of february started after my bday, on a thursday, evening, after my therapy session with my therapist i noticed that i was manic. for me it's an immediate awareness of my actual brain chemistry neurons or whatever shifting and i feel it biologically the way people report feeling anxiety in a physical way only it's nothing like anxiety. i had the visuals where everything is seen in a new clarity,the thoughts and connections and other stuff but i was able to be aware and use my way of kind of witnessing my brain like in mindfulness meditation.

this time i was very able, even more together and quicker than usual to get on to the job of managing the episode and mania. called my doc and told him and said i was going to up my abilify and take 200 seroquel (usually i take 150)mg. he left me a message saying i was right on and to increase abilify the next day and keep up the seroquel and that it was great that i noticed so quickly. the other ingredient was talking to denzel right away.

the upside was that i enjoyed reading this book called dogtrain to lola in a manic sort of way that was good -- i felt really present and was really into the book and holding her and relating with her. i know my therapist that night thought i was very related and grounded because i check in with him as i have a tendnency to go off and talk a lot to avoid emotions.

so that's been going on since last thursday about 10 days or so, and as you can see, the episode is not over but under control. the fact that it is 9am in nyc and i'm writing a lot of posts is soooo much better than if it was 2am, or 5am, you get the point. i've already had a night's sleep.

as to the stressors causing the episode, i'll save for another post. a lot of stress about elvis' aging, relationships, holidays etc. that built up in my body. i usually have manic episodes a couple of weeks or month after the big stresses have subsided a bit, but the elvis stress continues. to be continued.

the image i had for a cartoon was to draw abilify and personify it and have me talking to it. i'll try it out soon and get my scanner hooked up to this computer...

abilify, abilify, abilify say it three times and tap your shoes together!

ok so i'm still manic,but managing it. got sleep last night, about 6 hours or maybe 5.5. will have to take a nap later.

the mania is now under control and not further triggered by abilify as i'm on a higher dose. the longer you take it and higher d0oses it starts to do its threepart performance: mood stabilizer, helping lower depression, and antipsychotic! seroquel is supposed to do that too but it has a lot of long term effects that could happen later, like diabetes, etc.

so now i take wellbutrin 300mg, abilify now up to 10mg and seroquel now up to 200 mg. (with klonopin when needed).

i fully admit that my weird desire to start abilify (the idea of not taking depakote again was longstanding and the idea to maybe replace it was not weird but good sense care taking that seroquel is not enough and i did not want to have to stay on high doses of seroquel. with depakote my seroquel dose was 75mg before i went off to get pregnant.)well the wierd part of it, about 20% as to the 80% that i think was well founded and supported by my doc:
1. i liked the name for the first time i really liked a drug's name. i have to probably take these drugs for the rest of my life, so cut me some slack that i focus on the names. any bipolar knows when you get manic words MEAN more than when you're not. associations to the name: ability, abilify like liquify or other words like that , the "ify" i think means, to make, so to make more able, then other associations: ability, amplify, i think i'm spelling the drug's name wrong. i think it's "abilifi" anyway if i go more towards fantasy with the associations: able to fly, able to lift out of depression and mania, able lift...
2. i had an intuition that it would give me a hypomanic lift, just from knowing that unlike the other mood stabilizers it is not going to knock me out of slug me into sluggishness...
3. i even like the blue color, it's a really nice blue, not like the color of wellbutrin which i take the generic of anyway and wellbutrin smells bad. it's a tiny pill shaped like a rectangle but rounded at the edges. the blue is sort of cerulean blue, nice and bright for a bright new day of normality, not that i ever feel normal.

ok enough of that. i'm exagerating for effect and i know this post seems manic but it's partly due to my lack of posting and wanting to catch up and missing writing and enjoying it. i like words and playing with them when i'm not in an episode too.

next post: the episode and where i'm at with it...

new year's resolutions, new news and new episode!

hello all, so much for blogging more frequently. i've stopped using my mac almost completely as it's not hooked up to the internet and in a bad place for watching baby girl at same time. i think i'll start calling her lola just so she has a name here but it's not her real name. i don't want to regret writing about her in this context and as my name in here is fake anyway, as is denzel's and elvis' hers needs to be too.

anyway i will try to hook up my scanner and start doing comix again. i really strayed from the whole point of my "notes from underground" which was to post comix frequently about my bipolar adventures, as practice for the graphic novel i've been blocked about doing for about 9 years now. i'm on page 26 or so. today i'm going to a fun party where i will find some great old comic books and get reinspired. my friend whose party it is, a great friend of denzel and an "uncle" (not biological but more of an uncle than her "real" ones) to lola, set aside a bunch of wonder woman and other related comics by and about women.

anyway i will try to figure out a way back to comix. i haven't come up with the right drawing of myself but i have been doing some drawings that i think will help get to it.

this post should probably be divided into several posts. january news was that i got very depressed and then started a new medication towards end of jan.
abilify!!!
i had talked to the doc about changing to something more as the seroquel was not enough to manage my episodes or at least to prevent frequent severe ones. at beg. of jan. as you see from last posts i was kind of in a mixed state. the angry depression at end of january lasted only a few days. as soon as i started a low dose of abilify it went bye bye.
i know abilify can stimulate in low doses when it is helping your antidepressent work better. i think it did cause some hypomania...

anyway more about abilify. where have you been all my life? all those years of depakote, feeling sluggish and needing about 9 hours sleep a day at least, unable to wake up early etc etc. it did not affect my creativity though, so depakote takers out there, if it works for you, great! i also did not keep up with getting my blood checked and hate needles so abilify is great for that. no need for the blood levels i had to do for about 10 years of lithium followed by years of depakote.

more in next post.

very short summary of i don't know what to call it.

yes, up again at 1 but i just took my seroquel so i'll be tired soon.
i think i mentioned starting an episode two weeks prior to the april 7 post. up until last monday the mania seemed low or gone, just a lot of paranoia, emotional getting way emotional more than normal, like crying more at certain topics, talking a lot to one of my friends...
anyway long story short, monday the 21st i got so manic i was really scared it was goign straight to psychosis, but i recognized it.
next post more detail.
today i found out that since april 11 i have been taking about twice or more of my normal dose of generic wellbutrin. i didnt realize as i'm used to always taking three pills a day but anyway i finally figured it out after i had taken 6 00 milligrams instaead of 300. i'm sure some of the past sixteen days i've taken three pills by mistake, three times the normal dose.
anyway that explains a lot at least from april 11 on and especially this week's mania followed by mixed state and sort of rapid cycling stuff i'm not used to.
more on another post.
has anyoen also been so oblivious that s/he did not notice that the new bottle of meds was suddenly changed.../??

biggest challenge of my bipolar pregnancy...

i've been wanting to express this in comic strip form for a while; it somehow could have come out better, but it's the best i can manage at 1am...
it is confusing enough dealing with bipolar episodes and constant monitoring of whether i'm manic, hypomanic, depressed, psychotic, mixed state etc. whether on or off medications, but being pregnant and bipolar throws in a real extra challenge -- hormones!
then the question becomes "am i being normal crazy hormonal pregnant or am i being crazy made more nutty by hormones but not at all norrmal for a pregnant lady at al, in other words, bipolar crazy and pregnant at same timel..." in some ways it's not that difficult. when i have symptoms that women describe having after having the baby or when they have postpartem issues, but i'm still pregnant, i know this ain't normal for being pregnant... when i feel crazy but it turns out, as denzel puts it "you're just exactly normal for being knocked up and so many months along! how does it feel to be just like everyone else at this stage! ha ha. i know how you hate to admit you're going through the same stuff every other hormonal pregnant woman goes through!!!" he likes to rub that in. i do admit that if i'm going to suffer through being bipolar and pregnant, at times i enjoy that i'm having a very unusual pregnant experience that brings me to deep levels of awareness of all the transformations i'm going through and that most pregnant women are protected from going to these places and lucky in that they don't suffer the torments of it, but at the same time they don't get the special experience of being so in touch with all this intense unconscious material that if you live through it without destroying yourself, the fetus and your partner and anyone else along the way, is quite an extra special experience... along with that i also get to have all the other regular normal pregnant hormonal stuff. so sometimes i confess i bask in my own admiration of my special crazy and pregnant status. i can't get too grandiose because denzel is around to bring me back down to earth...

Top 10 Most Challenging Life Experiences...

i decided to try a list of them, the ones i've actually experienced so far, so having a baby can't be on the list yet...

1. death of a loved one
2. serious illness of a loved one
3. first time experience of psychosis and hospitalization
4. being pregnant with no medications for bipolar
5. bipolar "disorder" and all that comes with it, including dealing with its effect on one's loved ones
6. moving
7. dealing with anger and disapointment, conflict and confrontation from others
8. taking care of a dog coming out of anasthesia
9. high school and living through it
10. ages 13 through 28 and living through them

i am sure there are others that are worse that i have repressed, such as witnessing cruelty, violence and abuse, being mugged and some other things i probably "forgot" as i would not want to list them here...
if anyone else feels like making such a list, let me know and i'll check it out!

more anxiety...

just read too much on the internet about pregnancy, well specifically about delivery, actually about c sections as i decided quite a while ago to have an elective c section. there are some truly "crazy" judgmental people out there, i can't imagine that is good for their children. to tell people you do not know things like "you spread your legs to get pregnant, you should spread your legs to have the baby". this from a woman. it actually seems that the people with the most opinions about c sections are women, and the most intolerant and judgmental stuff comes from people who have had their child in whatever way they think is better. i just don't understand how people can complain about being given more choices.
who am i hurting by having a c section. one person actually made a mean comment about mothers choosing c sections as being selfish and not caring about their babies.

i can't say i'm completely comfortable with my decision but not because i might want to deliver the "natural" way, but because i'm not comfortable with getting the baby out either way. i wish honestly that i could just burp and she'd pop out. i'm scared totally of all of it, so the c section does not remove the fear. if i could be knocked out completely and wake up feeling ok with the baby there, i'd honestly choose that. i don't think that makes me a less fit mother. the things that could make me a shitty mother do not have much to do with getting the baby out. but it amazes me that there are women out there who think that way.

one of the reasons i chose the c section option besides the cowardly fear of labor aspect is the bipolar issues. i think the worst scenario would be long labor no sleep and then emergency c section because of complications, what could be more stressful, plus the huge stress leading up to labor of anxiety about it. i'm the type who carries stress around and then has an episode from all the collected stress, just like what happened this week. and lack of sleep for a prolonged period of time makes me manic. so i think choosing the c section option is actually also for the baby, so i can be more likely to be able to handle the first moments of motherhood without already being crazy and anxious and manic.

but at this point if i had to have the baby tomorrow i'd be frightened out of my wits. one of the reasons i never wanted to have a child until recently was that i really thought i could not handle the zero hour of getting the baby out of my body. i still feel that way.

it sure would have been nice to go on the internet and read some reassuring comments from other women. there was one reassuring comment from someone who said it was great and she had little pain and recovered quickly. and two friends of mine had no problem with the surgery. i guess i should focus on the real people i know and not the crazy comments from random things on the internet. plus i was born by c section myself and my mother said the experience was great. if i'm this freaked out now i can only imagine how i'll feel when it's time to deal with the reality...

of course i wonder why am i freaking myself out now. i could be just relaxing and trying to find that elusive bliss the media makes you think you're supposed to be feeling while pregnant. or i could be making a fun comic strip for this blog instead of another anxious rant... maybe soon, i hope.

i don't know what to call this...

i don't know what to call this post or what to call what goes on in my mind. what a strange day, at least the end of it. at the end of the shower i threw for a very pregnant friend, i randomly opened this book i have, frederick frank's "art as a way" to show someone about his method of art and zen and came across these old lost peices of paper i had ripped out of the book and written on during my first manic episode about almost 19 years ago. i didn't look too closely as it was really creepy and crazy stuff, though there was a nice photo of me i had ripped out of my high school yearbook, a friend at the party gave me a lovely compliment by saying i hardly look any different. i may be more sane now but i'm also more vain!
anyway i just looked at the pages and read them and they brought me back to how super psycho beyond just mania i had gotten at that time. i probably wrote that stuff the day before or day i ended up in the hospital.

well the weird thing was after the party i forgot about the pages in the book and eventually went off to see a movie by myself, "little children". i was not prepared for it. i like kate winslett, i'm a big fan and go to all her movies. i just thought it was a typical movie about a dissatisfied lonely mother who has a suburban affair. instead, i was transported into the world of the minor character who pervades the movie, ronnie, the mentally ill guy recently release from jail who is a child molester. ( i think in the book it's more spelled out that he molested someone and in the movie they suggest he flashed a minor but they don't get too specific although he's obviously done some creepy things.) so there i am expecting to just be watching a modern day madame bovary but instead the intense part of the movie involves this guy. i wont' give it away in terms of what happens, but his character is well written, to the point where i really felt for this lost lonely alienated guy who lives with his mother and can't be a "normal" person. after seeing the movie, i was so disturbed by what happens to him that i started to feel "crazy" myself. i just started getting this familiar feeling of feeling like i'd been doing a great performance pretending to be a functioning adult and suddenly felt like i did when i was crazy. it's hard to describe. i managed to call denzel and get home and talked to a good friend who had read the book and understands a lot about my bipolar stuff.

now i'm feeling a little more grounded but was weirded out when i remembered seeing those pages from the past and took them out before writing this post. among all the disturbing psychotic stuff on the pages there are some funny things i wrote like" TRY TO BE MORE CONFUSING THAN I AM" . it's all written in capital letters. on one page i glued a picture of janis joplin who was my idol at the time and wrote some weird stuff about her becoming part of me after she died. it's too embarrassing to quote the stuff in these pages. i can't throw them out though. somehow they feel quite poignant, a reminder of a former self who still resides somewhere in me.

i just wonder what will happen one day if my child sees that stuff. i'll certainly keep it hidden so the child would only see it many years hence when i'm dead and s/he's reading my old journals and seeing how crazy his/her mom really was...

truly it is hard to convey the extreme intensity of what i felt after seeing that movie. it's happened before, like with the movie "a beautiful mind". objectively i did not like how the movie avoided some real things about the man and kind of sugar coated things that were too "difficult" like his bisexuality. but the scene at the end when he talks about the price of sanity for him being that he has to ignore and not engage with or listen to his "delusions" the private friends in his mind that he'd been so close to for so many years of his life, that got to me a lot. it seemed to really express the aspect of loss that occurs with trying to be sane. to be continued. i thought if i wrote about this i'd feel less crazy...

100 things about me and elvis...

i see people do these lists and thought i'd try one. but please read the comix from yesterday's post and comment there as it was a very big announcement for me!

1. i am pregnant and due in sept. of 2007
2. the baby will be a virgo born in year of the pig
3. elvis is a leo born in the year of the monkey
4. i am not married and don't want to get married
5. denzel and i will be together until one of us dies
6. i'll probably live longer
7. i think i will live to be about 111 years old. i had a psychic premonition about it.
8. i was depressed in high school but did not tell anyone
9. i went to a therapist for the first time my second year of college
10. i had my first manic episode when i was 20.
11. i became psychotic and was hospitalized.
12. i had another big episode several months later when i was travelling.
13. i was hospitalized in a clinic in paris.
14. the clinic in paris was good. the hospital in new york was awful.
15. in new york they tied me to the bed in a room alone.
16. i thought i was in heaven waiting for everyone in the world to die.
17. after everyone died my ex boyfriend i was still in love with was supposed to come and rescue me.
18. i started taking lithium after the second hospitalization.
19. i was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder.
20. i was put on haldol during both hospital times.
21. haldol sucks. i felt like a zombie.
22. i was still manic after i got out of the hospital in nyc.
23. since then i have had many manic episodes and mixed states but never gone to the hospital again.
24. i found elvis in a pet store when i was manic.
25. this is exhausting and i'm only on number 25.
26. when i was five i told my mother, "i'm never getting married and i'm never having kids."
27. i'm afraid of needles, procedures, examinations and doctors.
28. i quit therapy about two years ago after 12 years with the same therapist.
29. i got pregnant a year and a half ago by accident and had to have an abortion because of the medications.
30. i went to a group therapy of people with depression and bipolar in 1999.
31. i talk a lot but i'm shy and don't like meeting new people.
32. i'm more comfortable with being around one or two people.
33. i hate going to big group dinners.
34. i've always been very rebellious and don't like being told what to do.
35. elvis hates rain and baths.
36. when elvis was a puppy he was scared of canes and umbrellas.
37. elvis is very jealous of denzel.
38. i don't like going away because i don't like leaving elvis behind.
39. i am very vain about my hair.
40. it's been less curly now that i'm pregnant.
41. i hate the cold weather.
42. i am lazy and procrastinate things.
43. i like lying in bed and hiding from the world.
44. i've become more open to country music.
45. i'm listening to roseanne cash's new album black cadillac right now.
46. i have a terrible sweet tooth.
47. i don't like exercising and have not done any in months.
48. i love walking everywhere.
49. i hate driving and don't have a driver's license.
50. i failed the driver's test twice a long time ago.
51. i don't have any motivation to get a driver's license and enjoy having other's drive me places if i have to get in a car.
52. i'd like to live somewhere that has no winter.
53. when i was in college i said i was never going to move back to new york.
54. i moved back to new york several years after college and have been living here ever since.
55. i love taking baths.
56. i love camping outdoors.
57. i have a phobia of going away from home and have to be forced to go on vacation.
58. elvis cannot go up and down the stairs because of his back and knees so i have to carry him.
59. elvis is one of the top ten reasons for getting up in the morning.
60. if i did not have elvis i would truly be out of shape.
62. i'm not sure how i will take elvis and the baby out at the same time as i have to carry both down the stairs.
63. i'm afraid of post-partem depression.
64. i never thought of myself as maternal until now.
65. i've had fantasies of giving birth to a dog.
66. i'm hoping to have a girl but of course a healthy boy will be just as great.
67. the times i'm most anxious about are the first year of the child's life and then the teenage years.
68. i think the happiest year of my childhood/teenage years was age 7.
69. i have tried lsd and psychedelic mushrooms and some other things.
70. my lsd trip was really crazy and intense and later i realized it was similar to a manic episode.
71. there are a lot of things i could say on this list that i will not.
72. my first crush on a famous unavailable person was david bowie.
73. my first crush on a real unavailable person was a friend of my brother's. i was four years old.
74. my brother is nine years older than me.
75. the first person i kissed was a scottish boy two years younger than me.
76. i was sixteen and in germany on a summer program.
77. i had a crush on a sweedish guy my age and wished it had been him.
78. elvis bites the air repeatedly when he wants a walk.
79. elvis does not mind this cold weather.
80. i wish i had a backyard for elvis. he is so happy to go outside.
81. last time i was manic i cried because i felt so bad that elvis' life is so limited.
82. last time i was manic i got a whole idea for a story from taking elvis out and staring at the pee from other dogs on the sidewalk.
83. i still have not written and made the pictures for the story.
84. it's called the grey day.
85. about ten years ago i got an idea for a children's picture book called "the flying poodle".
86. elvis was the main character and he flew places.
87. his owners in the book hired a medium to follow him in a magic chair to find out where he was going.
88. i start many things with good ideas and manic enthusiasm but then give up on them.
89. i feel dissatisfied with my success thus far in life.
90. i wonder sometimes if i had not been bipolar would i have accomplished more of my goals by now.
91. i like taking days off and staying home wasting time and hanging out with elvis.
92. i sometimes think of myself as an underacheiver.
93. i am afraid of certain people reading this blog and figuring out my real identity.
94. i'm craving a cappucino right now.
95. i love watching old movies from the 30's.
96. if i had a past life i was around during the 20's. i was a silent movie actress and died young.
97. i am not and have never been a morning person.
98. at one of my jobs i'd have to get there by 8:30 and i would find time in the morning to lie on my coat in my office and nap.
99. i feel very blessed and happy that i'm with denzel and we're having a love child!
100. elvis is one of my top inspirations to be a better more loving person.