Part 2, A difficult day...

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...

the long block finally ended...

not feeling too well. stressed out and kind of dizzy, but i wanted to post these before lying down...

tag, i'm it... very late in the game...

ok. better late than never. thanks to nicole for tagging me. i hope i know how to insert the right codes for this. i'll of course tag people who visit me often. sorry if you've been tagged already. i guess you don't have to do this twice!

well ok. i realize what the problem is. I am using safari on a mac so i will have to just list the website addresses as they don't seem to give me options for making links within this post. sorry.

INSTRUCTIONS: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.

1)Baby Moxie
2)Kicking You From The Inside
3)Third Time Lucky?
4) Just Crazy Enough To Try
5) bipolar notes from underground (off meds)

Next select five people to tag: (if you haven’t done it already) i have to just list the web address as i am not capable of linking directly. sorry
1) This Side of Reason; http://mydisplaced.blogspot.com/
2) Coming out of the Dark; http://bipolarmadness.blogspot.com/
3) Bipolar in the CIty; http://bipolarinthecity.blogspot.com/
4) Kill the Goat; http://saintvodkaofthemartini.blogspot.com/
5) The Wife of a Schizophrenic; http://the-wife-of-a-schizophrenic.blogspot.com/

What were you doing ten years ago?
may of 1997. i was probably dealing with a depressive episode and avoiding getting involved with anyone romanticwise...

What were you doing one year ago?
may of 2006. dealing with having just gone off meds to get pregnant. i was about two months into no meds and having a lot of sex. probably also worrying about my dog as he had diarrhea a lot around that time and needed special medications... maybe i had already started this blog. can't remember. dealing with anxiety for sure...

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. ice cream, ice cream, and more ice cream, often with peanut butter
2. potato chips, (the ruffles kind, salt and vinegar, the expensive kind with exotic flavors) with whipped chive cream cheese on them
3. really creamy hummous on rice cakes or pita
4. chocolate, dark or white, preferably with peanut butter
5. pickles of course...

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. when i'm 64, the beatles
2. denzel's special song for our unborn baby all about her name
3. jingle bells
4. michelle ma belle, the beatles
5. other beatles songs too numerous to list
(basically i'm terrible at singing and have a bad memory but the beatles were part of my childhood.)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. get a huge new place, like a brownstone or building in our current neighborhood with a great baby room, lots of storage, a studio for me that's ideal, a great studio/workroom/music room for denzel, an outdoor space for doggie and us and a wonderful roof top and great basement!!!
2. pay off all my debts immediately and invest some of the money wisely...
3. plan a wonderful trip (maybe a short two week one for now before baby last minute and one for when she is around 8 months old to take her with us) and find the perfect caretaker for elvis who will take extra good care of him and have a lot of vet knowledge while we are away to housesit as well in the above mentioned mansion!
the trip would probably include a visit to japan
4. help out some starving artist friends with money, not purely a gift, but as an investment in their projects to help them get the projects off the ground...
5. buy land and build a really cool country house that denzel would design!

Five bad habits:
1. laziness, procrastination and disorganization, they all go together for me
2. eating too much ice cream and unbalanced diet, even and especially while pregnant
3. not putting things away, general slobbiness
4. self hatred
5. complaining and worrying

Five things you like doing:
1. being with my dog
2. drawing and painting
3. nothing (literally, i like sitting and doing nothing, staring into space and not moving)
4. camping with denzel
5. watching the food network channel

we're back in comic strip form!

hi everyone!
finally marlena shuts up her big complaining trap of a mouth and you get to catch up on the important characters, namely elvis and the growing fetus (and denzel, at least through the fetus' point of view...)

2 comics...

these comic strips reflect the two sides of my life at present. the more healthy support system of two healthy males in the house who express themselves freely and move on without dwelling and festering and obsessing and feeding on their own anxieties...
and me and myself and my crazy mind that gets me into all kinds of trouble...