Lamictal Day 28: My First Really Bad Day, and Some Observations About Coffee

Those of you who have been avidly following my extended family drama may remember that my father is catastrophising about my grandmother's situation, but that my uncle doesn't think it's that bad.  So I thought that maybe talking to my uncle would be good self-care.  It might do me good to get the opinion of someone who isn't neurotic.

The problem is, we're not really in touch, and I didn't have his phone number.  To get it I had to drop an email to my mother.  Mom wrote back that it would be a bad idea to talk to my uncle, because it would "enflame the situation when it really needed to settle down", that she only told us kids what was happening with Grandma so we would know what was going on, and that she "should have done a better job managing her own stress levels."  If I wanted to talk about the grandma situation, I could give her a call.

In other words, I'm an errant twelve-year-old who needs to be told how to behave.  I'm not mature enough to navigate an adult relationship with my uncle.  My relationships with other family members need to be mediated by my mother, and by the way, my stress is causing her to feel stressed out.  Maybe I'm not mature enough to be party to family difficulties.  Also, my feelings are dangerous and need to be contained, like hantavirus.

Running, Coping Skills, and Family Pain

My father and I have both worked hard to have the relationship we have now.  I don't want to go into details here.  If you want to know what it was like for me growing up, read Ashley's post about her own relationship with her father.  The details differ.  The terror was the same.

Dad probably has, or at least has had, an undiagnosed mood disorder of some kind.  John McManamy writes that depression may be under-diagnosed in men because it can manifest in anger or rage -- symptoms that don't appear on the DSM list.  My father raged.  Holy crap, did he rage.  Then, for no apparent reason, he would be in a good mood, and he'd laugh off my latest transgression.  Then he'd start raging again.

Day 27: Lamictal, Vyvanse, or Zoloft: Which Is Causing My Insomnia?

I've been writing a lot lately about the insomnia/delayed sleep phase that's been brought on by the lamictal.  Actually, I naturally have a delayed sleep phase; if my body does what it wants, I would sleep from roughly 3:30 to roughly 11:30.  We've reached a compromise with the rest of the world in which I sleep from roughly 2 to roughly 10.  For some reason, the lamictal seems to be reasserting my inherent biological clock.

But is lamictal the real culprit?  After all, I'm on two other drugs for my brain.  One of them, Vyvanse, is a dextroamphetamine to treat my ADHD.  Amphetamines are sold on the street as "speed".  I'm also on Zoloft, an SSRI, which has a paradoxical effect on me -- it is simultaneously agitating and sedating.  I'm only on 12.5 mgs at the moment, but back when I used to take it at 100 mgs, I could never fall asleep before 2 am, and my usual bedtime was more like 3 ... and waking up, even at noon, was excruciatingly difficult.

Psychotic Depression (Again): What is "Mood Congruent Psychosis"?

If it seems like I spend a lot of time writing about psychotic depression, it's because I do.  Before it happened to me, I had no idea such a thing was even possible.  In the months since it's happened to me, I've learned that there's not a ton of information out there, and some of what's out there isn't accurate (for instance, the assertion in the WebMD article that the condition requires hospitalization).  Furthermore, a lot of the information out there simply doesn't apply to my situation.

For starters, as my doctor told me, most depressed people who become psychotic are in pretty bad shape.  In his experience, they've already reached the point where they're struggling to take care of themselves.  I was actually functioning well, my mood wasn't even depressed for most of the day.

Second, most psychosis in people with mood disorders is "mood congruent".  That is, a depressed person will have "depressed" delusions, such as feelings of guilt -- that they're deserve to be punished for something that couldn't possibly be their responsibility, or that people treat them "differently" because those people "know" about the horrible things they've done.  Another common delusion is for a depressed patient to believe, without any rational cause, that they are gravely physically ill.

Not me. I had delusions of physics.

Lamictal Day 24: Sleep, Exercise, Stress, and Family

I was able to get a decent night's sleep last night.  There are two things that I think contributed to this: I went running, and my husband went to bed around 11:00 instead of falling asleep with his head on my lap while watching TV. Actually, make that three things -- I drank about three cups of Traditional Medicinals' "Easy Now" herbal tea.

Since I had exercised and meditated like a good girl, I felt relaxed throughout the afternoon and evening, and even tired by 11.  I went to bed just after my husband did, and even though I read for awhile (which is bad sleep hygiene) I felt sleepy by 11:45.  Since I'd drunk all that tea, I had to get up and pee a few times; the last such time was 12:20.  Then I fell asleep.  I woke briefly around 8, and then was up for good when my alarm went off.  Waking up went pretty easily.

Lamictal Week 3: GI Stuff, Sleep, Alcohol, Skin, and Cognition

Week 3, my first week at 50 mgs of lamictal, continued to improve my mood, but also brought increased side effects.

Gastro-intestinal stuff:  For much of the week I've been slightly bloated, gassy, and constipated.  This has been mildly annoying but livable.

Skin stuff:  Still no sign of The Rash.  My initial pin-prick rash has not reappeared, but I took last week off from working out, so I might not have seen it anyway.  I continue to experience simultaneous dry skin and acne, but this could be worsening because my period is due.

My skin is definitely more sensitive than it used to be.  If I open the oven door to remove something, I really feel the heat -- and as it subsides, it itches quite a bit.  Then it's gone.  I've also noticed that it hurts more than it used to when my cat decides to wash my face.  That sandpaper tongue is murder!  My skin is also somewhat red afterward.

Alcohol: Yesterday I drank most of a bottle of wine in the evening.

As I was falling asleep, I realized that I've gone through 3 bottles of wine this week -- some of that was cooking, granted, but that accounts for maybe 80% of one of those bottles.

I probably went through three bottles of wine in the entire previous month before last week.

As I wrote at the end of last week, one side effect of the lamictal seems to be that alcohol doesn't give me as much in the way of tipsy-euphoric feelings as it used to, but I still get the slowed-down feelings.  I thought last week that this would continue to influence me not to drink. And yet, here I am, drinking.  Why?  Well, that brings us to ...

Sleep:  The insomnia I wrote about last week has continued.  I still sleep better, once I fall asleep, but I feel more and more as if this med is trying to give me a delayed sleep phase.

Only yesterday I was writing about my brain's tendency to race at night, and the need to find a way to wind down at night.  It would seem that 3 bottles of wine was attempt to do exactly this.  The scary thing is that I was not exactly aware that I was doing this while I was doing it.

The improved nightly routine I wrote about yesterday is looking more and more imperative.  I'm not sure what to do yet, but I need to do something.

Cognition:  In spite of consuming rather a lot of alcohol last night, I woke up this morning and was immediately able to hold a coherent conversation with my husband.

I am not a morning person.

Morning people are weirdos.  Everyone else will know that the brain is not meant to be functioning immediately after waking.  It requires at least fifteen minutes to communicate in monosyllables, and then a good breakfast, in order to be merely sluggish.  People who wake up ready to discuss the debt crisis are just ... abnormal.

Still More About Psychotic Depression: Why I Didn't See It Coming

My psychotic depressive episode happened after several fairly stressful months.  When it happened, and in the months since, I've been blaming myself -- I knew I was getting stressed!  Why didn't I take better care of myself!

The stress involved money and employment.  Early in the year, my husband had taken a job at a startup that entailed a significant pay cut.  To make a long story short, I had believed that I would be able to make up at least some of the lost income, and it turned out that I couldn't.  My husband's job is far from where we live, and he was trying to make a go on public transit, but the time this took was truly ridiculous.  He was getting stressed and snappish.

I was also getting stressed.  I could see my thoughts heading into depressive territory: I'm just unemployable.  I'll never find work.  How did I think I could find work, with my spotty work record and 10% local unemployment?  Who in their right minds would hire me? Et cetera.