A stay in the hospital…

I promised I was back, and then I disappeared again.   Well, I spent the last seven days in the hospital. I can’t believe that wanting to cut yourself can give you a seven day stay in the “wellness facility.”  I want to clarify, because my last post was a little confusing; I had thoughts of dying, not of suicide and I just simply had the overwhelming urge to cut myself not to die but to know what it feels like.  I’ve had thoughts like that before, but never so strong.

I think I was just overwhelmed by my thoughts.

Being in the hospital is enough to drive someone in there in the first place.  There’s so much time on your hands and if you spend that extra time in your room sleeping, you’ll stay there longer.  I can’t believe the point system is actually true, except at the hospital I was at you can’t go outside no matter how good you are.

Overall though, I feel much better.  No thoughts of self harm or suicide and I even gained some hope of getting better.  I finished an entire journal while in there, I have a lot of insight into my behaviors now and what sets me off.  Now, to handle it in the future.  I’m also considering some form of spirituality.  Not sure exactly what, I’m thinking maybe Buddhism. I’m still unsure.

Thankfully, my Stella has even gotten better since I was gone. Although, the girls didn’t eat much they missed their mommy as much as I missed them.

It’s been confirmed…

I do indeed have borderline personality disorder, I’m not sure how I feel about that.  My stomach is in knots and it is going to be hard to deal with.  I’ll start DBT skills training in two weeks. It’s all just crazy, I wish I had a book telling me how to deal with all the emotions that are going through my head and realizing that that is how I act and how others perceive me.  It opens your eyes even wider than they were before.

Again, sorry for the lack of update. Hopefully this week as I read me about the disorder  I’ll be updating more.  I’ve mostly just been feeling blah and with lack of reliable internet at my parents and now the end of the channels that I used to watch, I’ll have plenty of time on my hands.

In other news, Friday the 13th did strike on me. My poor little Stella has an ear infection.  Hopefully the spray that I bought for her will help her feel better.

Pets and Therapy

In the partial hospitalization program you attend group sessions from 9 am to almost 3 pm.  They give handouts in the beginning of the week telling us all what the groups will be throughout the day.  Today I was very excited for pet therapy.  In pet therapy we ended up just talking like regular group therapy but with a Rottweiler puppy in attendance as well.  We went around the room with treats for her and pet her after all the treats were gone.  She took a particular liking to me, which is good because I love dogs.

Because I can’t  have dogs or cats in my condo that I am renting, I decided to get a couple of guinea pigs for some companionship.  I’m amazed at how mentally absorbed I’ve become in my guinea pigs. I’m excited to get home to them and sad when I have to leave them.  I often think of them throughout the day and worry about them as I would a child.  I like that I have something to think about and occupy my mind because I often used to just worry about every random thing.  Thinking about them is a refreshing change.

I’m also excited to report that I actually started to feel hopeful today.  In expressive therapy I was able to work on a collage of what I wanted my future to look like, I know that I wouldn’t have been able to do that a month ago.  I was also able to make a list of goals.  Here is what I came up with in order of which I feel I could accomplish most easily.

• Try acupuncture. *I went to a place in town and actually made an appointment for this Friday. I’ll keep you updated on how it went.
• Get into a writing habit.
• Get my apartment cleaned and organized.
• Get my guinea pigs to trust me and want to be held by me.
• Happily return to work.
• Sell items I don’t use on eBay or at a garage sale. Donate what won’t sell.
• Do volunteer work.
• Look into a secondary insurance plan.
• Keep an eye out for a first shift/challenging position using my degree or that requires a bachelors degree.
• Get my debt payed off.

I also started seeing the psychiatrist I’ve been assigned in the program and so far I don’t mind him. He changed my meds again, I’ll be going back to Effexor and starting Abilify.  Hopefully that can do what the Fanapt is not doing.  I just want to feel better.

“How can you hide from what never goes away?”

The title of this post is also a quote from the book Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

I thought that I was done with feeling suicidal, turns out I’m not.  I was struggling with thoughts of wanting to die and not seeing a purpose again Sunday and Monday.  And today, I’m not really sure were I’m at with things. I don’t feel well, but I don’t feel completely hopeless either.

I hung out with my two baby guinea pigs tonight.  I love the two of them to death, they are so funny and my desire to see them grow and to get them to enjoy being held and trust me is probably one of the only things keeping me going these days.  Despite expanding my friend base after the first rough patch of this episode, I’m still struggling with feeling alone.  Maybe it’s because it’s my first day in outpatient treatment and I’m not used to the people yet, I’m not sure.

I had a little talk with my mother tonight and she agreed that she didn’t feel I was at the point in which I needed to go into inpatient treatment, but last Tuesday I could have sworn that was what I needed.  I’m scared I’m never going to get the right meds, because I’m starting to believe that this doesn’t have any reason other than being a true chemical imbalance and that’s why it’s taking so long for me to deal with and get better.  I was talking with my therapist the last time I had a session and she said that inpatient is the fast way to getting the right meds because you are seeing a psychiatrist everyday and being constantly monitored. I’m not sure, I still feel like it’s just a big crap shot and getting the right combo.

My sleep is back to being completely off the wall. I think I’m talking to my assigned psychiatrist tomorrow, I need to make a list of all of these things.  Although sometimes I never really know what to tell the doctors because I keep forgetting things or it’s been so long since I’ve dealt with them.

I’m going on my fourth month of feeling completely crappy and not being able to deal with day to day life, I’m just sick of having to feel this way all the time.

Naming my dog

It’s 11:40, I’m exhausted, I’ve been up since six a.m. and running since 10, and I still can’t find it in myself to go to sleep.  Tomorrow will be another long day. I can’t wait for Wednesday night to be all to myself and my girls.  I wish I could shut my mind off, not even the Ativan is doing that for me. Although it is helping me to make more rational decisions.

Depending on who’s around, I’ve decided to name the monster in my head either The Devil/The Bitch.  And it really depends on the day which one takes over. It seems now a days it’s either one or the other or both on the same day.

I just really need some sleep,

“That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.”

The title of this post is a quote from Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel, my current read.

A week ago today, despite everyone’s advice against it: I decided to stop taking my meds.  In all fairness, I was already feeling horrible and slept through my medication alarm on my phone and when I woke up the next morning (Tuesday, my birthday) I was feeling fine and thought I could handle not taking them.  I went to work all the while telling myself that I could make it without meds, and that I could pretend I was doing just fine even though I was falling apart on the inside.

Work started out fine, then about an hour in I started crying for reasons I can’t explain.  Then, I started to think about the meeting I had the day before about a job I had messed up before I went on leave and thought about the fact that I had delayed pediatric luekemia patients their last chance drug because I didn’t ask questions about the barcode. I also thought about the fact that I am feeling hopeless because I can’t find meds that work for me either.  I’m not a leukemia patient, but at times this thing that lives in my head seems just as bad, like it could kill me at any time.

I left work after my boss saw me crying and suggested I go home to try to deal with whatever was going on with me. (I still can’t tell you why I cried although I have a feeling it may be all the pent up emotions that I should have been feeling that my meds weren’t allowing me to feel.)  I took Wednesday off as well and went to group therapy at night hoping it would have the same empowering effect as it did the week before, sadly it didn’t.

Thursday morning I had an appointment with my psychiatrist at 10:20, at 10:35 I still hadn’t been in to see him and a guy randomly showed up to talk to him about issues he was having with his medication and he pulled him in his office to talk to him.  At that point, I was irrate. I was having issues with my meds too, and I had an appointment!  Finally at 10:45 I went into his office and just went off telling him that I was still mad and that he wasn’t listening to me and that I needed new meds. Sadly, he took me off Effexor and kept me on the antipsychotic for schizophrenics that I feel isn’t doing anything but making me fat.  Now I’m on the antipsychotic twice a day, Cymbalta at night, and Ativan when needed.  I had an appointment with my therapist at 11 so I couldn’t stick around and have the session that I truly needed to have because he has no concept of time.

I made it to my therapy appointment with a little time to relax and try to cool down from yet another terrible psychiatrist session.  When my therapist called me back to her office she asked how I was doing and I just let out a huge sigh.  When I explained to her what was going on and that I had thought about admitting myself to the hospital on my birthday she immediately took me out of work and told me to go back to IOP. Actually, I’ll be starting PHP (Partial Hospitalization Program) tomorrow.  It differs from IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) in that it last longer through the day and you also see a psychiatrist once a week.  She even said that hospitalization could be a good option for me to get my meds straight the quick way.  I decided to save the hospital for when I really feel like I want to jump off a cliff again. (Which, the suicidal ideation came back last night)

My sleep is starting to be completely off and crazy, I was awake at six am today.  And I’m also eating like crazy.  Sadly, I have to go into school today and drop my creative writing class because I can’t kick this stupid guy that lives in my head.  I wish I could let the people at work that are disappointed in me and think I should just come out of this see that I have no control over what my mind does or thinks right now.  Hopefully with more work in CBT I can start to at least get some of it under control.

The guinea pigs are doing great, although Bella still has a hard time being held and they are both too afraid to take advantage of the multilevel aspect of their cage.  I bought them treats yesterday to feed them while they are being held and I also bought them so grass that I’ll grow for them.  They are a couple of spoiled little girls, despite the fact that I’m super broke.

Are these things working?

I don’t know what happened, Saturday night and into Sunday I was in such a good mood and so excited to have my new babies.  Then Sunday night I took a turn for the worst, so to speak.  I was contemplating discontinuing my meds, I have no idea if they are working but they don’t feel like they really are.  Here are a few reasons I think my meds suck:

• Although I’m able to get out of bed and do things everyday I still don’t feel particularly motived.
• I haven’t been able to giggle like an idiot which I used to be before I went off the deep end.
• I can get out of bed, but my mood is often still gloomy.

I’m sure I can come  up with more, but that’s all I can think of at the moment. I’m considering going back to doing therapy twice a week, and hopefully with cognitive that will help more than plain psychotherapy.  I also see my favorite (insert sarcasm) psychiatrist on Thursday, lets see if he just keeps me on the same meds and hopes for the best again.

The happy momma

For the first time in a long time I could say that I was happy when I found the perfect two guinea pigs. I’d been searching for them for several weeks without luck.  When I saw them there were four that I was trying to decide between and when I saw the two that I bought fight over the same piece of hay I knew I had found the ones, they made me laugh and touched me in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.

When I first decided I wanted a pet my thought when straight to a cat because it could be a great companion and I didn’t have to take it on walks and devote as much time as I would have to for a dog. Just coming out of a deep depression and knowing it could happen again, even though I want a dog I knew it wouldn’t be a wise decision. I asked my landlord and after about a week of not hearing from him he finally told me I wasn’t allowed a dog or a cat.  I thought all hope was lost until I talked with one of my bosses and discussed the several things that had upset me that day including the inability to get a pet, he suggested a hamster or a rabbit.  I couldn’t get a hamster because they remind me too much of mice and I wasn’t sure about a rabbit.  Finally, I decided a guinea pig would be right for me.

After reading about them though, I found that in only having one that the pig could become depressed.  There was no way I could let my pet get depressed after going through it myself, so I finally decided on two females.  They just woke up and I was trying to be very quiet while I knew they were asleep.  I’ve been talking to them since I bought them, and I can already see an improvement in my mood. I just hope it can last for a while.

Meet my new writing corner partners…..

Bella Louise on the left

and Stella Capri on the right

Back to work…

Returning to work after a leave due to mental illness can be extremely nerve-racking. At least for me, anytime someone looks at me I feel like all they are thinking is “look, the nut job is back.”  I’ve only been back for four days now and everyday has been a challenge for me.  Yesterday I woke and really missed being apart of group therapy and thought maybe I should think about twice a week therapy sessions again.  Because my mind couldn’t stop racing, I called into work again.

I know I shouldn’t be so hard on myself because I’m going to have bad days, but I still feel guilty for missing work.  Although attending group therapy last night was a very good decision for me, it made me think even more about how I really need that and can’t get it because of my work schedule.  I’m perfectly fine talking about whats been going on with me now, but it’s one thing talking to someone who’s been through the same things and another talking to an “outsider.”  People who have been there can give a lot better advice than the ones who haven’t.

I started a creative writing class this week.  I’m surprised how mental health and creative writing mesh together and become such a big writing topic.  I’m curious to hear the reactions of my classmates when they read the memoir I have planned to write.  My biggest challenge so far is carving out time to write and sticking to it.  From what I’ve gathered so far, time after work is off limits.

The search for two female baby guinea pigs that don’t resemble mice/rats seems almost as hopeless as my recovery from depression.  I’ve gone in search of them the last two days and came up short.  I have their home all set up and ready for them, all I need now is my babies.

I’ve started a new therapist that I really enjoy so far.  I’ve only been to her once, but she seems to be a good fit for me.  She’ll be working on talk therapy and CBT.  I’m curious about how it works and fits in. She’s already given me a homework assignment.  And I need to be more diligent about it, not surprisingly.

Finally, I feel like my meds are finally working and stable although now my anxiety is through the roof.  I’m sleeping wonderfully at normal hours when nothing exciting is coming up or anything bad has happened.  I’m just not anywhere near how I used to be, I’m able to laugh now but not giggle incessantly like before.  Maybe I’ve just grown up through this, or maybe I have more work than I think I do to get better. I’m not really sure what to expect of this experience. The only thing I know is it hasn’t been the first depressive episode I’ve had, probably won’t be the last, but it’s the first time I’ve had help for it and I’ve very grateful for the help I’ve received so far.