Bipolar 1 Disorder

Below is a link to a blog I’ve written explaining the drug Lorazepam. It is a benzodiazepine used to treat anxiety disorders and sleep disorders. If you have any questions then please leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you 👌

Medication Explained: Lorazepam 💊

#MightyTogether #MentalHealth #Benzos

My thought of the day is what gives somebody the right to diagnose a person who is, according to them, suffering from an illness or ailment, or whatever else that it is, and they fundamentally don’t understand what it is that they are saying you are suffering from. This is something that they don’t fully understand. Not surprisingly then, they don’t know what you need to cure your newfound condition! 🤯

“Well, we don’t really know how this condition actually works or what is causing it Mr. Smith, but it is definitely what you’ve got”! 👨🏼‍⚕️👨🏻‍⚕️🥼😂🤦🏽‍♂️

It’s absolutely bonkers if you think about it! 🤣🤪🤯

#MightyTogether #SchizoaffectiveDisorder #Schizophrenia

So, following on to the post I made about my upcoming Doctors appointment, I had nothing to worry about. Thankfully 😅

I had done my research and read up on everything I could from the books I had to establish a cognitive narrative that backed up my theory and my request. I went to my local Pharmacy with this yesterday and read it to the Pharmacist who concurred with me and I was asking him if I had any mistakes with regards to my medication interactions, but he said I had done very well and that he was impressed with how much detail, time and effort I had put into it. Now, I know not everyone is in a position to do what I did and I’m very lucky to be able to do this, but I think that if you have an opportunity to make your appointments more interactive experiences that involve ‘you’ being in the conversation, I would highly recommend that you give it a go.

In the appointment the Dr initially said that if I’m sleeping excessively then the antidepressant increase could cause this to get worse. I assured him I was going to be very stringent with my sleep schedule and concentrate on getting up at 8am. I think it’s easier to control your waking up time than it is your going to sleep time. I told him about my lack of appetite, loss of interest in doing things I enjoy (currently forcing myself to play guitar each day), low mood and self esteem, and lethargy in general. He was happy to increase my dose of Fluoxetine from 20mg to 40mg daily starting from now. He was also about to look up in the BNF if Olanzapine interaction would be affected by increased Fluoxetine, which I was able to answer for him as it was in my notes. There’s no implications reported. I felt a bit cheeky telling a Dr something he didn’t know about his own profession (I guess it is slightly more pharmaceutical in his defence), but I felt slightly guilty about it and embarrassed too. But hey, we’re working together at the end of the day aren’t we?

#MightyTogether

Due to Bipolar I and OCD, going to work and making it through the day can be hard. (I work as a teacher aide.) My thoughts include a mixture of self-criticism, negative assumptions, and self-blame.

Anyone else have any tips for endurance? How to keep running this marathon of life, contribute to our commmunities, and not be so hard on ourselves? #Bipolar1 #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #Anxiety

Due to Bipolar I and OCD, going to work and making it through the day can be hard. (I work as a teacher aide.) My thoughts include a mixture of self-criticism, negative assumptions, and self-blame.

Anyone else have any tips for endurance? How to keep running this marathon of life, contribute to our commmunities, and not be so hard on ourselves? #Bipolar1 #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #Anxiety

I started blogging in 2021 with the intention of creating a scrapbook if you will of all my thoughts and feelings about different things I have experienced and if my Bipolar had any influence on my perspectives and opinions. I found that writing was the best way to cope with my extremes of Bipolar as it occupied my mind and focused my attention on the writing and away from the nonsense that I had reverberating around my head. It started with only a solitary word that I wrote but I was thinking about the words and not the nonsense in my head. Slowly the one word became 2, which then became 3 and so on until I was writing full sentences. From these I tried to make a paragraph out of them and join them together as best I could as they weren’t really in a narrative that was comprehensible to understand. Since this I have written 27 songs about Bipolar and associated things that it brings. I have written 3 short books too. I’m under no illusion about these being any good or great pieces of work but I am proud of myself for doing it. I’m an example of how you can make a negative situation become a positive one. I don’t have the answers for anything about Bipolar Disorder but I do have some insight into how to deal with things that I can offer to help others. I have been a far worse person than most people, meaning that I can help others and relate with them in their journeys, as I’ve come back from the abyss and I can now tell the story of how I attempted to get out of it, and maybe even give someone a chance to do it too.

My blog is a collection of accounts of Living with Bipolar Disorder, explanations of the medication used, links to the 3 books I wrote, funny bipolar memes, quotes from a selection of people, a lot of philosophy of the great Alan Watts (someone I highly regard and someone I relate to completely), songs of the day, music polls, stories of my escapades and shenanigans, Fight Club influenced perspectives on different topics, I have actually written a narrative using quotes from the film Fight Club that forms a different narrative all on its own that I’m pretty proud of, it’s pinned on my home page so it’s the first thing that you see.

If you want to check it out then there’s a link below 👇🏼

livingthebipolardiary.wordpress.com

#Writing #copingskills #MentalHealth #MentalIllness #MightyTogether

I’m currently going into a Bipolar Depression phase where I’m sleeping an excessive amount of hours (12 hours at least per night). This is rendering me in a state of what can only be described as a sleep hangover’. I have no appetite through the day and I’m going two or three days without food then I’m gorging on an excessive pizza order. I’m looking pale and tired according to my friends who I have seen and I feel my clothes are a little bit baggier.

So on Tuesday I’m seeing my General Practitioner (GP), because my psychiatrist discharged me in to their care, to see if they will increase my Fluoxetine (antidepressant). It is the only one of the three medications I take for my bipolar they have control over controlling the dosage. My Lithium and Olanzapine have to be controlled still by the psychiatrist.

This appointment has rendered me extremely nervous and anxious. This is because I struggle to get my point across when I see a health professional. I have tried to write it down before for my appointment with my psychiatrist but I’ve always been too embarrassed to take it with me to show him or ask him. I’ve attached some photos of the sort of stuff I wrote, which took me a while with researching it and all, but I never had the confidence to actually show it to my psychiatrist.

So, I was just trying to get a stable perspective of what to say to the GP to give him the best possible opportunity to help me the best way possible. I’ve said this in my blogs before about how Bipolar attacks you from different directions every time you experience a mania phase or a depressive phase and this depressive phase I’m currently experiencing is a new one for me. It is a cruel beast that rears its ugly head from a variety of directions to constantly keep you on your toes.

Secondary to this, I recently had a blood test which showed that I had a raised level of Thyroid. Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) is a hormone that the pituitary gland produces to regulate the thyroid gland's production of thyroid hormones. This majority of the time indicates an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism). This can be an effect of taking Lithium. My GP rang me to tell me it was raised but only slightly. I said to him that I take Lithium and this was most probably the cause for it. He then asked me how I know that. When I told him I researched it myself he just went “mmm” in an unsure, unimpressed sort of way. He emphasised the fact that the health professionals really don’t like being told somethings that they really should know in the first place so that these sort of situations can be avoided.
#MentalHealth #Medication #Doctor #MightyTogether