I just found out in December that I’m bipolar. I started this wonderful drug, Lamictal. It took me a few months to get up to a therapeutic dosage, but once I did, it was heaven. I was living something like a normal life for the first time.
Suddenly, I had the ability to laugh at minor problems. I was no longer expending most of my energy to keep from bursting into tears or screaming. I was actually nice to be around 95% of the time. I didn’t feel any mental PMS symptoms. My feelings were reliable and something to get away from or hide. I could focus on work, not the latest bee in my bonnet. I was feeling more stable than ever before – more like myself. I wasn’t overspending on crap. I was starting to get a handle on my eating. I was accomplishing things (emotionally) that I’d been working on for years!
Well, that’s just fucking fine, right? Except that I got The Rash – the dreaded Lamictal reaction, aka, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. I had nasty sores on my lips, gums & tongue, but I was lucky, because some people die from this thing. Anyway, once you have this reaction, you don’t get to try going back on Lamictal. So, buhbye sanity.
It’s been a week with no mood stabilizer for me, and I really ought to be walking around with a blinking neon sign above my head that says, “RAVING BITCH!” to warn off the timid and the ill. I’m getting mad, no ENRAGED, at the smallest things, like the sweat rolling into my eyes, or the laundry still being damp after a complete dryer cycle. Always now, my first reaction to stress is I want to hit, I want to scream and I want to smash. Me emotional Solomon Grundy!
I have no idea how much longer I’ll be feeling like this. I had to wait until the sores went away before starting my new mood stabilizer, so that didn’t happen until today. In the meantime, I really am not enjoying this. In fact, I’m just shocked at how uneven I feel – to think I spent 33 years feeling like this and not knowing!
And to up the anti, my parents are coming in to town tomorrow to help me with my tonsillectomy on Friday. If I get through the next 10 days without doing permanent damage to my relationships with them, it will be a triumph.
Any words of wisdom to help me through this would be appreciated. Thanks even for just reading this.
