God damn you fucking worthless brain disorder. I have been on your rollercoaster ride from hell so many times this week that I have lost count. Fuck you for making me lay in bed awake after taking a god damn klonopin that normally knocks me out. Fuck you blind rage that keeps cycling in my head uncontrollably. I need to get up at 3:15 in the morning and all the fuck you can do is keep me awake, and aggravated. And to top it all off, now you’ve aggravated my Restless Leg thingy so I had to take another one of those pills. Oh yes, I’m going to be such a joy at 3:15 fucking a.m. What’s going to happen then? Will the fucking rage be replaced by fucking uncontrollable sadness and irrational crying, for hours and hours. Oh, I am soooo looking forward to tomorrow.
And while I’m at it a very big FUCK YOU to the god damn U.S. health system. If it weren’t for the pathetic and shitty state of healthcare, maybe I’d be on some god damn drugs and sleeping peacefully now. But NO NO NO damn fucking ridiculous piece of shit pre-existing conditions stipulations. How the fuck am I ever supposed to get ahead in this game?!?
All I want is for this roller coaster ride to end. And for my brain to return under my control again. Some days it seems like it would be TOO FUCKING EASY to blow my brains out and be done with this god damn mess. But you know what? I’m too much of a fucking coward to do that either.
In summary, thank you fucking brain chemistry and the United States of America for making sure that I am so damned royally screwed.
Wow. I do feel better after composing my first vitriolic (probably not a word) pitting.
I feel share your pain. Know that your not alone, even here on the boards (hell, do a search on just my recent posts and you’ll understand that many a Doper are stricken with mental health issues). If you need someone to talk to, we’re here. If you need someone specifically, I’m yet again agoraphobic at the moment and am always around… email away.
Bullshit. I took my goddamn drugs and slept peacefully. I can understand bitching about the insurance system, but the health care system? There’s no better health care available anywhere in the world.
This year has been one hell of a roller coaster ride for me. In June I was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety, I was hospitalized in June and again in October for it. I’m doing somewhat better now but I still have my bad days – like tonight hasn’t been that great for me. I also can understand not being able to sleep – I’ve had insomnia for as long as I can remember. I was first put on Lunesta – worked at first, but then seemed to wear off. Then I was put on Trazadone – which worked somewhat but left me feeling like a zombie the entire day after I would wake up. Right now I’m not taking anything for sleep – and here it is 3:30 in the morning and I’m wide awake.
And yeah the health care system in this country is fucked up.
I just try to take things one day at a time – good luck to you and hope things get better.
I also am sorry for the hell you’re going through. Ask your doc if there are free samples they can give you, or a nurse practitioner they can refer you to (may be cheaper?). Also, definitely look into sliding scale services. They may not be able to help you (sounds like you have insurance, you just can’t get your BP2 covered?), but it’s worth asking.
Don’t forget to breathe. Do your best knowing what is real and what is your brain being fucked up, and cut yourself some slack.
I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have access to insurance. Just one of my medications costs over $700 a month without it and I take several for varying reasons. You have my complete sympathy.
When those times come that you feel like giving up altogether, please call the hospital and talk with someone there. You mustn’t allow yourself to dwell on that solution. Get to a safe place. Just do it!
You have friends here who do understand what it’s like. I had to take a disability pension and Social Security disability while I was in my forties. I couldn’t teach anymore.
To tackle Lib’s hijacking point, health care in this country can be good if you can afford it. But with mental health issues you frequently need to go to a number of doctors to find one who will diagnose and treat you appropriately. And if you are at the whim of one doc who doesn’t think there is something wrong with you or don’t have insurance, you are most assuredly fucked.
Without insurance I couldn’t afford to keep my bi-polar husband. His meds are expensive, plus he is going to weekly counselling and monthly med checks. He had to quit working two years ago and has had a couple of minor breaks with reality since then. He is receiving social security disabilty and his previous employer retired him with a disability.
Bi-polar sucks even if you are getting good treatment…it’s a nightmare if you are not.
If I may continue the hijack - my understanding is that mental health is still the bastard child even in places that have universal health care. First off, as other posters have mentioned the medications are relatively expensive, but more to the point, diagnosis is often a difficult and often time-consuming process. This site, in the UK, makes the point that even now mental health issues aren’t as well treated as they think they should be.
I only wish to point out that IMNSHO until the public perception about mental illness changes, treatment will always be substantially worse than what can be expected for any number of other chronic, life-threatening conditions.
On preview: Mellivora capensis, not me. I’ve got the weight problems because I’ve always had weight issues.
My girlfriend is bipolar, and takes a cocktail of drugs with lithium as the base. And with each drug comes a side effect, which is corrected by another drug, which has its own side effect, which means another drug, etc etc. And one side effect is that since she started taking these drugs she has ballooned.
Not only does she have to deal with the disease, now she has to deal with self esteem issues too.
It’s hell navigating the various side-effects associated with these medications. And, because of the limited time that doctors have to talk with patients there’s often a huge set of miscommunications making things worse.
The first time I started taking an anti-depressant I was afraid to sleep - because for the first time in my life I was routinely remembering three or four dreams a night, and they were all horror shows. Since I wasn’t aware, at the time, that this was an expected side-effect, I ended up just dropping the meds, and that doctor. Which meant my eventual crash was probably harder than it had to have been.
Is your SO trying to tailor her med regieme with her doctor’s help to minimize the effects? That may be able to ameliorate things.
One of the things that bothers me about mental health, if one were taking, say, blood pressure meds, and that lead to ballooning, no one would say a damned thing - and the explaination that it’s a side effect from a med that you have to take for a chronic condition would be enough to shut up all but the most assholish people. The moment the condition being treated is found to be mental rather than obviously physical, that’s out the window.
Yep. Even still, the weight remains a problem. One of the side effects causes sleep walking, straight to the fridge. The next morning she’ll wander into the kitchen and find empty containers with absolutely no recall of eating the food.
I don’t disagree with that, but in my case, I took matters into my own hands. My doctor is a GP without a clue about these kinds of things. His first prescription to me, for Celexa, practically made me into a vegetable. It was a horrible — and I do mean terrible — choice for me. So I did research by going to a counseling session and grilling the psychologist. Setting all bullshit and pretense aside, we fairly quickly determined that my anxiety consisted of two components: OCD and panic attack. We had enough time left to figure out what my panic triggers were. Then I went online and did research at places like WebMD and even Wikipedia (especially good for drug chemestry information). I went back to my doctor armed with the information I had, and told him that instead of a seratonin reuptake inhibitor, I needed a nonbenzodiazepine for my OCD and a sedative for my panic attacks. He prescribed these for me. They have worked wonders. You may ridicule me for daring to question a doctor, but I’m always amazed that people turn their lives and well being over so completely to someone else that they think they have to turn their reason switch off. The things I’m talking about here have nothing to do with cost or insurance or any such issues.
You are lucky that you have a doctor who would listen to you…not everybody does. And you are lucky that you can get the medications you need…not everyone can. And you are lucky that you found medications that work for you.
We had ten years of bad diagnoses, bad medications, and bad experiences. Finally we get a dx that makes sense and it’s taken two years to get mr.stretch kinda stablized.
There’s always the next mania around the corner to look forward to and prepare for. When mr.stretch gets up at 3:00 am to work on the car, it’s time to back off one med, change the dose on another, and ride it out. Not to mention the panic attacks, the depression, and issues associated with his other health problems. And his cognitive function is all fucked up, so it takes both of us to keep track of what he’s supposed to do. GAH! Mental illness sucks.