I'm working on fixing the thing in my head before it gets worse. The little part of my brain that says 'you're sick, I'm proof, and you're getting worse'. It's the Oblong Blahblahgetcha or some stupid latin medical term, I don't know. I have learned that my particular illness is the misfiring of serotonin and a couple of other chemicals to the synapses - too much misfiring. The extra chemicals cause me to over stimulate and eventually crash. That's the basis of the panic attacks. I am therefore on meds called SSRIs - Selective Serotonin Release Inhibitors.
To put it in a short term - it stops me from firing all barrels at once.
But the other side of that coin is depression. For that, I need a kick in the ass. It drives me nuts that one day I can be running around doing all kinds of things with all kinds of energy, and the next, I can't get out of the chair. Hence my list.
I have to put everything in writing now so that I get things done. It used to be called the 'honey do list'. Now its the 'get off your ass list'. The main difference is the author.
I have resigned my job, something that scared the hell out of me for the longest time, even though I knew I would never go back to it, but I held on to it because of hope, hope that I would come around and go back, the logical side of me never saw that, only the delusional side. So resigning has added several items to a list - getting my record of employment, getting a letter from my psych explaining why in order to apply for EI, etcetera.
I had a particularly bad week last week, and went to the hospital on my own accord to see a crisis worker, more crap to the list. I have to get my referral to the Mood and Anxiety Clinic and send it to the CMHA.
The crisis centre wants me to get a referral to another psychiatrist, hence one more thing on the list - a visit to my family doctor with a name and a doctor's name. I also need more bloodwork. Side note - I used to have a terrible fear of needles, now I've had so much blood taken since I got sick that I don't care if they take it out of my tongue.
And so much more to do, I won't go into all the details. So I'm not thinking Santa's around the corner, I'm not going completely nuts, I'm just putting yet more ducks in a row. So many in fact, that I dream of ducks. Too many fucking ducks. All lined up in nice neat rows.
Such is the process of the modern medical system. Lists, weird dreams about ducks, and strange un-pronounceable body parts. I'm going on 10 months since my diagnosis of Bipolar, and now it's more of an inconvenience than an illness. I guess that's progress.
Cheers.
