Bipolar my ass

I feel like shit tonight. Literally.. like whale shit on the bottom of the ocean. I admit I haven't been the best about med compliance while I've been out here in VA. I need to be better about taking the meds. I just forget to do it. Must set alarm on phone or something, I dunno. I'm really trying. I think my subconscious is trying to sabotage my recovery. I've been sick for so long that it's all I know. Recovery. What a fucking joke.

I wanted to cut tonight. I wanted to cut so bad. To see the rivulets run down my arm, tinting the bath water a pinkish hue. Feel the sweet sting of the blade slicing my skin. Relief from the anxiety, the stress of everything going on. Maybe get some sleep. It always helped me sleep in the past. Not an option though. Totally not an option. I have a deal with my wonderful Stinky that I won't do that. Wiggles doesn't need to see her mama with fresh scars. It's going to be hard enough when she's older and sees the ones I already have. But Lord Almighty was it hard not to. I took 3 Ativan, my topomax, a percocet, and my zyprexa in a hope to get myself calmed down and get some sleep. Yeah. Didn't happen. It's 6 am and I haven't slept. Today's gonna suck.

I really don't think I have bipolar. One semi manic episode does not make you bipolar, does it? I dunno. I think they just wanted to stick some stupid label on me cuz it's easier than giving me the label of mood disorder NOS. Easier to say we have a firm diagnosis than to not have a game plan in mind. They know how to treat bipolar. Dunno if Mood disorder NOS is as easy to treat.

Ok, gonna try this sleeping thing. Again. Not overly hopeful.

Up late..

Up late, cuz I have to stay up two hours past my normal bed time. No caffeine since 9 am. This blows.

This is what my head feels like ;lnfskvklsdng;aierhgf.am,gnvdgfh. With lots of drums pounding. I have to get up 2 hours earlier than I'd like to drive Stinkyman to work, because some jackhole hit his car and took off, so it's at the car doctor getting fixed. Oh, the reasoning I have to do all this is because I have to go get an EEG done, cuz I'm having seizures for some unknown reason, so tomorrow I get to look like this.

Yaaaaaaay. This outta be fun. This means Princess Wiggles gets to go to a sitter. Wiggles is going through mondo separation anxiety mode. Any advice on dealing with this? Basically what I've been doing is the Kiss, have a good time, bye bye mode and she still cries for a good portion of the time I'm gone. Granted, she's 19 months old so there's some to do with her age. Still though, it's hard on Mama (or Baba, as she calls me) to know that she's THAT upset the whole time I'm gone. / =

Anyhow, things here are meh. I'm adapting to my new meds. I got a big ole pill thing so I remember to take them. I have a horrible habit of just not remembering to take my meds, even if I set an alarm on a watch or something. I guess I could set an alarm on my phone, but that's a last ditch effort as I'm not always home when it'd be time to take them. I'm seeing a therapist now and that's going well. Involved in a great church group, working out, and doing all the things that I need to be doing, but things are still freaking MEHHHHHHHHH.

Take the other night, for example. I wanted to cut. God, did I want to cut. I wanted to cut so freaking bad it hurt. I ended up taking a full dose of ativan, washing it down with a big ole glass of wine, and laying on the couch so I'd stay safe because I know that logically cutting is NOT the answer. I'm getting a new tattoo on Thursday so I'll be getting my dose of pain then, that will help significantly, but man oh man did I need some guidance the other night. I did the right thing and told Stinky that I needed him to not let me leave his sight. He even went so far as to not let me pee in peace so that I'd stay safe. Looking back I appreciate that, because I've made phenomenal strides in my recovery, and I don't want to slip. I can't. I have a precious little girl that needs me to stay safe and healthy and sane.

Isn't that why I went on the meds in the first place anyhow?

Somnolence my ass

They told me this stuff would make me sleep. It is 0212. I am (obviously) not asleep. I took 2 Ativan, Zyprexa, Topamax, and a Norco. You'd think I'd be snoring away next to my husband. I'm not. I'm awake.

Well, to give ya'll an update.. I self admitted myself to the hospital last week. I went manic as all hell. I spent 5000 bucks in about a month. Some were justified spending, like the hotel we stayed at in Disney, a couple of the souvenirs, and food.. but 'Wiggles didn't need 3 shirts, I didn't need all the other stuff I bought, and I went way overboard on groceries. So needless to say, that's one big ole sign I was manic. I also went 4 days without sleep.. well, I slept like 5 hours in 4 days. Catnaps. Power naps, whatever you want to call them. I was irritable as all hell. Every little thing made me SO ANGRY. I almost hulked out over the stupidest little things Wiggles would do. She spent a fair amount of time playing in her crib so I could sit outside and just breathe so I didn't do something bad. At least I had the right frame of mind there, right?

My anxiety also got really bad. I'd lay in bed going through all the things that could go wrong. What if Ali got out of her rib.. she could fall and get hurt.. she could get into the cabinets and get chemicals.. there could be an earthquake and we wouldn't be able to find her.. did we lock all the windows and doors? (Now I'm freaking out and wondering if all the windows are locked... damnit). So I was not in a good state of mind, I needed some help. I called my Primary care doc, he wasn't a whole lotta help. He wanted me to just stop drinking caffiene (yeah right) and not nap, and call him back on Monday. This was Thursday. 0.0 Seriously. I told them that when I get that way I have a tendency to self harm. His response was to just not do it. Ugh. Anyhow, after water aerobics, my good friend A drove me down to the ER so I could be admitted.

The hospital was hands down the best thing for me. I got the care I needed. They treated me with the utmost respect and dignity. Food was AMAZING. Where else can you get steak for dinner and a goat cheese, chicken and spinach sandwich for lunch? A hospital of course. Nom nom nom. Other than the schizophrenic girl who told me to anoint people with my menstrual blood, the people there were not too bad. They didn't do restraint there on a regular basis, if you were that ill they sent you to another hospital. All the beds were private rooms, with private bathrooms. 2 showers for the whole ward, called garden pavilion. Only 14 beds, I think. Not too shabby.

I got out Tuesday night, and it was really good to be home. Wiggles was able to come see me on Saturday and Sunday. She was being watched on Stinky's work days by a good friend of ours, so at least we had childcare all arranged. THANK YOU MY FRIEND! Miz Shabby is the bestest out there. Em is her daughter, and she's about Wiggle's age. They play together all the time :)

In case you're wondering.. I'm bipolarish. This is what it feels like to be manic. ZOMG! ENERGY! I will DO STUFF! LOOK I JUST CLEANED MY HOUSE IN 5 MINUTES! OK NOW WHAT? LETS GO TO THE PARK WEEEE WE'RE AT THE PARK!!!! OK, HOME AGAIN YAAAAAY COOOK DINNER.. ALI STOP THAT NOW STOP. STOP. STOP./. you have been told to stop. go to your room, you can tantrum in your room. yes, I know you want to play with mommy, but mom wants to cook dinner. You cannot tantrum when mom is making dinner,so go tantrum in your room all you want. back to cooking dinner, but happy mood gone. *husband comes home, now I'm in a cranky ass mood because toddler of doom put me in a foul mood* I need to go get my nails done honey. back later. *go to store, spend money because it makes me go back into feel happy stage, come home and play with baby until bed time... then lay awake alllllll night with lots of random things running through my head. like.. do bunnies get rabies? what would happen if I put a rabbit on my friend Aleah's pillow. How loud would she scream. Would her husband tape it for me? Why are bagels round? I need to pee but I don't want to get up. When will there be an earthquake again? Are we prepared for an earthquake? I don't think we are.... and on and on.

This is why I need meds. Crazy lauren needs meds.

Ativan kicked in. Going to attempt sleep. Again.

Love you all.

Zyprexa

Today's stability brought to you by:

Life in the early 1900's

A blog challenge from a dear friend, Bambi. I will deviate from my normal blogging about the craziness that is my life to talk about something serious. That is life about 100 years ago, though I'm focusing on life in the US, especially NYC since it was by far the most populated city at the time. Most of the data I have is from 1900-1915, so it's approximate. We really do have it easy these days, comparatively speaking.

Medicine


Medicine and medical technology changed rapidly during the early 20th century. Advances made during the Civil War improved medicine for the rest of the country, though it was still difficult to get treatment for the poor. One common and easy to procure treatment from all types of pain was alcohol. It was used to treat the pain from anything from a broken bone to a toothache! Quackery was common, and it was normal to see salesmen on the corners of streets selling their wares to people passing by.

The three leading causes of death were pneumonia, tuberculosis (TB), and diarrhea with enteritis, which put simply, is the runs with your small intestine becoming inflamed. Out of 100,000 people, 146 died of TB. Comparatively, in the Americas, out of 100,000 people, approx 2 people a year die of TB in the Americas, excluding those infected with TB (source: WHO TB Factsheet). The deaths from disease were likely caused by overcrowding in apartments, called tenements, due to the massive population shift from country to city in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Additionally, the CDC states the according to serological testing preformed in NYC in 1901, anywhere between 5-19% of men had syphilis! Many women at that time turned to prostitution to supplement their income from factory work.

In the early 1900's, the maternal mortality rate was approximately 65% higher than it is today, and not much lower than it was in the mid 1800's. Over 90% of births took place at home.  While strides had been taken to improve sanitation, approximately 20% of women died from sepsis (source: CDC). 165 out of 1000 infants died in the first year of life, though we do not have exact statistics of how long those children survived within that first year (or, rather, I can't find a source. If you can find one, let me know!). To give you an idea of how horrible that is, these days, the rate is 7 per 100 live births. That statistic may or may not include accidents or violent deaths, I'm not sure. Their life expectancy was just 47 years old. I'm 26, so I'd be more than half dead. Today, it's 76, at least.

Working Conditions

Wouldn't you want your 6-9 year old doing this?

To put it bluntly, working conditions in the early 1900's sucked. They worked long, back breaking hours. The national average for manufacturing jobs was to work 6 day weeks, 15 hour jobs. This also included working in the fields. One half of all work related deaths occurred in 2 industries, coal mining and railroading. By 1979, this rate fell by 97%. Women and children were not excluded from this work. They earned one to two dollars a day in factories or mines. I'm having trouble finding more info on their working conditions, likely because anyone caught speaking out about how it was working in a place would be fired, so I'm going to add in some pictures. You can clearly see the working conditions were not fun.

Workers on a farm sort vegetables

Picking beets

Add caption

Daily life

Again, I'm mainly focusing on city life as that's where the bulk of people lived. Unless you were well off, you likely lived in one of these.

Doesn't this look fun!?!

Tenement life was hard. The walls were thin, you were lucky to have heat, and chances were good you had rats and mice joining you in bed. The average family had 8-10 children. I can't imagine having 8-10 kids in one of these, could you?  Wealthy children attended private academies.  The schools were houses with a few rooms in them set aside for classrooms.  They were small, with only about three or four in each grade. One teacher taught several grades in just one room.  In the private schools, girls and boys were not together. They went to separate academies. Public schools, on the other hand, were free. Boys and girls were at the same school. There was a class for each grade level with about 20 to 30 in each class. Many children did not have the ability to go to school at all, as they were needed to work to help support their families. School was, by law, required until the age of 16 but this was not enforced. Girls rarely went to college, instead marrying young. Most poor children finished school at 8th grade, and went on to help their families at work.

As you can clearly tell, life has changed in 100 years. Vaccinations, sanitation, and safer working conditions have meshed to make our lives just a little safer. We know now that there are serious risks to childbirth and take measures to mitigate those risks. We wear seatbelts in the car, eat healthier food, and don't work those long backbreaking hours, for the most part. Is life better now? I think so.

Keep on an even keel...

What does that even mean? Teh googles tell me it means "to remain cool and calm. (Originally nautical.)"


Right. I'm doing that, for the most part. Aside from a few little panic attacks, I've been doing really well. Wiggles had a major meltdown today while I was on the phone with my MIL. Lovely. Wiggles started pinching and slapping herself because she was starting to wind down, and yknow she needed a REASON TO BE MAAAAAD. So, *pinch* I'M MAD CUZ I GOT PINCHED! *le sigh*


Me: Fine, you want to tantrum? You can tantrum in your crib. Tantrum allllll you want. Mommy's gonna go clean the kitchen. 
*tantrum continues for about 5 minutes.. then silence*
Me: *checks on Wiggles, who is now asleep* Well.. that worked better than I planned.


 So.. upcoming fun stuff. I'm going to Disneyland with a friend from out here! That should be really good times. They have a 21 month old little girl who is adorable beyond belief. I'm really excited. I'll be gone from the 12th to the 17th. No robbing my house please, though you'll have trouble getting past the 135 lb guard bear/dog. Plus, you don't know where I live so nanny nanny booboo. Please don't try to find me. I don't have much worth stealing, unless you want a cat with the IQ of an eraser.


Things are going well with my meds. No migraines, no more manic episodes. I have more energy than I'm used to, but I'm thinking this is just my normal baseline. Normal... WTF is normal? I certainly don't know, cuz I haven't been it since I was.. oh.. 13 or 14, I guess. That's about when my depression started. I'm 26 now. I've been off and on meds since then, yeah, but never really found a combo that works like this one does. Abilify, cymbalta, and topomax for my migraines. It really is working. I'm actually SLEEPING! SLEEP! Sleep is a wonderful amazing thing. Waking up feeling rested and not like a member of the shambling dead is amazing. When I was really depressed, I wouldn't sleep for days. Literally, days. I would just lay there and stare at the clock hoping to eventually become so exhausted that I'd pass out. I would, and then I'd sleep for 24 hours, only waking to pee and get something to drink. Crazyness, isn't it? Then I'd get so manic I wouldn't sleep because I didn't need it. I'd lay in bed watching movies or tv shows, or reading endless books, or sometimes just lay there and let my mind wander to the most random of places. I tried to at least rest, because even if I didn't sleep I still needed rest, yknow?


Anyhow, I must be off as the Very Angry Toddler has awoken. Until next time my fair readers.

Why I chose a hospital birth

I figured that since, in the end, I AM a raptor, I need to post why I chose to birth in a hospital. This was originally posted on another blog (.http://www.10centimeters.com/)but I'm going to go ahead and post it here too. Cuz.. it's mine. And I can do that.

Let me start off by saying I am not against homebirth.  I am all for safe homebirth attended by an experienced medical professional, preferably a CNM.  I cannot in good conscience support unattended births or births attended by direct entry or lay midwives. However, I do believe that there should be state or federal guidelines as to what constitutes a medical professional, meaning there should be standardized schooling to allow more women the ability to birth at home if that is what they desire.

I delivered my daughter on July 16^th, 2010 at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. I bring this up because I know there could be someone out there who says “Your doctor induced you to make more money!” This is untrue, as my doctor is a military member; therefore she got paid the same amount no matter what kind of birth I had.  Homebirth was never an option for me, because I have multiple medical problems that would have made it extremely dangerous.

The primary concern for my wellbeing, along with my daughter’s, of course, was my heart conditions. I have a mitral valve prolapse with regurgitation. This in itself is not enough to be seriously threatening to my life, but it’s certainly something that needs to be monitored. My symptoms got progressively worse as my pregnancy went on, and since I am fairly asymptomatic from that, it was a cause for concern. Additionally, I have atrial fibrillation, a type of arrhythmia or, put simply, a whacky heart rhythm. This can cause a myriad of problems, and to be perfectly honest, people with AFib really should consider the risks of pregnancy with the condition. On top of all that, I was born with a genetic condition called Neurofibromatosis type 1, and as with many genetic conditions there are varying degrees of severity. My family is very fortunate that, generally speaking, we have had no major problems linked to our NF1. However, one of the major concerns is that we grow benign tumors called neurofibromas on our bodies, and they can often grow on the spinal cord or even in the vaginal canal. One can see why this might cause issues during delivery. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, was that I developed community acquired MRSA about 2 weeks before Wiggles' due date. I had to be on some serious antibiotics, and they are known to cause severe jaundice in neonates. The doctors needed to be able to monitor Wiggles closely for that and for any signs of infection in her.

                                                        Last picture of Wiggles in my belly

It’s tough to say what would have happened had we not had a hospital birth. I don’t know what would have happened if I went into labor naturally, as I was induced at 41 weeks. I’m aware that due dates aren’t an exact science, and normally I would have preferred to avoid an induction, but all of my doctors were strongly recommending scheduling an induction. My heart symptoms had reached an all-time high; I could barely walk up a single flight of stairs without my heart racing. After a 36 hour labor, including an MRI to check for tumors on my spine before placing an epidural, Wiggles' heart rate dropping to the mid 50’s, my own heart rate skyrocketing to nearly 200, and my poor husband having his hand nearly broken.. Our precious daughter arrived. Was her birth ideal? No, I didn’t really want to be induced and they had to use forceps as she was stuck behind my pelvic bone. Am I horribly traumatized and do I need lifelong therapy? Absolutely not.

I know that every woman is different, and therefore her choices and her reactions to the outcomes will be completely different. In the end, as long as mom and baby are healthy and happy, that is what matters. One might argue that the trauma of birth will make mom and baby not healthy and happy, but, to me, the argument holds no merit. Childbirth does have inherent risks, there’s no denying that. There is a reason that childbirth was the number one killer of women for countless years. Sanitation, better medical techniques, and better nutrition have all added up to make childbirth less dangerous. Birth is not to be feared, but I’m not sure it should be trusted either. Birth is to be respected, whether it’s at home, in a birth center, in a hospital, or in the middle of the woods with you surrounded by your furry friends. Birth how you want, but please… do it safely. 

There really is a baby in there, I promise

A KrEaTive award!

I love when I'm given awards, especially ones I don't think I deserve them. Yes, that sentence made no sense and I'M LEAVING IT THAT WAY BECAUSE I CAN! SO SCREW YOU GRAMMAR MILITSIYA!





There are, of course, the standard rules to accepting said award.

Rules:
Link back to the person who gave you this award
Complete the form below
Award 10 other blogs and let them know in a comment or email
Share 7 random thoughts about yourself

FORM
1. Name your favorite song: Too many to name!
2. Name your favorite dessert:  Orange rolls or homemade bread pudding
3. What ticks me off: Stupidity
4. When I'm upset I:  Bite my nails
5. What's your favorite pet:  Stinky
6. Black or white:  Grey
7. Biggest Fear:  Losing the people I love.
8. Everyday attitude:  Yes, I have an attitude everyday.. oh wait. Uh... Today could suck, but it could NOT suck too!!
9. What is perfection: My daughter
10. Guilty Pleasure: Orange rolls for dessert.


10  8 blogs, in no particular order, and taken pretty much directly from Linds cuz I'm cool like that:

http://momofmanyfeet.blogspot.com/ 

http://www.musingsofaplussizedmom.com/ 

http://whatpalebluedot.blogspot.com/ 

http://www.lifeas5.com <---- the one who gave me the award

http://birthconversation.blogspot.com/ 

http://separatespheres.blogspot.com/

http://sara-savel.blogspot.com/ 

http://lifebeingblonde.blogspot.com/ 

7 Random Things About Me:
1. Bear (our dog) got stuck in Wiggle's playtent today. Picture to follow.
2. I have 5 tattoos. I had to count how many I had before I put it down. I'm getting my 6th as soon as tax money hits.
3. I'm addicted to funny Russian pop music and videos, even though I only understand about 50% of what they say.
4. I LOVE FROGS AND RABBITS!! Aleah can suck it if she doesn't like rabbits.
5. I would love to do all the things I see on Pintrest, but I have no artistic talent.
6. I cannot deal without soda, even though it tastes like crap since I went on the Topamax. I'm not willing to go off it though.
7. I've found so much support and love from my friends, they are beautiful people, and I don't think I could survive without them.


Thanks again, Crazy/Not So Crazy Lindsay!  You're Teh AwesomeH.