This community is pretty quiet, but I wanted to drop a short check-in post anyway.
On Wednesday, I will see my pDoc to be evaluated for bipolar II. I just came off what I (and my wife with bipolar I) think was a hypo episode that peaked for about 9 days (after checking my computer history and sleep/mood journal). According to my wife, I get hypo every spring, but this one was the first one where sleep was completely optional for me. Some days I would sleep for 2.5hrs. Some days I wouldn't sleep at all. During that time, I was doing three things: playing my digital piano, playing games on my PC, and editing a mediawiki fandom site, creating 275+ updates with more than 1k characters in five days, over 170 of them on May 5.
I thought I was just being really creative and multi-tasking. I know that I really did level-up with the piano. I have third-party confirmation of that, but, yeah, I think that maybe I wasn't as awesome as I thought I was. Like, I know I got better at piano from playing basically all day for almost two weeks, but I also know I am only self-taught, and I didn't become a wizard or something.
After reading the bipolar sections of the DSM-V, I am fairly confident the diagnosis would be Bipolar II rapid cycling with mixed features and seasonal pattern.
So, I don't know if our suspicions will be confirmed or not, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to belonging to this community, and feeling like a label actually helps me when it comes to this.
Anyway, I don't know if anyone will see this post, as this community seems sort of fizzled out, but oh well. I just feel better sharing this. It helps me come to terms with it, I think.
I also wanted to share the following:
I skimmed the stickied posts, including the common medications one. At first, I was going to post a comment about one particular med I saw on the list that absolutely kills me and my wife, but then I saw the top-voted comment sort of covered it.
Trazadone. This med is awful for me. I've been given it three times as a sleep aid. Nope. It's more of a chemical torture instead. It makes me tired. So tired I beg for sleep. But I am also restless and my thoughts are racing. I will crawl into bed, barely able to stand, dizzy and groggy. But once I am in bed and try to sleep, I just can't stop moving or thinking. I can't even be sure if I am really moving, but the entire time I am dosed with Trazadone, I am incapable of sleep.
Temazepam 15mg is what works for me. I still only get about 4hrs of sleep, but I can at least sleep.
I hear about Trazadone being used a lot in a hospital setting, and the feedback from nursing staff is that it is very unreliable and patients seem more agitated on it than not, but it keeps being prescribed as a sleep aid. Maybe my experience is really rare, but I suspect it isn't.