Bipolar Disorder

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(Update) Get my eval for BDII Wednesday (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by s38b35M5@lemmy.world to c/bipolardisorder@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Hope you can get a low dose of lithium to stabilize without diminishing your experience.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

I began titration with Lamotrigine today.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

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.