So, these past two months my domain was down (unbeknownst to me) and I was psychotic (again) but I’m getting better answers now about why I keep tossing ill. WordPress was exceptionally helpful in my getting the domain registered again, so thank you WordPress!
By boring account, I was admitted to the hospital in mid-August, where I stayed for a week. During that time I’ve been signed up on government health care for the impoverished (Medicaid) and had to switch doctors. My last psychiatrist started thinking I may be bipolar instead of schizophrenic because of the odd nature of my recurrent psychosis and periods of full-functioning in contrast and the lack of correlation between my med compliance and recovery, or lack there of.
Current theory (since I had to get yet another doctor under Medicaid) is that I have Bipolar I with psychotic features which is to say, instead of being HIGH or super-productive, I just flip severe psychotic, blowing right past all the touted “benefits” of being bipolar. My cycle seems to be of the slower-cycling nature and, if I recall, the doc said this is harder to manage long-term. I’m now on a numerous meds to try and keep the next cycle from occurring, or to slow it down enough to catch. Not sure why catching it will help when the meds I’m on are supposed to prevent it altogether – isn’t that like saying we’ll use the meds you’re on to try to do the same thing? (That is to say, if it is prevented by the meds I am on, I won’t need to use the medications to bring me back down, and if the meds don’t stop the onset, we’ll use the same meds to try and squelch it.) Not being smug, but I’ll have to ask the doctor some more poignant questions, none of which I can ever think of at the time.
Since Thanksgiving 2013, I’ve gone psychotic three times, and if I count correctly, there’s been a total of nine cycles of destruction since the big block buster, two-year long psychosis I experience at onset.
The most frustrating aspect of this all is the stigma and the FALSE assumption that I must not be on meds if I am sick. Wrong on so many levels. To start, lots and lots of meds don’t work for people the first try, or even the second try. Second, that ONE TIME I was off meds doesn’t mean it’s my current behavior (truth be told, I was running my own experiment). Second, it doesn’t sound like this could have been better diagnosed. A pattern has to emerge, and, furthermore, there needs to be continuity of care.
My own experiment, eh? What’s that about?
In all sincerity, I thought I had this licked while–at the same time–I intuitively knew the meds weren’t working the way they should. Maybe it is better to say I thought it was over, that I was done with being schizophrenic. All of this, of course, is not ignorance or obstinacy, but denial. I just can’t admit to myself that this *may* be happening for the rest of my life. How do you plan for that? How do you plan on being totally incapacitated five to six months out of the year? You start buying a lot of art supplies, that’s what you do.
The continuity of care in our medical system leaves much to be desired. Initially I was on state-funded insurance, when I first became ill. When I became better and was able to work and get my own insurance, I had to move to a private doctor under private insurance. Even while on state care, my doctor changed several times. I finally found a private clinic with an associate Behavioral Health Unit hoping that someone would catch my symptoms and hospitalize me before something really really bad happened. Lucky shot there, for what resulted is that finally one clinic had notes for different events and they were finally able to see the full spectrum of behavior, from capable business woman to babbling fright. Although I changed doctors three times at the new clinic, they each read the prior doctor’s notes.
What has been helping also (and I am more than a little ashamed to say this) is that I’ve had my mom go with me to my appointments under the theory (more experimenting here) that the doctor would put more weight on what she said than on what I said, being a more-frequent observer of my condition. So, it helped.
And, while I say that, I’m banking on the new diagnosis and the fact I won’t go psychotic again (I know, denial) or that it won’t be quite as bad as last time (more denial).