Lithium and Internet Dating. Oh, and Alison Moyet.

Patience has never been one of my favourite things. To me, waiting rooms are where you get sent to spend your afterlife if you were pretty f*cking out of order in this life. I've been on lithium six weeks now and it's still not "in range" in my blood. This means two things..

Firstly, every seven days now (exactly twelve hours after the last dose) I have a blood test - again, not one of my favourite things, I'd rather stare at a bus timetable with my eyelids held open long enough until I see Alison Moyet in the cluster of numbers - which so far have been negative which means the dose gets increased, and then another blood test and so on, and the so on can go on for months. 

Secondly, I had to come off everything before I started lithium so there is no mood stabiliser, anti-depressant or anti-psychotic propping me up (I'm sneaking a glass of chardonnay into my system whilst no-one's looking). So I am pretty much "empty" at the moment, and this glorious thirty degree British weekend has been a dominos effect of bad luck - had to pack up my Grans house as she has lost the plot and gone into nursing home, tried to talk to my mother about lithium to which she does what she always does.. walk away/change subject/both, my guinea pig has a heart attack and dies in front of me, I missed one of my best friends' hen doo but still ruined it for her because no one told me it was supossed to be a surprise and yes, I shouted out on facebook "can't wait to see you at your hen, later, today" to then of course miss it anyway - also, side effects of lithium combined with the heat are making me feel like I'm going through cold turkey, my moods are swinging like two fat kids on a seesaw and I have a dead animal in an addidas shoe box to transport to the afterlife. 

I'm actually thinking about using the above as my "about me" on an internet dating website profile. 


Pic.. one of a series of my prints in the Core Arts Summer exhibition from Friday 2nd July 2011 

Mixed episodes, Argos and hobnobs

I'm recently experiencing high volumes of mixed episode. Btw.. 


A mixed episode is essentially an episode that simultaneously presents symptoms of both depression and mania. For example, an individual with bipolar disorder (manic depression) may have all the frantic energy of mania, but may also be struggling with the black thoughts of depression 

I'm getting myself over-excited about something that minutes later I can't think of anything worse. Not only is it mentally exhausting for me but it p*sses other people of too because it comes across that I'm indecisive and lose interest in them, which I don't. Example, I get an idea in my head that all my friends should have matching rollerblades and I go on the Argos website and place an order for five (I have to painfully select five friends, this must be what it was like saving lives on the Titanic) pairs of matching rollerblades but by the time I get the purchase confirmation email I'm convinced that a) none of these people actually like me that much anyway, b) one of them will skate in front of a speeding car and die and c) I've caused a mass friction over who got blades and who didn't and have created a social division. Not to mention Im down £224.94. 

I have a love hate relationship with maps, it takes me longer to work out how to get somewhere than get there. Yesterday I spent an hour working out a cycling route that takes only twenty minutes. I was definitely excited about it, and then I definitely wasn't, and didn't go, even though I'd bunked off especially. I paced up and down my lounge and felt compelled to know everything everyone was doing, so I asked friends (not about rollerblades) to tell me what bus they took to work and how long it took. You got stuck in traffic? Where abouts? How long for? I even got the exact details of the last forty eight hours from one friend, from her flight details to how long she waited at traffic lights on the way to the airport.

I managed to slow myself down with half a bottle of plonk and some strong painkillers (do NOT try this at home - I became violently sick - I wasn't aware of any interaction between lithium and codeine) and six back to back episodes of Six Feet Under. I'm at the bit where Brenda finds herself addicted to sex whilst fueling her inspiration to write her book. I find a quiet room and a pack of hobnobs useful but thats just me.


Pic.. One of my stills featured in the Core Arts Summer Exhibition London from July 1st 2011 

My birthday cake

Here's a birthday cake I knitted. It's good for three things..
1. It's very low in fat
2. NOBODY is going to want to share it
3. It's naturally full of fibres

Are pets aware of bank holidays?

I hate to admit it but I don't actually feel any different other than "clean" in that the old stuff must be out of my blood by now but I can't feel the new stuff in there. I've been put up twice since my last post currently on 500mg but am still doing the following..

Talking shit - Learning that lithium is a metal and used in aircraft I woke my boyfriend up to ask him "What happens if you wake up tomorrow next to an aeroplane?" to which he gave me that knowing look and went back to sleep.

Manic purchasing - Having purchased a roll of wonder-web (men, it's for dressmaking purposes) I came home to find it was the best purchase I've ever made so I went back to the shop and bought every roll they had left in the shop (thirty-two, in theory sixteen packs of two)

Mood swings - Have been swinging more than a piss up in the roaring twenties and as usual it's everyone else's fault.

Highs (Unrealistic thoughts/idolistic fantasies) - I do enjoy these, but only up to the point I remember they're not real. I can't cure cancer, will never be in Eastenders and my pet rodents are not aware of bank holidays.

A doctor said it can take up to two months for lithium to kick in. So I'll give it another five weeks, then if I still feel low I may go buy some cucumbers*

*For dated purposes, there is currently an outbreak of e-coli induced death and cucumbers have been blamed.

Pic - just some of my pet rodents

Stepford Wives v The Young Ones

It's been exactly a week into the lithium treatment now and I'm wondering how much I can sue the NHS for, for giving a psychiatric patient a placebo drug. I jest. I just over estimated how I would be feeling and behaving - I expected to be sleeping and vomiting a lot, and responding only to commands - not at all. There's been a slight reduction in the intrusive/obsessive dark thoughts, mixed episodes and brain racing (now there's a new pitch for the Olympics - a bunch of nutters running round the track bare feet and arms up screaming. First the paralympics and now the psycholympics).


The burning urge to crack open cava and create a cure for cancer at 11am has lessened, sorry Marie Curie, and I can be told my hair looks nice up without bursting into tears or sleeping with them in return. I've noticed that I'm noticing stuff too, like oncoming traffic and other spacial/visual stuff I've never really paid much attention to other than when someone shouts for me to get out of the f*cking way.


I have however let my flat become an utter tip in my slight vagueness and only yesterday did I take the plunge, after a very long conversation with myself, and I felt like a Stepford wife in The Young Ones house.


They increase today. Will post. In the meantime check out some art or something. I recommend Steve McCann, he's got some fab stuff up at Core Arts in East London at he mo.

http://www.londonsartistquarter.org/events/steve-mc-cann-paintings-drawings
www.corearts.co.uk

Cream Cakes and Lithium

The paracetamol plan didn't work. I'm been prescribed Lithium instead.


When I think of Lithium I think of the 1950's, a chemistry lab and a lobotomy kit, so I freaked out, obviously, just a few days ago when Mr Upstairs explained to me that my regular dose of Lamotrigine (lactimal) wasn't working, which I feel partly responsible for as it's taking me five years of being on this to point out to him what psychological side affects these have on me, which I've always thought were the psychological side affects of WHY I take them in the first place.. acute anxieties, deep depression, obsessive intrusive thoughts, distractive (and destructive) mania etc.. whether it's the pixels in my brain or the powder in my pills I don't care anymore, I just want a clean white, fresh start.


So in a couple of days, pending on blood results I start the new treatment. Several things concern me..


1) Blood tests - these are in my top five list of things I hate along with headless bass guitars and mackeral pate, and I need to have blood tests every four days for up to eight weeks.


2) Lithium is commonly linked with weight gain - I've never been overweight which I find hard to believe as my eating habits portray something like a bulimic who skips the throwing up afterwards bit. Yesterday my friend reminded me of a story I told her about my last day at school where cream cakes were laid out on trays in the classroom and I silently ate in the privacy of my own desk, six, without a care in the world, to be interrupted my the chanting "Eat!.. Eat!.. Eat!.." and I turned to see the class circling the two biggest boys in school having a cake eating competition and the winner painfully folded the last of, er, six cakes in his mouth whilst the other doubled over at four and a half. The class stomped and cheered, the winner couldn't move, and I silently shocked myself silly.


3) Lithium can stunt emotions and creativity - now this concerns me the most. If I can't write, think, make sense of, or make my dolls, play the drums, any other activity which involves impulse or improvise I'll feel a) numb and b) someone else has hijacked my body. 


4) Lithium can cause tremors - How the f*ck am I gonna put my make-up on?? Or explain myself to other people; I have a choice of saying that a) You make me nervous, b) I'm withdrawing or c) I'm on Lithium. My doll making requires detailed sewing and I also have a photography exhibition coming up.


I'm going to go on some forums now and find some fellow lithiumees to put my mind at rest. I'll keep you posted.


SSP x

Booze, Fags and Self Help

I've started counting booze units again. Partly because I'm bordering on listomania again - approached with caution, it used to be such a "listless" operation that during a hospital admission once I wrote consecutive lists for days without stopping, something I only became aware of when I asked for a copy of my file years later and some poor secretary had to photocopy the lot -  but also because I seem to constantly have a glass of plonk in my hand at the moment. I'm smoking too and smoking a lot, and as a non smoker I don't smoke at all. Obviously. 

I could blame my recent Angie Watts personification on this time of year - it's wedding season, the sun's out, there seem to be more bank holidays than actual days - but I'm spending most of my time indoors, on my own, and for obvious reasons I often get tippexed off the wedding list.

I'm also having to list some of my thoughts, they're neither fun nor glamourous, to take to Mr Upstairs. The poor note book that has to hold all this information (yes, I'm even feeling sorry for stationary now days)  looks like a polluted take on Bridgit Jones' diary. 

But on a positive note (and yes, that happens sometimes too) when you write things down, be it lists, letters, your will, etc.. things a) starts to make sense - I sometimes script format my conversation for therapists beforehand other wise I feel that what I'm trying to say doesn't make sense or is untrue, and b) it lets a little of whatever is bugging you out, and you do feel a bit better, slightly resolved. This is why I write, why I've always written, why I've spent years writing for journals, press, stage,TV, radio.. even toilet graffiti - no one needed to know that it was me who did it with Matthew Spears. 

Ironically I'm not much of a reader. Maybe the odd serial killer biography or self help book. The latter was recently eaten by one of my guinea pigs who has never been as chilled out, smug and vegan since!