11.30.2004

Playa Del Carmen

We returned yesterday evening from Mexico feeling relaxed, energized, and confident. It was a wonderful trip. I'll get into the details of it tomorrow, but suffice it to say, after a rocky beginning, we rallied and had a great time.

K initially struggled for a few reasons, but after a lot of sleep and very little human interaction, she was able to enjoy herself. We were part of a 40 person wedding, and we even got to know a number of the other guests. You have to realize that K and I are frequently anti-social.

The weather sucked, 90 degrees and 80% humidity. However, the water looked like the postcards, with the blues and greens. On Sunday afternoon, we went to Mayan ruins, scuttling from the shade of the palm tree to the next shade patch.

I'll write a longer post tomorrow, but we both are feeling good.

11.24.2004

Teenagers, Depression, and Meds

For those of you, who have been following the debate regarding the use of anti-depressants in teenagers, the New York Times has an extensive article in their magazine.



Happy Thanksgiving

We are more than ready for a holiday. I have scheduled the taxi for 4:10 am tomorrow morning to take us to the airport for a 6 am flight. I hope that it isn't cutting it too close, but how much earlier can we really get up?

K is still doing well. It took a bit of coaxing it get her out of bed this morning and she's suffering from some dizziness, but she's at the office finishing up her work day. We're both leaving earlier to go run a dreadful amount of errands before we are ready to go. And we may have to go to dinner with some friends this evening, but we've not really responded to them.

I remain stressed, but have continued fantasizing about pedicures, yoga, working out, back massages, etc. The weather in Cancun remains about 90 degrees (feels like 99), which is unfortunate as K is VERY heat sensitive. Even before she was taking lithium she never went into the sun. Now she is even more concerned about the heat and dehydration. Though, this gives her a better excuse to stay inside and watch movies.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Wish us luck!

11.22.2004

Stress

Sometime last week, I hit my limit for construction. Ever since then, my stress levels have been high and my tolerance for chaos low. I'm constantly tense and am apt to cry for minimal reasons.

Thankfully, we are heading to Cancun on Thursday morning for a nice break. Actually, it's to attend the wedding of a friend of mine, but there's the added benefit of staying at a luxury resort and getting away from a house filled with contractors. I'm also anxious to see how K handles the trip to Mexico. This will determine whether she'll be up for trips to London/England and Panama next year, in addition to the domestic traveling we do.

K's response to the stress has been to watch movies. Her therapist encourages to hide when she's no longer able to take the household circumstances. But that leaves me feeling a bit lonely.

This weekend, I spent quite a bit of time working on the dining room. The drywall has been finished, so I primed the drywall and began the repair work on the cracks and holes in the plaster. It's not that I want to do the work, though I don't mind too much. Rather, I want the room finished. The fastest way I know to finish the room is to do it myself. I'm not doing everything. For example, I'm not taking down all the picture rail to replace it, as I probably should. Instead, I'm doing as much as I can to make it look good quickly.

Once the dining room is painted, we can move the large oriental rugs back into the living room and dining room. The bookcases can be moved into the room and we can get much of the excess crap out of the living room. Basically, we will begin to reclaim our house.

Despite my stress, K and I are doing well. I did have a temper tantrum on Saturday night, when she tried to stay home five minutes before we were to leave for an evening out. I was pissed. Normally, I would have dealt with it better, but I couldn't take it. I could tell she was enraged, partially because the plumber had been working in the basement and messed with the plumbing all day, making it impossible to shower, do laundry or anything else. Fortunately, we worked it out together and she came out.

K is also extremely stressed. She's telling the table refinisher, who's taken about 4 times the amount of time he initially told me, that he needs to be done on Wednesday or we will finish the table ourselves. She's also very anxious to work on the dining room and have it completed. She worked with me a bit over the weekend. The funny part is that she's the one, who is better at these tasks.

We are continuing to communicate well and rely on each other for support. Even healthy couples struggle with home renovations and the stress of them. I talked to her about my loneliness as I'm working on things. She's going to try and do more with me, but her energy is being sapped by the state of the house. The chaos upstairs is exacerbated by the chaos in the basement, which will continue for another 6-8 weeks. Hopefully, painting the dining room will make us feel as if we've accomplished something and it will be easier to wait as the basement is completed.

Despite the stress, she's continuing to do well and work. I'm hoping that a few days in a resort with nothing to do will work miracles on us both. I'm thinking of scheduling my first-ever pedicure and maybe a nice seaweed wrap or something of the sort. They also serve rum drinks directly to the lounge chairs. K plans on reading and watching movies. Our intention is to do as little as possible. I'm really starting to look forward to this trip.

11.17.2004

Drywall in the Dining Room

Even I, who am rarely irritated by things, am becoming tired of the disruption and chaos throughout the house. K became tired of it some time ago. Even the dog refuses to spend time on the first floor, she races back upstairs to sleep undisturbed.

The amazing part of this all is that K is managing to get through the construction without ill effects from bipolar disorder. Even her sleep patterns haven't been unusually disrupted. I view her stability as a major achievement for her and as an indication that the medications are doing their job.

K has also weathered this month's PMS with flying colors. Last month, after two months of almost psychotic levels of PMS, her psychiatrist put her on Paxil XR (CR?). She is only to take it once PMS symptoms begin and quit once PMS is over. It appeared to ease the symptoms last month, although she was several days into PMS when she began taking it. This month she started well in advance of my period, almost before I had any signs of PMS. But no sleep disruptions or bouts of rage this month.

I can't begin to describe my relief as I see the medications being effective. We went through hell for so long with meds doing nothing (this was prior to the bipolar diagnoses) that seeing effective results is enough to make me cry. I'm beginning to trust that things are good and my world won't shift out from under me at a moment's notice.

11.10.2004

Contractor Overload and Meltdown

As a way to manage all of the work occurring in the basement and some of the work occurring in other rooms in the house, we are working with a general contractor. He has this incredible work ethic and seems to work about 16 hours a day. We are only one of his projects.

The bad part is that he occasionally drags us into his crazy schedule. Last night, we had contractors show up at 6:30 pm to work at finishing up the basement digging. We disengaged and went out for a nice dinner.

However, on our way home, I checked in with our general contractor only to find he was heading over to our place at 8 pm. (Note: we go to bed around 9 pm every night.) He brought his cousin, who was in town visiting for only one night, and a plumber along with him. This would have been fine, except then we had to wait for a drywall guy to come and check out our dining room, which is awaiting some drywall on one wall. We didn't manage to usher them all out the door until almost 10 pm.

The drywall guy wanted to start today and I noticed K wasn't happy about it, but I ignored the danger signals and agreed. She had a meltdown in the middle of the night, and awoke at 3 am in a rage state. Her goal every week is to work her full number of hours, which is 80 in a 2-week period. Today, she's still asleep at noon, while she tries to recover from meltdown.

I called this morning and canceled the drywall guy from starting until Friday, to give us some breathing room. So our only contractor visitors were the electricians and the furniture refininsher, who continues to refinish a table in our living room.

K's meltdown is a reminder to me that I need to make sure to pay attention to her warning signs, which I saw last night and chose to ignore. She'll be fine once she gets up. I also need to speak to our general contractor about not coming over too late. He knows K's health is an issue, due to the heart attack, and he is hyper-conscious of it. But he gets carried away trying to get work done.

Even with all the progress, her schedule is virtually sacrosanct as a way of keeping her stable and healthy. Less sacrosanct than it used to be, but still critical.

11.09.2004

Backing away slowly

The past five months have given us the opportunity to move away from the precipice. No longer is our life dictated by K's every mood swing and every bump is no longer a crisis. I had my doubts that we would ever return to normal.

Not that I would have ever voiced those doubts to myself. The constant day-to-day crises didn't allow time for reflection. Even if I had the time, it was too dangerous for me to admit that type of weakness. How could I hold myself and K together if I ever allowed doubt to creep in? I had to believe that things would be fine.

Thoughout the worst part of K's illness, I saw a psychiatrist for weekly therapy. She was amazed by my powers of denial. Denial is perhaps the wrong word for my behavior. When I am faced with a situation, I focus on what I can do and other alternatives are blocked. Let me tell the story of K's heart attack and my reaction.

Initially, I refused to believe that she might have been having one. After she convinced me to call 911, I still wasn't convinced. Even as she was wheeled into the ambulance and lay there looking at me through the glass, channeling all her love in my direction, I didn't acknowledge it. Some might say I'm stubborn, but a heart attack was so removed from my world, it wasn't a possibility. I managed to remain in denial until we reached the hospital and they began shooting her full of morphine. The tears came as I called her parents to tell them their daughter was in ER and going in for surgery.

As the bipolar becomes an integrated part of our life and not the center of it, I'm finally able to begin to acknowledge that K may have easily killed herself during the worst periods of her illness. Although I knew she thought about suicide obsessively, I couldn't contemplate that she would take that step. She never did, she claims, due to her love for me. She couldn't find a way to kill herself and protect me from the pain.

It frightens me to think about these possibilities even with the distance. I can't imagine that result. Thankfully, the meds, therapy, and K's will power have given her the strength to fight and manage the disease.

The positive is that I no longer am as fearful as I once was and I believe she will live a long and productive life.

As I look back, I also wonder how I managed to get through the pain and pressure. My ability to cope came from two sources, exercise and friends.
Much of ability to cope with the stress came from working out on a regular basis. I'm a reasonably lazy person, preferring to lounge in front of the fire than do things. But after gaining 15 pounds in grad school, K gave me a graduation gift of personal training sessions. (Note: I requested them; she never would have done it otherwise.)

The personal training and working out gave me the opportunity to lower my stress levels enough to cope with the on-going stress. I've slacked off the past 2 months, but have returned to the gym again. I'm a bit sore today from my morning weight lifting session.

My other coping mechanisms were being able to talk to friends and c0-workers. My co-workers were there to give me hugs and support when things got bad. Even though I wasn't thrilled with my job, they did not hassle me about using sick leave to care for K whenever it was necessary. (I've since switched jobs to a different group, though the first group keeps working to lure me back.)

Secondly, close friends kept me sane and both of us fed. Never underestimate how important it is to provide food to friends, who are under a great deal of stress. There were times when we weren't fit company for anyone, and friends would bring food and leave.

Things have worked out, as I hoped they would. K is healthy again and working fulltime. We are at a point of having a normal life again.

11.08.2004

Role Reversal

The work continues on the basement. The digging was completed in five days, and then we had a lull before getting the next round of contractors. Today, we should have an electrician with two helpers and the concrete guy, who will handle underpinning (the shoring up of the foundation), replacement of the I-beam, and the gravel and concrete work. Additionally, we are still searching for a reasonably priced plumber.

The quote for the electric came in at a reasonable price, even lower than I expected. But the concrete and underpinning about brought around my death, or at a minimum, illness in the dining room.

Friday was our day off. K decided to work, because she had missed a day during the week. I had to go in to work for an awards ceremony and then had plans for coffee and shopping for the afternoon. I met up with a friend and wandered aimlessly through shops and got to have coffee at the gourmet market, where I only go occasionally. Beautiful fall weather made it a perfect afternoon.

I got home and bubbled over to tell K about the afternoon. (Side note: It seems outrageous to spend $70 on 2 lipsticks, 1 lip glimmer, blush, and lip liner.) K was a bit subdued, but I put it down to exhaustion.

Turns out that she wanted me to get the last bit of enjoyment out of my afternoon before she sprung the price quote for the underpinning, etc. on me. When I saw the number, I wanted to break out into tears. We could afford it, but we wouldn't have the money to complete the basement. Nor is there any way to avoid having some of the work done, especially as it is already dug out.

As it turns out, I convinced the contractor to SIGNIFICANTLY lower his price. But this is after almost throwing up in the middle of the dining room, due to the onslaught of anxiety brought around by the money issues on the job.

On the basement, the bottom line is that we will be able to complete the work, unless we have another nasty surprise. The bad news is that we won't be able to afford central AC this fall and it will have to wait for a while, due to lack of funds.

The best part is that K is healthy enough to protect me from the initial news and she was the strong one. She is able to put aside her own anger and frustration with the contractors to comfort me and make sure that the two of us made it through mentally and emotionally intact.

I never realized the stress that can be brought on by having work done in one's home. Right now, our home is no longer a sanctuary. It is a construction zone with chaos creeping through every room. Our hope is to get the dining room table refinished (the work is being done in the living room) and have the dining room drywall put up (we tore down a wall) and the room painted, so we can have the living room and dining room back. The chimney company finished their work (not that we tested it yet) to correct the screw-up they did on the chimney lining job.

Any case, K is back. I can say this a year after her hospitalization. Her second release from the hospital, when she finally began to improve, will be a year ago on Wednesday, November 10. I don't want to remind her, but it is an anniversary worth celebrating, since she's come so far.

11.03.2004

Election Hangover

Too depressing to even write about.

K is entering another cycle of PMS fed from my pheromones. She yelled at me around 1 am this morning, blaming me for all her problems sleeping. Being woken up and yelled at in the early morning hours does little for my disposition. She and I need to have a discussion regarding her behavior. She began doing this last month. It's the only time she is ever upset with me and it is only for a couple nights, but imagine being yelled at for a couple nights in a row. Last month, it took me about a week before I began to feel human again.

Between the election, work, and home, I'm becoming irritable.

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