Good (but tiring) week
Today's our Friday. We work extra hours, so we have every 2nd Friday off. It makes a great difference in our pysche and in our ability to run errands.
I'm thrilled to report K's doing well. Actually better than well, but I don't want to jinx it. K's never had manic episodes where things go well, so I'm certain that she's doing well versus manic.
The great thing is that she's enjoying her job. It wears her out and she needs lots downtime by the end of the day, but she's getting up, going in, and is excited about what's she's doing. It makes me wonder if she had been more challenged at her job, would that have reduced the amount of time that she was ill? It's one of those questions that will never be and probably never should be answered. But it does linger given her improvement when she's pushed by external forces.
K agrees that she's doing better and even agrees that she should have left her old position some time ago. But fear froze K in place, so she couldn't move. Now, she's been forced to change and thus far the result is positive.
We're both worn out. Not much planned for the weekend, other than a 8-9 person dinner party on Saturday night. We'll be running around buying food and preparing for it over the next two days. However, it shouldn't be stressful.
I've been busy with work and finding professional mentors. I've two and a possible third. That will also keep me occupied over the next few months.
I'll also try to be better about writing.
wine (or whine)
I probably shouldn't be blogging, since I finishing the last glass in a bottle of wine. A bottle that I haven't shared. However, my mood has greatly improved from earlier this evening. K and I were spatting a few hours ago. Also, I'm in the middle of making potato salad, which I committed to bringing to the professional development kickball game/cookout tomorrow afternoon.
We've gotten pass the spat, but the stress of the past week, as I stated earlier, her job, my feelings of responsibility and professional obligations, her illness, the house, etc. have given us a few reasons to be stressed over the past weeks. Somehow this week, everything seemed to come to a head.
I think the low point for me this afternoon was sitting in the car sobbing parked in one of the eight parking spots in the alley behind our local McDonald's. McDonald's is the only place where you can find parking in one of the popular neighborhoods near us, and they have 6 or 8 spots total. The cabs frequently grab them from everyone else. But the street can be parked to the max with every illegal spot in sight already taken and the alley behind McD's can have spots galore.
Any case, I'm digressing. K seems to think that I'm through and had it with the entire situatiion of her job and illness. That isn't the case, rather I'm stretched too far. I don't feel as if I can continue to stretch. To address this, we've decided to try a joint session with K's therapist tomorrow. I'm not sure that I have ever been in a full session with the two of them, but we've decided that it might help both of us reduce our anxiety. I have reserved the right to change my mind up until the last minute.
As I've mentioned earlier in this blog, I did go to therapy for six months to help me get through the worst of K's bipolar disorder. It wasn't fantastic, but it did help. We had to set ground rules that the psychiatrist would not probe beyond the situation with K, as I wasn't interested in going beyond that portion of my life. Once, she tried to probe into my defense mechanisms and the result was that I sobbed for hours after the session. She decided after that session that my defenses funtioned well and there was no need to probe them and cause me additional pain.
Different subject: When I took the Meyer's Biggs exam recently, it was confirmed that I am an introvert. I need people more that K needs people, but it drains me to be placed in unknown social situations. Tomorrow's kickball game/cookout has been stressing me out for the past 2 weeks. I could have managed to have gotten out of it, but I know that it will be good for my professional life to show up and chat with people. I was whining to my manager about having to attend. His sympathy was with me, as he hates these events. But he pointed out that when I'm an executive I'll have to deal with them. I guess the good thing is that he's assuming that I'll make it that far. We'll see. I'm still a couple levels below that title. However, with the retirements in the next few years, it may happen sooner that I think. Once again, I digress.
K and I worked through our differences this evening. She was able to use her sense of humor to convince me to stop crying. Then, we were able to go get dinner. I had a chicken gyro. Not worth it, I'll stay with lamb in the future. I am somewhat concerned that we go to the Greek place enough that they greet us as regular customers. And it's been several weeks since we last made it. One other thing, K and I both got complexes, as there was a group of attractive lesbians sitting in the next restaurant patio from where we were waiting for our food. We both felt overweight. For the record, I've been going to the gym 2-3 times a week and I actually was able to briefly manage 6.8 mph on the treadmill this week. The rest of the time was between 6.0-6.5.
Okay--my potato salad is calling and the wine has already been hitting, as you can probably tell from the post.
Feeling Better
K and I had a long talk last night after I made it home from the office. I talked about my fears, specifically that I become anxious when I am concerned about her. She pointed out to me that she shows me her emotions behind the curtain.
K is excellent at maintaining a facade, a cheerful, professional, competent facade. But it tires her. When she speaks with me, she doesn't have to maintain the effort, so I'm likely to hear the frustration, fear, and exhaustion that she hides from the others. It's those emotions that I was worried she was showing to others. She reassured me that she isn't and I need to stop worrying.
K also reassured me that this project is her strong point. She takes piles of regulations, reads them, summarizes them, summarizes what her organization is doing, and writes a report. If all goes well, she'll also implement the changes detailed in the report as part of her new job.
This whole situation of the job and the continuing work being done on the house has put us both under way too much stress. K's therapist keeps emphasizing that stress is cumulative and that it is getting to us more the long the situation continues. The basement is moving forward, which is good. And K is slowly resolving issues on her job, another sign of progress. It just takes a lot out of me.
I would like to do nothing this weekend and Saturday afternoon I have to attend a party for a professional development. I don't want to go, but I figured that I have to go for a while. I agreed to bring potato salad, so I thinking that I may go to Costco and buy it, put it in a bowl, and take it that way. I know it's cheating, but . . . . Or maybe I'll forget about potato salad and make a large pan of brownies to bring with me.
Any case, I'm feeling better, though still tired. I'm also having my period which takes a toll on me mentally and physically, my energy is lower at this time of the month. But I'm moving back towards hopeful.
Endless Week
This week seems to be going on forever. I'm tired, somewhat disheartened, anxious, and generally uneasy. There's not much happening that should cause the above feelings, but they continue to lurk in the background.
Last week, things exploded with K's leave situation. She didn't go to the office on Tuesday or Wednesday. She worked Friday and made up one of the days, but still she was out unexpectedly once again. Basically, the shit hit the fan regarding her use of leave. She has to provide doctor's notes for the six days she missed in the previous two weeks. That really should not be a problem, except that one of the doctors was in Urgent Care and she's had a bit of trouble getting a good note from him.
What has become clear is that her leave situation, with almost six weeks of advanced sick leave that needs to be repaid, is not helping her mental health or her professional outlook. It is being used against her in this developmental assignment and by the management of the group. K also worries about it.
So . . . she's decided that the best thing to do, instead of waiting to earn it all back, which would take three years, she wants to buy herself out of the hole on leave. We've heard two figures, one in the four digits and one in the five digits as to the cost. But if that's what it takes to help K get back on track, then that is what needs to be done. I'm fine with spending the money.
K's moods have been pretty stable and she's made it to work every day this week. But the leave situation is dragging on her. She's had to report on her progress in getting notes and working out all the problems to the management. It takes a toll on her even to talk about it. I hear it in her voice and then I become anxious.
I continue to struggle with the challenge of separating my moods from K's. I've been busy all week as well, but I know that some of my anxiety arises from the knowledge that she's uneasy. Somehow, I need to let let figure it out on her own without my involvement.
I am also concerned because she's been given a new assignment. It appears to be a good one, but it is in an area that she's only now learning. I can hear the uncertainty in her voice as she is trying to figure out how to complete her assignment, which is due at the end of September. The hope is that she will then be converted to the position as a permanent employee and her ordeal as a temporary worker will be over.
To combat my own anxiousness and fears, I went to the gym this morning. Too soon to tell if it helped or not. I'm sure it did, even if I'm unable to tell. As I keep telling K, we'll get through this. Our toast lately has been "Survival".
Going Backward
I had thought or perhaps had hoped that I was getting better at riding out K's moods. This morning was a step backward for us both. Nasty fight with me pressuring her to go to the office. I won in the sense that she's at the office, but she's in a rage state.
The news from last Thursday that she won't have a permanent position rather a developmental assignment has returned her to the
state she was in after finding out about her reassignment to the developmental division. I had hoped that we were past that anger, self-disgust, self-hatred, and all other negative emotions. K had begun to think about the reassignment as an opportunity rather than a punishment. But today she reverted to her negative thought patterns.
I didn't react well. Last week, she kept telling me that she wanted to go to work, but the cold was keeping her from going. She was really ill, so there was no doubt that she needed to be at home. Friday, she was ready to go in, but then she had the scare with her heart and we spent the day in the ER. Today, she woke already enraged and we had an extended battle, complete with screaming, shouting, and tears before I convinced her to get dressed and go to work. Now, she's in a rage state at the office, and I'm questioning if I would have been better off leaving her alone.
How to balance. . . if she had been as physically ill this morning as she was mentally, I never would have asked her to push herself. What confuses me is that K's self-hatred is almost worse if she doesn't go, since she views staying home as a failure. The right answer may be that I stay out of her decision to attend or not attend work. I've tried, but I find removing myself from the decision doesn't help.
I become angry that I go to work every day and she doesn't. I become tired of the constant self-abuse that she inflicts on herself in these states. My instinct is to step in and help, but there's nothing I can do and I can't accept that answer. Right now, I feel sad for her and somewhat sad for our relationship.
I'm ready for us to be past this anger and drama. I want to be part of a normal relationship. Actually, I want the two of us to return to an equilibrium and not be constantly faced with shifting circumstances. Basically, I'm tired of this.
False Alarm
I need to write this quickly as I'm heading to the gym as soon as I finish.
Yesterday was a miserable day. Not only is it unbelievably hot and humid suddenly, but K had a bad scare with her heart. Thursday wasn't the best for her. She found out that instead of a permanent assignment, she will be receiving a temporary assignment at work. She was home sick still fighting the bad cold that she's had for 10 days, and right after she heard from her office, her ex-husband called. His mother is in the hospital and has been diagnosed with late stage bone cancer. Strange that after being divorced 7 years, and K living far away for 6 years, he still calls her first whenever a crisis occurs. So K was doing alright on Thursday evening, but she was upset by all the bad news.
Friday morning around 2:30 am, she awoke (and woke me) clutching her chest in pain with what she thought was bad indigestion. Her lithium gives her incredible heartburn, so she takes prevacid daily to combat it. Due to her cold, she was also placed on z-pack antibiotics, which also didn't seem to be agreeing with her system. I gave her several over-the-counter meds, but nothing seemed to help the heartburn. Finally, she asked me to give her nitroglycerine, which she has for her heart. At this point, she assumed that she must be having another heart attack, since nothing else was helping.
The nitro worked in 3 minutes and we both fell back to sleep. At 5 am, she was awoken with the same pain and took another nitro tablet. At this point, she announced to me that we were going to have to go to the ER to have her checked out, as she assumed the nitro would only help if her problem was heart related. I convinced her to let me shower first, and we headed out the door at 6 am for the ER.
We've had a number of visits to the hospital, since K's heart attack. Some of definitely been better than others, and yesterday was one of the worst. First, they couldn't insert the IV tube. They tried twice, and K ended up bleeding on her gown. Then she went into a panic attack and wanted to leave the hospital. That occurred a couple of times throughout the day. I convinced her to stay, but she wasn't happy about it.
Finally, after we had been there for 5 hours, and there was NO ONE else there, other than the guy that the two police officers were guarding, we saw the resident cardiology. We had been taken back immediately and they begin to work on K. But the difficulty with the blood drawing slowed everything down. Additionally, we were told that she would, at a minimum, have to spend Friday night at the hospital for observation. K wasn't happy about any of it.
The most interesting piece of news from the cardiac resident was that the nitro would have also eased pain from extreme heartburn. Apparently, the nitro relaxes any smooth muscle. K and I began to realize that we might be in the hospital for nothing.
Then they took her off to the heart center and move her upstairs around 11 am. I took the opportunity to head home (only about 1.5 miles) and let the dog out and pick up some food at Whole Foods. I HATE the hospital cafeteria. It's only a college campus so the campus center is only 1.5 blocks away, but I figured Whole Foods was a better choice.
I returned to the hospital at 12:30 pm. K wasn't on the cardiac floor yet, though I had been told she would arrive there in 45 minutes. Finally, at 3:30 pm, she got upstairs. They had worked her in, and she had been given a stress test, which was looking normal. We were becoming more and more convinced that this was not heart related. Meanwhile, K hadn't had any of her daily meds. Her lithium is an evening med, so she wasn't off that, but the rest of her medical routine was being severely disrupted.
After being in the room an hour, and we had made sure to request a private room, a nurse finally showed up. She asked K a number of questions, but she didn't really listen to the answers. Instead she would interrupt if K tried to elaborate. I could see K's frustration rising. Then they wanted to perform another blood draw, which brought on another panic attack. Nor would the nurse give K any anti-anxiety meds. K asked for xanax and the nurse said she would look into getting her something. Once again, K was ready to walk out the door. At the peak of frustration, the nurse came in and said that K would be released that evening.
Basically, we went through an absolute day of hospital hell for bad heartburn. We aren't sure if we should be grateful that it wasn't anything more serious or if we should be pissed if we both wasted a day when we could have been in the office. The sad part of the story is that the experience was bad enough that K will really think twice before she returns to the hospital with any type of pain. The other good part is that we now know for certain that there has been no detioration of her heart problem. Everything is the same as it was at the time of the heart attack, 2.5 years ago.
Okay--the gym opened 15 minutes ago, but I wanted to finish my post. I'm out the door. Sorry for the spelling errors, I'm using Safari, which doesn't really work with Blogger.
Clarification
K has requested a clarification about my comment regarding "omni-present rage." K doesn't constantly show the rage, rather it is internal. I know that she's fighting it underneath the surface and exerting control over her emotions. The trileptal helps her manage the rage. However, it is not a case where the rage is bubbling to the surface. I only see the rage on occasion, but I know that she's controlling it.
Evils of Trileptal
We had the day off, but due to a scheduling error at the psychiatrist's office, we spent the entire afternoon running around. But things worked out in the end. Original plan had been the see Dr. X in the morning and then have haircuts and visit with a friend in the afternoon. Well, Dr. X's office called yesterday and they had moved the appointment to the afternoon without telling us. Second time this has happened. Last time, they deleted the appointment entirely. Fortunately, the front desk people are good and know us well, so they accepted that it was their fault. Any case, hair cuts had to be moved up and we had less time to visit with the friend, but still. . . .
K pointed out to the front desk people and her doctor that patients, especially psychiatric patients, will immediately assume that they made a mistake in the appointment time and it can be very disheartening. This time K had them write down the time on a card to ensure that there is written, not just electronic, evidence of the scheduled time. We'll see in September.
K is still sick with her cold, though she's moving around more today than yesterday. So Dr. X wasn't fully convinced that she was doing well and checked in with me to verify. As usual, I was there with K. It makes things easier when I attend the Dr. X appointments. I know what's happening with her treatment and I can offer details that she may overlook or forget. Dr. X appears to prefer it as well. The three of us have developed a very good relationship over the past 2.5 years. I never went with K to see him before she began to struggle with the depression post-heart attack.
Any case, one of the meds in K's cocktail is trileptal. It's used to combat the noise in her brain and calm her episodes of rage. Normally, she takes 150 mg once a day, and twice a day, if needed. Ever since the job situation has escalated, she's been taking it twice a day to combat the omnipresent rage. It has proven to be extremely effective for her.
Well, she happened to mention to Dr. X that she has a rash on her hands that she believes may be connected to the trileptal. She's had it for at least six months, but it has started to spread, since she has regularly increased the dose to 300 mg/day. Apparently, there is fear of the
Stevens-Johnson rash, which is the same as the rash, which may be brought on by use of lamictal. K was pulled off lamictal, because she was showing signs of a rash and Dr. X wasn't willing to take the risk that it might be serious rash.
At no time had anyone mentioned to us that Trileptal was a possible source of the Stevens-Johnson rash. Dr. X was ready to take away K's trileptal prescription and bodily search her for any pills that she might have with her. K was fighting back pointing out that she certainly doesn't want to have to change meds, while going through the stress of transitioning to a new job.
I brokered a compromise by having K agree to see a dermatologist and Dr. X would give her another prescription for trileptal. That satisfied K, though Dr. X was not completely thrilled. He made K promise to go immediately to the dermatologist and call him with the results of the visit. He tried to convince himself that he was worrying too much, but it was evident that he remained very concerned. He screwed up writing the prescription and had to write it a second time.
The other interesting thing he asked her was if she really wanted to lose weight. I guess there is another medication, similar to trileptal, which will help patients lose weight. The downsides are that (and this is a direct quote) you lose a few IQ points. Apparently it impacts short-term memory and your ability to find the right words. Dr. X said that doctors frequently say you lose weight on the drug, because you are too dumb to find food. K turned down his offer for this prescription.
I could tell that she was tempted, but ECT and the aftermath of losing her short-term memory and being unable to write and read were very traumatic for her. I wondered if the side effects would be worse for her due to the previous loss of short term memory. Both of us are fully convinced that some permanent damage was done to her brain by the ECT. Dr. X reassured her that it wouldn't be nearly as bad, but she figured the job situation required her to be as intelligent as possible. As for weight loss, once she recovers from her cold, she'll be joining me at the gym in the mornings at 5 am.
No big plans for the weekend, which is good as K needs some time to recover from her cold. Next weekend is Pride, so we might actually go out and do some things. K's not enthusiastic, but I'll work on convincing her.
I'm pleased that there were no changes from today's visit. We didn't expect any. Dr. X requested that K work on reducing the amount of ambien she's using. Right now, she uses every night during the week, and he would like her to cut back. The job situation has been taking a toll, and it should be easier for her once she's placed. She had hoped to find out today as to where she's going, but no e-mails have come through yet. Dr. X's attack on trileptal had us a bit concerned, but we'll keep an eye on the rash and hope that he is worrying needlessly.
Still in a holding pattern
No news yet on K's job. We had a good weekend. We went south to a wedding on Saturday and it was a beautiful drive through the countryside and mountains. However, upon entering the town, where the wedding was held, we were immediately greeted with a roadside stand waving a banner "Johnny Reb's Dixie Outpost". It confirmed every stereotype we had of the area.
Sunday, we slowly headed home, stopping to visit college campuses and see a friend of mine. It was another perfect day and a 3.5 hour drive took us 8 hours, by the time we stopped for lunch, coffee, and dinner.
We had hoped that this week K would be placed in a new position. What she had been told was that there were 120 day temporary assignments and then she would be permanently placed with the group, if she wowed them. As it turns out, she's being requested by name from some managers to immediately be moved into a permanent assignment. This has done wonders for K's ego.
The new manager, who is guiding K (and other homeless employees) through the reorg process, is excellent. He and his deputy appear to care about what happens to the people and be sensitive to the emotional turmoil that the reorg has created. One of the best outcomes of this whole process is that K will be working for a better management team and she may have work that she find more intellectually stimulating.
K continues to handle this very well. Michele mentioned a concern that K may be entering a manic stage, but that isn't likely. K has never had a traditional manic episode. She would be happy to have a productive bout of mania. That's one reason that her bipolar disorder was difficult to diagnose. K's mania manifests as rage, of which there has been plenty the past few weeks. She is good about managing the rage through self-control and meds.
As I said last week, it's looking as if this entire situation will have a positive outcome for K, especially as she hasn't been happy or stimulated by her job in some time. As she is talking to the new managers, they are providing her with lots of positive feedback and are impressed by her background. That recognition is doing an excellent job of off-setting the negative feedback that she heard a couple weeks ago.
I'm thrilled to see her be able to stand alone again. I'm not missing the dominant role. Rather I would like her to be confident and take an equal part in our relationship. We're closer to achieve the equal balance than we have been since the onset of bipolar disorder. I'm also becoming more confident that K can react and survive any situation that confronts her. It's a good feeling.
