Category: Bipolarity

Posted on

The First Celebration-worthy Event

I told y’all that a bigly wall of bipolar depression fell on me a couple of weeks ago. It kept me from creating posts. I didn’t even spend time in the Tie Room. I wasn’t having fun, that’s for sure. I tell you about what goes on in my life because it’s part of my life, which is where I get my stories–good, bad, ugly, or mythical. Maybe my exploits can aid someone else. It’s all part of the TIE O’ THE DAY project. I don’t do the pity party thing, but I appreciate the concern my readers express when the posts don’t show up. I’d like nothing better than to say TIE O’ THE DAY won’t disappear again, but it will most likely happen from time to time. If you’re a longtime reader, you’ve been through it before. And the world goes on, whether I’m depressed, manic, or level–as it should. I am very well aware that I am not now, nor have I ever been the center of the universe. And thank the heavens for that! Can you imagine the fashion laws I would put into effect?!

Anyhoo…At the beginning of this last round of heavy depression, I was invited to a birthday party for Bishop Travis (really old) and Gracie (6 months). As hard as it is to believe, I did not want to go to a birthday lunch for two of my favorite people-blessings. Our group of partygoers was supposed to meet in Nephi for lunch, and I was thinking of excuses to not show up to the festivities even past the moment I crossed into the Nephi city limits. My heart was not in it. My head was not in it. My depressed spirit hurt too much with an amorphous, morbid heaviness which no one can ever explain. I’ve been down this road many times, and the only trick is to just show up. Just do it. Put on your Bow Tie o’ the Day and walk into the celebration.

We met at Lisa’s Kitchen. My hubby, Gary, and my Sister Who Wishes To Remain Nameless, brought Mom. Bishop Travis and Bishopette Collette brought their wee Grace Anne. We talked, and laughed, and ate, and couldn’t get enough of The Gracie Roadshow.

I’m glad I didn’t stay home alone. I’d like to say the birthday lunch with family restored my soul to high happiness, but that would not be true. Depression doesn’t work like that. I enjoyed myself. I hope others enjoyed me being there. But I know how depression works, and I knew not to expect bigly transformation of my sorry spirits. I did the best I could to be part of my lunch-eating family party. I’m able to appreciate the experience more and more as I gradually improve into my “level” state of mind, my normal.

The day was an incredible treat. Next, I’ll post about two more magical events of the past week.

Posted on

Tie O’ The Day Returns From A Bigly, Stoopid Detour

No, I didn’t forget how much y’all need your neckwear fix, but I’ve been temporarily unable to put together even a simple post. Ralphie Tie o’ the Day is one of my super-fave neckties in my collection, and it is my gift to y’all for being patient with me.

There I was— just rollin’ along down the road o’ my life a week or so ago, when I suddenly fell into a hellish sinkhole of depression. I kid you not. One minute I’m telling Suzanne a ridiculous tall tale which was mostly true, making her laugh wine out of her nose, and— WHOMP! For no apparent reason, I couldn’t find a reason to make it through the next minute. It was an effort to want to breathe. Why does this happen? Just because. It is one of the most pernicious and terrifying mysteries I have to deal with in my bipolar brain. It is a mystery, for example, how I was able to be part of some incredible events last week, while experiencing such mental anguish. (I’ll update you on the magic events tomorrow.) I take my “right” medication as prescribed. I am blessed to have made for myself a relatively drama-free, stress-free day-to-day life. I need for nothing, material or otherwise. But sometimes extreme depression still hits me from out of nowhere like a bigly, balled-up fist. It’s pretty much in charge of me for a time. Sometimes I can write through it, and sometimes I can’t.

Years ago, I gave up trying to figure out the reason extreme depression shows up in my noggin. To live with/through it, I had to learn to not be afraid of its presence, and I had to learn to be patient until it leaves me. It will always go away. Or at least it has always gone away, so far. What scares me is that there will likely come a day when depression decides to stay with me longer than my hope and patience can fortify me. Bipolar depression is not just an illness: it is often a fatal illness. Nobody likes to think about it like that. I certainly don’t. But the suicide numbers speak for themselves. Anyhoo… I’m back at my laptop.

I’ll catch you up on the miraculous happenings I was part of last week, even as depression was my unwelcome companion everywhere I went.

It’s all good, folks.

Posted on

Adventures In Bipolarity And Guitars

I must apologize for the irregular posting this week. I have more Arkansas posts to write but I’ve had odd bipolar spells since I got home from our Ozarks vacation. My storyteller has gone kaput, temporarily I’m sure.

I tried to explain to Suzanne what my brain is doing, and the best I could come up with is this: it seems as if I can feel each and every one of my blood cells race through me, while simultaneously feeling the kind of exhaustion that will drag me to sleep if I sit down and close my eyelids for more than four seconds. It’s the worst of both poles. But this too shall pass, and so I’m fine.

Anyhoo… I’ll get back to sharing tidbits from our mountain redneck trip as soon as I can. But for right now, here are some pix from last night’s BAND OF HORSES concert at The Union, in SLC. Yeah, we saw them in April in Las Vegas, but we had to get another listen. Yeehaw! Solid performance, once again. The opening act was Nikki Lane, who twanged Suzanne into a tizzy. Suzanne does not do twang. Personally, I would have preferred to listen to the clever Kacey Musgraves, but I can’t complain. BAND OF HORSES speaks to me.

Horseshoe Bow Tie o’ the Concert made sure I brought along my Saddle Purse, which Suzanne was good enough to hold for our snapshots. The photo of me being blurry is a telling illustration of my agitated state of mind and body, with my manic blood cells doing their jigs and all.

Posted on

If You Think Nobody’s Given You A Gift, You’re Just Plain Wrong: Part 2

Skitter is like Mom: Her eyes are sensitive to light, so she tends to wear sunglasses indoors quite often. Skitter is wearing Bow Tie o’ the Day shades this morning. You’ve seen these sunglasses on Mom, on me, and now on The Skit. We share well.

All the gifts in all the universes can’t save you from a mental illness like bipolar depression. Depression doesn’t care what material gifts you have been given. It doesn’t care about the gift you’ve received of being loved and wanted. It does what it wants to your head and, therefore, to your life.

I have mentioned before that I decided to do TMS to jump start my depressed feelers and level my mood. I had been “not feeling” for a while. Simultaneous to my “not feeling,” I was in a crippling depression. It might seem like a contradiction to “not feel” while also drowning in depression, but I assure you it’s possible. I have been there more times in my life than I’d like to count. This time was significantly more debilitating and dark. I honestly believe my mental illness was getting close to being terminal, if you get my drift: Bye, bye, Helen Jr.

Anyhoo… It’s been two weeks since I completed TMS, and I want to tell you what I’ve noticed. There’s been no bigly cookie at the end of the TMS rainbow for me, but I see and “feel” a trail of crumbs which will add up to at least half a cookie when I gather them and put them all together. As I wrote yesterday, TMS has been a smallish welcome gift– despite 36 treatments that felt like a woodpecker beak knocking at my skull.

I got part of my appetite back, which is probably good cuz my weight went down to 7th-grade level. I have been unable to focus my attention enough to read for the last year, and I didn’t even care about it. Not reading is sooooo not me. But I’ve been back to reading for the last month. My moods are back to being lighter, though not as light as my usual, weird “normal.”

I can’t say my “feelers” are back to feeling, but I get little bursts of feeling, so I’m confident TMS has helped to get that coming back to me. Until feeling shows up more often, I’ll stick to knowing what I anticipate I will feel in the future. Suzanne says I am talking more, which is a bigly change back to my true self– since I am a chatter-er like Mom. I’ll let you know when/if I notice other changes I think are TMS-related. TMS wasn’t magic for me, but it helped pull me up a couple of rungs on the slippery ladder in my depression pit.

Before TMS, aside from thinking it would be best for everyone if I jumped off the planet, the worst idea I ruminated over was…. hold on to your bike helmets…. are you sitting down?…. I told Suzanne I was going to shut down TIE O’ THE DAY. Forever. No more website. No more Facebook posts. I didn’t care about it or my stoopid neckwear anymore.

And I ranted to Suzanne about how I’m too old to write these stoopid posts about my stoopid, uninteresting life. And I ranted about how this stoopid tie/bow tie thing makes me look like a stoopid fool, and I should feel embarrassed. And I ranted about how nobody cares about my stoopid ideas about living better lives. And nobody thinks my writing is funny. Blah, blah, blah. You know… all that prattle, which is kinda true.

The tragedy! The tragedy! Junking TIE O’ THE DAY might have actually thrown me off the runaway train. Sticking with writing my posts– despite not caring about the venture for a while– anchored my depressed and sunken days with a purpose. I somehow convinced myself my readers would miss TIE O’ THE DAY to the extent that their souls would lose a wee bit of joy forever. Oh, if I were to quit writing and posting, it would destroy y’all’s lives! I told myself I had to keep TIE O’ THE DAY up and running, for the good of all mankind. I’m SuperBowTieLady, patron superhero of all neckwear!

Seriously, TMS has helped. Mostly, I am still here, and here is where I want to be. I’m not positive I would be here on this blue-skied day in June if I had decided against doing TMS.

Posted on

If You Think Nobody’s Given You A Gift, You’re Just Plain Wrong: Part 1

If you’re reading this post right now, you are enjoying a cornucopia of gifts. You’re probably not even thinking about them, but they’re yours. You’ve got your sight, your scrolling coordination, your friends on Facebook, and you can read. There are plenty more gifts you’re experiencing right now, but you get the idea. You are floating in an ocean o’ gifts. Just notice them and say “thanks.”

Bloom-y pink and white Bow Tie o’ the Day is a gift I received from Bishopette Collette last Sunday. I’m sure it’s from Bishop Trav and baby Gracie as well, but you know darn well who probably found it and bought it. The Blackwelder’s have had the courage to gift me two pieces of neckwear in the last year or so– something Suzanne won’t even do, for fear I already have the same of whatever neckwear it is. Both neckwear gifts from the Blackwelder’s have been pieces I didn’t already have. Amazing. Their family clearly has good instincts about giving me neckwear. Having good instincts is a gift too. And always remember that a material gift is an embodiment of the true gift: someone wanted to show you affection.

Clearly, I’m thinking about gifts today. It’s been two weeks since my last Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation treatment. I’ve been giving my head a little time to settle itself down and cogitate about the whole experience and any changes I might have noticed after the entire round of 36 treatments. I decided now is a fine time to give you my verdict on the TMS. TMS was a gift. It wasn’t one bigly gift. The gift is coming in tiny waves, here and there, at random times.

The entire round of TMS treatments significantly decreases bipolar depression 50% of the time. Suzanne said I should take the chance I’d be in the lucky half, so I jumped in. I only noticed one negative side effect of the treatment itself: for a few minutes after each treatment, my vision was blurry– as if I had forgotten to put my glasses on to drive. But that was it for the negative effects of TMS treatment.

Some things from that time were a pain in the butt. By the time I drove to the University Neuropsychiatric Institute (UNI) for treatment and back home, it took a two-hour block out of each day. I didn’t like having to commit to stay around SLC for two months of weekdays. And I didn’t like paying for the TMS, which I believe my insurance should have been responsible for. But those negative things have nothing to do with TMS itself.

What I could not see as I was going through treatment were gifts accompanying the same irritants I listed above. I see them now when I look back. I got to drive to SLC for treatments before rush hour, so I enjoyed beautiful mornings. I enjoyed the gift of listening (and singing) to weird music I can’t play if someone’s with me, cuz nobody else likes it. Having to remain “up north” for over two months, meant that I was able to get a lot of domicile work done which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I’d been gallivanting across the state and/or continent. And I am grateful to have health insurance that kicked in for a bigly chunk of the TMS cost. Yes, I’m saying health insurance is a gift.

During the last week of my TMS, I experienced a day throughout which I felt lighter and more alive than I had felt in the last decade. The next day, for whatever reason, the lightness was pretty much gone. If that one day is the only big change to come out of my TMS, I will remember and treasure that singular gift.

FYI Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post topic, tomorrow. I’ll let you in on some specific changes I have noticed as a result of going through the TMS.

Posted on

“Cost” And “Worth” Are Two Different Things

Yesterday I went to an appointment to check in with one of my crazy head docs. I see Dr. Day sporadically, for meds maintenance and talk therapy. I see her probably a half-dozen times per year. My last appointment with her was a couple of months ago, before I began the TMS. In fact, she is the one who told me– months ago– about a number of brain therapies for bipolar drepression which I might want to check into, one of which was TMS. She hasn’t been involved in any aspect of the TMS itself.

Anyhoo… The last time I visited with Dr. Day, I was flat and affectless as could be. Of course, that’s the reason she brought up TMS in the first place. But yesterday, before I could sit my butt down on the couch in her office, she said, “You have some life in you today! You’re looking alive!” I said, “I only have two TMS sessions left.” And then she said, “Oh my gosh! I forgot you went forward with the TMS. Do you feel like it’s helping?” It must be working if she noticed a difference in me. That was exactly what I needed to hear.

The truth is I haven’t been sure TMS is working. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be feeling while I’m going through the treatments. I do know that whatever’s going on (or isn’t going on) is happening gradually. It’s like that pesky ten pounds that somehow makes its way to your gut: It creeps on. You don’t see every tiny blob of fat as it decides to make its home on you, but one day you go to button your shorts and you finally notice ten pounds somehow showed up under your very eyes.

My potential brain change, however, would be a welcome change. But mostly, I think I’m too close to my situation to really notice TMS effects. I’m with me 24/7. I’m looking so closely at every little thing I do, every thought I have, and every hint of emotion that I don’t know if I’ve improved or not. Is my depression really improving? Am I starting to feel authentic things deeply? Or is it just my wishful thinking that I see some progress?

But Dr. Day’s reaction to my simply walking into her office yesterday eased my worries of TMS failure immensely. Her reaction makes it pretty clear to me that I’m probably doing noticeably better than I was before the TMS.

When Suzanne and I first discussed the possibility of me trying TMS to combat my evil bipolar depression, one of the minuses of going ahead with treatment was the high cost. Insurance covers only a wee bit of it, and that’s after the Treatment Resistant Mood Disorder Clinic @ UNI did much begging with the insurance company on my behalf. I think I’ve been trying to see more bang for my buck, so to speak. If I’m payin’ bigly bucks, I expect to see bigly positive change. But I’ve decided it’s kinda selfish and demanding of me to think that way. The desired outcome would be one enormous emotional change, but I’m thinking the non-flashy, simpler, thousands of tiny changes might add up to a longer-lasting, more thorough mental change.

If you think about it, you’ll see that’s how most change happens. Need a cinderblock fence around your yard? That’ll happen one cinderblock at a time. Teaching your kid how to walk? That’ll be one step at a time. Teaching someone to drive a car? That’ll be one driving skill upon another. Need a doctor to hack out 2/3 of your stoopid pancreas? The hours-long surgery officially begins with one cut. And then the next thing happens, and then the next, next thing happens. And so on.

It’ll probably take some time for me to truly analyze how effective the TMS has been. Patience is better than fretting about it. Since Suzanne is the person I’m around most, she’s the one whose opinion on the treatment’s success or failure is most crucial. She’s not ready to offer up her vote yet.

When we talked about cost and time commitment for the required 36 TMS treatments, I asked Suzanne, “If, after the boatloads of money and eons of time spent, TMS ends up helping my loony head improve only 1 percent, will it be worth it to you that it cost us our emergency fund?”

Suzanne is famous for being silent while she completely thinks through every word of her answers to even the simplest questions before she speaks. (Sometimes it’s annoying.) But she wasn’t silent at all after I asked her that question. Her head cogs didn’t turn. They didn’t even creak. She just immediately said, “Yes. It’ll be worth it.”

See why I agreed to give it a try?

Posted on

Another Of My Weird Theories

Hmmm. I blame JFK. “Delta red” Bow Tie o’ the Day and I have been chatting, and I may have figured out why I’m bipolar. I’ve always tried to get to the bottom of this mystery, and I’ve come up with theory after theory– none of which I can prove. The other culprits I have theorized are responsible for my crazy head range from universal fate, to luck, to the birth of a stone baby that was supposed to be me. (Long story.)

But I think I have hit on a probable suspect. And I guess it’s not so much JFK as it is Lee Harvey Oswald who caused my brain chemicals to be wacky. I was still growing my brain in Mom’s womb when JFK was assassinated. That’s where I was when Kennedy was shot.

How did this make me bipolar? The whole event was a cultural shock. It rattled the country in a way that not many events do. My theory of what made me bipolar is that while I was stretching and kicking in Mom, she was so overcome emotionally by the tragedy that it jolted my embryonic brain chemistry into a massive upheaval that was part of me from the moment I emerged into the world. Thus, I was born with the switch that so quickly takes me from deeply manic to deeply depressed.

Of course I’m being facetious about this. Although it’s fun to speculate about it, I seriously doubt my theory is correct. But still…. It makes as much sense as anything else I can theorize. On the other hand, sometimes things just are what they are– for no real reason at all. Honestly, in the end, the cause of my bipolarity doesn’t matter. Finding strategies to deal with it is what matters. I will, however, keep sleuthing for answers as to my bipolarity’s origin– the sillier, the better.

Posted on

The Return O’ The Posts

TIE O’ THE DAY is on its knees, begging your forgiveness. We shirked our entertainment duties, and we know how y’all get when you don’t get your daily dosage of neckwear and too much information about me. Bad tblog!

So today I found my redneck Hat o’ the Day and paired it with a lovely argyle Bow Tie o’ the Day. We figured the look would help us get back into our readers’ good graces.

Here’s our true excuse for our absence: I went to my TMS appointment early Friday morning. Now remember, last week was my first week of tapering the TMS from 5 to 2 sessions per week. After I got home, I wrote the day’s first post. Immediately after I posted, my crazy head went weird on me. Now, I know you’re saying to yourself, “This dame is bipolar, so she always has a weird head. What’s the big deal?” Well, this was a brand new territory of weird head. My head had never before been in this particular zone of crazy. For three days, I was forced to explore the new universe spinning in my noggin. That’s how I spent my Memorial Day weekend– with a new kind of weird head.

I’m sure it had something to do with tapering off the TMS. I suppose that at least shows TMS has done SOMETHING to me. I wish I could tell you whether or not my weekend crazy head was positive or negative. I’m not sure. I think my noggin was more level, but I’m still too mystified about the experience to make a judgment, myself. One thing I do know is that I wasn’t in a frame of mind to write posts, and that’s an odd thing.

I tried to describe to Suzanne how my head’s soul felt, and the best I could do was the following: I felt like the “dumb blonde” in the dumb blonde jokes. Oh, I felt intelligent as ever, but I felt like if you put a tire gauge up to my eardrum, you could test the air pressure in my skull. And it would be high. See why I can’t tell if the feeling was positive or negative?

After TMS this morning, I felt a little more like my abnormal normal self. Not to worry, folks.

33 TMS treatments down, 3 to go.

Posted on

My Saddle Purse Is Not Bipolar

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I stole Suzanne’s lunch hour by invading her office to do our usual off-the-wall routine. Just because we’re there, it doesn’t always mean Suzanne ceases working. On this day, not even The Saddle Purse could make her look away from the three computers sitting on her desk. She thinks she’s so important that the entire Utah public education system will fall apart if she stops to eat some yogurt and string cheese for ten minutes. She might be right.

I decided I should add something I didn’t include in yesterday’s post about depression and the depression side of bipolarity. It’s important for people to understand that a devastating depression does not generally correlate to the quality of a clinically depressed person’s life. [There is something called “situational depression,” which can occur when someone’s life is in tatters. But it tends to be not very deep and it goes away when the situation improves.]

Real depression doesn’t care about the quality of your life. It just shows up, like any illness. Take me, for example. I’ve experienced bouts of depression since I was a kid, and yet I’ve had a relatively tragedy-free, love-filled, opportunity-filled life. My life has been rich, and peopled with decent characters wherever I’ve been. All of that didn’t keep me from being bipolar though.

At this point in my life, I have the freedom to write all day. I live in a swell house. I’ve got a few bucks in The Saddle Purse. I get to travel quite a bit. I have a fine family, fine in-laws, and Suzanne. Skitter’s sleeping head is snoring on my lap even as I write this post. The evil parts of my pancreas got hacked out, and the pain they caused has mostly disappeared. I’m even satisfied that Mom is in the absolute best place for her to be for the last chapter of her life. As far as I’m concerned, I have everything. Not only does my cup runneth over, I’ve got more cups than I can count and they all runneth over.

But none of the gifts my life contains has kept me from being bipolar. None of it has kept this swamp of depression away. Mental illness does what it wants. All I can do is try to manage it. Meds help. Talk therapy helps. Practicing mindfulness helps. Writing about it helps. I hope TMS will help. Each of these things helps a little bit. At least, they help ME. I know they do not help everyone who is bipolar or depressed. See, my life is lucky even where that’s concerned: There are things that help me manage my bipolar head– and still this deep depression shows up whenever it wants.

I don’t get cocky about how well I have been able to manage my bipolarity throughout my life. I don’t get complacent that I have access to things that help me. All I can say is that I’ve managed to make it to this day. I can’t afford to act like I will still be able to manage it tomorrow. So far, so good.

Posted on

A Solid Color. Don’t Get Used To It.

Today I’m sporting a velvet, floppy butterfly Bow Tie o’ the Day. It’s blue and blue, as you can see. I do not own many neckwear items in solid colors. They have a tendency to be matchy, and you know how I feel about attire that matches. Solid colors make me feel like the Not-Me.

Speaking of “Not-Me,” I think I’m having some minor, but weird, side effects from my TMS treatments. Again, there’s nothing to worry about, and I have no proof it’s even related to the treatment anyway. But when Suzanne and I were at Walmart buying dog food on Saturday, I began to experience a jittery manic episode– the exact likes of which I have not felt before.(I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Doesn’t everybody feel manic when they walk into a Walmart?” Har, har, har.)

This particular soul-fidget was nowhere near the worst I’ve ever gone through. It was actually quite manageable, though even the smallest bout of mania is always a bit dangerous and scary. We came home, and I got through it. Suzanne spied on me wherever I went in the house for the rest of the day, to make sure I wasn’t going to do something crazy-headed like throw all my Sloggers in the garbage. (Minor mania means I do minor weird stuff. Bigly mania means… you don’t wanna know.) My car keys somehow disappeared from their key hook for the rest of the day, as well. Suzanne, too, moves in mysterious ways. I thank her for that.

Yesterday, Mother’s Day, I still couldn’t focus enough to write posts. And then I did a thing– which was really done by my Not-Me. It was a thing so unlike anything the “real me” would ever do. But y’all will have to wait until the next post to read about my transgression. I’m still trying to figure out how to write about “my bad” in such a way that I don’t end up looking like an ass– if that’s at all possible.

Being bipolar sucks.