Admissions of a Birthday Girl

Tomorrow marks another year closer to three decades of my existence on Planet Earth. Admittedly, there is, and always has been a strong contradiction between the number of birthdays I’ve celebrated, the age of my face, and the age of my soul. If everyone in the world forgot the year I was born, I would be very confused about my age.

A few months ago, I gazed in the mirror one day to see my first noticeable signs of aging. Before that, I had a face as smooth and white as a baby’s bottom. A baby face, that took at least five to ten years off of my chronological age. When I was pregnant, people gazed at me in shock and horror, as if I were a teen mother. I went to complete paperwork at the bank for my name change, and the teller was taken aback. “I swear, I wouldn’t have thought you were old enough to get married.” I got that, a lot.

Tick - tock.

Quite the oddity, I was actually excited to see the fine lines across my scarred forehead and around my mouth. I may be the only woman on the planet that was excited to see my face start to catch up with my chronological age! I despised my youthful appearance. I have never felt as if my chronological age fit, nor did I take it as a compliment when someone thought I was a teenager.

I will make an admission; I am one of those people that typically loathes their own birthday.  Yes, I find it absolutely pretentious.  Except, I do not detest my birthday for the same reasons that everyone else does.  As previously stated, I like the aging process.  I have always been excited about gaining more numbers.  My birthday just falls in a bad time of the year.

Growing up, I secretly envied peers that had birthdays during warmer months.  Pennsylvania has reasonable temperatures between March and November.  My friends would have all kinds of fun parties, because they weren’t all trapped in the house, buried in four feet of snow, and huddled around the heater in subzero temperatures.  Camping parties, pool parties, outdoor parties, indoor parties where we could run around the yard, parties in the park, and every other conceivable party I couldn’t have.

As an adult, the problem grew worse.  In the last ten years, I have had two nice days on my birthday.  My 22nd and my 24th.  Neither of those birthdays had anything planned.  I can’t plan a party.  Every year I have tried, I was doomed for especially bad weather.  My 23rd had to be moved to the weekend of Superbowl Sunday, when the Steelers were playing.  Living in Pittsburgh, the Steelers in the Superbowl is more important than anything.  When they win the Superbowl, the city gets shut down for two days, because everyone is too busy celebrating to go to work.  If they’re not going to work, they sure as hell aren’t going to my birthday party.

People don’t want to come out in January if they don’t have to.  I have been cursed with ice storms, heavy snow, and subzero temperatures.  So, I stopped planning parties.  I stopped planning anything, actually.  Because each year, I have been brutally disappointed.  Those disappointments mounted into resentment for that day.

Not this year!  I don’t especially care what the weather is like.  It does not matter if my friends or family notice the date on the calendar or not.  I like my birthday.  I am celebrating me, and everything my life has amounted to.  I am happy with myself, and all that I’ve created and become.  There is no need for anyone to justify my thoughts or emotions about me.

I love that it’s on a Saturday, because there are no expectations.  I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.  And, I have all of the time in the day to do anything I do want to do.  I will go out and have a lovely dinner on the house.  (I already have the voucher).  Then, I will buy myself the things that I actually want for my birthday.  No expectations, no disappointments.

This past year has been one of the harder ones, but not the hardest.  I have made so much progress in all aspects of my life.  I am managing my physical and mental health well.  My marriage is solid.  My career is taking root.  And my son is growing.  My family is happy and healthy.  I am happy and healthy.  Those are all of the things I’ve ever wanted. This birthday, I have them all.

The best birthday present ever is the pride that I have in myself.  I have walked through fire to get to this point.  I may not have done it all gracefully.  But, I made it out stronger, wiser, and better for it all.

Emerging Patterns in Cyclic Analysis

I wrote With This Pill in extreme aggravation.  I have a theory based on observational findings about the pattern.

I cycle around every two months.  Pendulum began June 19, 2011, with the post To See If I Still Feel, describing an incident involving depression and self-injurious behavior.  Three days later, on June 22, 2011, in Shifting Gears, I described the sparks of a hypomanic episode.  Eight days later, on June 30, 2011, I detailed panic attacks and highly reactive emotions in Overdrive Mode.

There was a period where I went through a fluctuating depressive episodes varying throughout the spectrum of twos through fours.  It was a result of Somatopsychic trauma from a six-week long, progressively debilitating bout of Walking Pneumonia.  During a two-week long prednisone treatment, I had erratic emotions, which sent me reeling into a serious depressive state.  It was quickly fixed in two weeks by a medication adjustment.

That medication adjustment threw me into the first dysphoric hypomania I can ever remember having.  I had another incident of self-injurious behavior reported in Confessions of the Pain of Payment, on September 22, 2011, three months after the first noted episode.

That was followed by the longest, most intense hypomanic episode I have ever marked.  I marked it at 16 days, but I have a feeling that it was closer to 30.  I had a brief reprieve when I was down for the count during an illness.  I eventually attributed the extreme hypomanic episode with a chemical change in Big Money, No Whammy, STOP!.

Prior to my first post, my last hypomanic episode happened three months prior in late March into early April for 14 days.  That was my first record breaking hypomanic episode.  I attributed that to anxiety, that led to insomnia, which paved the way.  As for what happened between then and late May when I recall my depressive episode first beginning, I’m not sure.  I will have to check my personal logs to shed some light on that.

I’ve always looked to external factors to explain the occurrences.  But, the pattern is emerging.  I cannot deny that.

Now, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I have always had a depressive episode closely follow a hypomanic episode.  What Bender? detailed an alcoholic relapse at the start of a long depressive episode.  The depressive episode lasted for about two months and left three weeks until the onset of my next hypomanic episode.

However, it has been three weeks since my hypomanic symptoms subsided, and I am now only feeling small pangs of depression here and there.  I am not entirely convinced they are depressive.  I am irritable and reactive, but I have not yet had the urge to isolate myself.  I am not entirely disinterested in enjoyable activities – actually quite the opposite.  I am only interested in the most enjoyable activities and have had quite the hedonistic urge to indulge myself.

That is unusual for me.  I am not a creature of hedonism.  The Irish and Scottish had a philosophy that with every great pleasure in life came a great pain.  It was kind of their own yin and yang in their society – a way to describe the balance of the universe.  I am mostly of Scottish heritage and was raised in such an environment.  There was no escaping the pain that accompanied indulgence.  Therefore, I am not inclined to do so.  In fact, I am quite disciplined to do the opposite by taking on the role of the martyr.

What to do, what to do?  Do my brain and my body know something that my conscious mind does not?  Is this impulse a way of circumventing a depressive episode?

The Case of the M&M Interactions

I had a psychiatrist once tell me that the psych meds were all “M&M’s a different color”.  Doctorspeak for, “Same thing, different packaging.”  How refreshing.  At least she was honest about it and didn’t make it seem like one thing was going to be the miracle cure.  That’s now how I refer to my cornucopia of medications.  M&M’s of a different color.  I’ve got my big white ones, little white ones, my shelled white ones, the big bulky blue breathey one, and the mac-daddy of suppliments I take to keep everything else under control.

I’ll take you through a quick run-through of the normal of chronic ailments and then medications.

Bipolar II
Mood Stabilizer:
Lamictal (lamotragine) – 100 mg twice daily = 200 mg

Antidepressant:
Wellbutrin XL (bupropion) – 150 mg once daily

Sleep Aid: (insomnia)
L-Glutithoine (nutraceutical)
L-Theanine (nutraceutical)

Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Anti-anxiety (benzodiazepine):
Ativan (lorazepam): 1 mg, three times daily = 3 mg

Asthma:
Ventolin (no generic)- 2 puffs every 4 to 6 hours or as needed

Migraines:
Maxalt (no generic)- 5 mg when you feel a migraine coming on

Tendonitis of the Knee and Genu valgum (Knock Knee):
Ibuprofin – 200 mg every 4 to 6 hours or as needed

High Cholesterol:
Garlic (nutraceutical)
Omega3 Fish Oil with DHA and EPA (nutraceutical)
L-carnatine (nutraceutical)

Regular Suppliments
Vitamin C
Vitamin E
Vitamin B-12 with Folic acid
Pantothenic Acid
Bioflaviniod Complex
Bromeline 3000
Ubiqinol (I highly recommend this one for fatigue but it’s pretty expensive)
And probably like 10 others I’m not thinking of right now.

And of course, I am a woman of childbearing age, so throw in an oral, hormonal contraceptive.

Throw in 60 mg of prednizone, and a Z-pak and you’ve got a medicine soup.

Think about all of the doctors we have. Pdoc, PCP, OB/Gyn, Neurologist, Orthapedic, etc. Now, consider that despite the hundreds of times I relay the medications from one doc to another, it probably widens the margin of error.

I’m finishing this on my phone so I have to put the full link on.
http://reference.medscape.com/drug-interactionchecker. This is a comprehensive multi-drug interaction checker. Slap ’em all in there and it’ll tell you. Of course with a little doctorspeak.

Turns out azithromycin (z-pak) doesn’t play well with hormonal bc. Pregnancy risk. Hormonal bc doesn’t play well with lamictal and prednizone by increasing the metabolism rate and having higher concentrations in the blood.

Who knew?