Sources

You said,

"Any sources such as websites, etc that you utilize for educating yourself on bipolar. Trying to understand better this illness."

I think that's a very good idea. I think you can type in "bipolar" in the search engine and will see a list of websites that talk about the condition.

How is the Depakote, which you said was a mood stabilizer for bipolar, and the Trazodone, which you said was for depression, coming along?

You've been taking it for about two weeks. Is the Trazodone still making you agitated?

You also said you were having trouble with sleep.

You said,

Your Depakote (stabilizer for bipolar) "seems okay" and that your "Mood is stable."

And added, "I'm not sleeping much with Trazodone. I can't explain how Mood okay yet zi don't get sleep needed. I think Trazodone makes it more difficult to sleep."

Well, I take Mirtazapine anti-depressant to take care of the depressed side of my manic-depression, and Lithium for my stabilizer. Because, as a manic-depressive, if you give me only an anti-depressant, with no "cap" on it like Lithium stabilizer, the anti-depressant alone will throw me into mania and/or I will have panic attacks.

As a bipolar, I think they're are four things here. One is, getting diagnosed correctly, and we seem to be. And that is not always a given. So we passed the first hurdle, we got diagnosed correctly.

OK, second is, we got on anti-depressant, I have Mirtazapine and you are taking Trazodone anti-depressant.

Third, we are both on a stabilizer, to keep the anti-depressant from throwing us into mania. You are taking Depakote as a stabilizer, and I am taking Lithium for that.

But there is a fourth issue. Sleep. Neither one of those is a sleeping pill.

The difference is, I'm taking a third item for that, a sleep aid, Melatonin from the health food store, and you aren't.

Have you been on your two new medicines long enough that it is OK with your doctor to try that?

You can also buy that at a grocery store health food section, possibly, at a drug store or over the net.

It's good that you are seeing your doctor this week.

Having a doctor is not a guarantee. We are very fortunate that we live in a time that we have doctors and good medicine.

I've already told you the story about my mother's mother, who had bipolar in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and there was no medicine during that time. They had to be treated at a central state mental hospital. And they had no medicine.

We're being treated in our homes, not 100 miles from home with no medicine to help. As I said, she would go into people's medicine cabinets and take some of the pills, hoping one would help her. None of them did.

But she could hope.

We live in an era when there are many tablets that can help. We are very fortunate.

You say, "I have another appointment this week. May even ask about another antidepressant. There are so many options out there."

You know how your current antidepressant is working, so you would know how that's going. I was going to ask if you were still depressed, if your antidepressant was working, but you said your mood was OK, so I figured maybe that medicine was working.

So I'm glad you brought up that subject.

You said, "From reading about bipolar many are not properly diagnosed until 10 plus years after symptoms. That is scary."

I've even seen it on webmd.com under the bipolar topic, one of the psychiatrists was getting onto the others, saying "If your patients come in as depressed, determine if they are manic depressed before diagnosing them as depressed."

I mean, really? Misdiagnosed means miss-medicated. Means possible panic attacks, like I had when given only an antidepressant. And then when I would see him next appointment, he would say, "Well, what have you been doing this week that would cause a panic attack?"

And you say, "Also each episode causes brain damage?" That could be a possibility.

Let me tell you what a panic attack feels like. They started when I took my first antidepressant
with no stabilizer. They would come 30 minutes after I had taken my antidepressant (with no stabilizer to put a hold on the antidepressant). Right as I drifted off to sleep, I would wake up out of my mind. I would sit straight up in bed, And I wouldn't know where I was.

I would think, there's no pill you can take for this. There's no tranquilizer, for I'm already out of my mind. Sometimes I would go to the ER. This went on for, several months or more?

I would tell my psy., and he would say, "Well, what have you been doing that would cause you to have anxiety attacks?"

Brain damage, certainly not.
And it is very common for bi polar, not necessarily as a misdiagnosis but into a progression
into the dx. It is a hard dx, not certainly in a few sessions.

Tip, an anti-dep that works well with a mood stabiliser,
and regular sessions with shrink and keeping ya general dr updated.
Tell your shrink everything. It really does help, and the response will
give you a better understanding of certain things going on. HT.

Good that you reported back.

Hope this latest round of adjustments works out.