I slid off my lithium, and I'm trying to feel well again.

Tim Tam said...
You said,

"I went right off my lithium, what a mistake. I'm trying to feel well again. I was taking 900 mg of lithium daily, but I bumped the lithium up to 1200 mg and started to feel better. I over did it and started taking 1800 mg a day, but I went for a lithium blood test on Tuesday, and my reading was 1.66 which is starting to be toxic. My doctor told me to cut the lithium back to 1200 mg daily."

You said, "I bumped the lithium up to 1200 mg and started to feel better."

Did you bump it up, or did the doctor bump it up?

In the previous post, you said, "I was taking 1,800 mg a day of lithium. My reading was 1.66 which is high so I'm reducing to 1,200 per day of lithium from orders of my psychiatrist."

So you planned to reduce it from 1,800 to 1,200 mg. a day of lithium.

In your latest post you said you increased it from 900 to 1800. Was that you or your doctor that increased it?

Tim Tam said...
You said in your latest post,

"I bumped up the lithium myself to 1200 mg daily. I over did it and took 1800 mg a day for a week or two but got scared and phoned my doctor. She sent me for a lithium blood level the next day when the reading was slightly toxic at 1.66. The doctor then told me to reduce the lithium to 1200 mg."

You said in a previous post,

"I was taking 1,800 mg a day of lithium. My reading was 1.66 which is high so I'm reducing to 1,200 per day of lithium from orders of my psychiatrist."

So, one day you decide to follow the doctor's order, and a day or two or a week or two later you decide to self prescribe your medicine. How do you decide who's orders you're going to follow?

When you decide to double your lithium on your own, where do you come up with a prescription that a drug store will fill?

Tim Tam said...
With the increase in lithium, you must be feeling an increase in mania.

What is a typical day for you?

Tim Tam said...
When you were on only 900mg of lithium a day, what was a typical day for you?

Tim Tam said...
Before I went to see a psychiatrist, when I was in my early and mid 20s, when I was working, being around people was enough to keep me undepressed.

When I got to around 27 or 28 and lost a job and was no longer around people, I quickly became depressed. The depression seemed to build into anger, and the anger seemed to build into mania.

I kept getting wound up, more and more, tighter and tighter, more angry and more angry, and I was either going to get help, or I was going to have a break out of some sort, and then I would be forced to get help or even I would realize I was to be in big trouble.

I choose to have a break out. I didn't choose that, but being negative about what to do, to take care of myself and see a psychiatrist, that's what eventually happened, because my brain couldn't take anymore of the stress. We had to go to a break, to get me to go to a psychiatrist.

It's not the best way to go. It's best to get evaluated if nothing else, and then maybe try some medicine to see if it helps.

So, once on lithium, I didn't have the mania, which was a big help. Since I'm bipolar, I also needed the antidepressant, because just being diagnosed as depressed and given an antidepressant, would send me into mania and panic attacks, if I wasn't also given the lithium to calm down my mania.

So, being diagnosed right is very important, for it will lead to being miss-medicated.

Typical day for me, is getting up, cleaning up the kitchen from the night before, cooking breakfast, getting the dishes washed, coming on this website, doing various project during the day, such as, cleaning up my house. Then walking my dog, which gets me out of my house and sometimes seeing some people.

With bipolar, I worked off and on. Now I'm of retirement age. At night, I watch TV, mostly true crime shows, some educational TV/public broadcasting like biographies. I like getting into people's lives, like yours.

What was going on before you were diagnosed as bipolar?

Tim Tam said...
If you've held a job some 25 years, you're doing pretty good.

With my bipolar, I held about 5 jobs for about 6 months each.

I held one job for two years, another for three. It was pretty rough.

It's interesting abut your writing. That's very good, getting six stories published. Writing 60 stories is also very good.

I've written for newspapers for about 10 years. Wrote news, but I liked feature stories best. Wrote sports for about five years.

After my last newspaper job at about age 30, I didn't have any outlet, and went 5 years where I got only one story published. Then I got hooked up with a city magazine, and worked, freelance, for them for 14 years.

One thing about the city magazine, it had a female editor and a female publisher. No problem. Those years with male editors were pretty bad.

I didn't have a nitch. I didn't fit in with the male sports editors, and yet, didn't want to write for the women's section. Gosh. Talk about a fish out of water. There was no place to go, gender wise or work wise.

And that was during the days of all-male everything. All male doctors, all male bosses. Hurry up women's lib. Finally, free at last. With the city magazine and the women editor and publisher, thank god almighty, I was free at last.

I've also written two manuscripts. One on human relations, one on a well known novel, that is a complete fake. No luck getting either one published.

In a way, I'm glad. I wouldn't want to do the publicity. If they'll just print it, that would be OK, but I don't want to do any publicity.

I had a female writer at the city magazine, who got her novel published, and it was made into a movie, tell me about all of that, saying, "Be careful what you wish for, you might get it." Meaning, to me, it's probably got a difficult side to it.

So, what kind of fiction do you write?

You also fly airplanes.

Yes, the lithium and the Mirtazapine antidepressant really help. I inherited my bipolar from my mother's mother. I was told she used to go into people's medicine cabinets when she was visiting, taking some of the pills, hoping one of them would calm her mind from the bipolar.

No such luck. She ended up going to a state mental hospital, some 125 miles from her house. Little or no medicine to help. Lithium had not been invented. Didn't come along to c. 1955- or 1960.

So we can feel fortunate that we have lithium. By the grace of god. Sometimes I try to imagine what she was going through. It's not too difficult since I'm her grandchild.

Depends on what era you were born into.