Bipolar disorder: not for lovers of sleep

I went to sleep last night at 9:30 and woke up at 3:30. I had to pee, but then, couldn't sleep. Oh, hello, hypomania. Goodbye, effects of my current medication.

From the Wikipedia article on hypomania:

Hypomania is a lowered state of mania that does little to impair function or decrease quality of life

Bwuh?

In hypomania there is less need for sleep, and both goal-motivated behavior and metabolism increase.

Less need for sleep, check. Goal-motivated behavior? Ehhh, kinda. Metabolism increase? Doubtful.

...mania itself generally has many undesirable consequences including suicidal tendencies.

Siiiiiiiiiigh.

Prominent hypomaniacs likely include Endymion (a mythological figure, probably describing the real person/s), Rudyard Kipling, Vincent Van Gogh, John Keats, Andy Warhol.

Stacey Spiehler.

Manic characteristics include irritability, anger or rage, delusions, hypersensitivity, hypersexuality, hyper-religiosity, hyperactivity, impulsiveness, racing thoughts, talkativeness, pressure to keep talking or rapid speech, grandiose ideas and plans, and decreased need for sleep (e.g. feels rested after 3 or 4 hours of sleep). In manic and hypomanic cases, the afflicted person may engage in out of character behavior such as questionable business transactions, wasteful expenditures of money, risky sexual activity, recreational drug abuse, abnormal social interaction, or highly vocal arguments uncharacteristic of previous behaviors. These behaviors increase stress in personal relationships, problems at work and increase the risk of altercations with law enforcement as well as being at high risk of impulsively taking part in activities potentially harmful to self and others.

If you knew me between the ages of 18-21, I want you to go ahead and read that paragraph again. Because wow.

Mild forms of mania, known as hypomania, cause little or no impairment, but some people who suffer from prolonged hypomania may develop full mania.

Greeeeeeeeat.

I'm tired.

Emails from crazy people

I have spent the last 3 hours reading Emails From Crazy People. Yep, I finished the website.

My favorites include:

"I warned you about your dog! He raped my baby and now Fifi is pregnant!"
"I have been using images from your website... If you do not upload the images again I might have to contact my lawyer."
"All the lawn chair towers are gone." Be sure to read parts one and two!

If you read none of those, you must read this one: "As you all know, a fabulous Thanksgiving Dinner does not make itself." Read that one, and give thanks for your family.

It's Mistletoe day!

Today, my friends, I will get most of my Christmas shopping done. For today is the day I go to the biggest Christmas extravaganza of the year - Mistletoe Marketplace! 160 vendors, 1 building! Yeeeehaw! I woke up this morning and my first thought was "Mistletoe!" My second thought was "is it too early to get up?" It was 5:50. I got up.

I've worked at Mistletoe the past 2 years. Last year, I sold t-shirts and hawked momslikeme.com. This year, all I have to do is set some bags on some chairs, and for that, I get a free lunch, a free ticket to Mistletoe, and I get to watch a fashion show and an inspirational speaker of some sort. I love being a Clarion Ledger groupie. I get to do all kinds of fun stuff.

Y'all, is it too early to decorate for Christmas? I AM SO READY!!! I am sincerely hoping that I can find an angel for my tree. I had one, but she fell and her face broke off, and I didn't think an angel with a light for a face was too pretty.

Whee! I'm off to Mistletoe! I've made a list, I've checked it twice! Y'all have a great Friday!

we've got a mission!

I am admitting with no small measure of shame that Ace still uses a pacifier. He only uses it to go to sleep, and hasn't fallen asleep without it since he was probably six months old. (Well, he can sometimes conk out in the car, but usually not without a pacifier.) We all know that it hasn't affected his speech as extended pacifier use can, but I know it's affected his teeth. I see braces in my future.

I have made half-hearted attempts to take it away before. I've tried peer pressure. "Big boys don't use pacis, Ace, don't you want to be a big boy?" He was not especially interested in that. One night I gave him a long talk beforehand and decided to go cold turkey. After he'd woken up for the 8th time crying for his paci, at 2am, I decided I wasn't ready for all that. Ohhhh, how I wish I'd stuck with it. I'd be done with this by now.

My mind is made up. He's going on Thanksgiving break in a couple of weeks, and has a whole week off. That's it. The end of pacifiers. Bye bye.

Here's my plan. Ace is going to receive a letter in the mail from The Little Einsteins. I've got to make up some reason why they need all of his pacifiers, and then have him mail them back to The Little Einsteins. I'm going to make stickers, letterhead, everything.

Do y'all think that The Little Einsteins should need the pacifiers for a mission in a couple of days, or immediately? Warning or no warning? Also, how much do you think he'll resent The Little Einsteins for the rest of his life?

If y'all get to Fryday and realize I've had no sleep, this is why. But dadgummit, he's three and a half years old and I should've taken the paci away two years ago.

boom boom

Ace got a card for his birthday that, when opened, sings a song that goes "boom boom ain't it great to be crazy?" He, of course, loves the card and plays with it most days. You would think the battery would die after 5 months, but noooo.

Boom boom, ain't it great to be crazy? Ace's bipolar, ADD mother sure thinks so.

Mental health treatment is not covered like physical health treatment. Unfortunately, since I went to that treatment program earlier this year, my mental health benefits have run out. At the very least, to maintain my sanity, I have to see my counselor every two weeks and my psychiatrist once a month. Each of those appointments cost $125 a pop. So for the last 3 months of this year, I will be paying $375 a month to keep from going crazy.

We had planned on getting a new big screen TV this year. Thankfully, all the money for a TV is already in the bank; we've been saving it all year. Unfortunately for all of YOU, that money WAS set aside for Christmas. Each of you will be getting 1 M&M for Christmas. So what's your favorite color?

(Thankfully, part of the stimulus package earlier this year included legislation that will force insurance companies to cover mental health as they would physical health. That begins next year.)

Better

Do y'all know how much I love Halloween? It's strange, because I hate - HATE - being scared, but I love Halloween. It's one holiday that I've always, always loved and get excited about every year. I have most of my inside decorations finished, and will probably be doing my outside decorations today.

I can't wait for Thanksgiving, though I don't know what we're doing this year. We usually host my mom and stepdad and whatever weary travelers feel like coming over, but this year is up in the air.

Oh, and FRYDAY!! Hello, aren't y'all looking forward to Fryday?

I absolutely, positively cannot wait until Christmas. I can't wait to give out presents to everyone, to make some heart-healthy pumpkin granola for everyone, to hear the music, to watch Love, Actually, to smell the Christmas candles, to decorate my house and stay up late and drink tea and stare at the lights on my tree, to read the story of Jesus' birth to Ace... I just cannot wait for any of it. I am excited this year. (Part of that excitement is the fact that Drew and I have been actually setting money aside every month for Christmas and won't be having to live paycheck-to-paycheck to be able to afford everything.)

Last year was different. I hated every holiday after my miscarriage. I gritted my teeth and barely sailed through. I bawled my eyes out with stress, thinking about everything I had to get accomplished. The extent of my Halloween decoration was getting my witches' cauldron out of the attic to put all the candy in (and then promptly ate the majority of the candy). Thanksgiving was totally uncomfortable. My Christmas decorations were up on December 23rd, and only about a third of them, and only because my big sister was in town to help. I sought every means necessary to avoid buying or making presents for people. I cried. A lot.

This year is so much better, and I am so happy. I'll get stressed, I'm sure, but that's standard fare for fall and winter holidays.

That's good stuff, people!

Misinformation

Shortly after my daughter passed away, I joined a message board called the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust. It was an endless source of support and information, and I credit the website with helping me recover from my loss.

A few months later, the board was all abuzz with excitement - The Discovery Channel was going to do a documentary on ectopic pregnancies! Since ectopic pregnancies are still undiagnosed and still kill women at an alarming rate, we were all excited that there would be information available in such a widely-viewed format. Who would they profile? Someone like me? I had the "easier" treatment - methotrexate. I just had to get a shot to end my pregnancy. My friend Jolene, on the other hand, saw her baby on an ultrasound in the emergency room. She didn't know she was pregnant. She thought she was having kidney stones or appendicitis. Jolene found out she was pregnant by surprise and in the next minute she was told that she would have to have emergency surgery to remove her tube because it was rupturing.

Unfortunately, The Discovery Channel didn't profile me or Jolene or anyone like us. They managed to find two women in the world whose ectopic pregnancies survived all 9 months. The odds of this happening? One in 30 million.

One woman was Iranian - she said she'd had excruciating pain throughout her pregnancy but didn't have regular access to doctors, so she was never diagnosed. When she went to the hospital to give birth, she got scared and went home. She went through labor, but it just stopped and she assumed God had just taken her baby. 46 years later, a calcified fetus was discovered in this woman's abdomen. The documentary is called "Pregnant For 46 Years."

The other woman had, also, excruciating pain during her pregnancy which was also undiagnosed. She was pregnant with twins, or so she thought. When she went to give birth to those twins, it was discovered that another baby had somehow attached itself to her colon. The placenta was getting nutrients from one of the veins in her colon. She has healthy triplets today.

I cried after that documentary. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I thought, if I had a 1 in 30 million chance, did I do the wrong thing by terminating my pregnancy when I did? I had a 99.9999999% chance of dying if I continued that pregnancy, but there was that minute chance that I did the wrong thing.

Now, I don't want y'all flooding my comments telling me I did nothing wrong. Logically, obviously, I KNOW that. But there's nothing like a documentary making a sideshow attraction out of my extremely rare pregnancy to make me feel like an idiot. Momentarily.

Ladies, if you are in the early stages of pregnancy and are experiencing constant, dark red spotting or are experiencing constant sharp pain on one side of your abdomen, tell your doctor that you want an ultrasound immediately. PUSH your doctor. If he/she won't give you the ultrasound, see another doctor. Ectopic pregnancies have to be terminated immediately upon diagnosis. Otherwise, the mother's tube can rupture, which can cause internal bleeding and death. Yes, I am one of the women who has had to have an abortion to save her life.

Also, ladies, ectopic pregnancies are notorious for not showing up on home pregnancy tests. So, if you think you're just having a very light period and you're experiencing other symptoms of pregnancy and are experiencing sharp, one-sided pain, go to your doctor's office immediately.

I want the right information out there, not the sensationalized information.

Thankfully, a couple of months after the Discovery buzz, another woman on the board said that her actress friend in Hollywood was on a very popular show and her character was going to experience an ectopic pregnancy. The actress collected her friend's experience and the experiences of several other women on the board, so she could portray the experience accurately. The show? Grey's Anatomy, season 2. Christina Yang had an ectopic pregnancy.