Tuesday
Jul272010
Confessions continued: The beginning of it all
Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 1:58PM
I started writing in the previous post about my need to get my story out about how I came to be diagnosed with Bipolar I. In retrospect, I probably have always had a milder case of bipolar disorder. There are many behaviors and events that I look back on now and it all makes sense.
I tried many anti-anxiety and anti-depressant meds throughout the years (Celexa, Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Tofranil, Effexor and Lexapro) but they all made things worse for me. When I was on them I would become increasingly anxious, I couldn't sleep for days (literally multiple days no sleep whatsoever) I would fly about the house working on senseless projects and I became severely agitated. One wrong look would set me into a rage. Then as suddenly as the agitation would come on, it would end and I would fall into a deep depression. And it would cycle all over again. At this point I still just thought I was dealing with anxiety and possibly bad medication reactions.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was Lexapro. About 3 weeks after Felix was born my anxiety started shooting through the roof. I couldn't leave him, no one could hold him, he couldn't sleep in this outfit or he'd suffocate for sure, what if the Amby bed fell down, what if it got twisted, what if he died??! What if he caught some really bad illness, oh my god he could die?! Why aren't you worried about protecting our baby more? He could DIE! Anxiety is fun like that. It's like being hopped up on meth (not that I would know) the way my thoughts race about all the bad, terrible, awful things that could happen in the world.
Then, there was the ASPCA commercials. I still to this day can't watch them because of all this. If one happened to come on when I was innocently watching smutty TV on VH1 I would burst into tears, sobbing..endlessly for hours because animals were dying and I wasn't helping. I know, who doesn't cry at one-eared cats and beat up dogs, but this was ridiculous crying and then it turned into crying that happened for no reason. All the time. I also stopped going out-anywhere. I didn't want to talk to my friends anymore, I didn't want to socialize, I just wanted to sit in my house alone with my baby and make sure he wasn't dying. I would only be awake when he was awake. I would sleep the day away. My husband just assumed I was tired-which for someone who's wife is waking up every 2 hours to breast feed a baby is a valid assumption.
At my 8 week postpartum appointment (which should have been 6 weeks but I cancelled because I just couldn't get myself to go)I filled out the questionnaire my doctor gave out for PPD and anxiety. She said I scored incredibly high on both of them and she recommended anti-depressants. I ran down the list of those that I had tried and she mentioned Lexapro. Hallelujah, there was one I hadn't taken that was safe. Little did I know at the time Lexapro is basically Celexa. I didn't do my research but I decided to try it anyway because it was one of the few safe for breast-feeding that I had not tried before.
This is where I pause for a minute and contemplate whether my OB should be prescribing anti-depressants to someone who has previously had a bad reaction to them. I know she wants to be able to help people with PPD, but in some cases I feel like she should have told me I need to talk to a mental health practitioner. BUT I also didn't do my homework either. All of this which is a topic for another blog another day. I digress..
The first few weeks on the medication was fine. I didn't see or feel any change in my thoughts or behaviors. I felt the same-sad and anxious about the world. Everything in the world. Then the clock started ticking down until I was supposed to go back to work. This made me even more anxious. If my husband mentioned finding daycare I would be a complete sobbing mess the entire day. I begged and pleaded with him to not make me go back. He said I should go back that I'm just having a tough time right now and maybe some separation from Felix would be a good thing for me. But I wouldn't hear of it.
I emailed my boss and asked if I could take a few more weeks leave ( I had taken almost 12 at this point) and he said they couldn't do that for me, unless a medical doctor ordered it. I had an out, but I couldn't admit to my company what I was going through. I had a really good job there. I was worried I would be moved to a different project with less responsibilities if they found out. I was a person who had always prided myself on my work. I worked hard to get to where I was in that company and I had been with them for 4 years. One of the hardest thing to admit to myself was that I honestly had so much anxiety and was too depressed to care about my job. The effort to contact the doctor was too much, I just wanted to lay there.
A week before I was supposed to go back I locked myself in the bathroom. In front of me lay my Lexapro and some various other medications. I willed myself to take them. I couldn't go back to work, I couldn't be sad anymore and I couldn't be such a shitty parent to Felix. I felt completely guilt ridden that my motives for staying home was not because I wanted to stay home with him but because I couldn't make myself do anything else.
I didn't want to die, I just wanted to be happy. I swallowed a handful of pills. It was not enough to kill me, just enough for a trip to the ER and a stomach pumping. They wanted to admit me there and then. My husband talked them out of it. He said I was getting help and had an emergency appointment tomorrow morning with my doctor. I didn't. He should've let them admit me. This would've been a better state to be admitted in, then the state I was in when I was forcibly admitted months later.
I quit my job. I quit my good paying, stable job because I was depressed and anxious. I tried to pass it off as though I wanted to be a stay at home mom for a year. The truth was, I couldn't even shower or dress myself for the day, never less be in charge of million dollar contracts.
My husband was very reluctant to let me quit. I think this still bothers him to this day, but he would never tell me that. Not after everything that has happened. I just hope he doesn't resent me because of it.
It is becoming quite clear this is going to take multiple posts to tell the full story. I'd rather break it up than test WordPress' character limit on a blog. So yet again, I will continue tomorrow.
I tried many anti-anxiety and anti-depressant meds throughout the years (Celexa, Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Tofranil, Effexor and Lexapro) but they all made things worse for me. When I was on them I would become increasingly anxious, I couldn't sleep for days (literally multiple days no sleep whatsoever) I would fly about the house working on senseless projects and I became severely agitated. One wrong look would set me into a rage. Then as suddenly as the agitation would come on, it would end and I would fall into a deep depression. And it would cycle all over again. At this point I still just thought I was dealing with anxiety and possibly bad medication reactions.
The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was Lexapro. About 3 weeks after Felix was born my anxiety started shooting through the roof. I couldn't leave him, no one could hold him, he couldn't sleep in this outfit or he'd suffocate for sure, what if the Amby bed fell down, what if it got twisted, what if he died??! What if he caught some really bad illness, oh my god he could die?! Why aren't you worried about protecting our baby more? He could DIE! Anxiety is fun like that. It's like being hopped up on meth (not that I would know) the way my thoughts race about all the bad, terrible, awful things that could happen in the world.
Then, there was the ASPCA commercials. I still to this day can't watch them because of all this. If one happened to come on when I was innocently watching smutty TV on VH1 I would burst into tears, sobbing..endlessly for hours because animals were dying and I wasn't helping. I know, who doesn't cry at one-eared cats and beat up dogs, but this was ridiculous crying and then it turned into crying that happened for no reason. All the time. I also stopped going out-anywhere. I didn't want to talk to my friends anymore, I didn't want to socialize, I just wanted to sit in my house alone with my baby and make sure he wasn't dying. I would only be awake when he was awake. I would sleep the day away. My husband just assumed I was tired-which for someone who's wife is waking up every 2 hours to breast feed a baby is a valid assumption.
At my 8 week postpartum appointment (which should have been 6 weeks but I cancelled because I just couldn't get myself to go)I filled out the questionnaire my doctor gave out for PPD and anxiety. She said I scored incredibly high on both of them and she recommended anti-depressants. I ran down the list of those that I had tried and she mentioned Lexapro. Hallelujah, there was one I hadn't taken that was safe. Little did I know at the time Lexapro is basically Celexa. I didn't do my research but I decided to try it anyway because it was one of the few safe for breast-feeding that I had not tried before.
This is where I pause for a minute and contemplate whether my OB should be prescribing anti-depressants to someone who has previously had a bad reaction to them. I know she wants to be able to help people with PPD, but in some cases I feel like she should have told me I need to talk to a mental health practitioner. BUT I also didn't do my homework either. All of this which is a topic for another blog another day. I digress..
The first few weeks on the medication was fine. I didn't see or feel any change in my thoughts or behaviors. I felt the same-sad and anxious about the world. Everything in the world. Then the clock started ticking down until I was supposed to go back to work. This made me even more anxious. If my husband mentioned finding daycare I would be a complete sobbing mess the entire day. I begged and pleaded with him to not make me go back. He said I should go back that I'm just having a tough time right now and maybe some separation from Felix would be a good thing for me. But I wouldn't hear of it.
I emailed my boss and asked if I could take a few more weeks leave ( I had taken almost 12 at this point) and he said they couldn't do that for me, unless a medical doctor ordered it. I had an out, but I couldn't admit to my company what I was going through. I had a really good job there. I was worried I would be moved to a different project with less responsibilities if they found out. I was a person who had always prided myself on my work. I worked hard to get to where I was in that company and I had been with them for 4 years. One of the hardest thing to admit to myself was that I honestly had so much anxiety and was too depressed to care about my job. The effort to contact the doctor was too much, I just wanted to lay there.
A week before I was supposed to go back I locked myself in the bathroom. In front of me lay my Lexapro and some various other medications. I willed myself to take them. I couldn't go back to work, I couldn't be sad anymore and I couldn't be such a shitty parent to Felix. I felt completely guilt ridden that my motives for staying home was not because I wanted to stay home with him but because I couldn't make myself do anything else.
I didn't want to die, I just wanted to be happy. I swallowed a handful of pills. It was not enough to kill me, just enough for a trip to the ER and a stomach pumping. They wanted to admit me there and then. My husband talked them out of it. He said I was getting help and had an emergency appointment tomorrow morning with my doctor. I didn't. He should've let them admit me. This would've been a better state to be admitted in, then the state I was in when I was forcibly admitted months later.
I quit my job. I quit my good paying, stable job because I was depressed and anxious. I tried to pass it off as though I wanted to be a stay at home mom for a year. The truth was, I couldn't even shower or dress myself for the day, never less be in charge of million dollar contracts.
My husband was very reluctant to let me quit. I think this still bothers him to this day, but he would never tell me that. Not after everything that has happened. I just hope he doesn't resent me because of it.
It is becoming quite clear this is going to take multiple posts to tell the full story. I'd rather break it up than test WordPress' character limit on a blog. So yet again, I will continue tomorrow.
Reader Comments (5)
You have quite a story to tell. Thanks for sharing it.
Confessions continued: The beginning of it all...
I found your entry interesting do I've added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)...
You are my hero for this. I wish I had half the courage you do.
You are simply amazing. I am so inpsired by you.
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