As A Career Move

[Stickler]

I'm on lithium now, also wellbutrin, sertraline, buspirone, topiramate.
....:(

I feel slightly less horrible today, though.

 

[joeylittle]

I'm on lithium now, also wellbutrin, sertraline, buspirone, topiramate.

Well, that's quite a cocktail.

Do you feel like your psych knows you well enough to start looking at making adjustments? It's possible you are over-medicated. That can lead to various kinds of problems, of course. Seeing that you are on buspar and topimax, makes me question whether you are getting the positive (instead of negative) benefits of those two meds. I don't know your detailed history, and I'm not a physician - I can only speak from personal and anecdotal experience.

I took it as I might never feel any better. Even though I would be functioning better?

This is something I am wrestling with as well. It's hard to accept. But for the last few years, I've been primarily looking at my functionality, and less at my mood. I don't like accepting that my mood might never get above 'lightly depressed'...so I try and not think about it too much.

But when my drugs are working right, I have decent functionality and can apply CBT/DBT stuff to the worser aspects of my depression. When the meds have died out, or need to be changed, or are going the wrong way - I may function, but I can't harness my own cognition properly in order to challenge some assumptions that are clearly coming from depression brain, not neutral-brain (if that makes sense).

 

[ladee]

@Stickler , glad to hear you are feeling a little better today.
I appreciate what you shared @joeylittle about whether we might not be getting maximum benifit with our meds.. Something I will bring up with my Dr.
Glad your better Stickler.

 

[Stickler]

I wanted ECT last year, because I'm very stuck. I was told I was getting better.
I have started testing myself weekly on the Goldberg scale to see if I am.
I'm not really getting significant improvement through multiple med changes and through therapy and...every positive change just falls apart because I get exhausted.
I keep going back for therapy.
I will keep trying.

 

[Friday]

I have started testing myself weekly on the Goldberg scale to see if I am.
I'm not really getting significant improvement through multiple med changes and through therapy and...every positive change just falls apart because I get exhausted.

I'd be pretty surprised to see a lot of variation on a weekly basis, unless you're in the middle of a med change.

Spoiler: Long version

I've found it's pretty useful to me to take a Depression-Anxiety-Stress test fairly regularly (every 1-3 mo) just to get a bit of a snapshot. From month to month? Things don't change much. There might be a little shifting around, higher stress here, lower anxiety there, etc... That fall pretty much inline with what I'd expect. Again, though, there's not a lot of change.

Until I start looking at the collection of them for the past couple years. Then I can start to see patterns around certain dates/events. Okay spiking here, lowering there. KK. And when I look at the normalish test for a couple years ago (normalish = all the tests were within a couple points, give or take, of all the others // excluding big bad events, or really great ones // the occasional outlier) compared to normalish now? Holy f*cking Shit. Huge difference.



39 > 33
36 > 24
42 > 33

That's almost 10 points of difference / roughly 25% improvement. It's freaking awesome. Granted, my life still sucks. But it's sucking a bit less :P And getting mo' better in other areas. Baaaaaaby steps.

 

[Stickler]

I'm bipolar. Plus we're twiddling meds monthly. I'm lobbying for ECT because I have not been not depressed since at least 2008. I've been exhausted and wanting to die most of the time since 2008.

 

[joeylittle]

I'm lobbying for ECT because I have not been not depressed since at least 2008. I've been exhausted and wanting to die most of the time since 2008.

When you brought it up last year, and they said to wait because you were getting better....was there any other reason you were given for not being a candidate for ECT?

Have you looked into TMS?

 

[Stickler]

They gave no other reason than the meds were having an effect at that time.
They were. It was slight. It went away again.
...I'm poor, I go through a county healthcare service.
They don't have TMS, I asked.

I feel horrible.

 

[ladee]

Setting quietly with you.
Supporting and hearing you.

 

[joeylittle]

Hearing you, @Stickler.