The daily question

If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?

Thinner.

It happens all the time, but I never see it coming. It happened today. I was volunteering at a community event, when a couple came over to our booth. They were fairly generic, two small kids, nothing out of the ordinary. There was the usual chit-chat related to the event when someone else in the booth suggested that the woman get involved with the program I oversee.

She said she had already been a part of it years ago, but felt it wasn't a good fit now. I asked her to tell me her name, and when she did, I said, "Well, of course, Nicole! I had already taken over the program then." She looked at me and was puzzled.

"No, it wasn't you."
"I'm sure it was me. It wouldn't have been anyone else."

She looked at me again and said, "Wow. I just don't recognize you at all."

That's when I understood. Of course she didn't recognize me. I had gained 50 pounds since then. She wasn't the first person who couldn't recognize me post-2003.

"Oh, Nicole, I do look a lot different since then (and I'm not so hypomanic I'm spiraling up into the stratosphere). I've gained a lot of weight since you saw me last. I had a neurological event and the medication I take now causes rapid and inescapable weight gain. Trust me, though, I am the same person you knew six years ago."

It was actually a friendly conversation. It was still better than our former neighbor who saw my husband and I about two years after I started the medications. When I say "saw," I mean from a half-block away. The neighbor saw my husband again a weeks later and asked, "Has your wife had her baby yet?"

Yeah. It's like that. Again and again and again.

From the media

Media roundup.

First, from National Public Radio, an interview with Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, authors of Welcome to your brain: Why you lose your car keys but never forget how to drive. (Purchase information is available here.) It's a good interview about what our brains actually do and don't do. Lots of myths are revealed for what they are, but for every myth busted, Aamodt and Wang replace it with a fascinating factoid. I love learning about the brain. I figure if I embrace the information, I might stop resenting so bitterly the brain I ended up with. To hear the engaging three-minute interview, click here.

Also from NPR, a short piece about shingles. How timely. I heard this on Thursday and hoped they were going to explain why the vaccine is only available to people over 60 years of age. They didn't, but it's an interesting story anyway. After listening to the piece, I was surprised to find out that I had three predispositions to the illness. I think I was biologically screwed on this particular issue. You can read the story or listen to it by clicking here.

Finally, where Ann Landers left off, Dear Margo carries on, albeit in a somewhat snarky tone. Today's big question is from a 26-year-old woman with bipolar disorder who is surprised to find out that her fiance loves her when she's manic, but is none too keen to stick around if she's depressed. Poor thing--she must be new. You know, when someone gets a BP diagnosis, they should be given an informative pamphlet detailing how all personal relationships will now crash and burn with alarming speed. You can read the whole question and Margo's unexpectedly sensitive reply here.

Tomorrow I'm working on a special project and will be spending the day with a sullen 16-year-old girl. It doesn't matter that she's African--all 16 year-old girls have a knack for being sullen. This one does a killer deep-sigh-with-eye roll. Extra points for when she also crosses her arms over her chest. I just found out that I am the same age as this girl's grandmother. Oh, dear God--is that what she sees when she looks at me? Someone who is grandmotherly? I'm horrified.

That's all from the news roundup. May has a splitting headache that is borderline migraine. Alas, since Lyrica is a blood thinner, I can't treat my headache in the usual way with handfuls of Advil. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but at this point, I'm pretty sure my right eyeball is going to pop out of my head.

Check out the links listed. It's worth the time. I'm off to bed with my headache.

The bipolar nose

There aren't many certainties in life, but there are a few things I know unequivocally. One of them is that if a medication has a rare side-effect, that's the one I'll get. When it comes to psychotropic medications, though, I get side-effects that aren't even listed on the patient information sheet.

As I mentioned before, there was a point in my treatment when I had to change almost all of my medications. this included going off of SSRIs. Rumor has it that if you do that slowly, you won't notice a thing. There are legions of dizzy, barfing people who will tell you that's a lie. there are also people who will tell you that SSRIs are not addicting--these people work for pharmaceutical companies. A former friend of mine--who happens to work for one of the companies that makes one of the SSRIs that made me very, very sick during withdrawal, showed her support by saying, "It's not withdrawal; it's just a step-down reaction." You say tomato, I say, fuck you.

As I was going through the long, slow process of detoxing off of an entire class of medications, I started to realize that I could smell things. The people around me swore I was imagining phantom smells. They speculated that maybe the medications were confusing the olfactory signals in my brain. that was a short-lived theory as we all realized that the things I smelled were real, but so subtle that they were undetectable by the normal human nose. As the weeks went by and my brain became even more muddled, smells became the almost unbearable bane of my existence. I thought, This must be what it's like to be a dog--except I cannot filter out those smells that are meaningful. Can smells be meaningful?

The overwhelming plethora of everyday smells in the world did not help my nausea at all. At home, I was plagued by a mysterious petroleum-like smell that I could not identify. After weeks of trying not to gag while I watched TV, I found the source: It was a black Kong dog toy that my husband could only smell if he held it up to his nose. It had been sitting about eight feet away from my chair for weeks.

I mentioned this bizarre symptom to my doctor, and he frowned a bit as he said, "May, that's not a side-effect of this medication." I insisted that it was, and then I reasoned that it must be a side-effect of withdrawing from the drug. The doctor looked skeptical and said, "Noooo. I've been working with these medications a long time, and I'm pretty sure an acutely enhanced sense of smell isn't on the list of reactions." He was wrong. I know it.

At the time this was going on, I bought some teak-type outdoor wood furniture, including a bench for the front porch. The wood comes unfinished but with strict instructions to oil the furniture as soon as it is assembled and in place. The Nyatoh wood required a two-day treatment of five coats of teak oil that had to be rubbed in by hand. I got out the can of oil, some new cotton rubbing cloths, and gloves. As soon as I uncapped the can of oil, I knew I was in trouble. The first rush of odor coming out of the can made me gag.

I started to oil the bench, and I had to hold my breath. The oil smell was making me dizzy, but mostly, it was making me feel sick just because it so powerful. I couldn't understand how people built furniture and worked with this stuff on a regular basis. My husband came outside to see how it was going. I was clammy with distress sweat and I had taken a break about halfway across the front yard. "The smell of that stuff is killing me. It should come with a warning."

My husband looked puzzled. "What are you talking about? It's just teak oil, right? I'm standing right here and I don't smell anything. I mean, I smell it, but it's not noxious or fumey or anything. Are you sure this is what you smell?" I was turning a nice shade of green that almost matched the lawn.

It took me hours to finish the bench because I couldn't bear the smell of the teak oil for more than a few minutes at a time. I swore I would never do this task again.

Nature has a way of making us go back on our word. The bench stays outside all year, we live in a dry, sunny climate (ha!), and it was time to try oiling again. On Monday, I got out everything I needed and hoped I could stomach the smell. I opened the can of oil. fine. I poured oil onto the cloth. Fine. I started saturating the wood. Still fine. As I worked, I realized that the oil had a very mild, almost pleasant scent. I had no problem at all getting the job done, and I was able to breathe normally throughout the entire process.

It made me realize that my olfactory senses had, in fact, been jarred into freakish hypersensitivity by the neurotransmitter storm SSRIs had set into motion. It took a couple of years, but eventually my nose went back to its normal, usually somewhat stuffy self.

Never underestimate the weird power of a differently-wired brain and the nervous system that goes with it.

Step into my office

There is a very swanky athletic club just around the corner from my office. It's the kind of place with oriental carpets in the lobby, dark wood furniture in the atrium, a bowling alley, squash courts, a lot of wealthy white men in their fifties, a swimming pool in the basement, and across the hall from lean people with goggles and pale skin getting in their daily laps, there is a bustling physical therapy practice.

The perky assistant at the front desk handed me a stack of papers to fill out. I sat in the elevator vestibule on one of two tired, gray waiting room chairs and balanced the clipboard on my knee. I wasn't even through the first page when Toni, the therapist, stood over me and said, "You can finish that up after. Come on back."

I followed her through a somewhat narrow, windowless room filled with people involved in various body bending, muscle mending activities. We walked almost to the back of the facility, through a set of paned glass doors, past a heavy red curtain and into a tiny room with an examination table in the middle. I took a seat in the only chair, a standard vinyl upholstered steel framed business-only chair.

Toni pulled up close on her rolling stool and used the exam table as a desk. She asked how I had been referred to her and what I perceived my illness to be. I gave her the referral form from the urologist. As I pulled out my typed list of medications (there are eight right now), I explained to Toni that I had been dealing with this problem for over 20 years and I was skeptical that there was any relief in sight. I went on to tell her that after the urologist's exam, I was in excruciating pain for weeks.

Toni had been using the exam table as desk while taking notes. She put down her pen, looked at me, and leaned closer. "May, did the doctor tell you what goes on in here?" Oh my god, did people come here not knowing that?

My eyes opened wide and I said, "Weeeeellllll, no, she didn't, but I looked it up on the Internet. Of course, everything I found was so carefully worded, it didn't really tell me anything, so I posted on a forum and said, 'OK, people, just be straight with me and say it in plain English. What am I in for with this physical therapy?' So, I guess I do know, but not because the doctor told me."

Toni laughed and said she was going to make up an information sheet for the doctor to give to patients. Apparently, quite a few patients come in for the consult and are horrified when the details of the therapy are explained. And then they get up and leave, sometimes leaving skid marks.

I have a nervous habit. Actually, I have many, but the most prominent is that I shake my foot. It doesn't matter if I cross my legs or my ankles, or if I have my feet on the floor (then I bounce my knee), I am almost always fidgeting some way. Toni noticed this, and interrupted her own sentence to say, "May...I want you to put both feet flat on the floor and don't shake anything. Why do you do that?"

"I don't know why I do that. I've always done that."
"OK, for now and the foreseeable feature, I don't want you to do that. Be still. Try to be still."

Our conversation went on, and although I hadn't realized it, I was now tapping my right foot rather quickly. Toni kept talking, but she very gently reached over with her own foot and softly placed it on top of mine. She never broke the pace of her conversation, but she was more aware of my nervous energy than I was.

As I wrapped up my medical history, Toni said something remarkable. "May, the first thing we need to take into account with you is that, based on your medical history and current conditions, we know that your brain and your entire central nervous system are wired very differently than other people's. That means you are going to think differently, but more relevant to your being here, you feel physical sensations differently. That presents certain challenges for any nerve-related treatment, but it's nothing we can't work with."

I crossed my legs, and Toni immediately told me to put both feet flat on the floor. She explained that the autonomic nervous system, when left to express feelings related to stress, will cause phantom or misdirected pain. Furthermore, it serves as a distraction and we don't focus on the true source of our physical discomfort. Stop shaking you foot, May.

We talked more about my abdominal pain and the upcoming therapy. Then, Toni asked me what I do for exercise. I was honest. "Nothing. I do absolutely nothing. Unless you count walking 12 minutes from my car to my office and then back again at the end of the day. I walk briskly." Toni looked at me and said, "I want to see you do more than that." Oh, yeah, you and everybody else.
She asked if there was ever a time when I did exercise. I went through the whole history. "Well, yes. I was never athletic, but in my quest to be unnaturally thin, I exercised. I spent my twenties going to 5:30 a.m. aerobics classes six days a week, only to return and do it again after work. On Wednesdays I took an abs class. I never did lose any weight or look any better, even though I lived on salad and chicken breast. In my thirties, I went on to ride my bike hundreds of miles every month. I got down to 123 pounds, but I had to keep eating less and less and exercising more to maintain it. I also used to walk for exercise, I rode my bike to work, and then I took up running. I used to get up early and run around Municipal Park every morning. that didn't work out too well because I ended up needing knee surgery and now that I don't have much cartilage left behind my patella, the surgeon has forbidden me from running or walking for exercise. I had a YMCA membership for a really long time, and I used it. Ask my husband. For about six years, I pent at least ten hours a week in the gym, including Body Pump classes an working with personal trainers, but I was still a cow. I stuck with it, though. Of course, right before my bipolar disorder peaked, something else went wrong in my brain because I lost my balance--guess that makes me unbalanced, ha-ha--and I couldn't ride my bike anymore. I have four bikes, including a stunning Italian steel touring bike, but I can't bear to even look at them. You know, I started taking all of those meds and I gained 50 pounds, so unless I can excercise in complete secrecy or under the cover of darkness, that's about it and me and exercise.

Toni nodded and wrote something down. Then she told me that thing. That thing that makes me roll my eyes and cringe. She told me that I needed to start a program of meditation or focused deep breathing, conscious relaxation, perhaps yoga or Tai Chi. And I burst out laughing. I think she is now the fifth medical professional to tell me this. She asked who was the last one. "Oh, the urologist. and before that, the doctor who treated me for shingles."

Toni pointed out that shingles hits the nervous system, as does bipolar disorder, as does interstitial cystitis and pudendal nerve damage. "May," she said, "the shingles episode was a wake-up call." Then she suggested Pilates because it improves balance and strength, and uses focused breathing, but doesn't require balance or strength when you start it." I laughed again. She just looked at me and said, "What?" "Let me tell you about the Reformer in my basement...As soon as the shingles inflammation goes away and I can lie on my back, I'll get right on that Pilates routine."

Pain. If only we never felt it, think of how productive we would be... I haven't decided if I'm going back for the icky part of this PT. Probably not.

It really does take a village

There is nothing like a profound and unexpected success to ward off job abandonment in the face of imminent burnout. Sometimes, just when you think you can't take another minute, or that the work you do doesn't change a thing, something happens to shake the doubt out of your head.

Abdi is almost 21 years old, but that is strictly in the chronological sense. He slips back and forth between two identities; one is a mature and responsible young adult who is leading his family through the adjustment years in a strange and overwhelming new culture. The other Abdi has a short temper and even shorter attention span. He tries to be part of everything and he has little patience when he can't keep up.

Abdi was born in Somalia, part of the Bantu ethnic group, the group firmly entrenched at the very bottom of the Somali social strata. When Abdi was ten years old, he helped his parents shepherd themselves and four younger children through a war-torn Somalia, across the border into Kenya, and then hundreds of miles further into the country to the Dadaab refugee camp. Abdi missed his childhood, just like the tens of thousands of other refugee kids in the Kenyan camps. He was able to squeeze himself into the overcrowded, irregularly held primary school classes at Dadaab. His formal education involved little more than learning the alphabet and some very basic reading, writing, and first-grade math.

When Abdi came to the United States four years ago, he spoke little English and lacked the fundamentals of basic education. Despite this, he was placed in a sheltered English program in a city high school. He was 17 years old, and the clock was ticking. If he couldn't cram his head full of state required competencies before his 21st birthday, he might never go on to get a diploma.

Abdi's family was resettled with the assistance of a volunteer team from a local church. One of those volunteers, a prominent local attorney, made sure that Abdi was properly enrolled and registered for the appropriate classes at school. Except, what classes are appropriate for a teenager who is carrying the burden of being the eldest son in a family where the parents are too disoriented to leave the house? The attorney assured Abdi he would be OK.

The next volunteer to step in was Susan, a soft-spoken, humble middle-aged woman whose long blond hair and apple-cheeked face bespoke her Swedish heritage. Susan is a practicing Buddhist, but in the real way, not in the trendy, next-week-it's-Cabala-and-then-Scientology way that so many empty nesters find comforting. Susan wears frumpy clothes--dark tights, flat shoes, calf-length dirndl skirts, and no makeup. I doubt she has ever worn makeup.

Susan took on Abdi as a personal cause. It was obvious to her, as it was to so many people, that this kid was pure potential, if only he could stay out of trouble and find something to keep him grounded in the rush of American culture and high school assaulting him on a daily basis. Susan called me. "May, I need a favor. There's this kid, and he's so good and bright, and..." "Susan," I said, "You know I can't take this on. The State will have my butt in a sling if they find out."

Susan backed off the first time, but she was really just waiting for a better opportunity. In the meantime, Abdi enrolled in after-school classes. He got a job working with elementary ESL kids in an after-school program. He completed the entire curriculum for the police department's community cadet cultural liaison program. He made friends at school. He played soccer. He helped with the little kids' soccer on Saturdays. He struggled academically.

Within two years after arrival, every single Somali Bantu high school kid had dropped out, with the exception of Abdi. The pressure to do the same was intense, not only from his friends but from a nervous school staff that didn't want to see any negative effects on their already abysmal graduation rate. The standard unwritten protocol is to push out the kids who aren't likely to meet graduation requirements by the age of 21. A dropout is not counted as a failure on the school's part the way an Unable to Graduate is. Abdi had a lot of people pushing on both sides, and he responded to all of it by becoming sullen and withdrawn. He was perilously close to quitting everything and moving to Minneapolis to join a similarly disenfranchised group of Bantu teens heading for trouble.

Joe came along just in time. I met Joe through my job and laid out my case. I explained that Abdi was a good kid who needed a male adult mentor--someone to be accountable to, someone who could help him understand his frustrations with the culture, someone who could help him master the five-paragraph essay. Joe was a 32-year-old graduate student who needed to get in some degree-related community service hours, so he figured he'd try it for the summer.

In the 18 months since Abdi and Joe met, Joe worked quietly and diligently to effectively mentor Abdi. Abdi started to focus more on school and less on his friends who were busy getting arrested, getting married, or doing nothing. Susan believed that if she could just keep Abdi busy, he would be OK. The thing is, he wasn't always OK. He was defensive and frustrated at school, and three of his teachers had already told him that there was just no way he would graduate--even though that was still a year away.

In September 2007, I asked Joe how it was going. He was a man of few words, and he only replied, "We're making progress." A week later I found out that Joe was spending between five and ten hours a week with Abdi. Abdi's grades shot up dramatically. By late November, he wasn't failing anything. By February, he was an A/B student. Susan told me that Abdi's senior pictures had come in. Senior pictures? Apparently, Joe had felt that if Abdi needed faith in the possibility of graduation, Joe was going to do anything he could to make that possibility more tangible. Joe paid for everything, including a haircut, a new shirt, and a tie.

Sometime in February, Abdi began to stumble. His attitude had tanked, and he wasn't up for listening to any motherly American women telling him to hang in there. I called Joe. Joe had taken a few weeks off from Abdi when Joe's wife gave birth to their first child. It was OK, he said. He'd stop by and talk to Abdi the following day. We'll never know what this gentle, soft-spoken man said, but Abdi turned himself around immediately.

In April, Susan called me, frantic. Abdi had gotten into a fight at school. They wanted to expel him. She was on her way over there to pick him up.

When Susan arrived at the school, Abdi was sitting alone in a conference room. She opened the door and stepped inside, and as soon as she did, Abdi, burst into tears. "I didn't do anything! I didn't. It's not what the security guy said. Susan, I didn't do anything!"

The principal, assistant principal, and the social worker were all out at a conference, so Susan had nobody to speak with except the teacher who was filling in. He couldn't tell her much, except to say that if security had brought Abdi in, there must have been a good reason. Susan tried getting the assistant principal on the phone for days. When she finally spoke, he said they would have to talk about Abdi's cse, but he didn't see why they should believe Abdi and not the security guy. On the day of the meeting, Susan arrived early to talk to Abdi before the meeting started. She put a paper in front of him, a long list of names. The first four names were Joe, Susan, the attorney, and May. "What's this?," Abdi asked, puzzled. Susan explained that this was Abdi's "village," the community of people who had put in a real effort toward his success. Susan went on to point out that if all of these people hadn't believed in him, Abdi never would have achieved so much during his short time in the U.S. "Abdi," she said, "These people care about what happens to you and have made you their repsonsibility. Do you understand that you have a responsibility to believe in them?"

As Abdi thought about that, the attorney came in the room, followed by the social worker, Joe, and Abdi's parents (who had taken off from work for this meeting). The assistant principal listened to each person speak on Abdi's behalf. He said that Abdi could stay. Now Abdi just had to keep his temper in check for a few more weeks and then he would leave high school behind, diploma in hand.

The days came faster and faster. I knew Abdi was in the home stretch, but I was holding my breath, afraid he just wouldn't make it. But he did. He met all of the state requirements to graduate. His walk across the stage represented a much longer journey--from Somalia to Dadaab to Kakuma, to America. In four years, he had learned to read and write, to take on geometry and algebra, and to master the five-paragraph essay.

Abdi had reached his goal, but he had a lot of support. It made me realize that for kids at risk, getting through school isn't so much about the academics as it is about knowing that someone is paying attention, someone is rooting for you, someone is going to show up and stand by you when you get in trouble. For students like Abdi, success isn't predicated on standardized achievement; it is rooted in the unwavering faith of the people you respect.

As I sat in the theater on Friday night, my eyes welled up with tears. He had done it. He was the first Somali Bantu kid in the entire state to have a high school diploma. I looked around at the proud families surrounding me. Abdi's family was there, and his parents--who still speak very little English--applauded enthusiastically for every kid who didn't have a cheering section of his or her own.

I picked up my program booklet and as I read the names of those in the graduating class, I found no fewer than ten names I recognized. These were the children of refugees, and for many of them--most of them--they were the first in their family to finish high school. I knew them. Some of them had translated for me, some of them had served me tea, and I had served all of their parents in the course of their resettlement. Just for a moment, I could see it. I could see that I had made a difference. My work had taken away some of the stress from these parents. They had been given resources. Because of this, they were able to concentrate a bit more on the task of parenting and supporting their children. The proof of their success was steadily filing across the stage.

After the ceremony, we made our way into the crowded lobby, where the constant camera flashes were blinding. In the midst of it, I heard my name in heavily accented English: "Miss May! Miss Voirrey! Hello, hello, my friend. This is my friend. She helped me. She helped me so much. Hello, hello!" I got kisses, hugs and smiles, and I was photographed repeatedly, much to my dismay. Afghanistan. Somalia. Sudan. Bosnia. Krasnodar. Ethiopia. They were all here, and suddenly, it was my night, too. I got the message. I wasn't graduating, but I was commencing the next part of my career. This was the infusion--the proof--I needed. I should stay.

After the ceremony, I went back to Abdi's house. The small apartment was full of rambunctious little children. One of Abdi's friends had come over to wish him well. Abdi's 15-year-old sister and her best friend served huge slabs of sugary supermarket sheet cake with huge scoops of ice cream. Abdi's mother sat on the floor and ate fried chicken and salad that Susan had brought. I sat next to her and said, "Halima, are you happy?" She broke into a huge, sunny smile and said, "Happy! Yes, yes. Good. Everything goooood.!" She may have come from a culture with absolutely no history of formal education, but it was clear that Halima understood her son's accomplishment.

Abdi has big plans for the summer. He'll spend ten weeks in the AmeriCorps progam, and then he's going to start community college. He doesn't know yet what he wants to study, but he's thinking about social work. He figures, he likes helping people and working with kids, and since he's never had any money anyway, it's not like a career in social work will negatively impact him financially.

I told Abdi he has time to figure out the details of his course of study, and for the next few months, he should enjoy just how far he's come. Consider it a rest stop before the next big journey.

Please bring summer to my town

Memorial Day. It is 50 degrees, completely overcast, and spitting drizzle in intermittent fits. There's a pretty stiff breeze blowing, too.

I am miserable.

In the last two days, I happened to be watching two completely different, totally random cable programs. Both were in Aruba. One was about real estate. I think it's a message coming through the airwaves. Oh. Wait. Cable doesn't use airwaves. It's obvious, then, this message is being channeled directly from Aruba into my home via the coaxial path.

Aruba. Ocean. Sunny. Beautiful. Not gray, damp, and not miserable.

This has been the longest, most godawful, painfully slow and drawn-out spring I have ever been through. I need to move. Aruba...

The secret seems to be...

Breathe Right Nasal Strips. I used these the last two nights, and even though I went to bed well after midnight, I slept a restful six hours plus and in-and-out additional hour. This happened before when I used the Breath Right strips, but I just didn't connect the dots.

I do not have sleep apnea, and I don't snore unless I'm congested. My theory is this: I am a shallow breather most of the time, a condition largely brought about by stress and my lack of awareness about whether or not I inhale deeply. I just forget. That being said, when I use the nasal strips, I automatically breathe more deeply. Ah-ha!

This probably isn't the ultimate cure for my insomnia, espciacially since these things are expensive, but it's good to know that during the times when I am not manic, there is something that might actually let me sleep better, if not longer. Ahhhhhh.

What will it take?

This was another busy week, yet I still didn't sleep much. I'm averaging about five hours per night, and I don't care what you say, that is not enough. If you don't believe me, just check in with the National Sleep Foundation on the issue of sleep deficit.

A couple of days ago, I took all of my prescription bottles out of the cabinet and lined them up on the kitchen counter. I read each label and took note of the side-effects posted on each bottle. I take eight prescription medications right now, and five of them are prominentlly labeled with a warning indicating: This drug causes drowsiness.

You could have fooled me.

There's definitely a difference between feeling drowsy and being tired. I'm always tired, but usually wired, as well.

When I saw the "very special" physical therapist this week, she told me I needed to work on focused relaxation (more on this later). When I laughed, she asked why that was funny, and I explained that not only can't I "clear my head," but even when I only sleep a few hours, my brain is firing so intensely, I wake up making to-do lists.

If three anti-convulsants, a sleeping pill, and an anti-histamine--all taken together--don't make me catatonic, it makes me wonder...What the hell would be going on in my cranium without these medications. They are, after all, intended to slow down my neurotransmitter traffic, and bring the rest of me down a few notches, as well. My brain reminds me of an episode of Gilligan's Island when Mrs. Howell was eating radioactive sugar beets...

What I need

The weather was beautiful today. It was a sunny, cloudless day, light breeze, temperatures in the 80s and low/no humidity. This is what I need to feel well. I want this weather every single day, 365 days a year.



Is that so much to ask?

I am traveling through each day at 1,000 miles an hour, unable to stop and take a breath, take a moment, take my time. In a paradox that seems unfair at the very least, my ability to accomplish anything has been greatly diminished. There is so much to do and I am doing so much, yet I haven't done anything. It is a maddening cycle of days, endlessly repeating and compounding.

My irritability finds new intensity with each 24-hour spin of the earth. There is no one particular source of this mood; there are, in fact, several.

My body has forgotten how to sleep properly. It was insomnia that first brought me to the point of seeking medical help for the storm in my head. I remember asking the doctor, "Does insomnia cause depression or does depression cause insomnia?" He never answered my question, but he wrote a prescription for Lunesta and sent me on my way. A month later, he added Lexapro, a move that only prompted my brain to induce its first full-blown hypomania. Years later, I find myself taking eight medications, six of which have or are intended to have drowsiness as a side-effect. Why, then, can't I sleep?

I am afraid that one day my brain will implode, leaving me without the ability to recover. In my fear-stoked version of saving for a rainy day, I have crammed every day full of work, work, and more work. My doctor, my husband, my therapist all warn me to slow down, take it easy, take some time and then get some sleep. They don't understand--my level of activity isn't causing my insomnia; it is a response to it.

I'm not having manic symptoms. I know this because I am only irritable and tired--I'm not talking too much, but more telling--I'm not funny. No, everything that comes out of my mouth is laced with the snap of impatience. The glass is very much half-empty and my brain seems to be capable of generating only complaints. I annoy myself, so I can't even imagine how everyone else is perceiving this mood.

And that's what it is--it's a mood. I'm tired, I'm in chronic pain, and my resources are so depleted that patience is not even in my repertoire. What is the answer to pain that doesn't respond to treatment and sleep that never comes? My time is coming out all wrong. It's all wrong.

Complain a little more, May. It's doing so much for your image...

Another day, another mood, and good meds

Yesterday was the Big Event at work. I survived! We all survived, but the biggest hazards turned out to be each other. Our entire department gets snarky with each other when this event rolls around. I cannot hold myself above the bitchy, for lo, I am the worst of them.

Here's the thing. I'm still in chronic pain from shingles. When I do too much physically or experience too much stress emotionally, the pain flares brutally. It's worse when I don't sleep. On Wednesday night, I barely slept. This means that when Thursday rolled around, I was one big batch of Bitch.

There is no reason to recount my bad behavior here, especially since I'm sure it will be told and retold among my coworkers until it becomes legend. The only part of the day that brought me any true satisfaction was when I got into it with the parking troll who "guards" the parking lot where I work. It was a telling-off that was ten years in coming, and it just means that I won't be able to illegally park in the alley anymore. Easy come, easy go.

Here is what I know for sure. My mood came from stress, unmitigated physical pain, lack of sleep, and resentment at having to participate in an event that requires an unreasonable amount of work but results in no benefit at all to me or my coworkers. This year was the year I stopped pretending that I was a team player, on board and happy about it. Instead, I was just exceptionally frank about what I thought and how I felt the whole damn day. What a refreshing change.

Last night my feet hurt so badly that I had trouble falling asleep. The incessant throbbing was relentless--and I wore running shoes under my floor-length dress throughout the entire day. We had off today, and that was a blessing. There was no improvement to my mood, though. I can dwell under the clouds of bitchiness, deep in the Dungeon of Resentment, indefinitely. When the conditions are right, my moods are no longer within my control.

All of those bipolar medications work, although it may not seem that way. Without them, this mood would have escalated into flat-out nastiness and rude behavior. Every thought coming into my head would have exited through my mouth, unchecked and unfiltered. Taking medication doesn't stop you from having moods; the medication stops the moods from turning into something unmanageable. Sometimes I miss that lack of a filter. I can insult people with exceptional skill and intensity, but my willingness to cross that line is greatly diminished by the medication. Ah, those were the days.

Have I mentioned that the entire right side of my body is on fire? It's getting old and I'm very ready for it to end.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with myself. Every morning, as I drive to work, I play a question game with myself. There's a different game for the afternoon. The morning game is called, "If you could be anything in the world what would that be?" The answer is a litmus test for whether or not I am mentally healthy. These days, the answer is likely to be "free of pain," "lottery winner," "exceptionally thin," or an equally shallow option.

It wasn't always like that. For two years, my answer to the question was, "Dead." Every day, for more than 700 days, I asked and answered without deviation. That made me come up with another question game for the afternoon: "How would you kill yourself?" For a long time, the answer was really a list of things I wouldn't do. Then it became a list of things I would do. And then I finally got the answer, and until this moment, never revealed it to anyone.

Here's what I would do: I hate late fall, I detest winter, and I don't like spring very much because where I live, spring is often cold, wet, windy, and snowy. Summer is my haven, my salvation, the season I am awake. So, I would have to carry out my plan in the winter. On a frigid, sub-zero-temperature night, I would first sedate myself with a sufficient dose of the appropriate medications (which I have in abundance), knowing it would eventually send me into deep unconsciousness. Before that point, though, I would, quite simply, go outside and lie down in the bitter cold night, on the frozen ground of my front lawn, wearing nothing more than my pajamas and socks. Then, I would fall asleep and die--if not from the overdose, then definitely from hypothermia. It makes for an easy clean up, too, as well as being easy for the coroner to recover the body. No stairs, no walls, no furniture, no obstacles at all. No blood, no bodily fluids, no mess of any kind (with the exception of my office and basement which are beyond the scope of my organizational abilities at this point).

So, summer is on the way, and I feel cheerier at this time. The irritability will pass. The drugs will force me to feel OK, and lithium will protect me from killing myself. I will live to blog at least another 120 days. After that, it's really a matter of mood and weather. Nobody ever really knows how precarious my situation actually is, and that's probably best for my own autonomy.

The Bad Daughter

I didn't get my mother a Mother's Day gift. Her birthday is tomorrow. I didn't get her a gift for that, either.

I know this will be held against me. (You could have made a necklace for me. But I've been sick, I've been in terrible pain, and I barely made it through the Resentment necklace. That's no excuse. I'm your mother.). This conversation hasn't happened yet, but a similar version of it will.

I'm not sure what to do with that. Guilt seems so unproductive.

The bigger question might be, why didn't I buy a gift for either occasion? The truth is simple and I think I can actually admit this: I didn't get any gifts because I did not want to. Seriously.