hsphaven

“Was there a moment when I felt no pain?
I want to feel it in my life again.
Let it be over now.
Oh Oh over now.”

Sarah Brightman, ‘Only An Ocean Away‘

This is going to be a difficult post to make. I do want to process the last few days, but I also don’t want to re-visit them as they were so distressing. I am also extremely tired now, so don’t have much energy to write a long post.

I wrote a post about the impact Dexamphetamine had on me last time I took it. It has taken a few days for the physical symptoms to go away. Mania symptoms, such as shaking, can feel a lot like anxiety. I’ve heard it called “bipolar anxiety”. My heart was skipping and it felt like I had a thousand butterflies thrashing about in my stomach. The difference between this anxiety is that it is not really associated with any negative thoughts or things that happen. It is purely physiological, the result of an extremely heightened nervous system. Mania and stimulants can take a massive toll on our bodies. I didn’t sleep at all that night, even though I took the Dex in the morning. I was up at 1:30am in the bathroom. The male nurse, who was as emotionless as a rock, came to my door and asked if I was ok.

“Not really”, I said. My euphoria had gone, and I was now depressed, distressed, and left with only the yucky aspects of mania such as insomnia, heart palpitations, and endless neurotic texting. I think I was in some kind of “mixed episode” or something.

The nurse then left.

What he really should have said was “Are you still alive?”, because that’s all the night nurses seem to care about: keeping people living, breathing objects. They don’t want to talk with you. They don’t care how you feel inside or that you are suffering, they just don’t want you to die under their care.

I lay in bed trying to sleep but I just suffered. I wanted to crawl back to Betty. It’s been years but I still haven’t managed to break the trauma bond I formed with her.

I ended up getting out of bed and pacing around the dark, empty corridors. I wandered into other wards and up the other end of the hospital. One of the nurses in another ward told me to return to my ward and have some medication. I wandered back to my ward, stood at window at the end of a corridor and watched the traffic go past. Eventually one of the nurses, an older lady, found me. But I was very out of it. I couldn’t even talk. I don’t know whether it was because the Dex/high overwhelmed my nervous system so much it had gone into shut down mode. Or maybe I just thought what’s the point in talking, no body bloody listens anyway. She asked me to come back to my room. I ignored her.

“How can I help you, I can’t mind read,” said the nurse.

“Would you like a hot drink?”

I couldn’t believe she thought a hot drink would fix this.

“I can’t have you wandering around the corridors at night,” she said. “I don’t mind if you don’t want to sleep, but you have to go back to your room.”

It’s not that I didn’t WANT to sleep, I just COULDN’T sleep.

Eventually I complied and she took me back to my room. She tried to make my bed comfortable.

“These pillows are shocking!” she commented.

She left the bathroom light on thinking I might like some light, and she also left my door slightly open. But the patient opposite me was playing some audio and I could hear it from my room. When she left I got up again, opened my door and stood there facing the offending patient’s room. The nurse came back and tried to get me to go back to bed.

The night was one of the longest, most torturous nights I’ve had. There was absolutely nothing I could do to make the time pass. I enjoyed nothing. I put my strawberry robe on with the big strawberry hood, which comforted me (it can be bought here, for anyone who’s interested). I felt like maybe a little child personality was emerging, so I tried watching Winnie the Pooh on my laptop to see if that calmed them down. But I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t cry, even though I wanted to. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t talk. I felt trapped inside myself. Eventually I wrote down everything I was feeling and handed it to the nurses.

“We’ll pass this onto your doctor,” was their response. But I needed help right that minute. It was so hard to communicate my needs with them.

I listened to a song I used to love when I was younger called “Only An Ocean Away” by Sarah Brightman. “Wish I wasn’t crying”, she sung. “Can you hear me crying?”. I wondered whether anyone could feel me and know I was crying deep inside, even though no tears escaped my eyes.

Somehow I managed to make it to the morning. But nothing felt real and I felt like I was trapped, going through the endless cycles of day and night, never getting a break. I didn’t even feel tired, I was just sick of being awake. There was a moment when I started to relax and drift off, but then the morning nurse woke me to ask if I wanted to see my NDIS worker later that day. I nodded, still unable to speak. I felt sick/nauseous.

The whole experience felt like the day I nearly drowned in a surf beach. I was with other people and there were surfers nearby but I realised I was in deep shit, and even with people around me I could still die. That’s how I felt here. Even in a hospital with nurses and doctors around I felt I could die. It was the most lonely, hopeless feeling in the world.

I actually managed to still go out with my NDIS worker later that day. We went to the beach and I went for a swim. It was better medicine than anything the hospital could have given me. I had a great day, but as soon as I returned to the hospital my heart palpitations came back. I worried they would never go away, that the Dexamphetamine had caused some permanent heart or anxiety condition in me.

That evening, I suddenly fell asleep after texting my friend. But then the nurse woke me at 9:30pm to do my blood pressure. I felt disoriented and really unwell physically upon awakening. That evening I lay on my bed and I actually managed to cry this time. I thought I was even going to start screaming at one point. I felt so alone. I wished I had a partner or someone who could just hold me and be there with me. I’m just so fucking lonely and touch-starved. I felt like I was never going to get better and this pain would never end. I wanted to die. I wanted it all to be over. I pressed the “call a nurse” buzzer. The same nurse I had the previous night came to the door. She came back with some Diazepam this time.

“Here’s some anxiety,” she said, forgetting to say pills. We laughed.

“Please no more anxiety!” I told her jokingly.

While my friend warns me about benzodiazepine withdrawal, I figured taking them for a few weeks while I’m in hospital would be ok. I had to take something as another night like the previous night would have killed me. Usually the Diazepam helps me sleep, but this time it didn’t. I suffered for an hour and then got up and asked for some quick acting Olanzapine. Finally I fell asleep, and I slept until 2:30pm today. I went from one extreme to the other. And I’m pleased to say my heart palpitations have finally gone away. I just needed some sleep.

I saw my doctor today. He suggested maybe halving the dose of the Dexamphetamine. It is already the lowest dose available, so the nurse will need to cut the tablet in half. He said he originally didn’t think I had bipolar, so didn’t predict this reaction in me. He suggested a mood stabiliser called Topamax. I had never heard of the drug before. It is used to treat epilepsy and migraines, but is also used off-label as a treatment for PTSD and bipolar, especially in people who have not responded well to the more conventional mood stabilisers. Many other mood stabilisers make people put on weight, but many people find Topamax kills their appetite and they lose weight. However a common side effect is tingles in the body. I already get this, and find it distressing. If this drug made it worse I know it would make me even more distressed, depressed and suicidal, so I decided the cons outweigh the pros and I will pass on this one.