ECT

People react to stress, pain in all kinds of ways. Some people call on friends and family for support. Some lean on their faith. Some self- destruct. I seek oblivion.

I just went on a walk, durring which I had a long conversation with myself about whether or not i would call my psychdoc tomorrow and request some ECT treatments. Not that I am any more deppressed then normal. I am just in pain. I hate my body. I'm afraid to get up in the morning and face the day. I miss Emma so much it takes my breath away. Everything hurts right now. The ECT wuold take it all away; the pain the fear, the self-hatred, the ache, all wiped away in one electric moment.
I want to feel the sting of the iv as it goes in, the burn of the injection, the chemical whiff of the medication as it puts me to sleep. I want to wake up with no idea where i am. Someone can drive me home, and I can sit on the couch all day and think of nothing. It's so tempting.

I'm not going to call.

A borring post

Remember my "21 day challenge"? You know, how i wasn't going to binge or purge for 21 days? Well, I only made it 12 days. But I am going to take the advice that my friend Kara so wisely gave me when i started the challenge and i'm not going to beat myself up for not making it. I'm dissappionted, but i would still consider the experience a success. I mean, 12 days is a long time for me! That's almost 2 weeks! And. I think it's even more of a success because I wasn't restricting or sticking just to safe foods; I was challenging myself to eat regular meals and "fear foods" and still not purging. So, all in all I think I did a pretty good job. Now my task is to not let this setback become permanent; to pick myself up and start again.
Last night my heart was beating really irregularly and it really scared me. It reminded me that I have been doing this for way too long, and I cant' afford even one day of bingeing and purging. I tend to think that since i am at a healthy weight i don't have to worry about medical consequences of my behavior. Last night my heart was telling me otherwise. I so don't want to throw my life away over this!

I did get to talk to Emma yesterday. She made it to Bosnia safely and i was so relieved to hear her voice. I am thinking about her alot today and wondering how in the world I am going to make it through the next month!

Today is Annie's b-day. We had the big party last week so Emma wouldn't miss it; I think today we will just go have dinner at McDonalds and let her play on the playground there ot something.

I am having MAJOR body image issues. Due to not purging and challenging myself i have gained a little weight the last few weeks and am really struggling with it. It's really hard for me to "trust my body" because I feel like it always betrays me! I would love to be able to eat like a regular person, like my D and T say i can, but when I do, i just gain a bunch of weight! GRrr!

Well, not much else is going on here. Pretty borring stuff. Sorry i complained so much on this post. Sometimes it seems like recovery is so hard and i just need to vent.

the curry cure

My Emma is in a airplane somewhere, probably still over the united states aat this point. The fact that she is gone fills me with fear, sadness, ect. My mommy instincts are telling me to hurry up and get on a plane and go after her, but of course I can't do that. This trip was planned, I let her go. It's a strange, helpless sort of feeling.

So I must distract. I have decided to cook up a big Indian feast for the missionnaries, who come to dinner on the first saturday of the month. Chris and

I looove Indian food; we had our favorite places in Salt Lake, but there are just no Indian restraunts here. So, I have a few cookbooks, and am trying to learn to cook it myself. But it has been several months since I have tryed any of the recipies, because my eating disorder was telling me i couldn't eat Indian food. Well, I have been doing much better this last little while and have been taking more risks and challenges, and am ready to dive back in.

So, this afternoon, I put on my favorite Bowie cd, made some green chutney, and mixed up some dough for naan bread, which is currently rising. I am insanely excited about this, as i love naan bread but have never attempted to make it. Later, I will make samosas and Balti chicken.

I love cooking Indian food because it is more like art then cooking; more of a hobby then a household task. There is such a focus on the blending of spices and flavors, there are so many different steps and techinques that are layered and blended in, and when you are eating the finished product you can taste all of that, almost like eating a story, or poetry. If that makes any sense. I really can lose myself while I'm cooking Indian food.

Which is kind of what I need right now. To lose myself, but in a healthy way.

retail therapy

Help! I am, as my father-in-law would say, "in the debtor's prison"! He he! I love saying that and use that little phrase ever since the first time i heard him say it. The funny thing is, when my father-in-law says it, he's serious! One day, he just called us out of the blue to ask us if we were "in the debtor's prison". Sheesh!

Anyway, back to my transgressions. First up: neccessary $25 haircut turned unneccessary $80 highlights. But i love it! I know in the picture I look mad but i'm really not; i'm extremely happy because for once i feel beautiful. So to me it was totally worth it.
Next up was a trip to Younkers to take back a pair of totally impractical shoes. See, I was trying to be good. Buut I had it in the back of my mind that I "needed" this body glitter brush thingy from victoria's secret, that if i could just have it i would be young and sexy again and all of my dreams would come true; plus i had a $10 off card, so i popped into Vicky's for a second. Well, they were running a beauty promo: buy so much stuff and get this cute little bag full of free stuff. So of course i had to spend a little more. And put it all on my VS card. Debtor's Prison, here i come!
But the makeup i got was so cute; liquid gold eyeliner and gold eyeshadow (please refer to photo at top of post; I couldn't figure out how to drag it down)! I needed something to get me excited for summmer. I know, i shouldn't focus on the outside so much, but when i feel like i look beautiful, the world just seems like a better place.
Even from behind"prison bars".

med changes and mild triggers

Well, i did get in to see my psychiatrist about that whole anger thing i wrote about in my last post. He doesn't think it's the Seroquel. He thinks the most likely culprit is the Topamax, which we increased last month. He wants me to taper off the Topamax, and increase the risperdal.

Here's the really annoying thing. He asked me why i was on topamax in the first place (ok, it's annoying that my doctor doesn't know why he is prescribing my meds apparantly but no, that is not the annoying thing to which i am referring) and i couldn't quite remember. He said that it wasn't proven to be good for Bipolar disorder, and he was going through his notes, and then he said "I think you were on it to lose weight."!
Gggaaaahhh! Are you freaking kidding me? At no point (outside of my own imagination) have i needed to lose weight, or sought medical help for such a problem. Especially not recently! In fact, i had just come from an appointment with the dietitian where we were discussing my overall goal of weigh gain. But of course, as soon as he said that, i thought "I must look like i need to lose weight. I must look fat. Blah blah blah....". Seriously! This guy knows i have an ED, why would he say that to me! What a gomer! Well, I guess he's only human and can make mistakes, but still. He really isn't very involved on the ED front. The reason I see him is because he is one of only two docs in town who do ECT's, so just in case i need the "electrical cure" again he could do it.
In the end, we figured out that i was taking Topamax because a few studies have shown that it is helpful in cases of bulimia. And personally, i kind of like the appetite suppressing qualities, especially since i am taking risperidal and seroquel, bolth of which increase the appetite. So i am a little nervous about going off the topamax and increasing the risperidal. I'm worried i'm going to gain weight out-of-control, and let's face it, my body image isn't so hot already. I think about restricting ALL THE TIME (not acting on it, just thinking about it). I just want to find a way to be happy and not think about food, weight, or my body! If only there was a pill for that...

BTW I HAVEN'T PURGED IN 10 DAYS!

furious

http://www.adrugrecall.com/seroquel/anger.htmlquick quiz:

Let's say you are putting away the dry dishes in your kitchen and you drop a fork. Would you

a. pick up the fork

or

b. SWEAR LOUDLY, KICK A CABINET, PUNCH THE FRIDGE

If you were me lately the answer would, sadly, be "b". I don't know what the deal is, but lately, this really intense anger, rage almost, has taken hold. I walk around feeling like i am about to blow. Constantly. It feels so out of control, so unlike me. Everything my husband says pisses me off and gets on my nerves. Dealing with the kids without losing it is sooo hard. It kind of feels like I have pms times 1000, and its not even that time of the month. I feel waaay overstimulated, with emotions and sensations coming at me all at once, and i get frustrated and want to scream or curl up in a ball and hide.

This happened a few weeks ago, lasted a couple of days, went away, and now it's happening again. I'm not sure what is going on, but i made an appointment with my psychiatrist for tommorrow, because it feels like something chemical is out of whack. Because nothing bad is happening in my life to make me feel this way. I just hope he doesn't want to add any medication, i already take 5 of them, but maybe something needs to be tweaked, like my seroquel could be increased or something. I had to treat myself to a little extra seroquel this morning just to get the rage under control so i could function and not kill anybody.
I feel so ashamed about this. I hate being an angry person. I especially hate being an angry mommy! I don't want to be a mommy who loses her patience and yells or is snappy. I only want to be kind and fun and loving! I am praying that the psychiatrist has some answers for me.
As I was driving in my car this morning thinking about all this stuff, "the Bitch is Back" by Elton John came on the radio. Oh the irony.


EDIT:
after doing some research on the internet, i found this site http://www.adrugrecall.com/seroquel/anger.html, and also some information about how Topamax can cause uncontrollable rage and anger. Great. I depend on these medications to keep me sane. i feel so hopeless right now, like crying. I hope my doc can shed some light on this tommorrow.

T minus 5 days....

....and counting until Emma leaves. Zlatko is picking her up Friday evening, and they are flying out Saturday. For Bosnia. You know, that little war-torn country on the ass-end of Europe. It doesn't help that i recently saw the movie "Taken", in which Liam Niessen's character gets kidnapped by a bunch of Albanian(Bosnian) thugs and sold into the sex trade. 7 years old is too young to get kidnapped for the sex trade, right? It terrifies me that she could just dissappear and i would never see her again. Another thing that i worry about is that in Bosnia there are still land mines from the war that nobody has ever found and once in awhile someone steps on one and gets blown up. It doesn't happen alot, but it happens.

Ok, i just have to remind myself that Zlatko really loves Emma, too, and he wouldn't take her to anywhere dangerous or let anything happen to her. I hope.

But what if the plane crashes?

It's going to be a long 4 weeks.

Emma has been to Bosnia 2 other times. I'm trying to remember how i got through it before. Well, the first time she went, I timed my treatment so i would be inpatient at the Center for Change the whole time she was gone. This was extremely helpful, as there was always a nurse standing at ready with a dose of Xanax or a shot of Haldol for my FFO's (Frequent Freak Outs). And i got to process my fears and anxieties in group. But mostly, i was dealing with my eating disorder issues so much that it was a huge distraction and i didnt constantly worry about Emma.
The second time Emma went to Bosnia is more of a mystery to me. It is a mystery because i have no memory of it. I'm talking about an entire month of Emma being out of the country, and it's a total blank. There is only one probable explanation for this: heavy Xanax use. This would make sense, because i'm sure that I had alot of anxiety over Emma being gone. But it's sad to think that instead of talking about it or trying to use coping skills, i took so much Xanax that i lost memory.
Well, this is now, and i no longer have Xanax as part of my psychopharmceutical arsenal. Which is good, but at the same time, scarry! How will i deal, when those fears overtake me, and i cant get my brain to shut off, and i can't think about anything else. I can pray. I can practice trusting, which is something that I am not so good at. Trusting that everything will be ok, that things will work out. And, in an emergency, i am authorized to take some of my Seroquel as a prn.

Goals for the week: Buy an international phonecard. Take a deep breath.