There is nothing more comforting than a well-stocked snack drawer

Especially on a morning that you didn’t eat breakfast.

SOME dumbass we all know

... has accidentally taken his night psych meds in the morning enough times lately that his mom finally had to make a bunch of big white paste-on labels for his pill containers so he hopefully won’t get so confused again in the future.

I feel like I’m on the pill for my Endless Fucking HeadacheTM

Plus the headache gives me the backup birth control of OUCH OUCH DON’T TOUCH ME MY HEAD HURTS OUCH OUCH.

My doctor sent me a note today with the results from my labs, but I totally don’t understand whether he interpreted them to say they did or they did not confirm his preliminary diagnosis of occipital neuralgia. So I wrote back to ask for more clarification and should know more tomorrow.

But after my first day on this Prednisone course, I either actually feel or I REALLY WANT TO FEEL like the pain is better. So there’s that.

The bad news is I woke up with my head throbbing. Throb. Ing.

The good news is once I hobbled and squinted to the kitchen and ate something, my head felt considerably better. Better than it’s felt all week, I dare say.

The bad news is it still really hurts.

The good news is it feels manageable enough that it’s emboldened me to not mask it with any pain meds so I can gauge how bad it is all day.

The bad news is I won’t really get a full all-day reading because I’m crawling back in bed.

Wait ... that’s actually good news.

t-t-t-tard-d-d-d-i-v-v-v-e ....

My tardive dyskinesia—the permanent, involuntary-movement-causing neurological side effect of my bipolar meds—is firing on all cylinders tonight. I’m shaking and twitching and lurching like a sloppy drunk swatting mosquitos on a pogo stick during an earthquake right now. But my week’s obligations are over, I’m finally home, and I’m gonna find a quiet room where I can just go and WIGGLE.

Two years ago I was a pretty big mess:

I was spiraling up and down from the ramp-up and withdrawal effects of a changing cocktail of bipolar meds, my face was lacerated and I was enduring the pain of a concussion from a blackout and a full-body crash to a tile floor caused by a med that thankfully would become my lifeline and savior, and my mom was blaming autocorrect for turning “row” into “rowboat” in a post about my having a relative six good days in a rowboat. (Damn. It just happened to me too.)

But I’m now up to two good years in a rowboat, and I’m so thankful that I’ve been exposing myself daily to hundreds of people. Plus I still call dibs on “Six Good Days in a Rowboat” for my memoirs.

I just had a really good checkup with my psychiatrist

She thinks I'm stable enough that she's not going to adjust my meds. And she gave me more free samples of the new med that's been working so well for me. When she said the samples don't expire until 2020, I said that's awfully optimistic for a drug that prevents suicide ideation. 

She didn't laugh.

Here's your one chance ...

I probably shouldn’t have been so cavalier about living my life effortlessly free and clear on my bipolar meds this morning, because by noon I was sliding into a depressive episode fast enough that I left work and came home to crash. But five hours of sleep and shovelfuls of leftover Christmas comfort food have brought me back from the brink. Seeing Kelly Clarkson sing “Fancy” in tribute to Reba McEntire on Kennedy Center Honors didn’t hurt either. I’m profoundly exhausted, but I think I dodged a bullet by canceling the rest of my day to sleep. Onward!

Timber!

Two years ago today, just hours into adding yet another new bipolar med to my ever-evolving cocktail, I stood up from a chair, walked three steps, blacked completely the hell out, fell Timber! onto the tile floor (which I cracked with my face because go big or go home), shredded myself eyebrow-to-chin on my shattered glasses, bit most of the way through my lip, loosened some teeth, got a concussion, and woke up in my sister's car holding a huge bloody rag to my face too confused to remember that Christmas had happened (or, for just a few glorious moments, that I was even bipolar) as she rushed me to the ER, where I looked so brutally horrifying that the nurses assumed I was the victim of a violent assault and three police officers visited my room well before the doctor showed up to give me stitches.

I came home covered in swelling and bruises and scabs and stitches and glue--after telling the ER doctor in my foggy haze that my modeling days were over and I didn't care if he left scars all over my face but I vaguely remember him informing me that he still had a professional obligation to do his best--and filled eyeballs-to-spine with a not-for-amateurs headache that brought crippling new levels to my understanding of pain ... and yet I still found a way to take time out of my busy schedule for a quick selfie to document the occasion for future biographers. (You're welcome, posterity!)

This Timber! event was directly linked to my new drug (called Fetzima, who sounds like a resident of the Anatevka demimonde in Fiddler on the Roof) that, as with all psychotropics, came with an alarming list of ramp-up side effects ... including abrupt blackouts. But I knew from a decade-plus of trial-and-error experience that I needed to tough out the first three or four weeks until the side effects subsided and the drug's level (or not level) of efficacy manifested (or didn't manifest) itself.

And despite its hyperdramatic entrance into the musical of my life, Fetzima more-or-less quickly proved itself to be perhaps *the* drug that effectively balances my serotonin and norepinephrine and keeps me (more or less) stable and engaged and functional and capable and able to go to work and do shows and take care of my parents and run races and buy shoes and buy more shoes and here I am two years later, scar-free (thanks, conscientiously ethical ER doctor!) (though it took a good six months for the scars to heal and the scar tissue where I bit through my lip to subside to the point that I could drink out of a straw again) and concussion-free (pro tip: you do NOT. EVER. want a concussion), and clearly in possession of an added year's mouth wrinkles and silver foxiness.

So if you're inclined, raise a glass and yell Timber! in my scab-free, concussion-free, fog-free, not-functional-free honor today. I'm gonna go out and keep living. Timber!

It's Migraining Men

I spent last night dancing to "It's Raining Men" like a shameless, wanton stripper with five half-naked cop guys in a massive photography studio filled with smoke, disco lights, towering Palladian windows, a stripper pole within pants-throwing distance, and multiple photographers and videographers. Which is nothing new, really. I mean it WAS a Tuesday.

Then I spent the early morning practically grunting in pain with the first migraine I've had in probably 15 years. I'd forgotten how the pain can be so breathtaking it almost chokes you. It was so bad and I was so near-delirious that even though I knew I needed to get out of bed and find any pain medication I could get my hands on, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stand up and I'd collapse on the floor, which would be measurably worse. Or I'd get lost in the dark, because I knew from experience that the last thing I wanted to do was turn on any lights.

Now I'm at work exhausted, groggy, still in lingering pain, overdosed on acetaminophen because I can't take Ibuprofen with my psychotropics, and ingesting caffeine all but intravenously. So hello, Wednesday!

One of us is a bit twitchy and one of us is a Bitch Kitty

But only one of us can blame our issues on our bipolar meds.

LITTLE. SANTA. HATS.

As is the case with many people on psychotropic medications, my bipolar meds have given me a robust case of tardive dyskinesia, a permanent neurological disorder that causes a range of involuntary movements including twitches and wiggles and shakes and grimaces and blinks and OCD things like repetitive face touching.

And I've won the tardive dyskinesia lottery and gotten the full spectrum of these behaviors, with varying degrees of intensity. Some days my knees just shiver. Some days I have epic squinting, face rubbing, rocking and anything else my body can think of to make me super-paranoid I'm irritating the hell out of everyone around me. People often ask me if I'm nervous (which happened once at a job interview I was otherwise rocking, to my eternal mortification) or cold (my veins actually course with reptile blood and I am NEVER cold) when they see me shaking. People have asked me why I'm always on my tiptoes when I sit down (the obvious answer: to help my body shake the living hell out of my legs more annoyingly). People have politely asked me to sit still.

And while these awake behaviors are bad enough, it's the nighttime manifestations of tardive dyskinesia that are killing me. Many, MANY times every EVERY night, I end up on my back with my legs bent and my feet flat and my knees slamming against each other so violently that they wake me up--usually somehow mummified in a tangle of sheets. Or I wake myself by repeatedly running my hands through my hair like I'm a supermodel being all sexy for a shampoo commercial as I ride with the top down along the 101. Or I just rub my face like I'm Lady Macbeth but the damn spots got all over everything and I need to URGENT URGENT WAKE UP AND TELL MACBETH TO ORDER DUNKIN' AND NOT MURDER DUNCAN.

Last night it was the face. Hoo boy, was it the face. And it was so borderline violent that it hurt ... and then it stung like an advanced-degree sunburn when the water hit it in the shower this morning. Which--if you see me today--is why I look like Hobo Santa because my cheeks are ultra-rosy and I'm now on my third day of not shaving and I don't care THAT much about how I'm going to look in the family Thanksgiving photos.

I take Gabatentin three times a day to help control the reason I'm extremely bad at stealing tambourines, but that is a six-paragraph discussion for another day. Key words: opiod epidemic.

Anyway, this post started out as a few sentences about how my face hurt in the shower this morning and then I was going to show you all a photo of the Hershey's Kisses I bought last night THAT LOOK LIKE LITTLE SANTA HATS. Sorry for rambling on like this, but look at the Hershey's Kisses I bought last night THAT LOOK LIKE LITTLE SANTA HATS:

When you’re in a show

and when it’s over you race to another theater to catch the end of a show you have a bunch of friends in and then you catch the end of a wedding reception and then you catch the end of a cast party where you have a jalapeño burger you soon learn to regret and you finally get home at 2:30 am to take your Saturday pm bipolar meds really late and you carefully calculate that you should take your Sunday am meds about 11:00 to keep them somewhat evenly paced but when you go to take your am meds at 11:00 you discover that in all your careful late-night planning you accidentally took them last night and WELL SHIT:

Goodbye, Mickey 5K costume!

It’s been fun, but even in the 5:00 am Florida coolness, it’s also been hot. There’s a very good reason I never run in hats and long sleeves unless it’s below 50°: I’m a furnace.

Also: Hello, plastic box of morning and night bipolar meds that I just noticed are on the counter in front of me in my selfie! You make me a wiggly furnace.

Also: Our route this look morning looks like a laughing Muppet. Or a melting toilet with a plunger left in it:

I'm back from my three-month checkup with my psychiatrist

And she still wants to keep seeing me every three months instead of the every-4-6-week schedule I was on a year ago. This might sound good to you, but it's HUGE to me and my family. The bipolar med cocktail that she's methodically calibrated for me over the last three years seems to be keeping me stable (though the 12+ miles I've been running every week since March might also have something to do with it), and of course the tireless, diligent support of my family and friends has been an enormous part of that success.

I'm so thankful for all of this--and all of you--that I splurged on a massive bucket of Diet Coke and two super-sticky apple fritters on the way to work. Even though caffeine and sugar probably undermine the efficacy of my meds and exacerbate their weight-gain side effects. But I'm pretty sure I can manage these setbacks. :-)

Yawn

When you accidentally took your night bipolar meds—which include the sedating Clozapine—instead of your morning ones plus you didn’t rehydrate nearly enough after your morning run so you’re profoundly sleepy and your entire body feels like an immolated corpse and you need all the stimulation and moisture you can get before work:

And on all days to screw up my meds, I had my three-month psychiatrist appointment this morning. I’m apparently still normal enough to be allowed toroam among the unsuspecting citizenry, but I’ve been having near-blackouts multiple times a day for months and my blood pressure is on the alarmingly low side of normal, so now I have another compelling reason—the other one being I’m 50 and need to be responsible and get a colonoscopy—to visit my GP.

I did NOT just talk about my colon on my blog. Did I?

Anyway, I’ll call to schedule an (yawn) appointment with my (yawn) GP just as (yawn) soon as I rehydrate my (yawn) cells and wake the hell (yawn) up.

Yawn. Colon.

Well, shit

When you get home from an amazingly awesome vacation and you set down your painstakingly-filled-by-your-mother container of bipolar meds divided into an entire week of morning and evening handfuls of pills and it slips and lands face-down on the carpet and pops open and basically her worst nightmare explodes right before your eyes ...

I’ve had a couple am/pm mixups in the fistfuls of bipolar meds I choke down twice a day

Mom has now ever-so-subtly tried to fix my absent-mindedness.

Timber!

One year ago today, just hours into adding yet another new bipolar med to my ever-evolving cocktail, I stood up from a chair, walked three steps, blacked completely the hell out, fell Timber! onto the tile floor (which I cracked with my face because go big or go home), shredded myself eyebrow to chin on my shattered glasses, bit most of the way through my lip, loosened some teeth, got a concussion, and woke up in my sister's car holding a huge bloody rag to my face too confused to remember that Christmas had happened (or, for just a few glorious moments, that I was even bipolar) as she rushed me to the ER, where I looked so brutally horrifying that the nurses assumed I was the victim of a violent assault and three police officers visited my room well before the doctor showed up to give me stitches.

I came home covered in swelling and bruises and scabs and stitches and glue -- after telling the ER doctor in my foggy haze that my modeling days were over and I didn't care if he left scars all over my face but I vaguely remember him informing me that he still had a professional obligation to do his best -- and filled eyeballs-to-spine with a not-for-amateurs headache that brought crippling new levels to my understanding of pain ... and yet I still found a way to take time out of my busy schedule for a quick selfie to document the occasion for future biographers. (You're welcome, posterity!)

This Timber! event was directly linked to my new drug (called Fetzima, who sounds like a resident of the Anatevka demimonde in Fiddler on the Roof) that, as with all psychotropics, came with an alarming list of ramp-up side effects ... including abrupt blackouts. But I knew from a decade-plus of trial-and-error experience that I needed to tough out the first three or four weeks until the side effects subsided and the drug's level (or not level) of efficacy manifested (or didn't manifest) itself.

And despite its hyperdramatic entrance into the musical of my life, Fetzima more-or-less quickly proved itself to be perhaps the drug that effectively balances my serotonin and norepinephrine and keeps me (more or less) stable and engaged and functional and capable and able to go to work and do shows and take care of my parents and run races and buy shoes and buy more shoes and here I am a year later, scar-free (thanks, conscientiously ethical ER doctor!) (though it took a good six months for the scars to heal and the scar tissue where I bit through my lip to subside to the point that I could drink out of a straw again) and concussion-free (pro tip: you do NOT. EVER. want a concussion), and clearly in possession of an added year's mouth wrinkles and silver foxiness.

So if you're inclined, raise a glass and yell Timber! in my scab-free, concussion-free, fog-free, not-functional-free honor today. I'm gonna go out and keep living. Timber!

I’d forgotten about this post

I’d forgotten about this day, this episode, this helpless despondency ... probably as soon as it melted into the ocean of some-better-some-worse days, episodes and helpless despondencies that I’ve navigated my way through over the last decade. I’m coming up on the one-year anniversary of starting THE med cocktail: the one that—while still not perfect—has kept me overwhelmingly functional and present and foundationally able to live and participate and just BE. I’m thankful for the pharmacology, I’m thankful for the determination of my family, I’m thankful for the understanding and support of everyone around me ... but it’s KILLING me that I didn’t proofread this before I posted it, and though it’s a perfectly preserved time capsule of a day and an episode and a helpless despondency, it’s taking everything in me not to go back and edit it today.

This is the face of near-catastrophic bipolar depression. This is also a brain dump of a Facebook post that may or may not be a shameless plea for affirmation or an embarrassingly disjointed documentation of my current inability to generate linear thought. I haven't decided yet. Because I haven't written it yet. And I don't know where to start.

I fell over getting out of my car this morning at work. I opened the door, grabbed the frame to pull myself up and immediately lost all sensation of the direction of gravity, spinning to my left, rolling against the rear door and hitting my head on the door frame on my way to the ground. I've felt a little off-balance all week since my doctor doubled one of my meds on Monday but this was the first time I went full-pavement.

My right hand is slowly losing its ability to function. Last week I couldn't push the button on the key fob to unlock my car door. Last weekend I couldn't hold on to a tube of chap stick hard enough to pull the cap off. Last night I couldn't pick anything up with my chopsticks at the restaurant where we celebrated my brother-in-law's birthday. This morning -- after realizing I was plummeting faster than I could manage to control at work -- I couldn't pull the key out of the ignition when I got home.

I have no idea if any of this is related to being bipolar, changing meds or something entirely unrelated, but it's the easiest to explain.

My depressive episodes are mostly about fogginess (I get lost physically and mentally, I forget stuff like things I promised to do or why my parents are gone for the night) and abject despondency (everyone I know hates me, I don't care if I live or die). Fortunately, I've been doing this a long time and I can look at it all objectively -- no matter how acute or systemic or visceral or urgent the feelings are -- and know with slightly foggy certainty that none of it is real and it will all pass and if I can just find a blanket and a dark corner and a couple of uninterrupted hours I'll be emotionally drained but highly functional.

I'm a 48-year-old man who after a 15-year advertising career in Chicago moved home to Iowa ostensibly to care for his blind father but more as it turns out to be cared for as a mentally ill person by his parents. On paper, I hate everything in that sentence. In reality, I'm currently sitting in the glow of the Christmas tree with both my parents and Bitch Kitty and I'm so thrilled I get to share so much of my adult life with them and that alone helps me rebound when I spiral out of control.

It has taken me over two hours of intense concentration to write this. But I'd already napped for five hours and writing this gave me something relatively constructive to do instead of stewing in self pity. I know I probably spend way too much time on here talking about being bipolar but it helps me clear my head and organize my thoughts and in some ways make myself accountable for my own mental health. And it's even helped me bond with a number of you who have confided in me about your own struggles with mental illness. You call me "brace." I call myself "unfiltered." But if any of us finds value in my ramblings, it helps compensate for the fact that I've probably scared away every eligible gay man in Linn and Johnson counties.

600 paragraphs ago, I said I didn't know where this post was going. Almost three hours later, I don't have a clear recollection of where it wandered to wind up here. And I'm not going to proof or edit it so when I emerge from this episode I can maybe see how the depressed me kicks through the brambles and strings together thoughts. In the mean time, I have my blanket and dark corner and I'm finally sleepy again. For those of you still with me, thank you for your friendship and support and kind words. And good-night.