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!

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. :-)

This cartoon is insane

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.

Science!

So for the second appointment in a row my psychiatrist wants to see me in three months instead of six weeks like I’ve been seeing her over the last few years. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m still (relatively) stable or because I wore my phrenology shirt, but my muddled brain and my high deductible will take it.

Why is the hold music at my psychiatrist’s office playing “Send in the Clowns”?

Asking for a friend.

Well.

I just had my regular six-week psychiatrist appointment and apparently my bipolar crazy seems under control enough that she doesn’t want to see me again for three months.

Or I smell so bad that she doesn’t want to see me again for three months.

Either way, the important takeaway is I’m going to save so much on copays that I can go to Paris!

Remember the hot hot hot medical resident with the distractingly sexy forearms who sat in on my psychiatrist appointment a month ago?

I SAW HIM AGAIN LAST NIGHT!

Unfortunately it was in the ER.

Unfortunately it was because my dad’s COPD complications that landed him in the hospital last week got alarmingly bad enough yesterday that we rushed him back gasping for air.

Unfortunately he also has pneumonia this time.

Unfortunately they also found evidence of staph.

Unfortunately my mom is home with fevery, shaky flu symptoms so she can’t even visit him.

Fortunately though, my sister is able to take the day off to stay in the hospital with Dad.

Fortunately also, I’m able to take the day off to stay home with Mom.

So fortunately things are as under control as we can make them.

But unfortunately—and I’m trying to maintain my emotional composure here—the hot hot hot medical resident with the distractingly sexy forearms who first attended to Dad in the ER last night didn’t look at me with a flicker of either recognition or interest. On any the times he stopped in Dad’s room. ANY. OF. THEM. So our marriage is clearly over before we even scheduled a cake tasting.

So to lighten the mood, I’m posting something that the Internet gave me when I googled “funny sick cat photos.”

I just had my six-week psychiatrist checkup

(I'm still crazypants biploar but things continue to be stable and we're not altering my meds this time, thanks for asking) and when my psychiatrist met me in the waiting room she asked me if it was OK if a residency doctor observed my visit and of course I said yes because I'm clearly not a hide-my-crazypants-biploarness person and when we got to her office and she opened the door and he was politely standing there waiting to shake hands and introduce himself OH MY GOD HE WAS TALL AND HANDSOME AND LET'S NOT MINCE WORDS HERE HOT HOT HOT and we sat down for my visit but I kept looking over at his let's still not mince words here sexy forearms because that's all I could see besides his face because he rudely wasn't wearing a Speedo and WHY ARE YOU SO HOT STOP DISTRACTING ME and we talked about all the usual stuff like my moods and my appetite and my feelings of control and my ability to concen OH MY GOD I CAN'T CONCENTRATE BECAUSE JUST LOOK AT HIM HE'S TOO HOT TO WALK THIS EARTH trate and any side effects of my meds (still lingering exhaustion, but thankfully it's not 24 hours a day like it has been) and is there anything else I think would be relevant to tell her WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME HAVE YOU EVEN NOTICED THE LET'S AGAIN NOT MINCE WORDS HERE HOT HOT HOT MAN WHO'S ABOUT TO BE A DOCTOR AND I THINK WE CAN ALL AGREE IT WOULD BE A VERY GOOD THING FOR ME TO MARRY A DOCTOR AND HE'S SITTING IN THAT CHAIR RIGHT THERE SO CLOSE I COULD STARE AT HIM FOR HOURS WHOOPS I JUST DID and I said that I've actually ramped up the activities in my life like Follies rehearsals and editing a massive book pro bono and making my bedroom renovation finally really start to happen and cleaning out the storage room in our basement AND WHY WHY WHY DOES THIS INSANELY HANDSOME MAN HAVE TO KNOW I'M CRAZYPANTS BIPOLAR PLUS NOW HAVE A DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP WITH ME BECAUSE THAT PRETTY MUCH GUARANTEES THAT'S THE ONLY KIND OF RELATIONSHIP WE'LL EVER HAVE BUT HOLY SHIT WE'D LOOK HANDSOME IN OUR WEDDING PHOTOS and she gave me some more free samples of my really expensive medication and we scheduled my next six-week visit AND FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND HOLY MAKE SURE HE'S STILL RESIDENTING WITH YOU WHEN I GET BACK IN SIX WEEKS and I think we had a really productive visit.

A needle in the haygurl

I am fully aware that the "people you may know" Facebook feature is not a poor man's Match.com. Nevertheless, I persist at treating it as such and I greedily swipe through it every time it appears on my feed in the hopes of finding the one local age-appropriate reasonably athletic show-tune loving human non-sequitur needle in the cliché-loathing haygurl who I know Facebook will deliver to my screen if I look just THIS ONE LAST TIME.

But Facebook keeps showing me in random order the same people I clearly after all this time STILL DON'T KNOW: local women, long-bearded undergrads who live 45 miles away, guys in Venezuela I share one friend with, and people who use Nell Carter for their profile photos. Plus my psychiatrist from Chicago who I had to leave for a different psychiatrist because not only was she mortally opposed to the very existence of Diet Coke but she didn't inform me of this fact -- and, granted, she didn't yet have a reason to -- until I brought a large McDonald's Diet Coke to her office and after I learned she really didn't want me even having it in her office I reached over to pick it up so I could pour it in her little office sink but instead I bumped it and spilled it all over her couch, throw pillows, artfully draped pashmina and carpet and neither of us had any way to clean it up except for the box of Kleenex on her table and the sweaty gym clothes in my bag and I was dying by fiery degrees inside as I simultaneously struggled to clean it up, apologized profusely, and marveled at the sheer liquid volume of seepy, drippy horror that a larger-than-I-thought container of delicious carbonated chemicals could inflict in mere seconds across the entirety of this poor woman's office furniture, décor and feng shui. Needless to say, I could never face her again and I began the hunt for a new in-network, geographically desirable psychiatrist almost as soon as I got in her elevator. So yes, Facebook, she technically IS a person I know. Score one for you! But under the circumstances, she is currently a poor dating choice for you to repeatedly offer me in the poor-man's Match.com you so misleadingly call "people you may know."

Oh -- and aside from any oblique references to show tunes or spilled liquids, the attached picture has almost no relevance to this post. I just thought it was funny. And you should find me a boyfriend.