My Natural, Wonderful, Special Bipolar Self Again!

Well, here I am! My natural, wonderful, special bipolar self again! New and improved! Well, at least that's how it feels now that I've gotten a few nights of good sleep under my belt.

My doctor changed my medication, and I've been able to get back to a regular sleep pattern and to sleep well again, awakening refreshed and alert in the morning, not even waking up during the night to go to the bathroom or anything! It's great!

Sleep means a lot to me. I'm always preaching to everyone with bipolar disorder how important regular, uninterrupted sleep is to good management of bipolar. Now you see why!

Just a couple nights without it, and look what it turned me into! I'm almost embarrassed to read my last post, the one I wrote without any sleep. It was probably a jumble of unreadable mess, I'm afraid. I was just so exhausted.

I looked at the time stamp on here afterward, too, and it said 1 a.m., and I thought, "Oh, gee, they're going to think I'm really out of my mind," because here it was 4 a.m.! I promise you, I really was up all night that night! My exhaustion can bear out the truth on that one.

It was like my body was awake, its parts were functioning (bearly), doing what they were supposed to (I could walk and all), but my mind was just not there, if you know what I mean. Like I was trying to see through oatmeal! This great big fog sort of surrounded me, and even though I could technically walk, it was like I was trying to walk through pea soup!

Ok, ok, enough of the graphics. I was just plain exhausted, all right?

That's what lack of sleep will do to you. But what lack of sleep consistently will do to a person with bipolar disorder is that it will put them into a bipolar episode if not straight into the hospital! Which was where I was headed, if I didn't do something quickly.

I called my psychiatrist after that last post I wrote, later that day, and I spoke to his nurse. I explained the situation, and she was concerned that I was slurring my words (imagine that). I told her that if she had gone without sleep as long as I had, she would probably be slurring her words, too!

She said she would talk to the doctor and call me back.

Well, after several hours, she did call me back. She said she was calling in a prescription for me to the pharmacy that I could take that night that should help me sleep.

Thank God for a good psychiatrist. And thank God for good medication.

I finally slept that night. Really slept. I didn't even get up to go to the bathroom or anything! I slept straight through the night, awakening refreshed and alert the next morning, like I'd had a really great night's sleep (which, apparently, I did!).

I finally felt like myself again!

No more walking through pea soup or looking through oatmeal! Yeah!

The point is, if you're having trouble sleeping, don't let it go on too long. Lack of sleep is one of the biggest triggers to a bipolar manic episode that there is.

Call your psychiatrist like I did. It could just be a matter of your medication stopping working, like it did in my case, so just a switch in medication could be like a magic "cure" for you, like it was for me!

Don't wait. Solving a problem like this can be a matter of only a phone call away.

Wishing you peace and stability,

Remember God loves you and so do I,
Michele
ps. Check out my new bipolar book at: www.brokenroseministries.com