Category Archives: mom

I dis­con­tin­ued my Effexor Fri­day and started my (hope­fully final) 1500 mg. level of lithium dos­ing. No nau­sea side effects, but like clock­work I’ve started feel­ing weepy and volatile and shaky. Yes­ter­day it was argu­ing with the trans­porta­tion chief, the inpa­tient social worker, and finally, the head of social ser­vices at the hos­pi­tal where my mother stayed last week. See, to com­pound the almighty clus­ter­fuck that was her stay, the inpa­tient sw signed my mother up for trans­porta­tion, even though her address isn’t on the list of pickup areas. And he couldn’t check, because he didn’t do it until after the depart­ment had left for the day, and only after I left him a blast­ing voice mail–despite the fact that he’d known for 2 days that trans­port was needed.

I started shak­ing yes­ter­day with nau­sea and rage when my brother called me. My mother’d got­ten up at 5:15 and was ready at 7. No van, how­ever. She tried call­ing, but she’s not yet with it enough to really get what they’re telling her. (Funny, the col­li­sion of instinct and insight.) So then she called Brother, who called me. He was at the end of his rope. So I called and got the trans­porta­tion man­ager. He said he’d talk to the inpa­tient sw and some­one would call me back in 15 min­utes. An hour later I called the trans­porta­tion man­ager back, furi­ouser and furi­ouser. Well, of course he’d spo­ken with the f*ing moron I told him not to bother with, since I’ve appar­ently scared the use­less shit so much he won’t return a call to me. (and no, I never swore once out loud to any­one…) So I told the trans­porta­tion man­ager that I wanted the head of social ser­vices. More resis­tance. I said “look, I know you’re just telling me the facts and the mess up isn’t your fault, but you can get me the head of social ser­vices or I will just fax the Risk Manager.”

“I’ll put you right through.” I thought so.

I got her voice mail. My voice was trem­bling with rage and exhaus­tion. If I didn’t get this started toward a solu­tion, I don’t know what I’dve done. I didn’t men­tion the Risk Man­ager. She called me back in 15 min­utes. I explained the sit­u­a­tion, my voice still sound­ing shaky and teary as I explained the fuck­ing idiocy of this inpa­tient social worker. (Again, I didn’t swear, but I used the words “shocked,” “con­cerned,” “extremely wor­ried” and “pre­cip­i­tate a relapse.”) “He never called you back?!?” “I hope he’s new,” I told her. I then held for 5 min­utes while she grabbed my mother’s paper file. “I see a list of ‘social work goals’ signed by Brother here. Did any of this get done?” “No. No case­worker. No med­ica­tion man­age­ment. No SSDI appli­ca­tion guid­ance. Nothing.”

She was appro­pri­ately apolo­getic. There isn’t much they can do for get­ting her to their day pro­gram, since she’s not yet fit to drive, and she really is out of their pick-up area. But she took all the infor­ma­tion we’d col­lected about whom we’d spo­ken with, try­ing to get set up, and said she would fol­low up with the agen­cies, includ­ing a case­worker refer­ral. She is also going to refer Mom to a more local day pro­gram, and will con­firm transportation.

Finally, some­one with a brain. Only took a week. A nasty let­ter to the Risk Man­ager may still be in order, how­ever. But we’ll see what the rest of the week holds.

After I got off the phone, I threw up. And then shook for about a half an hour. And then went to the Trader Joe’s for gro­ceries and some med­i­c­i­nal wine. On the way home, a dis­abled vet, pan­han­dling at an inter­sec­tion, caught my eye. He could be renamed Mr. PTSD, the dis­may on his face was so appar­ent. We’ve recently not had any cash, but I got paid last week. Five dol­lars to him was worth left­overs for lunch all week– hell, I have left­overs. I snif­fled and snor­fled the rest of the drive, thank­ful for Home. Once inside, I was freez­ing, shak­ing cold– so I crawled into bed for an hour, until the BH came home and made me sup­per. I can’t say that the two glasses of med­i­c­i­nal mer­lot were a cure, but they did make me stop shak­ing so hard. After fur­ther agi­ta­tion, an ati­van sent me off to sleepy-time. Today, since the project I am work­ing on is fraught with data­base cor­rup­tion, I got to sleep until 10. It’s going to be a lazy tak­ing care of myself day.

I can’t imag­ine how peo­ple who don’t under­stand the basic work­ings of the sys­tem do it. I could do all of this stuff myself, if I were there, and I’m still a wreck.

My mom is out of the hos­pi­tal and home again, start­ing a partial-hospitalization pro­gram three days a week at the same facil­ity.  She’s not 100%, not even 90%, but she knew today to call main­te­nance because the toi­let was over­flow­ing.  She’s still grandiose, her insight is still impaired, but Brother put the fear of Boston into her, so for now she seems coop­er­a­tive.  Fin­gers crossed.

But, a ques­tion for my bipo­lar read­ers (and any­one else tak­ing psy­chi­atric meds, who thinks it’s applicable)–

Has it been your expe­ri­ence that when your meds are work­ing just right that you get a full night’s sleep, with­out the need for tranks like ati­van et als?  No anx­i­ety dreams, fall right back asleep after the 2 am pee break, no trou­ble wak­ing in the morn­ing, and for me at least, weird-but-fun-dreams.

That’s been my expe­ri­ence, and my way of con­firm­ing that I’ve come back to an equi­lib­rium.  My mother still needs tranks even with a week of full dosage lam­ic­tal + abil­ify under her belt, which seems to say to me that it’s just not the right drug com­bi­na­tion.  (Oh, the open­ing the door naked to the handy­man thing is a sign too…)

What’s your expe­ri­ence?  Com­ments and/or emails to bipolarlawyercook@gmail.com are much welcomed.