My Brain is Recovering

Well, I've been off my last medication for a week and my brain and personality are returning. It's been two weeks since I've taken the last one that was really giving me problems and my appetite is just now returning to normal. It is SO NICE to not be hungry all the time. I wished I had not waited so long to make a change because I put on 20 pounds with that medication. I kept thinking with enough willpower that I could overcome it but now that it is out of my system I realize how overpowering it was. It's no wonder I kept eating! I also didn't realize just how dulled my thinking and brain had become until now that my thoughts are returning. I feel like I missed out on some important stuff in the last year, like really being able to enjoy a cruise with my husband. I was reading a blog earlier this week by someone with bipolar disorder who realized how his medication had affected him when he basically felt untouched by and unemotional about the terrorist attacks on 9/11. He knew he should be upset but he had nothing. I have felt that was many times in the last year but it was a trade I was willing to make at the time in order to be less agitated and upset about everything or nothing at all. That was the best decision I could make at the time but I don't want that life any more. I would rather have bad feelings than no feelings.
I wonder how I'm going to feel about this, though, when things get out of control. Right now, I am just wondering rather than worrying, so that's progress! I KNOW there are going to be days or maybe even weeks where it will take all I have just to get out of bed and get the kids off to school. There will be times where mania comes full force. Maybe I will feel desperate for medication again, although if I take stock of the last year, I experienced these highs and low even while on medication! For now, I just want to enjoy feeling like myself, without having to make grandiose plans about how to handle something that may or may not happen any time soon. And that's just how I feel today.

Scrapping Saved my Butt

This week I was really glad to have the large collection of scrapbooks I have. DD #2 is in 6th grade now and for health class she has to do a project called "My How I've Grown." In it, she's supposed to have a picture from when she's a baby and then at 2, 4, 6, and 8 years old plus at present. In addition, Mom or Dad is supposed to write down some memories about the student at those ages. OK, I gotta tell you, after spending 10 years in a state of sleep deprivation from being pregnant and mothering babies and toddlers that I can see I've forgotten a lot. But thankfully I recorded some stuff in the scrapbooks to fill in the gaps in my memory.
All this takes some of the sting out of the guilt I feel that the scrapbooks are not "equal" for all the kids. Guess what? There are a lot more pictures of our oldest daughter than there are of the little ones. Sometimes I wonder if they will resent that later on. Some years I took fewer pictures and made fewer pages because of business or tiredness or depression. I could never keep up the pace I started with the older kids and I already have a storage problem with what we do have! So yeah, it's unequal. I should get over feeling bad about that because plenty of people don't have ANY scrapbook pages so at least my kids have something. That's what I learned while doing this health project. Now I'll just have to remember it!

Been Away for A While Now

Well, it's been quite a while since I updated here, hasn't it? For the scrapping I did, I posted on my Facebook page because I got tired of collecting credits as I went along and I thought my "real life" friends and my family might be more interested in photos of my kids than my online friends LOL.

Things have been up and down around here. I am about a year out from my Bipolar diagnosis and still have not found a good medication. I am on my sixth one right now but I found out yesterday that my health insurance is ending as of October 31. We were getting it through a state program for the last year and now my husband and no I longer qualify. Our kids still qualify but their premium is going to triple. So for me, we cannot afford to pay out of pocket for a monthly visit to the psychiatrist and the medication. The prescription is about $275 per month and that's a cheaper one than some of the others I tried. Honestly, I don't think this one was going to work out anyway; I was getting a whopper of a headache EVERY morning since I increased the dosage as instructed. I didn't take any last night and no headache this morning.

A few months ago I would have been scared stiff to think about facing life without the help of some sort of mood stabilizer but I am beginning to think differently about it. I have been having a hard time with my spiritual life over the last year and it is my belief that the some of the medications I been taking have dulled me so much I was unable to connect with God in any meaningful way whatsoever. It's like they just turned off my soul, which was very, very uncomfortable. But I was so desperate to get a handle on my manic side that I just let it go until I couldn't stand it anymore. Some of these medications would start off great and just slowly make me more and more of a zombie as the weeks or months would go on. Some of these pills had negative side effects besides the mental dullness. Headaches. Weight gain. Not giving a rip about stuff. Very painful stomach problems. No attention span. Crazy nicotine cravings (after being a non-smoker for MANY years) Bizarre adrenaline responses. Sleeping too much. And you know what? My mood was still going up and down so I was a dullard with side effects and not getting any relief for my symptoms.

Meanwhile, I have been fighting with God about this, when I have been spiritually lucid enough. Why am I like this? Did God make me this way? Was he gonna leave me this way? Would he heal me?

I haven't received any direct answers to these questions but I have received AN ANSWER many times in many ways. God wants me to know he loves me. Very much. Just the way I am.

So my next step is to try life again without medication but WITH GOD. What's the point of enduring all the side effects for only short periods of symptom relief but no God? That's just going through the motions.

I don't know what things will look like for me. I don't even know if right now I am simply on the good part of a manic swing, thinking everything will be fine. Maybe, but I think what's different is I am choosing to put my hope and trust in a God who knows me better than I know myself. So we'll see where it all goes.

Right now I am grateful that I can get up in the morning. The last medication I was using caused me to go to sleep at about 8:30 every night and it was excruciating to get up in the morning. At first it was hellish getting off it because I couldn't fall asleep and I had a couple nights where I was waking up every 20-30 minutes all night long. Now I am going to bed at a reasonable time at getting up before the kids to watch Joyce Meyer on TV. I have been able to start reading again. I can understand what's going on in Bible study. I can pray. Later if I can't do that, I am setting up a reminder for myself. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Romans 8:26

I hope to get back to blogging on a more regular basis, just to help me see where I am going and to process what's going on in my life. I realize my journey may not interest many of you who originally tuned in to see what was going on with my digital scrapbook design business. So if you unsubscribe that's cool. I cannot make a guess right now whether I will ever go back to designing, even freebies. At first it was REALLY hard to let go so I made the challenge freebies and that helped. But lately my creativity has been really lacking. I haven't even felt like doing scrapbook pages. But this has happened before LOL so it doesn't mean anything permanent! Just another thing I'll have to wait and see about. Sometimes I think about contacting some designers and asking them if they'd consider doing a collaboration with me but I haven't had the guts to do it yet. I'm OK with that for now.

That's the update for now. Like I said, hopefully I will be back more frequently. THANKS for reading.

Prayer Notebook and Digital Scrapbook Pages

Some things I've completed in the past few days



credits
Rainy Day
Bellisae Designs- The Blue Side of my Soul

Juliana Self Portrait
Krista Mettler typekey alpha
Carrie Stephens Calypso Nights

Thanksgiving Prayer Journal
Bohemian Art - Autumn Gold freebie
Dawn Wilson - Diggin Season
Jen Caputo - Torn Edge
NumBumm - Twilight Meadow kit

DSO Color Challenge Freebie

Didn't think I was gping to do any color challenges this month but I really loved the color palette at the DSO forums so I went ahead and whipped up a little something.

Click the preview to download



ENJOY!

Digital Scrapbooking - ALL Caught Up

I'm now caught up on all my pictures! I am printing right now. Here are the last 2 I did



credits
Lauren's 9th Birthday
Awakening by Studio Mgl
Capturing the Memories by Maelia Designs

VBS
Julien's Bayou Summer Camp by Shawn Walter

Thanks for looking

Last Vacation photos

credits: Gone Fishing by Christine Smith (retired)