Angie gently chided me for my narrow field of view on this topic, and I'm glad she did. I expected a lot more disagreement than that. But she brought up a point that was excellent. In talking about a time of personal stress she said:
"...that dopey feeling went completely away as the drugs sponged up and absorbed all that stress and fear."
This is an excellent example of how and why our meds are crucial to our day-to-day lives.
I'll be the first to admit that my particular manifestation of bipolar disorder is not as debilitating as that of others, and I'm currently in an upswing. But life is pretty great right now. Not perfect, but pretty close to as perfect as it's going to get. Looking at it another way, how many other people in the world have a medical reason to live for today?
Back to my previous post: I am still concerned about the future. I still acknowledge the uncertainty, and perhaps the certainty of future problems. But life is too short to worry, and I refuse to let this disorder control my life. I'm going to think about my disorder less and worry less. I am going to enjoy my life, enjoy my health and frame-of-mind today, and let tomorrow bring what it will bring. It's a luxury to be able to live that way, and I am going do afford myself that luxury. I deserve it.
My sister is a nurse. She was working in a clinic once and was the intake nurse. The intake nurse took the patient's vital signs, wrote the patient's history, and wrote down the meds the patient may be on at the time.
One day a woman came in with her husband. She had over 20 different bottles of pills and liquids. Most of the meds were psychiatric. Some of them were for blood pressure, a few for diabetes, but most for psychiatric.
The patient didn't work and barely could get off the couch each day. Her husband cooked, cleaned, and reminded her to take her multitudes of medication. She was unable to care for herself because she was so "doped" up (patient's words).
She had meds to help her sleep, meds to wake her up, meds for anxiety, meds for mood, meds for psychosis, meds for neurosis, meds to counter act the adverse effects of other meds. Her life revolved around taking her meds and watching TV for she was parked in front of it normally.
My sister told me about this patient because she was absolutely aghast at the fact that the woman had to take a med for just about anything she did and didn't do and because of such she was disabled and totally dependent on her husband. The meds caused liver damage, kidney damage, diabetes, and a heart arrythmia. She had been on them for several years. She literally couldn't live without taking the pills.
Her husband's story was that his wife, at one time, was a promising up and coming attorney with a brilliant mind but over a short period of time became more and more psychotic and neurotic. He told my sister that now she just gets up, he takes her to the couch and turns on the TV, he fixes her meals, gives her the meds, and at night he puts her to bed.
Made me stop and think about meds.
A lot of folks with Bipolar due end up disabled and on disability because they are unable to work and/or function. They are on many meds which cause life living issues and over a period of time physical illnesses and issues. This isn't to say that the meds aren't needed. I've taken whokus of them over the years - I just wonder though truly what a lot of us are exchanging our lives for - a peach colored pill or momma's little helpers just to live in this world.
I think maybe there's another question to ask there: if it is the meds causing you to give up your life, then what can be done to fix the meds? Being medicated to the point that quality of life is diminished possibly more than untreated BP would do makes no sense.
To me, it didn't sound like this was a question of whether any tx was too much to handle, or whether what she was on was excessive.
I have many thoughts about this, but will express just a couple.
First, this illustrates why it's so crucial to have a doctor we can trust, and one that will listen to us and work with the objectives we have, and limits we place on our treatment.
I was at a support group meeting the other night, and one man was going through a benzodiazapene (sp?) withdrawal program. It looked and sounded like the guy was going through hell. It was a process that would take several years to accomplish. He knew what he was experiencing would be a part of his daily life for the next few years. He was handling it much better than most of us would handle it. I bring this up as we all have an obligation to ask our docs hard questions about our prescriptions, and take an active role in our treatments.
Thanks tabby for sharing that story. As heartbreaking as it is, I think we can all learn a lesson from that.