The Bane Of My Existence: Meds

Grrrr...

I remember years ago -- and I chuckle about it now -- going to visit my thyroid doctor a few years after I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His assistant called me before the appointment and told me to bring the medications I was currently taking so he could record them in my file. So I opened up the drawer and began setting the pill bottles on the counter. And I quickly realized I would need a very large Ziploc bag to transport the "bounty" to his office.

"This is my life now," I told him when he came into the examining room and I handed him the bag. I honestly think he was taken aback. Some of the medications he had never heard of before and frankly had trouble pronouncing. One by one he wrote them down.

Depakote: Mood stabilizer
Lamictal: Mood stabilizer
Invega: Anti-psychotic
Lexapro: Anti-depressant
Ativan: Anti-anxiety

I also had bottles of meds I was phasing off of (or had once taken) because they didn't work or had such terrible side effects that I refused to take them:

Lithium
Zyprexa
Seroquel
Geodon
Abilify
Topomax

Have I left anything out?

There are some very lucky souls out there who get diagnosed with bipolar disorder and the right med combination to manage it is found right off the bat. Alas, I am not one of those people. It has taken a decade to nail down a good combination for me, peppered with manic episodes along the way. Every year we would think we had it nailed down, only to find the combination didn't work. I felt like a guinea pig. Heck, I was and I still am a guinea pig.

And the side effects -- oh those damn side effects -- there are so many that I cannot believe I've managed to stay med-compliant the whole way through. Incredible weight gain. Hair loss. Loss of sex drive. Memory loss. Constipation. Lethargy. Inability to concentrate. Difficulty doing simple tasks. Agoraphobia. The list goes on and on.

So given all of this, why in the hell would anyone want to take these dreaded medications?

Well, it's simple really. I want my mood to be stable. Always. I've been in the tar pit of clinical depression and I've been in the frightening world of manic psychosis. And without my medication, I will swing between these mood states with no relief in sight. I've been locked up four times in horrible mental wards and I didn't like it at all. And then there's the fear: will I do something so terrible, so horrific that I am locked up forever?

Some days I'm on auto-pilot, and look at taking my pills like I look at brushing my teeth. It's just something you do every day. But other days...oh, I hate my medication, hate what it does to me, don't want to take it, can't believe I am taking it, curse my illness. But inevitably, I always swallow them. I have to.

Perhaps one day I will come to peace with my medicine. Lord knows I've been taking it long enough to stop fighting it. It's just a part of my world now, part of my existence. I may not like it, but this be the truth.