There are times when my illness takes control over every aspect of my life and I fall off the map. Multiple doctor appointments are had in the course of one month. Medication gets adjusted and readjusted in hopes to curb my symptoms. When I finally get stable, I go into recovery mode. I don’t come up for air anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. I don’t like how sick I get. I don’t like asking for help.

And yet, I get sick and I’m forced to ask for help. I’m lucky, I have help. Not all is lost when these types of episodes happen. I have safety nets that I use when I can’t even take care of myself. It’s all over now and I’m back to my usual self. I wish there was a way to stop this from happening but at least it only happens every couple of years and it’s not an ongoing occurrence. I’m feeling fine and that’s an awesome place to be.

Every now and again I have a paranoid thought that I can’t shake and it causes a lot of trouble. Such a thought ruined my day a couple of weeks ago. It’s hard to talk about when it happens because it can be scary. Thankfully, all I tend to do is shop. Let me explain.

I was getting my younger son in the car to take him to preschool. As I was doing so, I waved to the gardener who takes care of the community plants. He’s been the gardener here ever since I moved in almost a decade ago. I’ve smiled and waved at him hundreds of times. He seems like good people. However, this time a horrifying image of him dropping his work and raping and murdering me and my three-year-old son ran through my brain. The details were so vivid and clear that they felt real. I got in the car took a deep breath and tried not to feel scared and unsafe. Without incident, I got my son to preschool and then proceeded to blackout.

I came back to reality a couple of hours and a couple of hundred dollars later. Alternate Meaghan (the person I call myself while blacking out) went and bought Christmas presents for the boys. I love Christmas shopping. It’s one of my many joys so it’s no surprise that under the amount of stress the paranoid thought gave me, Alternate Meaghan did something joyful. I felt calm again. I felt normal again. I started to cry. I don’t like losing time. What am I like when I’m Alternate Meaghan? I’d like to meet her one day. Blackouts don’t happen often often and all I do is shop. I like spending money. This is normal. Not remembering doing so? Not normal.

My physiatrist had been trying for years to get me to give Lithium a chance because one of my bipolar symptoms is rapid cycling. That’s when I change from depressed to manic to depressed to manic to depressed and back to manic all in the span of thirty seconds. It’s not fun when my brain is behaving that way. After experiencing an episode where rapid cycling had been happening for over a week, I decided to follow my doctor’s advice. I now know Lithium is not a drug for me.

The first side effect I experienced was mass confusion. Much to my annoyance, my psychiatrist insisted it wasn’t the Lithium. The thing though is I’ve a stroke. Mass confusion was a symptom of my carotid arteries tearing. I sat there in my neurologist’s office crying. I thought my stents were failing me and I was going to have to have more stents placed in my arteries. She ordered an MRI, which ending up showing that there was some sort of occlusion in my right carotid artery. I was immediately sent to the hospital for a contrast CT scan. The one where they inject radiation into your blood stream. Radiation that illuminates the blood vessels so doctor’s can get a clear view of what’s going on. Well, the MRI was wrong. My carotid artery was fine. My neurologist told me my confusion was most likely caused by the Lithium. Confusion is one of Lithium’s main side effects.

All while this was going on, the weight number on my scale kept creeping up. I was starting to panic. I had my stomach stapled two and a half years ago and had lost over seventy pounds. Seventy pounds that I have successfully kept off for over two years. Weight gain is also common on Lithium and my body likes to gain weight.

At my last appointment, I started crying in front of my physiatrist and he told me to stop the Lithium at once. That was a month ago. I haven’t gained a pound since going off of it and I am now deciding the best way to lose the twenty pounds I packed on. My clearheadedness has come back. Well, as clearheaded as a bipolar schizophrenic can get.

I’m only slightly annoyed by my experience with Lithium. I never know how my body’s going to react to a medication until I try it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s just something that comes with the territory of taking medication to treat my illness.

I’m an impatient person and I don’t like rejection (though in all fairness, who does?). On Monday, I received my sixth rejection letter for my book, Gently Dented: Inside the Mind of a Bipolar Schizophrenic and I decided right then and there to self publish. I kind of think publishers don’t know what to make of my book. It’s a book written by a schizophrenic and slightly reads like one. I didn’t shy away from the inner workings of my brain and it’s not a comfortable place to be. Even for a book that’s less than 150 pages.

Anyway, if you’re so inclined, please buy it and let me know what you think. I really hope it has value in adding to the conversation about mental health in this country. Without further ado, here are the links:

Gently Dented Kindle

Gently Dented paperback

Much love to you all. As always, you can find me on Facebook here:

Meaghan Hilary’s Facebook page

I was running late this morning and in a hurry to start the boy’s laundry. The laundry was started and I began to make breakfast. There was a phone call that I had to make. That’s when I realized I didn’t know where my phone was. The memory of where it last was seen set in. It was in the basket with the boy’s dirty clothes. Panic set in and I raced to the washing machine. I opened the lid and plunged my hand into the soapy water.

My first cell phone was bought in 2000. In the past nineteen years, I have owned five phones. The newest, brightest phone with all the latest gadgets never impressed me. I had always purchased the cheapest phone. In fact, a couple of times I got the free phone. I have had the same cell phone company since my first phone and I have always had the cheapest plan. I take care of my phones and my phones have always served their purpose. To be functional.

Then in 2014, I went in to replace my phone and I somehow got talked into buying the new iPhone. Yes, I would buy it outright. No, I do not want the protection plan. Yes, I will take the expensive case. Then came the day a couple of years ago where having a landline no longer made sense. The only people who called my home phone were telemarketers and why should I pay thirty dollars a month to be annoyed multiple times a day? Still, I did not need the protection plan.

Last November (2018), I hit the button to upgrade the phone and the phone died. Completely. The man at the repair shop apologized but there was nothing he could do. I walked into my phone company’s store and asked how much an iPhone 8 would cost. “What?!? Fine, how much a month is the payment plan?” “I don’t want to spend that much. Can you get me an iPhone 7?” “I don’t care about the iPhone XR.” Somehow though, the XR was cheaper per month than the iPhone 8 because I’m considered a valued customer. Nineteen years of loyalty will do that for you. Plus, I needed my phone so I couldn’t wait for the couple of days it would take the store to get a 7 in stock. “No, I don’t need the protection plan. I take care of my phones.”

Those words were the ones haunting me as I pulled my phone out of the washing machine. I tapped the screen and nothing. Then I hit the screen and it turned on. My phone was on! I removed the industrial strength Otter phone case and my phone was somehow dry. I made the phone call I needed to make. The speaker didn’t work quite as well as normal. After a shouting conversation, I set my phone down and let the speaker completely dry to see if that would fix the issue. The speaker is now dry and it works just fine. The expensive Otter phone case is worth it’s weight in gold.

Now, accidentally washing my phone with the dirty clothes was probably bound to happen. I’m surprised my phone-taking-care-of streak lasted as long as it did. This may not have been an important story but I did promise to write about more than my mental illness as a New Year’s resolution. You’re welcome.

Last week, a dear friend asked me, “since you take medication, why do you still have episodes?” This stopped me in my thought process. I had forgotten how many people think medication is a cure for mental illness. It isn’t a cure, it’s an aid.

I used to be anti-medication. My mom believed that God made me this way and there was no need to tinker with God’s design. That was before my massive episode. It was an episode that took me eighteen months to recover from. My brain felt like it broke. At the start of the recovery process, I decided to give medication a chance. That episode was in 2002. I’ve been tinkering with God’s design ever since. It’s the only way I’ve lasted this long.

I’ve been in a lot of medications through the years. I’ve had some truly horrific episodes. I’ve suffered through some terrible side effects. I’m also not in a mental hospital. On this journey, I’ve also experienced weeks of peace. Is medication perfect? Heck no. Would I go back to being unmedicated? Heck no.

I do live with an undying hope that one day I won’t need medication anymore because there actually is a cure. Until then, I do what I can to help lessen my episodes. I take my aids in little pill form.

A few days ago I woke up utterly depressed. I used to be able to work past depression because any dark thoughts I had I would compare to the pain of losing my mother. That was true depression, everything else was hallow nonsense. My mom passed away eleven years ago and I find I’m starting to forget the pain. Oh, it’s there but it no longer feels tragic. I wake up utterly depressed and it’s hard to fight past it. Life goes on though. Life has to continue even if I want to hide from the world. I have kids, I can’t wallow in my episodes. It’s can be good to not focus on my episodes but it’s also hard. It takes longer to get over the episode because I can’t take the proper time to heal.

I’m at my rheumatologist’s office waiting to be called in. I have fibromyalgia and who knows what else. I’m here for results from a blood test my doctor ordered. My body feels like it’s falling apart. On a normal day, I’d be okay but today is not normal. I’m walking around wanting to cry but the schizophrenic in me is making that release a challenge. People used to tell me to just “snap out of it.” It would be nice if it were that easy. I know this depression will pass. I may not be able to snap out of it, but I can wait it out.

What is it like to have a normal brain? Oh, I know, everyone has something wrong with them but for some of us, that something massively intrudes on our lives. My something (bipolar and schizophrenia) engulfs me in a never ending cycle of being ill and fighting the illness. I can’t escape my disorder no matter how hard I try. Yes, I can go a week or so without an episode but every night I have to take medication. I can never just go to bed. I have to honor my treatment plan or my brain will spiral out of control and I won’t be able to function. My medication is the difference between life at home or at an institution. So yes, this means always needing to be focused on my disorder even when I’m having a rare day of feeling fine.

It would be nice though to know how it feels to just be. To just be Meaghan. To not have the label of schizoaffective. To be normal and not have to have an appointment with a psychiatrist every couple of weeks, or more. To not have to worry when the next episode is going to happen. To be free. What if I actually was able to live life with calmness always in my mind? What if I simply heard the term “mental illness” and didn’t full understand what it meant? What if I could just go to bed without needing to take psych meds? The what ifs are endless.

However, I don’t live in the land of what if, I live in the land of what is. That’s all I know. If I think about “what if” for too long, it’ll drive me nuts. More than I already am.

Yesterday, I was picking blackberries in my backyard when I noticed a bunch of insects. I called my eldest son over and he confirmed that there were indeed a bunch of flying insects in front of me. Now, it may seem silly to ask a boy to verify that an infestation of bugs is real but bugs are my number one hallucination. From flesh eating bugs to bugs in the water, I see and feel bugs often. Bugs that are a figment of my disorder.

Once the picked blackberries were in my sink being inspected and washed, I started to notice tiny white bugs in the berries. Once again, I assumed I was hallucinating. Except they looked very real and were moving around. I quickly bagged up all the blackberries and threw them out. Then I took the trash outside and proceeded to feel bugs crawling on my skin.

The bugs soon started eating my flesh and I went to my medicine lock box, opened it, and took an Ativan. Ativan is a sedative and it doesn’t stop the hallucinations. However, it calms me down and I stop panicking. It makes me calm enough to deal with what my brain is doing to me and eventually the sensation stops.

This episode is isolated. A one-off. I see bugs from time to time and I never know if the bugs are actually there or if they’re a hallucination. All I know is I’m not touching my blackberry bush for the rest of the season.

I’m having a bipolar episode. An episode that started just as a schizophrenic episode ended. My brain hurts from being manic then depressed then manic then depressed then manic and back to depressed all in the span of 30 seconds. Sometimes the cycle takes a break and I’m manic for 5 minutes and then depressed for 5 more minutes and then jerked back to the polar opposite emotion. Sometimes I’m fine for half a day.

This rapid cycling of emotions has finally convinced me to try Lithium. My doctor’s been recommending this medication for years but Nirvana’s song gave me a lasting bad impression of it. However, my liver is starting to show the wear of twenty years on psych meds and I’m willing to try something that might help my moods stabilize and ease off my liver. (Lithium is filtered through your kidneys. My kidneys are fine.)

I just started Lithium last week and am on the lowest dose. My doctor said I need to ease into taking higher dosages of the drug and it will take some time. I’ll also have blood work done every three months to make sure my body is responding to the medication well. After awhile of being stable, we can focus on getting me off of Lamictal. I’m so tired of all of this. I’m tired of switching medications. I’m tired of episodes. I’m tired of my brain hurting. However, I’m not tired of being alive. I doubt I’ll ever tire of that. So I shall switch medications. I shall endure episodes and I’ll cope with my brain hurting from time to time. I’ll live.