Last night saw me in Dr. Steve’s office again for my regularly scheduled visit. And it was a rough visit. Lots of tears. New issues coming out, or rather old issues coming back up to the surface.
You see, I am my own worst critic. I am extremely hard on myself. Extremely. I don’t know why; I don’t know how I’ve fallen into this trap, but I’ve always demanded the absolute best of myself for decades.
But, we’ll start at the beginning… of the session, that is. It was quiz time again. Every few months, I have to answer two sets of 25 questions – one is the Burns depression test and the other is the Burns anxiety test. This allows Dr. Steve to analyze how I’m doing across time. The depression score wasn’t too bad. It was an 18, which is good for me and indicates that I’m managing the depression. The anxiety score was high, though – 33. As high as when I first started seeing him over a year ago. Isn’t that mildly distressing? 😆 Actually, I knew that one or both of the scores were going to be pretty high, based on how I’ve been feeling over the past week and a half. It’s not necessarily indicative of how I’ve been doing in the months since the last time I was scored, but it is true to how poorly I’ve been feeling of late.
And my diagnosis has been changed. Which I knew was coming, based on last week’s and then last weekend’s events. The anxiety diagnosis is obviously still there (in a BIG way), but instead of dysthymia (which is low-level, chronic depression), he’s changing it to cyclothymia. This takes into account the swings, so it is basically dysthymia with upswings.
According to one website, “Cyclothymia is a chronic bipolar disorder consisting of short periods of mild depression and short periods of hypomania (lasting a few days to a few weeks), separated by short periods of normal mood. Individuals with cyclothymia (thymia: from the Greek word for mind) are never free of symptoms of either depression or hypomania for more than two months at a time.”
That sounds about right and I’m actually fairly comfortable with the diagnosis. It’s basically the mildest form of bipolar disorder, with two levels of severity above it. “Genetic factors appear to be causative in cyclothymia as they do in the Bipolar Disorders. Many of those affected have a family history of major depression, bipolar disorder, suicide or alcohol/drug dependence.” Check, check, check and check. ALL of those are in my immediate family. Also, “Sleep difficulties are prominent, with affected persons sleeping little during hypomania, and “unable to get out of bed” during depression.
So, Dr. Steve is now anxiously awaiting the psychologist’s verdict when I see him on July 6th. I told him that I didn’t want to medicate for it, that I didn’t want to be a zombie, I still wanted to feel the highs and lows of life and I actually didn’t mind the hypomanic periods. His response, though, was that there is a price to pay for the hypomania and we both agree that that’s the part I don’t like. I can’t afford to miss work because I can’t get out of bed in order to provide the energy for the later hypomania. *sigh* I know he’s right, but … I just really hate to change meds again. I know it’s all part of the process, but I dislike not knowing how I’m going to react when I try a different medication regimen. I just want to be stable. I want to be normal again.
But, enough about that. There’s no sense crying over spilt milk. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. How many other clichés can I throw in there? 😉
You know what? I’m tired of talking about it for the moment, so the rest of my update will have to wait. More later.
