mood tracking...

I've known for quite awhile the secret to more symptom free days is to get some insight into what causes you to get loony. Whether you are struggling with classic melancholic or "unipolar" depression or bipolar depression with switches into higher moods with euphoria and irritability it can sometimes seem like you have no control whatsoever over your sanity.

2010 started with a BANG. As I was highly productive and felt like I was kicking ass at work. My therapist even made me make an emergency appointment with the doc one day because she thought I was too "high" during one of our sessions. This little episode led to the creation of the blog you are reading.

All good things (and feelings) come to an end. Throughout the course of this year I have had more trouble with fatigue and spent more time in bed than I have in my entire life. By May I was in bed twelve, fourteen, sometimes sixteen hours a day. I didn't even really feel depressed. I could work just fine on the three nights a week I needed to drag myself to the hospital and do some work. But on off days I felt slowed down and unmotivated...and really hungry for double cheeseburgers. Double cheeseburgers made everything Ok...and a six piece nugget on the side made things just perfect. Which brought me to a whopping 297 pounds by mid year.

Here and there I was able to break through with little bits of inspiration. A stern talk from my wife (a registered dietitian with a fat husband is kind of the definition of irony...) led me to start weight watchers and I lost 30 pounds. It was still a chore to get out of bed on weekends, but I slowly climbed out of the hole. Several medication changes were made and I felt like a marionette under my doctors control. Sitting in the waiting room with the other desperate souls I would think to myself. "Just fix me...just fucking fix me!"

I took up running which has brought with it both exhilarating energy and frustrating injuries, but I have established a commitment to health and realize that cheeseburgers don't work as well as fresh foods, meticulous timing of medication and the attitude that life will unfold ever so perfectly if I can just let it be.

Which brings me to the present. Last week I couldn't get six hours sleep. I felt like slapping total strangers and thought I was on the verge of a melt down. This week I'm getting ten hours no problem and I'm settling back into a normal mood. It's all a mystery to me and it's one I'm setting out to figure out. I have been tinkering with mood tracking software since my episode in February. I tried a couple of Iphone apps, but this weekend I found a great website. https://www.moodtracker.com/index.php

This site seems to be the daddy of all mood trackers. It tracks sleep, med history, irritability, anxiety and gives you the option to rate your mood "elevated" or "depressed" (mood categories are further broken down into mild, moderate or severe). There is also a section for a brief daily journal. You can analyze you mood via a bar graph or you can scroll through your journals.

Here is my graph for the last few days:

I've also simplified my cocktail. I had a long talk with a friend from my 12 step group about how I should be handling my medications. We both agreed that recovery is based on spirituality and that I needed to believe that my doc was a trained professional that was put in my life by a higher power greater than me. Adjusting doses, constantly researching meds, playing with vitamins and trying to skirt by without ever experiencing any pain or discomfort was a problem. My motives need to be pure.

Lamictal 150
Topomax 50
Risperdal 0.5
Omega 3 Fish Oil 1200
Natural Way Multivitamin

I'm also trying to only drink coffee for the first four hours that I'm awake. In the last month I'm drinking ten to twelve cups a day and its getting ridiculous. I guess this year has really been about acceptance. Every time I think about looking at a mood graph that reads baseline all the way across I think "Wow that would be boring...I want to be jacked on coffee...I want to run around the house dancing to jazz music... I need to fly out of bed feeling like a million bucks with no anxious thoughts every morning." That would be a wonderful world to live in for a time, but at this point in my life I can value being able to get a stable level of sleep and actually be calm enough to sit still in a chair. It's a goal I can work towards that will probably be more interesting than I think. Not too exciting but not too dull.

It beats crashing full speed into the pillow without a hope or a prayer of knowing when you'll be back...