A Quickly Thrown Together Easter Greeting

To my Christian friends, loved ones and readers, Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!

Everyone have a blessed day celebrating the greatest story ever told, with the world's most predictable outcome which strikes Westerners as way more plausible than the myth of a seven-headed horse or God in the form of an elephant. Glory! Praise! Honor!

To my non-Christian friends: I know it sucks, but Target is still probably open, and tomorrow, all the candy will be 50% off.  

In the Department of Heavenly Miracles, God bestowed upon me 2 new giant zits, my mom only ripped me 3 new assholes in the span of about an hour and a half, & in a story upon which I'll have to expound when I'm not as pressed for time, Guy Friend barely squeaked by unscathed from my wrath with his balls intact.

Scratch that, Ma just added asshole #4.

Psychotic Word Salad: The Offical Memoir Title

Call it what you like, but the Offbeat Drummer would never squash the power of spreading my blog across the world. I'm very happy that another mental health site, HealthShire, is following the diatribes, but I feel compelled to forewarn that my posts aren't entirely, solely about the practice or therapist training in psychology, or the physicality of my mental disorders. In fact, the vast majority of blogs are generated out of my personal feelings, be they love, the people I love, hate, music or defense and self-salvation.

A while ago, I started to follow a Tweeter called the "Chump Lady," who has this utterly deprecating, man-loathing approach to love and marriage. In essence, men are complete assholes, women bond together online  for support against their philandering spouses and often referred to a divorce lawyer. 

The Tweets piqued my attention, so I decided to visit the Chump Lady' site this morning, where I read this rambling, sob tale about some woman's emotionally crumbling because her husband had an affair. Her Twitter and website, so says the Chump, are supposed to offer "infidelity support." 

It was a total bummer that I missed the whole day of strings of threads regarding my post that lit the group a'fire and, as I am wont to do, ruffled some serious feathers. They took down my initial comment and blocked me from further commenting, but then all felt compelled to spend all day talking about what an awful person I am, which I personally find very, very funny, obviously because I'm a bitch of epic magnitude and if I actually gave a damn, it might have merit, but alas, I don't habitually lurk anywhere & nor do I keep deepening the knife of destruction against a forum purely to incite a strong, negative reaction. I fucking read the post, offered my two cents, and went back to bed for like 6 hours. 

Don't ever think I'm SO stupid that I wouldn't save my original post. It's harsh, and blunt, & I'll spare you this woman's like 10 page "Help me! I'm so sad! I'm being left for another woman!" about her husband, his mistress, teetering on divorce and lots of other wah wah blah blah.

I said:

"Suzanne: Of course he loves the other woman, primarily because you come across as being The World's Most Demandingly Impossibly Difficult To Live With Assbag of a Wife. Had you been remotely tolerable, his derailment might not have happened in the first place. You haven't been making a valiant, heroic, respectable attempt to salvage your marriage. You've baited your husband with an iron-clad clause of stringing him up by his balls for having feelings for someone other than you, which is incredibly selfish. The attempt to use being barren as a weapon of sympathy is reprehensible.

Could there be any more blatant man hating on this site? I kind of doubt it.

Yes, grant him a divorce so he has some semblance of a chance of finding the happiness and soul searching of which you've deprived him for such a long time, and to such an egregious degree that the pole up your ass is long enough to hang you horizontally and dry clothes out in the breeze. Men don't accidentally fall into other vaginas...there's always a reason and to assume or assign all of the blame to either partner in a couple is unfair and unreasonable. Your husband may have taken a roundabout exit to end your relationship, but you're no angel; you're vindictive looking on this site for validation and justification ("Let's all gang up on my dick husband!") for what is completely also partly your own fault. Legitimately, there is relationship and marriage burnout, and as years turn into decades, people evolve into a place where they feel comfortable with themselves, and that doesn't necessarily gel smoothly with the person to whom they have been married.

Quit throwing around bourgeois cliches and asking if you're a chump on an internet site devoted to championing the cause of the self-proclaimed chump.

I *am* divorced and it was the best thing my ex-husband and I could've done for one another. We're parents who gel well together but just weren’t meant to be married . I'm also a training psychologist, so I'm not just pulling this out of my ass.

Spare the man further agony, file the papers and move on with your lives."

Which was, of course, the God's honest truth of the matter. But the women on this site were reaching out for comfort and affirmation for what is, in reality, 50% was their own culpability. After my nap, I checked in to see if I'd missed anything, and found myself hooting and hollering in laughter:

Jesus, "Chump Lady," it's no wonder you call yourself a chump and your life mission is to validate other chumps, who also call themselves "Chumps" and instead of empowering women, you take turns whining about what assholes your husbands are and how you're all victims of horribly flawed men. It was implied in the above comment that The Chump in Charge speculated my husband had left me for another women ("OW") when no, sorry, I left my husband.

A "musical psychologist?" Yes, can you fucking believe it? I beat things for relaxation.

Hey, Chumps? Do you comprehend, or are you all drowning so deeply in the tide of your own self-pity that I specifically notated my website into my comment so that you all *would,* in fact, read it? Oh, for fuck's sake. Of course I did. Hang on, I can't hear you because I'm jingling the triangle you joked I played. Dumb asses. This was, out of all the comments, the only one which carried with it any merit whatsoever:

As a general rule, folks, it's an extremely poor idea to try and crack skulls with a feisty, opinionated, fearless, tough punk such as myself (GASP! I was accused of being a FEMINIST!).

Oh, sanity. Way to go and shift the blame onto Suzanne's (soon-to-be lucky) erstwhile husband. Somehow, they convinced themselves early on for a second that it wasn't *me* writing the post but the husband (while I'm on his side, I'm nobody's ghost writer).

They seemed disappointed that Crabby-In-Charge removed my post, because they dissected it all day. That's not fair, as one poster declared:

Oh damn. Anyway,

"Blowhard moron." Come on, you can do better than that. "Ignorant, cruel arrogant and (worst of all) illiterate?" Hi, yeah, sorry to disappoint once again, Happy Homemakers. I have a BA in English and have read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." And someone! Quick! Polish the crown for the King!

Well, yes. You are indeed too stupid to live, Erika. A musical psychologist is someone who studies or practices counseling psychology and simultaneously knows how to play a musical instrument. Another shocker.  When asked, which I couldn't answer, if I would ever treat my clients with such disrespect and disdain, that's highly doubtful. Would I sit idly by while a bunch of embittered wives poke needles into the voodoo dolls they've made of their husbands like the Chumps do? Y'all don't know me, but suffice it to say, I sit idly for absolutely NO reason whatsoever. I'll upset the apple cart until every last apple careens down a hill and the truck is empty. I love men. Most of my friends are men. My 2 best girlfriends feel strongly the same way about women, on the other hand. With few exceptions, we all think women are kind of catty bitches who stomp all over the men in their lives. Our mission statement is to salvage such men from the Estrogen Prison in which they're trapped and release them freely to make themselves happy, to thrill their souls. And yes, it can be done.

I'm 3/4 of the way done with year one of graduate school in psychology. I've provided therapy to peers. We're all psychologists/therapists at our learning institution, so nosybody Ms. Terry S., you've got things pretty much all wrong and furthermore, you completely don't understand the meaning of the concept of "projection," but I found your statement funny nevertheless, as will my friends and colleagues:

Because calling out recovering alcoholics and drug addicts who have bipolar dual diagnoses is really fucking sensitive. It doesn't make me a bad person, a bad writer, or a bad psychologist. The opposite is true, really. And my goodness, it took you enough blog snooping to scramble together all of those details to form an erroneous profile of me. Just awesome. Like everyone who reads my blog (especially psychological and medical services, journals and recovery centers) doesn't already know these things. IQ points for Terry just plummeted by about 74 points.

This is, BY FAR, the best unintentionally appropriate and hilarious name for my upcoming memoir:

"Psychotic Word Salad."

Well, Chumpie, this is MY blog and if I fucking feel like it, I can completely tear you and your whiny, man-loathing friends to goddamn shreds. PS, Nutter Butters are one of my favorite cookies. PS, if you were "Lord" of the manor, you wouldn't be a woman in the first place. Pardon my literary criticism of aforementioned simpletons, but royal women are "Ladies," while men are "Lords." Got it?

Wait, big finish at the fireworks show!!!!! 

Really, you can stay seated. A standing ovation really isn't necessary. Notoriety and infamy are treasures which elude too many writers. It certainly is a special day when such obvious, ridiculous fodder just plops into a writer's lap and any writer/author blessed with such base material around which to weave what is a true story should thank his/her lucky stars. Buy golly, fact check first! The life this merry band of fucktards created about me is actually more thrilling and salacious than my actual, real life is. Had I realized I was so tawdry and tabloid-attracting, I might have considered altering the gray hair on my head (which sucks at only age 40!) but instead began collecting ridiculously wild, printed socks that literally pretty much don't match anything, which is fucking glorious.

I would definitely crawl back under the rock from which I emerged, but I get spotty cell service under bridges: 

I love the phrase "Annie can fuck off" so much that I'd almost totally have shirts printed saying that and use that as yet another writer's publicity or marketing tool, so thanks for the razzledazzle. The shirts could be bejeweled and glittery! 

So best of luck, Chumps & Co. I'll keep checking into the pity party, though I can't book a reservation, because it's an awfully large, dangerous barrage of ultra-fanatical freaks who I'm reasonably certain haven't had a quarter of the fantastic sex I've had in my life.

PS, my ex-husband is a total peach (despite being sort of milquetoast) and we'll have one another's backs for life, as we're raising our son together. No hard feelings and ill will tempered and disappeared in a very short period of time (just months after the ink dried on our divorce). 

My thinking is that not only are y'all incapable of learning how to actually file for a divorce, in addition to being clueless regarding how to be close to your ex and his family (and his girlfriend!).

"Chumps" really is kinder than calling you "jealous, vindictive vampires," I suppose...

She's Got To Be Strong To Fight Them, So She's Taking Lots of Vitamins

Best Male Friend coined it most aptly: "Annie, you're more stalky than a hunk of celery."

I'm totally befuddled, as is evident in the above photograph. I'm inclined to agree, as I was fending off The Brooklyn Stalker most recently, and wouldn't you know it--he/she either found a way to sneak in or I truly scared them away. In any event, I'm not terribly bothered by the notoriety, especially given I was attempting to straighten out the dilemma of a friend.

I'm so tired of being blog stalked, I can't tell you.

But then entered Stalker Number 2: This one's a bit trickier to figure out. The static IP came from Lincolnshire, IL...the tiny suburb where Guy lives. (It's not Guy himself, or Lady GuyGuy--they're in Chile being eaten by an anaconda, remember?) Then today, I was accessed through Lisle, IL, which is way the hell southwest of here. The IP is dedicated to originate from a "Dr. Salwani" however, at Resurrection in Chicago.

Short detective work on the hospital web site pointed to 4 different Salwanis. Three men and a woman. I don't think it's the chick, really. That left me with 3 men, only one of whom practices the same type of cardiology as Guy. (Quite honestly, these are some of the scariest looking people I've ever seen who all seem to have goiter or thyroid problems. I mean, what's with the giant eyeballs? Very disconcerting.) So then they could be colleagues, logic would say. Neighbors?  Friends?  Who the fuck knows, but I'm totally freaked out. Hiding, waiting to see who emerges from a dark corner:

I'm sorry, but the conspiracy theorist in me, along with some trusted friends, find all of this a little odd and not coincidental. The Salwani is Googling me by my first and last names. How on earth would such a person even KNOW my first and last name, barring someone like Guy Friend who could've pointed him in this direction? I never worked for or with this doctor. To the best of my knowledge, Guy's been very hush-hush about our friendship, which is good, considering how much I blab in public myself.  I had asked Guy, God, a few months ago, if he was friends with any of the 4 Doctors Salwani and he never answered my question (not that he's terrific at answering direct questions in the first place) when the Salwani tie first visited my blog.

At some point last night, Dr. Salwani (or whomever this is) felt compelled to email a link to a certain blog entry to someone, though my server won't tell me whom exactly or which entry it was. The doctor read my whole Google profile. It always boggles my mind that certain people (typically for the WRONG reasons) read my diatribes in hopes of picking around. Everyone's welcome, but geez, don't creep me the fuck out over a couple days' duration, ok?  Either that, or I'm getting really popular. But again, from the wrong people reading me. I'm infamous.

I suppose it's possible that Guy is in touch w/this Doctor while he's on vacation and he could be fibbing all along about not having access to email or cell phones out of the country. That could be a ploy to stop me from incessantly bothering him, which I totally would be, who are we kidding? Given Guy called me finally 5 minutes before he boarded his plane, I was officially on the no-priority list. An "Oh yeah, I was supposed to call Annie before I left...oh shit." We had a short phone chat, mostly concentrating on his damn sore throat which he could've remedied a week prior, but was too stubborn. (He finally broke down and got some antibiotics. There he was, bitching about the red eye plane ride to Chile, not understanding how many common people can't EVER go to Chile for 17 days for vacation. He was being whiny and an ingrate with no valid reason.)

I will say this: Guy Friend and I are in a relationship. It's any one or more of the possibilities below, ever-changing and certainly worthy of debate:

Still, the relentless barrage of page views/lengths from this doctor's IP address were staggering into stalker proportions; otherwise, I'd chalk it up to a fluke like last time. But I can't help but wonder if Salwani noted my last blog, in which I told the Brooklyn Stalker that I could figure out whom he/she was with a few clicks of the mouse and that I had all the background information I needed. I'm nothing if not resourceful.

If there is a question that's pressing, or require further information Dr. Salwani, feel free to email me a question at the end of this blog in the comments. I'm not exactly afraid of self-disclosure. If you're gaining information to feed to Guy Friend, just tell him (in my absence) that I miss him like the dickens & want him to come home. If you're just a curious onlooker, I don't know...read what you want literally or figuratively if you can comprehend it and I really don't give a shit. Again, I just can't imagine that you found me on your own, not knowing AT ALL who I am and working affiliated with Guy's hospital. I haven't worked there in over a year. I should be totally old news around the Professional Building.

Walk Away. Just Walk Very Far Away.

If I say something, 15,000 people will listen.

If I say nothing, 45,000 people will poke me until I DO say something.

Obsessive  "Rhythms" reader in Brooklyn, NY? You're stalking us. I have a pretty good instinct as to why, but I'd like to know what's so goddamn compelling that it requires pathological snooping.

You out-Google and keyword search more than the average person, and I don't know if you're a vulture, a superfan, or a twisted sensationalism journalist. 15 subject searches and keyword queries in one day that took almost 2 hours? Sucking up my writing every single day, multiple times a day?

FIND SOMETHING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE.

The search scope is pretty specific:

ME
ME AND DRUGS
QUITTING DRUGS
MY FRIEND AND DRUGS
MY FRIEND AND DRUGS AND I
MY FRIEND, PERIOD
ODDLY, NICOTINE PATCHES
QUOTES I'VE SAID ABOUT MY FRIEND
REFERENCES TO MY FRIEND
PICTURES OR CLIPS OF MY FRIEND, MY FRIEND AND I, OR OF MY FRIEND'S FRIENDS AND I
THE TITLE OF MY BLOG AND MY FRIEND'S NAME (FIRST AND LAST ON OCCASION!)

Like, what the fuck? He's a witty, smart and talented man who totally makes me laugh and shares some commonalities with me. He's also almost *too* nice and what, in my opinion, should boil his blood, he's really pretty calm about and isn't a huge fighter. His resilience is admirable and his strength and zest you can't help but want to enthusiastically thumbs up. Really, just a really, really good guy. I drive him nuts often enough such that I'm used to him channeling me out as I "blah blah" through life's oddities, and he's actually told me before what he can and can't handle, & what he cares & doesn't care about when I over-disclose.

It totally sucks that the press has turned conjecture and speculation, which was completely unwarranted and intrusive, not to mention completely fictional, into articles and out-of-context interviews while these fellas are beginning to talk about and push forth their latest major project. My friend doesn't deserve to have his life scrutinized for details that are nobody's business but the people he's chosen with whom to share his life in whatever capacity that might be, whether casually or intimately. Too many people feel a sense of entitlement to know about his life, by virtue of his profession, when that is not the case. Too many people care so little for him as a human being, husband and father that they relentlessly fish for gossip by which to lay him out like a lamb to slaughter, which he ends up having to correct and clarify in spare time he does not have, much for the sake of protecting and loving his family.

Again, what the fuck is wrong with people and for Christ's sake, why would anyone fucking dig in MY little pile of dirt as if some huge revelation or hot news was within the confines of my blog? Sorry, but you won't find much of anything, so it'd be best for your own sake to crawl back into the hole from which you emerged, if for no other reason other than I fight forcefully and dirtily, am loyal but easily agitated, and when people royally piss me off, or devalue someone I care about, my claws are very, very sharp.

Having said that...

I know your IP address.
I know your geolocation and the exact coordinates, and have seen the building in which you access my site.
I know that your internet service provider is Optimum Online.
I know that your ISP is generated out of Edison, NJ.
I know you're using Safari and have a Mac.
I know exactly when you read, what entries you read, how it takes you to read them, and what all of your searches are.
Sorry, if you try to access through a proxy, yeah....that doesn't work to hide you.
Methinks with a little more tech work, or perhaps paying $15 online, I'll get your name, address and phone number, after which you should really, honestly hope I don't get so agitated that you suffer some type of acute severe trauma.

I don't deserve scrutiny. People in my life don't deserve scrutiny. Your hyper-invasion into my world was most unwelcome, and most importantly, you can't trust the media to be reporting the truth.

I am really, really proud of my friend and how well he's doing, and empathize with how hard it was for him to get and stay in a good place, because a lot of the same things, I've already lived through myself.

Vulture? Whomever you are and your purpose? Go outside and play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.

Please leave me alone and quit the fucking garbage of intensely combing fine hair after fine hair for a sign of lice on my friend. None of it is any of your goddamn business, and this entire entry I shouldn't have felt the need to write.

Step away, because I'm keenly watching you.

Rumors Of My Death That Aren't Completely Fabricated.

I haven't published an entry for a week and a half, which, by all accounts, means that there's something very, very wrong with me. I haven't been reclusive, purposely mysterious, or involved in depth with requisite school assignments; the latter, an epic fret of serious magnitude related to my surviving pursuit of my masters degree which will require extensive explanation that I'm not prepared to tackle today or tonight, for which I will beg on hands and knees for accommodations I didn't and couldn't have anticipated needing in the first place. With a drained brain and weak frame, to have *not* completely lost my sense of humor is back-pattingly high-five-ish.

It's sometimes bordering-on-annoying when it's iterated or pointed out to me the enormity of how unusual I am, with a legendary reputation of medical mystique, largely because it's frequently an insult as opposed to a compliment. Yet I'm thinking that it might be wise not to cry wolf with regard to dying because it's not funny anymore. (The jet ski death, I found hysterical, personally.)

The prescription leaflet above details a relatively new anti-psychotic, Saphris. As you'll soon read on, risks of fatality or other life-threatening complications or reactions are not even addressed, and I looked closely. Even the side effects indicate that during the drug's clinical trials, nausea and drowsiness were found in < 1 in 1,000 patients.

In the favor of condensing time, it's just easier to insert below the explanation of the events of the last few days that I emailed Kate:

Thursday: 

Same old same old here here, except for crossing the jaw dropping condition of anaphylaxis off my lifetime bucket list. The Russian Drug Czar shrink, when I said I felt like my anti-psychotic med had plateaued and I kept rapid cycling, titrated me in like 5 days off the anti-psychotic, Geodon, which I've been on for 4 years, and switched me to a new on the market anti-psychotic, Saphris. I wouldn't wish Saphris on my worst enemy. I'm a pretty almost genius layperson who knows about every drug on earth and what it's for, and who it's for.  Saphris  just came out and was reportedly aimed for bipolar II patients who rapid cycle like me and hadn't crossed my radar for review. 

Being a gambling girl by nature, I said what the hell and agreed to trying this new, powerful, almighty and heavily marketed drug to calm the crazies. Keep in mind, over last weekend, I thought for sure I had a strep throat infection with hoarseness, sore glands, a very sore throat and fever. I was tapering the Geodon and transitioning into the Saphris. By Monday, I was starting to feel gastrointestinal ick, diarrhea, cramps...which kept escalating in severity, then added itchy skin, that I assumed was just winter-dry, which brings us to this morning. The throat infection symptoms were gone and I slowly & forcefully rubbed my neck around my pained glands and just thought it was a virus I had to ride out. But then came the diarrhea and cramping, and the feeling like there's a 15 lb bowling ball in my abdomen, which began @ 4am this morning. 

I never gave it one iota of thought that I could possibly have non-stop diarrhea, a blotchy welt rash, gas, abdominal distention, and nausea because I was allergic to the new anti-psychotic. It wasn't unreasonable for me to have assumed the sickness of both my mom and Luke was the root cause of feeling lousier and less functional by the minute. I ended up at Immediate Care after dropping Luke at school (yes, I drove in that condition) and got an epinephrine shot, because my throat was closing--feeling thicker and thicker, very quickly, and was given Rx's for  2 days' worth of Prednisone (a steroid) and Lomotil (an anti-diarrheal). 

Jumped through 2000 hoops to get a fucking Zofran refill (anti-nausea) straightened out by the pharmacy idiots. I never gave it a thought as to WHY my intestines are exploding. It was literally every 5 min in the bathroom. I almost (still) speculate as to having had an intestinal blockage. 

I paged the shrink @ 5:30 am, and left another message at noon. She called me back at about 4pm. Fuckin'  idiot. She didn't know which of my meds was the mood stabilizer and which one was the anti-psychotic, listening to her accented garble on the phone trying to figure out a new bipolar cocktail. *I* shouldn't have to fucking explain to the doctor the psychopharmacology of the meds. My gastro (the famous Stosh) is in the loop. Immediate Care asked me all these goddamn questions when I couldn't speak because I couldn't breathe. Then I started crying which made breathing even harder!  Panic attacks while barely breathing are THE easiest way to stop breathing entirely. Wonderful! (After simply initialing the consent to treat with a capital A, I threw their paperwork back at them.)

The shrink said on the phone that she's never seen such a severe reaction to this drug. Of course she hasn't. It just came out and I don't recall being on the guinea pig list. I should've red flagged her when she talked about the drug and said, "Well, the pharmaceutical rep said..." THEY ARE SALESPEOPLE, NOT DOCTORS!!!!   

Then she suggests Lithium. Hi, Gumby, that's for Bipolar I with severe manic episodes, and I'm Bipolar II with mixed mood episodes. Totally wrong option. She rattled off a couple more (like Zyprexa, which she decided to Rx against my better judgment and desire to remain on Geodon). Never mind that Zyprexa has been recalled and outlawed in the state of NY for its incredibly alarming reactions and side effects. Yeah, no thanks. She wanted to boost something with Abilify, which was even dumber because that's a antagonist chemical that enhances the effect of an antidepressant, and this is an issue with my anti-psychotic. How do people who are so uniformly retarded thrive in this world purely because there's an "MD" after their name? I'm up to taking like 15 Benadryl at once but still itch all over my body. Sleep is impossible. Lomotil's not working at all. I am like one shit away from an IV and a heart monitor. Or a goddamn stroke. And Prednisone! Our favorite! It drives normal people psycho and loonies suicidal. Love it. I'm keeping up with fluids but I'm SO thirsty.

Drugs I desperately need are caught in red tape. Drugs I don't need and didn't even request are ready. It's so fucked up.I would gladly take pancreatitis over whatever this reaction is that can take 3-5 days to exit my system. This is NOT side effects from the drug. It's a REACTION. A SEVERE reaction. 

I can't even compose any more thoughts, but there's more to this whole stupid story. I'm crying too much right now. The doctors and the pharmacies and the rest of the fucking world don't know what's happening and why, and I, for once, am the only one with my head screwed on correctly. The lunatic in the asylum is powerless and unmedicated, but nobody has died yet and don't forget that I'm very, very smart. 

Best part? Soon, Guy Friend, Lady GuyGuy and some grouping of their kids are going to South America for 17 days. SEVENTEEN DAYS. They're moving a daughter to Chile to teach English for a year or something. (That whole Mother Jones CIA expose on the USA planting operatives and spies under the guise of "teaching people to speak English.") He said he'll check on me, he promises. He also said 90% of people would've caved in a long time ago, but I'm strong and I hold on. I don't like it when he's off radar for 3 weeks and doesn't have international cell service, which is "total bullshit" according to Best Male Friend, who is wrangling assistance with Annie Management Relief Efforts during Guy's vacation.

Friday:

The prednisone (only 10 mg!) caused me to defy all logical behavior I had to spare, and I did all sorts of crazy shit around the house until I took 3 Ambien and tried to fall asleep, leaving a veritable trail of disaster all around, only briefly sleeping and having frantically 1) searched the whole house and talked out loud looking for Luke, when Logical Me *knew* he was at Craig's and 2) bawling in steroid-fueled, shaky, hysterical panic and cavernous emptiness nothing could assuage for 4 hours about school, my bipolar disorder, &  my needy-little-girl reliance on Guy Friend to keep me feeling safe. More than 3 people have now asked me honestly how Guy manages to flee the USA for weeks at a time when I'm acute need of him, and his love and support. I understand Guy, being Guy, wanting to cut himself off from the rigors of First World problems (like me) and enslave himself to nature and an alternate universe as soul-quenching, contemplative enrichment. I also find it totally douchey.

I had therapy @ 2pm Friday, and I only went to see that idiot because I needed to extrapolate info from her for a major paper on a social service provider which is due on Monday, but is completely not going to happen, which I'll have to explain at length to the professor. My only armor towards the school is a very poorly composed, brief letter the therapist wrote to one of my professors. If I don't go to class tomorrow, it'd behoove me to see Stosh, get a medical note, & yell at the psychiatrist more in favor of Geodon. 

The extent to which Maine Center (my public aid mental health providers) professionals twist a situation to nullify their culpability/liability onto the patient, me, is frightening . Why didn't *I* tell the shrink sooner that I was sick? Because I assumed I'd caught an infection from Ma and Luke. Only after the immediate care anaphylactic shock shot did I realize I'd been getting sicker and sicker as the week went on, and that the reactions timed and were poised to blaze my bloodstream and brain exactly when I started taking the new drug, overloading my system, which was shutting down. Whoops!

So the shrink makes it my fault and the counselor backs her up, and nobody's advocating for me except me. Guy said I have a better psychopharmecutical medicine based knowledge than any doctor I could ever see, which is a compliment. Also, Maine Center should watch their mouths very closely with regard to all this ass-covering as they deny negligence, praise one another for their clinical competence, and make me the bad guy. The reality of it all was at the moment when the shrink handed me the samples of the Saphris and when I asked what side effects might occur, she curtly referenced drowsiness and an occasional upset stomach, and said that the drug is well-tolerated. I'm sure the perky young saleswoman, who introduced the shrinks to the drug, probably didn't mention that on extremely rare occurrences, this fucking medicine will introduce a slow, uncomfortable, painful ascent of the patient up into the Pearly Gates. Death is kind of a buzzkill to throw around when you're peddling toxins. 

A gentle reminder memo should be placed upon every medical professional and mental health practitioner's desk, which reads "It's probably really not smart to argue with and lie to someone who just got an "A" in Psychology Ethics and Law. Like, especially when she's on steroids. Because Annie on steroids is ANNIE ON STEROIDS."  I have no interest in profiting or conniving compensation for the suffering I endured at the hands of Maine Center. All I want is to be treated and treated WELL. What type of compensation or financial gain and accolades these mental health providers expect as the rewards for their work should NEVER come before the well being of the people who have come to them for help. If I was really a bitch, and sued everyone who have almost killed me by virtue of their own stupidity, trust that Luke and I would be living a far more cushy lifestyle. 

It's pretty crappy that they're also not available for psychiatric paging on any weekend, I'm in between PCP's right now, defaulting ALL of the Annie Physical Management back onto Stosh. 

Saturday

After a 24-hr respite from the toilet and trying to bulk my system with small portions of bland solids, the diarrhea is back and the world's left me ONE Lomotil until tomorrow's magic release of 100 of them. 

Probably *should've* started the spare steroid eye drops I have LAST night before I crashed at 8pm, when I ignored that my eyes were swollen, red, blurry, clouded and that my pupils were the size of Jupiter and I had a migraine. Dumb, rhetorical questions like "How do you know you have allergic conjunctivitis?" weighed against all the other presenting evidence, are colossally fruitless. In all, though, I slept a straight 14 hours, only arising once to urinate at 4am. 

Guy hasn't checked on me since Thurs night, despite my bevy of texts, and only replied today because his own lymph nodes were swelling and he's on day 7 of a sore throat, right before his trip. I had a little trouble sympathizing, given he could've put himself on an antibiotic a week ago, and not doing so was a heroic superhero attempt to be awesome when he was just being stubborn. It was all I could do not to reply that I sincerely hoped that while he is hiking in Chile, scorpions bite him, giant insects buzz around his head, and that Lady GuyGuy is constricted to death by an anaconda. XOXO. Swollen lymph nodes, seriously? No, go on...

Oh, Luke just told me anacondas don't constrict, they bite and eat people. Details, details. 

You can't accuse me of being the asshole....Thursday night, Guy felt compelled to send a text suggesting I totally dope myself on too many benzos and knock both myself and my immune system out. I told him I hadn't even had a chance to explain, that it wasn't funny, and to just forget it. "Ringy dingy" went the phone and he was apologizing for upsetting me (again). See, when we say things in jest, sometimes they're not funny whatsoever, you know, Guy?

In any event, tomorrow will be raft with straightening out school stuff, not itching, not going to the bathroom and being functional. No, I don't think any of it will be accomplished.

Tomorrow morning's edition of "Rhythms" will focus on whomever is hyper-focused in a creepy, stalker way in order to gather dirt or ammo on or against one of my friends. Be very, very afraid.

Stalactites and Stalagmites, MY SWEET LORD! (Coming Soon to PBS)

Life itself is an oddity, for sure. People have grappled since the beginning of time (a duration which varies depending on your theory) with the sequence of events which perpetuated the formation of the Earth and all its creatures, great and small, and in general terms, it's primarily attributed to a) the beautiful creations of God (the creationists), b) the Big Bang Theory and evolution (the scientists and folks of reasonable intellect) or c) A growing camp, those who believe God created evolution, (the indeterminable, non-committed middle ground). 

Creationists honestly, utilizing their bounty of spongy head tissue, would prefer to believe this illustration is accurate:

Versus the notion that such a creature as this existed, The Uchchaihshravas, in Hinduism (which hangs on my bedroom wall!):

Why, you ask? Because for simpletons and those whose logic is irreversibly stunted, it's much easier and less neuron-draining to lump the Tyrannosaurus Rex with hissing cockroaches, zebras, cows and monkeys on a giant boat and reduce the dinosaur to a peaceful herbivore in lieu of what science has starkly proven time and time again, that the T-Rex (like many other dinosaurs) was a total carnivore. The creationist will say, "No, this can't be! That would mean the T-Rex ate things like other animals, and, gasp, maybe even people! No, no. They ate grass and trees. It's in the Bible here....(licking fingers and flipping pages)....um, unable to find anything remotely referring to prehistoric creatures...but hold on, we're looking, we're looking..." in utter denial that prehistoric creatures eradicated the planet before it was inhabited by homosapiens. 

Hi, yeah, no. 

Perhaps what amuses me the most is an aforementioned (many months ago, a chick who became physically ill after reading an hour's worth of my blog, which tickles my insides!) woman who attends my Lutheran church, who recently publicly renounced her support of and her child's enjoyment of PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, because of whom she perceives is Satan's latest myth-perpetuating, disastrous minion, whose incarnation as an eyeglasses-wearing, preppy dressing, TALKING AARDVARK rejects the Judeo-Christian version of God's creation in the form of:

Sure, "Arthur" seems innocent enough, and you know, take away the show's highly enjoyable (I started watching it BEFORE I had kids) and well-presented positive spins on little kids grappling with life, home, friends and school, insert an 11-minute vignette about stalactites, stalagmites and bats, explaining in logical, honest sense and reason what was involved in cave formation, and you, you, you, you and all of PBS are on a swift pathway to the bowels of hell.

This is the vignette in question, which, at 7:50, begins to explain the cave's formation (where the kids are on a field trip) with the truthful understanding that the Earth is, in fact, billions of years and not 4,000 years old. 

Yeah, trust me, I was thinking the same thing too, but this family takes Lutheranism to the tiniest pinhole of legitimacy vis-a-vis an extremely thin thread of any semblance of remote intelligence, and have made the unfortunate (but to each his own....raise ignoramuses, I give a shit) and illogical decision to ban "Arthur" from their daughter's television time. (If you're not in the know, "Veggie Tales," with its Christian approval stamp, gets really old really quickly, especially if your kid is really intelligent and deduces that he'd sooner watch an upright, humanly functioning aardvark than vegetables with eyes & mouths.) 

Perusing the comment thread underneath SB's anti-PBS rant featured rally cries from other creationist parents, and a special howdy-do from The Bride of Frankenstein, SB;s mother in law. Frankenbride proclaimed her own disdain towards PBS, her renunciation of supporting WTTW-Chicago; furthermore, her membership to the Shedd Aquarium, because the factual accounts of and displays about sea creatures, some of which are or were prehistoric, are likewise mislabeled, misguided fallacies and the Christian God isn't given any credit...in a public museum. (Poor thing. She's missing "Downton Abbey.") 

This is all, like, 75% as awesome as the Pope Emeritus Benedict the Roman Numeral resurrecting (for lack of a better term) the Shroud of Turin, which Catholics from around the world are ga-ga'ing their way to Italy over which to fawn. 

Hi, yeah, no.

Multi-million dollar, extensive research and study from both sacred and secular authorities deemed the Shroud an illusion of fallacy like 25 years ago. It's a crafty, man-made thingy a helluva long time ago, which happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to....exactly the way European Christians have depicted the Middle Eastern Jewish Jesus since roughly the Renaissance.  Catholic dictates are even more difficult to grasp than protestant theology, but my humble opinion was that Mr. Ratzinger sprung the Shroud out of hiding to deflect the multiple hush-hush scandals within Catholicism, while publicly (in his farewell address) accusing God of having "been asleep" for the majority of the last 8 years. 

God sleeps?!?!?! 

If I'd known *that* in the past, I completely would've capitalized on the Almighty Creator's snoozing inattentiveness and worked harder at seducing Guy Friend guilt-free, many times over. All these natural disasters, e.g. tsunamis, hurricanes, erupting volcanoes, amoebic dysentery epidemics & SB getting pregnant again must have all occurred during one of God's naps. His motto? "I'm omniscient & omnipresent, but I like to snuggle with a blankie and snooze while my children on Earth get all wacky and eat pig meat, fornicate, take My name in vain and fill sandbags before the levees break. I'm a busy guy, I'm getting old, and my son, seated at my right hand, well, gee, it takes me 3 days to get Him out of bed. Kids."

Concluding with the subject of naps, I arose with an intensely sore throat and a fever, and as I told SuperJuls, I'm a warrior who presses forward regardless. If I feel like lying down, chances are I ain't too peppy. Special thanks to Tuberculosis Freddie situated right behind me on the train yesterday morning, whose liberal and enthusiastic sneezing were barely shielded by my coat hood.  

Shalom!

Whaddya In For?

February 21, 2008

Above, a beautiful photograph of Diversey Harbor overlooking the Chicago skyline. That's where I *thought* I was going. Harborview Recovery Center in St. Joseph's Hospital in Lincoln Park. I was still married, though separated for a year, and had a great Blue Cross/Blue Shield insurance plan, so money wasn't an issue.

All I knew was that I needed to stop drinking as much as I was drinking, or else face the brutal fact my doctor laid out that the pace I was running would kill me in a few months. Yes, I was an alcoholic, having spent (in drinking years, anyway) only a few years drinking to the point where it was a daily necessity rather than in casual fashion, uncontrollable. Chris and I had been dating only a couple of months at that time, and I told him on the phone, during an argument over wine I stole from his apartment, that I needed to go away.

Harborview under the Resurrection Medical corporation was one choice. The other was Parkside Recovery in Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, where I live (where Elton John did his rehab). I wanted to be far enough away from home where it'd be nearly impossibly for me to get home on my own, so after spending the entire night drinking, I managed to get my ex-husband to drive me downtown after he took my son to school, whom I didn't know if I'd see in a week, or a month, or longer.

I was advised by a social worker to show up to the ER as drunk as possible (and I was) and declare that I was a danger to myself and others to ensure I would be admitted to the recovery center. Craig and I spent the next 10 hours in a partitioned cubicle in the St. Joe's ER, when the delirium tremens started to kick in, I was a shaking, nervous mess and had to be sedated with Ativan to stop me from walking out of the curtain 20 times to see when they planned on taking care of me. I'd gone through 2 banana bag IV's. Turned out, I had to be competent and sober enough to agree to the admission, according to the intake coordinator, which I wasn't deemed until about 5pm that night. (My blood alcohol lever was in the stratosphere.) 

It was winter, so the above view outside Harborview is a little more bleak, but still overlooked the lake. It wasn't until I was taken to my room that I grew immediately fearful. It didn't look like Harborview did on its web page. What *did* it look like? A hospital mental health ward. An insane asylum. 

And it is, my friends, exactly what it was. I don't know if the homicidal and suicidal proclamation (neither of which were true, though I was an active self-harmer (cutter) at the time) were what led to the commission to the ward under the diagnosis of comorbidity or dual-diagnosis, two terms for the same thing: having mental illness and a substance abuse problem at the same time. 

After copying important phone numbers out of my cell, which wasn't allowed in the ward, I compiled the friends I wanted to contact during my assigned telephone time. I had to hand over the laces of my running shoes for fear I'd try to strangle myself with them. My mom scrambled to buy me a few track suits, as zippers were allowed but drawstrings not. I handed over more of my belongings than I remember, but I do remember being allowed to keep my Curious George, thank God.

I'd spend the next 10 days or so detoxing from the booze, warding off the withdrawal with a lot of Librium, Campral and Antabuse, some of which made me very sleepy, but a ton of sleep is not part of a treatment plan in the psych ward. There was breakfast at around 6-7am, followed by 3 hours of intense group therapy, then lunch, more therapy, and finally dinner and free time. We also had nightly homework for group therapy, but I'm pretty sure I was the only one who vigilantly did the assignments. If didn't take a genius to realize that the more you complied, the more you participated, the more you took charge of your own recovery, the sooner you might be allowed to go home.

Group therapy was very depressing, given the dozen or so patients were uniformly suicidal but not otherwise dangerous over on our east side locked partition. People would compete to see how many more cutting scars we all had, but never once did I say I'd rather be dead. The dangerous psychos were on the west side, also locked, and they kept all of the exercise equipment over there, so I couldn't work out.

As I've said in previous blogs, the other patients were all pretty weird, including my first roommate who took a pee in the garbage can next to my bed my first night there, and her catatonic follow up roommate was just dazed and confused the whole time. I met with my son and Craig in a locked, supervised visiting room, not unlike jail. Luke had recently turned 8, and I can't imagine what he thought I was doing in that crazy hospital. I seem to recall my ex-boyfriend visiting me in perhaps the cafeteria (?) one evening and my mom came to see me in my room (with the "safe" clothes). And also as previously discussed, yes, trays of food are thrown, patients throw fits of rage or ill-control and are tethered down and sedated, and bedlam frequently ensues.

There were people I witnessed and things I saw in the psych ward, where I, at the time, though bipolar, was the sanest of the lot, which is frightening. I befriended a few people, all of whom had been in the psych ward for MONTHS.  Some patients were plain-clothed like me. Still others wore hospital gowns, I believe quite frankly, that a lot of them lived on the streets and had nowhere else to go. I had a child to raise and I was stable, so I was granted a "Get Out Free" card. A clusterfuck of problems prevented me from doing much outpatient rehab, and I stayed sober on my own for over 4 years (the NyQuil incident notwithstanding). Minor detours have soiled my 5 years of attempted sobriety, but I worked damn hard to still be here.

Thus was my time in alcohol "rehab." That was my time in the "loony bin."

February 21, 2013

In my professional community, to have done a stint in rehab is the rule over the exception (with clients anyway). Across the board, if you are over 40 and say you've been to rehab (whether that's once, twice or 34 times), nobody gasps or chastises. Rehab is so common it's about the equivalent of having insanity endured taking your child to Chuck E. Cheese. And only for a week and a half? Most of my colleagues wonder doubt whether or not I'm even an alcoholic, which I am, at present, not so sure about myself anymore. But am I bipolar? OMG, yes.I'm going to get this for my manic/depressive mood swings:

We've come a long way in the area of addiction medicine and counseling psychology since I was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital 5 years ago (yesterday). At school, the vast majority only know what a psych ward is like because they read about them in undergrad textbooks. Being a patient in one is totally different. Asked many times if any of us have been patients in a psychiatric ward, I'm the sole hand-raiser. The follow-up question is always "voluntary or involuntary." "Involuntary," I say, which is true, because I wanted to go to Harborview instead. Such a statement rises me to the highest level of wisdom and I'm like the Yoda over there.

It was neither fun nor enjoyable but highly educational at St. Joe's, and cemented my idea to become a psychologist specializing in substance abuse or dual diagnosis patients myself. It's sad, scary and freakish. Rehab is an experience I'd never trade but don't necessarily plan to repeat, unless I'm working in one, during which I'll probably lose what precious is left of my gray matter.

Seeing it just recently, I'm enamored by and drawn to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."  As you know, some things have changed for the better, and some things are still held by strict ethical codes of conduct as determined by the American Counseling Association, just as they religiously followed in the 1960's, during the time span the film covers. I don't have a lot of compelling  evidence these days to see how rituals of group therapy or addiction therapy are run (I'm still a grad student!) but I'm taking group psychotherapy this semester. I feel odd there, mostly because it's during the awkward pauses and silences (even if they're deliberate) I want to insert something--anything--to alleviate the mood. Usually, we're sitting in a circle and smack dab in the middle is a 4-outlet metal electrical doo-hickey. It'd be unusual for me NOT to point out the fact that I'm staring at it most of the time.

When I was in therapy as an inpatient, I was calm, happy and restlessly depressed (all at once) but had my wits about me, unlike the rest and felt 10 times more recovered that any of those other poor souls when I left. This montage of "Cuckoo's Nest" along the song along to a song by Gary Jules, is entitled "Mad World." This clip is heartbreaking, funny, and humanizes the patients versus the robotic nurse amazingly.

Never going back. (I did eventually get my shoelaces back.)

I have to give a shout out to www.healthyplace.com who have recommended "Rhythms" as being a topical and mental health-related site, which in a roundabout way, it is, if one can meander through my complicated personal life to eek out what's socially relevant. To "Stand Up for Mental Health," as I do, visit: http://www.healthyplace.com/stigma/stand-up-for-mental-health/stand-up-for-mental-health-campaign/.