This is a great presentation/speech. I hope you can watch and share it! It really needs to go viral! Hopefully the correct video will play. It is a TED talk about mental illness and community.
Hey Everybody! I recently made this new brain/neuron fabric and gift wrap! I made a giant brain pillow for my psychiatrist too, and he seemed to like it which was awesome! :) Here are some pics! Also, the fabric, gift wrap, and wall paper are available on spoonflower here: http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/3713721
Recently I made a medication change (with the help of my psychiatrist), and as you might know from your own interactions with meds sometimes it can cause issues to develop. I was happily strolling along for a couple of months with a few bad days here and there, and then I started to notice the bad days piling up more often. I was really irritable, sad, became unmotivated, and suicide starting sounding better. I became alarmed, because I knew something was going wrong, but how was I supposed to explain to my psychiatrist that “irritable” is a symptom for me?
The problem with mental illness is that even when we fit into a diagnosed category of disorder, we all have our own unique symptoms that we need to pay attention to. I have schizophrenia, but for years I didn’t appear “sick enough” to most doctors, because they expected me to be talking to the walls and completely disheveled. There were times when I was talking to the walls and completely disheveled, but the doctors rarely saw me during those times, so they figured I wasn’t that bad off. Because I could communicate relatively well most doctors dismissed schizophrenia as a diagnosis.
Over the years I have come to realize what my symptoms are (for the most part), and now that I am doing better I can advocate for myself more effectively. However, it still isn’t easy to call up my psychiatrist and say “wow, I’m extremely irritable, this isn’t normal for me, and I need to increase my meds.” Most psychiatrists won’t believe that “irritable” is in any way related to schizophrenia, but for me (and many others) it is. I don’t become psychotic over night, and I don’t believe that I should have to be talking to walls in order to get the help I need. I also don’t believe that people should have to try to kill themselves before mental health professionals take people seriously.
Unfortunately, a lot of mental health professionals won’t take a person seriously unless they are debilitated to the point of needing to be hospitalized. So, as people living with mental illness or people who love people with mental illness, we have to be very proactive about getting the help we need before it turns into a crisis. Think about the good days and what you are like on those days, and compare them to the bad days. What are YOUR symptoms? How do things manifest in your day to day life? You might want to write down what you know your symptoms to be, and take that list with you when you talk to your doctor. It isn’t easy or fun, but we have to advocate for ourselves even when we are not doing our best.
In the end, you know your symptoms the best. Remember that you aren’t “crazy” for wanting to feel better and you aren’t making up excuses. Be pragmatic and straightforward, and get the help you need.
Hi! Just wanted to post this to ask people to please sign the petition to the President and Congress to increase funding for research related to finding cures for mental illness. It only takes a minute! Please share with your friends too!
https://www.change.org/petitions/to-the-president-and-congress-fund-research-to-cure-mental-illness
Hey Everybody! I wanted to share with you this cool genetics testing that is available to people. I just got it done, because my nurse practitioner ordered it and Medicare pays for it. (Medicare pays for this testing, because it saves a LOT of money and can save lives!) It is really cool, because it tells you how medications will interact with your specific genetic makeup! It is extremely important if you are taking really any kind of medication. For example, had I known about my results before I took Wellbutrin years ago, it would have saved me from basically having a manic reaction to the medication. It turns out that I metabolize differently than normal on some of the metabolic pathways. This means that I will metabolize the meds on those pathways different than people without this issue. If you have Medicare, I strongly urge you to get this testing done. It could save your life from a bad genetic-medication mistake. I think many other insurance carriers might also pay for it. It also explains why I can take a lower dose of many medications and still get the desired effect from the medication. I would say that anyone who is trying to figure out their psych meds should really get this testing done too. It doesn’t just tell about psych meds though, it tells about stuff involving all other sorts of meds. Seriously, this is pretty awesome! Again, here is the link: http://www.genemedrx.com/
Hi! I’m happy to report I got my Cure Alliance schizophrenia magnet today! Strange that my bumper wouldn’t hold the magnet! haha. Anyway, please check them out at the Cure Alliance Facebook page here. Also, see the related post I made about their campaign here.
I thought I’d do a little mental health update, since it has been quite some time since I’ve blogged about my overall mental health. As some of you dear readers may know, I have schizophrenia. I first had issues with it when I was about 15. My first hospitalization was when I was 16. Towards the end of 2000 I got mostly stabilized with my Haldol injections and Zoloft. I haven’t been in the hospital since then! Yay! Quite a long run I’ve had and I hope it continues! For quite some time I had problems getting things done, being motivated and feeling down…that sort of thing, even though I was mostly fine. I think it was last year that I started taking Abilify and it has made a HUGE difference! I’m still taking Zoloft, Buspar, Haldol and some non-psychiatric meds in addition to the Abilify, but the addition of the Abilify was great. I’m doing really pretty well these days. Sometimes I have anxiety, although I think it might generally be related to performance issues with school. I also tried taking Topamax to help with weight loss, but I thought it might be making me stupid and giving me more anxiety, so I quit taking it. I think overall, the Topamax was not helping. It seemed like I was becoming less motivated and more sad with it. I also had that bad anxiety day that I wrote about recently.
So, I think I was just hoping for a magic weightloss bullet with the Topamax. It didn’t work. Boo. I have lost about 90-100 pounds though which is good, but I still need to be less sedentary. I’m also a believer in fat acceptance, but of course it is hard to say that I never want to try to lose weight. I would be an even bigger believer in fat acceptance if I wasn’t actually fat I think!!! hahaha. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is kind of true. I can accept the hell out of everyone’s fatness, but my own! lol.
Anyway, enough about fatness for now. What I want to say is that I’m doing well on the whole. My sleep patterns have improved with my sleep apnea machine, and while I’m not sleeping on any kind of normal schedule yet, I’m getting sleep every day and mostly at the same time! I still tend to be somewhat paranoid, but I’ve found that opening up with people over the years on the internet has really helped me to realize that I don’t need to be afraid of everyone in the world. I still have some delusional thoughts that blow through my brain now and then, but I consider them to be more of a slight annoyance than a big deal right now. But seriously, it is because of the medicine. If I wasn’t taking my meds, and doing so faithfully, I would be in and out of hospitals and massively psychotic. Some people don’t believe me, because I “seem so normal,” but I have to wonder what THAT means anyway? And, I don’t know, it seems like I should be insulted when people say that to me, but I’m not sure why I find it so insulting! I don’t necessarily want to be abnormal, even though I pretty much am, but I think it just bothers me that people attach a kind of value judgement to the term “normal” as if “normal” is superior. It is definitely easier to live in the world if you are “normal,” but it isn’t the only way to be in the world, that’s for sure. Normal is just such a peculiar word, no?
So, I’m doing fine. Some anxiety here and there, some weird thoughts here and there…a depressed mood now and then, but mostly just good. Which is nice. Thank you meds and thank you lucky stars! So, that’s my update after living with schizophrenia for 24 years. Wow! 24 years! Man am I getting old!!! LOL.
Yes, my life is all about math and cats. Here is another cat I’ve finished making. This one is for a friend of mine who likes green. :)
I have one cat for sale in my Etsy shop here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ArtByKristinBell.
And I’ve made a new Calculus fabric out of my math homework and uploaded it to spoonflower.
Here’s my shop on spoonflower: http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/kristinbell
OMG I was so excited when someone bought one of my fabrics! You have no idea how thrilling it is!!!
I’m quite a boring person…obsessed with making cats and doing math homework! hehe. Thank god the anxiety has calmed down quite a lot, so I can go about my business and get stuff done!!! What a relief! :) :) :)
Sometimes I get terrible anxiety that I can’t seem to make go away. I try my usual coping mechanisms like eating (bad idea), and obsessing on the computer (bad idea), but those don’t help. Sometimes I plop down in bed and try to relax my way out of the anxiety. It probably doesn’t help that I drink a lot of coffee, but I really feel like the coffee doesn’t do much to me. It feels more like a different kind of anxiety than a coffee-induced jittery type anxiety. Lately, I’ve tried focusing my anxiety into doing productive things like making cats and cleaning and doing homework. Sometimes I can harness it and actually get stuff done. Other times I’m too agitated to concentrate. The making cats thing seems to help a lot, because it involves using my hands and my imagination and I can sort of zone out on it. I also have to focus on details which is helpful. I feel guilty that I’m making cats instead of doing my math homework sometimes, but there are times when I just can’t motivate myself to do math–like tonight. I really really need to do my math, but I’m not doing it. So, I could either start on a new cat or just fritter away my time doing nothing. I think I might start a new cat despite the guilt of not doing my homework. I do take Buspar, which is an anti-anxiety medication, but it doesn’t seem to do all that much. I think part of it is that I need to figure out why I’m so keyed up. I know that part of it is that I’m worried about my school work. Perhaps another part is that my parents just came back home after being gone for three months to Arizona and I’m having to go through some adjustment having people back in the house again. It is just an adjustment I think I need to get used to. Anyway. Writing about it has helped a little I think.
kristinbell.org 