MORE hypo-medical stupid...!

Briefly, if possible, but perhaps that's unhelpful... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've been arguing for some time that my doctors should listen to me on meds*. When it comes to mania and near mania and hypomania and near hypomania -- they don't. In recent years, I've gotten wayyyy too close to all four of those latter stages. Multiple times.

Now, I am starting to enter menopause. That could be the other problem.

Thing is, I just don't know. 

This year, I began having really erratic menses, like nothing I'd have before, and/or normal menses mixed in with crazy throwbacks... as in, blood levels from over a decade ago, or even my first decade of periods!

=-=

Last summer, almost exactly -- I shall check, of course -- I began taking Lamotrigine. Teeny dose: 50mg.

My doc wanted me to move up in doses. Tried that. Things got worse, not better; my frequent hot flashes went ballistic unto nuclear levels of awfulsauce; my sleep went down to mere slivers... that sort of NOT-fun.

I tried increasing my Tegretol, my old reliable anti-mania med, but that didn't help either, so I went back to my (admittedly quite high) dose of Teg instead.

I persuaded my kind doctor to return to Lamotrigine's baby dose. Alas, it took a couple weeks for someone to process that [or he happened to be swamped, I know not] and so I had to essentially restart the process with it.

=-=

Thus we come to this past month...

I've been getting next to nothing for sleep. Averaging 1-3 hours/night -- or session, as I'd been sleeping in such small gasps that sometimes I'd just get lucky enough to wear myself out, and nap later on. But never for longer than about an hour, maybe two at most.  :( :( :(

The sleep problems began around 20-June, and that's also when I began having a week's warning of PMS/odd symptoms that used to mean "menses in 24 hrs, yo" -- but don't now.

A week ago we got back from CVG, and this week, nearly 3.5 weeks after this hellride started... I began sleeping almost normally. Whole nights of sleep! With maybe 1-2 breaks from hot flashes. O.M.G.

Tuesday I see my doc again. But I'm stopping Lamotrigine tomorrow; I forgot today. :o Whatever is gacking my sleep, the culprit I can control is the drug. If it's hormones, that I need a different specialist for. About to find one now...



* In 2015, it was an accident medically that I nearly went manic. [See about halfway through this very chatty and cluttered post, after the link for Be a Tourist in Your Own Town.] My then-shrink kindly put me back on an older med, Nortripyline, to see if it'd help with my sciatica pain. (It did.) Problem is, that accelerated me ASAP toward mania. Like many meds tend to do.

Ornery little fvcks.