I haven’t blogged in a long time. I guess no news is good news. Just for the record I thought I would mention what medications I am currently taking on a daily basis.
200mg Lamictal (Lamotrigine)
150mg Wellbutrin (Bupropion HCL)
5mg Saphris (I guess there isn’t a generic version yet.)
15mg Deplin (folic acid?)
1gm Lovaza (omega-3 acid ethyl esters)
My pill dispencer has compartments for six different kinds of pills. I use every one. It helps me so I don’t spend so much time opening and closing my many bottles. It currently contains Deplin, Vit. D3, Calcium, Lamictal, Omega 3, and Wellbutrin. I still don’t have room for my Melatonin for when I have trouble sleeping (rarely these days) and my DMAE.
At age 59 Virginia Woolf filled her coat pockets with stones and walked in to the river near her home. The following is what she wrote in her final note to her husband.
“I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.”
Growing up there was a quote colorfully embroidered and framed that hung on the wall in my house. It said, Only that day dawns to which we are awake. For years I wondered what Henry David Thoreau meant.
After I started taking medication for my bipolar disorder I felt “awake” for the first time since childhood. Of course I did not realize that I was in a haze. If one is not aware, if one is “out of it” and not living in the moment then one is only a shell occupying space. One misses out. To be awake and alert is to be alive. It is a gift to be able to see roses and smell the coffee and hear the birds singing. The present is a gift.
