Sidelined.

Published on May 10, 2013 by Corinna Carlson | 1 Comment

The 5th of May has come and gone and I was not at the start line for the BMO ½ Marathon. On one of my runs in the final two and a half weeks leading up to the race I felt a pain in my left foot, it was in the last kilometer of a short 8k and I knew the second I felt it that I was out. I did run another 13k on it that Sunday to prove myself right but I still knew.

The last time I injured myself before a big race I ran it anyway and that had disastrous consequences. I could have easily done the same thing this time but I didn’t, I’ve been benched and haven’t ran since April 21st.

I may or may not have a stress fracture. X-rays generally do not show stress fractures and mine stayed true to that so I’ve been waiting on a bone scan. After I’d done that 13k the pain wasn’t any worse than it had been but the three days rest I’d given it from the onset hadn’t helped at all either. I had planned on simply giving it another two days rest and then only running 5k on it. At first I wasn’t worried because the longest run I had left before the race was a 10k and I figured if it wasn’t going to hurt any worse than that then I could run the ½ on it.

I went out on the second rest day to do some errands and noticed again that the foot felt no better and the words stress fracture were getting louder and louder in the back of my head. My body was telling me that ignoring my gut any longer was stupid and to get my ass to physio, NOW. I knew I was going to have to see a different physiotherapist than my normal one and I wasn’t super happy about it. I’d heard good things about the new guy at the clinic and thankfully everything I heard turned out to be true because between treatment and having my foot re-taped twice a week, we’ve been spending a lot of time together.

I’m pretty sure that this injury be it a stress fracture or just a really bad strain stems from a super bad race I had at the end of March followed by a training error or rather a few training errors. I didn’t write specifically about the race but I did post on how stressed out I was feeling. It seems silly to get so worked up over a race but some of these races are really expensive and they do take a lot of time in training for them. Whether I’m running them for fun or for a specific time it’s disappointing and frustrating when nothing ends up working out. When I was forced to back off of my miles I didn’t back off the intensity, I think that’s the main error I made. I know I would have raced a great time, I did a 19k Tribute to Terry Fox run on April 12 and the pace was pretty easy and I felt great the entire way and the time was 1 hour 50 minutes. I felt really strong that day, that day made me feel like it was all finally coming together. I’ve got it now, I’ve learned the lesson, when I get back out there I’m slowing my training down. I’m going to stop saying that I’m going to do it and just do it. The funny thing is if I’d have been running with a group regularly it would have happened anyway because I always have to keep up to the front of whatever group I’m running with and that is why I don’t run with groups, very often, I know my running weaknesses.

So far I haven’t gotten depressed and I’ve been riding my bike around the park, not in the trails that would hurt my foot, too bumpy and I’ve been water running. Water running has got to be the most boring thing to do on the entire planet but I started doing it with my high school track team and have done it enough in my life that I’m actually pretty good at it. I started out with 45 minutes and now I’m up to an hour. I don’t know how I feel about doing it for more than an hour, I take Adam to the pool with me on Sundays to keep me company, If I go over an hour it’ll be when he is with me. I don’t really know what sort of water moves he’s doing but it is nice to have him there.

Right now is a bit of a waiting game, my bone scan is super soon but then it can take another 5 days for results. I waver back and forth over whether I think it is fractured or not. One part of me doesn’t think that it hurts enough while the other is puzzled as to how it doesn’t feel any better. It feels like if I ran a kilometer on it that it would dart right back to the most intense of pain levels. If the scan comes back not fractured I could be back out there in around 6 weeks but if it comes back fractured it will likely be 8 to 12. Either way I’m not running on any sort of ground right now and although that sucks fucking large I seem to be maintaining my sanity quite nicely. For now.

diagnostic thoughts.

Published on April 6, 2013 by Corinna Carlson | 2 Comments

When I sat down for my last session with my psychiatrist some of the first words out of his mouth stated that he had just read a recent study proclaiming that the average diagnosis period for bipolar II is 13 years. When and the way he said it stuck with me. I’ve been seeing him long enough now that I’m used to his mannerisms and this wasn’t the shrink I recognized for a moment. We both know it took 10 years to diagnose me so I left it, I remember acknowledging that he said it but I didn’t comment back in a way to bring it into the dialogue I moved on to whatever I needed to talk about.

I can’t say that finding out that it can apparently take 13 years to come to the conclusion that your patient is in fact more than “just depressed” doesn’t make me feel any better about the length of time it took for me because for me it isn’t really about the length of time, that is turning out to be the least of my worries.

This has been the first week except for PMS where I’ve had more than one bad day in a row. This is good but it is also bad because the low times were LOW like sleeping all day low. One very obvious difference over being on the antidepressants and now just meds for bipolar II is that before I’d go to bed and do absolutely nothing and have to play catch up on everything. This week I still did all of my housewife extraordinaire chores and then I crashed or I crashed in between and I went to some length to hide from Adam that I was actually sleeping – which there is no need for me to do – if I wasn’t getting it done as a wife. Yesterday I explained that I had been feeling worse than I had originally led on.

The point is I don’t know how many days are too many days. I don’t want to have to add an antidepressant back into the mix but I realize I may have to. I feel so exposed and I don’t mean in an I put my life online sorta way I mean literally exposed. Depression was just depression but this means that there is actually something wrong with me. I would gather that makes no sense because severe depression alone dictates that there is something wrong but this is deviating from everything I thought I knew about my disease. I have now said to myself many times that I do not like being bipolar I do not like it one bit. But at the same time I do not want the old me back, not for one second. I like the person that is emerging, the difference is incontestable, this is a better me. But I’m still afraid. Very very afraid. I don’t enjoy feeling like a time bomb or worrying that people won’t want to be friends with me because of it.

I don’t care so much about the label of bipolar – people are gonna say what they are gonna say – as I do the feelings behind living with this. I know in my head right now that it wouldn’t be a failure to have to go back on an antidepressant but I know I would punish myself with mental torture if I were to. I do not wish to be back under some foggy cloudy shit that most of the time I really didn’t think was there but I’m afraid of bad days and how long they will last and if it is only the day and how will I feel in the morning and did I freak out and if so how bad? So it is a bit of obsessive thoughts as well. Everything is still so new, the only other time I was able to come off of antidepressants I made it two months, suffered an assault and went right back on. I remember that ex boyfriend I have who said that he would never want to know me off of antidepressants, I don’t dwell on that comment but I sure as fuck remember it.

This is me off of antidepressants, up and down a bit more than I’d like right now but adjusting to being a medicated bipolar person with a side of clonazepam for anxiety. It’s the best I’ve got right now.

inside of life.

Published on April 3, 2013 by Corinna Carlson | Closed

I feel like I spent ten years not really feeling. People would talk about being under a cloud with their depression so to speak but I always thought that that was never me. I always felt that even though I was on an antidepressant that I was feeling everything because my moods were still pretty extreme at times.

It has been a while now since I’ve taken anything with any sort of stimulant in it, I’ve been able to deal with my allergies without needing any medication and my cough is finally gone. I missed last Friday’s session with my shrink and now I won’t see him again until the 19th so I have to make the best of not knowing but trying to sort out where I’m at with my mood stability.

I’ve been training for the BMO Vancouver Marathon, I’m supposed to be running the half but I’m running into obstacles, some of which I can take in stride while others are sending me over to the depressed side.

According to my email I registered on February 18 which means I was in the thick of SSRI withdrawal when I did. It also means that I would have ignored all of the reasons I had for registering for the Vancouver Scotia ½ at the end of June INSTEAD of the BMO, now I’m registered for both. Because of what happened the first time I ran a half marathon I had planned on only registering for the Scotia ½ this year to make sure I didn’t put any pressure on myself trying to run the city’s main running event of the year. I know I’d have told myself that except for the muscle spasm in my stomach the 15k had gone really well so why not? I didn’t know that I’d be in withdrawal for a full month leading into a horrible visit with my parents where in which I got the cold from hell.

The shrink told me not to make any important decisions because I wasn’t all there and except for registering for the stupid BMO half marathon I didn’t. I thought I was very conscious of the false sense of security that feeling so high at times was giving me. I know I would have told myself that I had lots of time.

I ran a short race a couple of weeks ago now and it was shitty, Adam remarked that it was like he was running with someone else my form was so off, I felt horrible the entire way and if Adam hadn’t have been there with me I’m pretty sure it would have been my first ever DNF. The next day my body didn’t feel like I had ran a race so I went out and tried to do a recovery run and I felt really good and so I ran too fast and too far but I didn’t realize it until my next run when from the first step I had screaming pain in both of my shins. I chalked it up to my form being off and my body not wanting to run the nasty hills repeats I had in store for that day but the next run was just as horrible and painful.

After freaking out and thinking that I had a stress fracture in each shin I deduced that the pain was definitely coming from my form being seriously off. Having one run with my form off is one thing but two or more within that proximity is basically unheard of until now. I had a lot of swelling in both of my legs and feet, I had no choice but to miss my 10 mile Sunday long run and cut a few other runs short as well. I rested and iced my shins and did a short 5k with Adam on the weekend and it still took almost two kilometers to relax enough that my form was close to normal and then I took the two days off that I always take off after a race. I don’t know what possessed me to stray from my tried and true race training. I always take two days off for every race distance under half marathon except for this time and this time it cost me.

I dealt with the withdrawal and getting so sick after with running. I was just happy to be able to run so I basically ignored all the proper training and opted for fun running. I used it to get better and for what I needed it for it worked and was great but now that’s over and my feet are lost and I feel like I’m out of time. I generally have a very nice stride, unless I’m right next to you, you don’t hear me. When I ran with my Dad in Bali he was constantly turning around thinking he’d lost me, we couldn’t run side by side very often and he couldn’t hear me landing right behind him. If I can hear my feet over my headphones things are seriously wrong.

I ran today and although things went ok they were far from good and I felt that the fun is gone, it all feels like work, my stride my pace everything, it isn’t fun. I don’t even want to run either half right now because if it isn’t fun and my body is tightening up on me again which I knew was going to happen to a certain extent but this is too soon and really tight. The furthest I’ve ran this year is 10 miles and I don’t feel right going into the half if I haven’t put down more than 11 miles and I don’t want a repeat of 2002.

I want nothing more than to relax and have fun running, taking time to smile at people and find something beautiful to comment on around me isn’t there right now and those are some of the things that I use to keep running fun and to remind myself to run for the right reasons and I don’t care right now all I care about is how my body seems to be falling apart on me and I can’t figure out why I didn’t adjust my training accordingly when I got sick instead of believing I could play catch up if I needed to or that I had time. I feel like a fool really, I thought I was past this stupid shit I thought I had taught myself how to run smart and keep it fun. I’m feeling frustrated and I don’t know how to fix this.

too much emotion, too much energy.

Published on March 24, 2013 by Corinna Carlson | 3 Comments

I was already struggling to hold back tears on the skytrain last Friday before I hit the shrink’s couch. I had noticed in the few days prior that I hadn’t been feeling as good as I have been, I know it’s (also) PMS time but I have been having a lot of trouble regulating my mood. I sat down exclaiming that I needed a break. Since the end of January it has been one bloody thing after the other with my health to the point that I STILL have a cough. I went straight from a month of Effexor (SSRI) withdrawal into a hard month with one of the worst and longest lasting head colds I’ve ever had. Admittedly, I haven’t rested like I normally would from a head cold but I have so much energy from not being on an antidepressant and only being on this Olanzapine shit that I haven’t known what to do with it all.

It isn’t the time to start adding and subtracting from the medications that I am on – Clonazepam from the day I was assaulted and now this Olanzapine. Because I’ve been so sick on and off and taking cold meds for so long – plus now my allergies have hit – we don’t have any idea exactly where my mood is and won’t until I have a couple of weeks without so many extra stimulants in my system. With the shrink’s permission, I’ve had no choice but to take an extra Clonazepam here and there on days where I just have not been able to sit in my own skin.

I haven’t taken any cold medication in about a week now, except for Buckley’s when I wake myself up coughing at night and I’m only taking one pill a day if that for my allergies so here’s to hoping that by this Friday we’ll be able to start a month fresh and actually evaluate how my mind is doing.

I’m having a tough time not being really fucking tough on myself, I’ve thrown a few fits and am so much more present while I’m losing it, and I seem to be directing all of the embarrassment and guilt back onto myself to the point that Adam has very sternly told me to STOP calling myself a loser. That led to me feeling like a bigger loser and then starting to cry because I didn’t want him to think that he couldn’t do anything right to help me because I just feel like I can’t do fuck all right, right now. It is also how I feel, I feel like a straight up loser, I feel like everything I do is wrong and I’m finding myself very confused. I’m generally rather abusive towards myself but I’m nearly plumbing new lows with the name calling and yelling at myself. I used to be able to turn off and sleep it off and that doesn’t seem to be working with this. Also, when it comes to being self critical that includes having to take an extra clonazepam, if I do have to take one then I still have to beat myself up mentally for not being able to make it through the day on my prescribed dose.

I just didn’t feel like this on antidepressants, I’m really starting to struggle with feeling great for a few days and then BAM out of nowhere I’ve got the inner monologue telling me to off myself. It is one thing to be in a depression and feel depressed and feel suicidal, I’m used to that I know what to do for that, whether I always can or could is irrelevant now but I could deal with it. This is all still so new that every negative feeling is exacerbated and feels like the end of the world and then ten minutes later I’m happy happy go go again. This very minute I feel like bursting into tears and already have a few times today. I don’t think that some sort of stable mood is too much to ask for but it fucking blows knowing I can’t have it right now.