18 Weeks Pregnant: Panic Attacks, PRN Medication for Bipolar Disorder, There's a Rat in Our House, We Can't Find a Bigger Place to Move into that Doesn't Cost the Moon, the End of My Cold, Glum Weather, and Loneliness

Current mood . . . (yes our cat sneered at me when I opened the blinds the other morning)

Last weekend was spent at home with my husband and cat. Having an entire weekend with my husband made me feel grateful after having him gone for so much in the autumn and winter. We thought about going out for dinner or to a movie or even both, but I was still feeling really wiped out from the cold I caught two and half weeks ago. He seemed to be coming down with it. And I had to pee even more often than usual making me think I might have a urinary tract infection (I still am not really sure. I think my body is just trying to adjust to having an increasingly heavy uterus pressing on the bladder and I was never a camel to begin with, so, lots of urination in the future for me I guess). Instead of going out, we ordered in Indian food and relaxed. Bliss . . . I know we should be going out together and enjoying the last of our "freedom" but we've been trying to have a baby for so many years now (almost seven) that  perhaps we've had enough freedom. We just feel exhausted and antisocial (and this epic cold certainly hasn't helped).

We just couldn't move since a giant cat was forcing us to rest all weekend . . .

Listen to me . . . you are getting sleepy . . . you will stay in and feed me tuna.

Monday, one of our landladies came over to tell me that the neighbour had heard scratching in the walls of some sort of rodent and she didn't have a cat, so they had had an exterminator over to lay some traps. I told her that I had not heard anything. And I thought we'd be okay because of our big tabby cat. I went back to preparing dinner not too worried about this piece of housing related news (our last rental suite had a rat infestation, but it was more run down, we paid half the rent, and it was a ground level/basement suite dark haven perfect for rats). This story will pick up further down the post . . .

Tuesday, my husband was home sick from work with my horrible cold (sharing is caring). After discovering a strange man going through our recycling on our back deck, I looked at UsedVictoria, Craigslist, and Kijiji hoping that the rental situation might have improved in Victoria since I last looked at it about a month or two ago. The conditions had not improved at all (for tenants, for landlords they are the best ever). There is almost nothing available in the way of houses to rent and what is available is either crappy and really expensive or ho hum and really, really, really expensive. Thoroughly depressed, I abandoned the search after about an hour. A visit from yet another canvasser to the door further worsened my mood. How many times per month do I have to be interrupted in my work by people knocking at the door asking for money when I know that the organizations that send them have such high administrative costs that the purported recipients of this charity will see virtually none of it?

We keep wondering if it's even worth staying in Victoria. I mean, if one can't even find a place to live without paying almost their entire after tax income in rent or towards a mortgage that they'll never pay off, how would one ever prosper or even retire?

How depressing.

Instead of finding a place to go and view with 50 or 100 other prospective tenants, we emerged into the windy and rainy night to go out for an ice cream. For some reason, I had been craving ice cream the last two days and what better time to have ice cream than a dark and stormy night?

Rain- check, wind- check, dark- check. The perfect conditions for an ice cream cone.

This week has been difficult as I have been suffering from increasing anxiety and having panic attacks most days, sometimes many times a day. I have suffered badly from anxiety and panic attacks at various points in my life, but none worse than around the time when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2012. Panic attacks and high anxiety are one of my "tells" that something is not right and that I need to slow down, rest, and if my condition doesn't improve, go on PRN medication(s) to treat a mixed or (hypo)manic state. I normally suffer from mixed states, which are what experts describe as a sort of "agitated depression," i.e. you feel restless and anxious and depressed (and often suicidal and unlike unipolar depressed people, you have the energy to carry out a suicide, therefore, these states are treated very seriously by psychiatrists as they can be very dangerous. People suffering from bipolar disorder have a much, much higher chance of committing suicide than people suffering from any other psychiatric condition, at least 15 to 20% of bipolar patients commit suicide or 15 times the incidence of suicide of someone without a mood disorder and this number is much higher than unipolar depression patients which have a suicide rate of about 5-10%).

I had thought that I was just depressed with anxiety, but I was fooled last winter by a state similar to this that turned out to be a mixed state and when treated by my most effect PRN, Loxapine, it eventually receded and left me able to deal with the spring (when I was ramping up for the first scheduled IVF treatments, which were then cancelled due to my natural pregnancy, which then abruptly ended in a miscarriage).  I'm not surprised that I'm suffering from a mixed state, it's been a very stressful time for many reasons (undergoing IVF treatments, becoming pregnant, having my lithium levels drop below therapeutic levels, having my husband away most of the fall and winter, the gloom of the winter, family strife, uncertainty regarding housing, and my still fresh fear of having another miscarriage).

The weather has been very glum lately in Victoria.

So after a very tearful Wednesday morning, where I could not stop crying, I took a Loxapine (considered safe in pregnancy, as far as bipolar medications are concerned, naturally it's better not to have to take it, but leaving a condition like this untreated is even more dangerous and past discussions with my past and current psychiatrist have made this my PRN to use should episodes arise during pregnancy). I was particularly convinced that I was suffering from a mixed state because my number of panic attacks per day and waking from nightmares with them was increasing by the week and my general anxiety level was very high. I felt scared to leave the house to go anywhere or go for a walk and had a panic attack just putting the recycling out three days ago. High anxiety and numerous panic attacks are almost always an indication for me that I'm in a hypomanic, manic, or more likely, a mixed state.

My husband brought me home some spring bulbs to watch grow. I have always found gardening, even on a small scale indoors,  therapeutic.

Wednesday morning, after my meltdown, while my husband was at home sick with my cold again (my sinuses are still quite stuffy and runny and I've continued to take Loratadine, non-drowsy antihistamine, because I'm having trouble breathing without it and don't want to get a sinus infection because I used to get them all the time when I was younger), he was in the second bedroom that we use as an office when he all of a sudden heard scurrying which he thought was in the wall, only to discover a large rat in the corner of the room. We tried to capture it on our own in a overturned garbage can, but it was too fast. We tried to get our large tabby cat involved, but he was not interested in this activity. He used to be quite the ratter when we lived in Oak Bay, which had beautiful houses, but many, many rats. I suppose at the age of 15.5 years he's retired from the job of ratter and is content to be a genteel old chap now. Having a large rat on the lamb in our place of course did not improve my already hysterical state. We called the landladies and they said they'd send by the pest guy who was supposed to fix the problem in both of the duplex units.

Catch your own rats. 

We took a short walk and picked up a few groceries nearby. I thought I felt a little a better from the Loxapine and getting for a bit of a walk away from the rat infested dive that we live in, but was still quite anxious to be out in public, even with my husband. I find my walking pace to be definitely slower than my former walking pace and I notice the shortness of breath that all the books have been talking about.

My Christmas cactus is blooming now that we're safely out of the Christmas season. I don't blame it.

I feel awful that I haven't been getting out for more walks for my health (in the family I was raised in, guilt is like currency), but I've just been so anxious and exhausted and depressed and as I was starting to realize, mixed. The thing about a mixed state is that there are only two main ways to treat it, medication (various medications work for different people, as I mentioned, my PRN or add on medication in this state is Loxapine, but it's an old school conventional antipsychotic that few people find effective, so I guess I'm just weird) and rest. Unlike with depression, exercise is actually bad for those suffering from a mixed state, as it can fuel or feed the mixed state, just like it does manic or hypomanic states. In the old days, before medications were discovered, people were just put in a bed and told to rest for as long as it took for them to feel better, low stimulation as my old psychiatrist used to call it. So, actually, lack of exercise is good for this mental state, just not good for my physical state. It's one of the hard things about bipolar disorder is having your regular exercise schedule or activity schedule hijacked regularly by seasonal fluctuations in mood that might include hypomanic, manic, mixed states, or depressions, all of which are a little different to deal with.

The pest guy came over late in the day and set one trap in the kitchen and one in the second bedroom where we figured the rat still was, given that we had kept the door closed. He found that there was a lot of space around the plumbing in the wall going into our washer and that was where the rat came from (he found rat droppings behind the washer apparently). We felt unsettled by the whole day.

That night,  I took another small dose of Loxapine to help me sleep and continue the treatment of the mixed state. But instead of making me sleepy, I kept having panic attacks, hyperventilating, and I was extremely anxious and agitated. That on top of having to pee all the time and trying to sleep only on my side (the several pregnancy books I have don't have a consensus about if you should stop sleeping on your back and perhaps even on your stomach in the second trimester, at 16 weeks, or at 20 weeks, or if perhaps sleeping on your back sometimes is okay and maybe even on the stomach if you can get comfortable- ha, ha- not that that's a surprise that they don't have a consensus since they don't agree on anything other than that pictures of pregnant women should always show them having the time of their lives and laughing maniacally), did not allow me to fall asleep. Plus hearing the rat in the room next door trying to claw and gnaw his way out of that bedroom and jumping around loudly instead of succumbing to the trap laid for him, did not contribute to a relaxing atmosphere and I didn't really sleep much until about four or five in the morning.

Thursday morning, my husband reported that the clever rat had set off the trap, put the trap on its side, eaten the peanut butter bait, but had not been caught. My husband reset the trap. The cat paid no interest at all in the proceedings and went back to sleep. I wish that I could have his nonchalant disinterest in life.

Nope, I'm not catching that rat.

I felt nauseous and dozy from the extra Loxapine that I had had in the middle of the night to try to get to sleep and calm down. I'm not sure if the Loxapine is just not working well to help me sleep because I'm pregnant or if it's just because I'm really, really anxious and stressed out, but it didn't seem to help much like I thought it would and like it often does. I spent some time writing on Thursday as I do every day, but I can't say that I've touched my novels either to write new material in them or edit them, since I've been pregnant. I just don't feel like I'm inspired, energetic, or perhaps mentally sharp enough to do it right now.

I felt like this Thursday morning.

By Thursday evening, my mood had improved a lot. I've always been impressed by how just one day of  Loxapine can turn my whole mood around. I decided to try sleeping with no Loxapine last night and I was actually able to sleep fairly well, albeit with numerous interruptions from my bladder and the rat waking us up trying to get out of the second bedroom again.

The spring bulbs that my husband brought home for me have started to bloom.

Friday morning, the clever rat had again managed to avoid capture, instead, eating the peanut from the trap which he or she had set off without being captured.  I had to call the pest control guy to tell him that his modern plastic little traps (which we thought looked like they were for mice, not rats), were not working on this far too clever rodent.

The cat was of no help in trying to capture the rodent . . .

I went to the chiropractor today for another adjustment. That was my only appointment this week, which after having five appointments last week was a lovely change, especially since I haven't been feeling well. I managed to go grocery shopping after and then do some writing. I'm hoping my mood will continue to improve or at least hold and I can avoid taking Loxapine again for a while. But the spring historically has never been a good time for me (often I get either mixed episodes or at least hypomanic episodes around the spring and autumn equinoxes as many bipolar patients do- it is a condition intimately tied to light and seasons). In fact both of my hospitalizations in psychiatric wards occurred in the spring, April and May, though it has been three and half years since I've been hospitalized now.

Car selfie in the glamorous car park at the chiropractor's office.

Tonight, my husband and I actually went out to dinner and then to a movie. When we came home, the rat was finally captured. Hopefully tonight we'll have a peaceful sleep knowing that our place is again secure (for now . . . one of our landladies did mention that she had someone propose renting out the other side of the duplex and then running our side as an Airbnb an offer which she refused, but who knows what the future holds).

All in all, I feel overwhelmed even though perhaps I shouldn't even be overwhelmed yet. It's a helpless sort of a feeling. I know that we signed up for this and paid a lot for it, but it's been an even bigger struggle than I had ever imagined and circumstances around us have not made it any easier. Sometimes I wish I had someone to talk to who had been through this before like a family member, but then I think about how conversations with people in my family have often only made me feel worse. Plus, sometimes I just don't want to talk at all about this whole situation/life because I'm so overwhelmed. It's hard to explain. I just sort of feel like I'm lost in the labyrinth of life right now and I don't know if I'll run into the Minotaur or find treasure in the end.

I'm 18 weeks pregnant today. As I get closer to the halfway point, 20 weeks, I just can't believe it. I can't believe that I'm still pregnant or pregnant in the first place, or that I might actually have a baby. I don't know when it might sink in, but I guess it's going to have to eventually.

18 weeks pregnant today.