About the whole shower thing.

During one of the last posts I made, I mentioned the shower/bathing stuff.

Again...

Well, I decided to search my posts to see if I really had posted anything about it.

Looks like I hadn't posted anything that really explains it.

Well, today is the day.

Prepare to be amazed!
(Or disgusted... maybe...)

Several years ago, when my real struggle with Bipolar started, I slowly stopped showering/bathing.

A huge part of that was rolling out of bed straight to work.

Now, rolling out of bed to work was often the result of sleeping in late, or not being able to sleep.

My Bipolar mania behaviors include really bad sleep problems (staying awake for days with VERY little sleep).

With that in mind, if I could get in and out of work quickly, I would have more time to do other things.

Part of my plan to get done with work was to just roll out of bed and start work and shower later.

Well, that was all well and good, but slowly it wasn't happening.

The flip-side of being Bipolar is the depression, where I didn't shower or much care about anything at all.

So showering and caring for myself wasn't really high on any sort of list of mine.

I think the longest I went without showering was about 10 days.  I've read where some people with mental health problem have gone more than a month without showering.

These days, I still have trouble showering & caring for my personal hygiene.

Shower & shaving is better, while teeth brushing still sucks.


As I think about it more these days, it's more along the lines of not wanting to miss things or waste my time showering when I could be doing something else.

Over the last month or so, I started purposely taking 15-30 minutes after everyone else has gone to school to shower, shave & brush my teeth.

If I don't do it after everyone has left, then it throws off their schedule really badly.

Why not do it at night?

The problem there is that when I often finally go to bed, it's REALLY late and I just want to sleep so that I'm not tired for work.

Another problem with the night showers, is that many times the bathroom isn't free until I'm asleep.  Everyone else is just busy with it, trying to get ready for bed.

Over the past month, I think Ellie is starting to realize that I'm not coming to bed until she's in bed.

If I go to bed first, then the lights in the room get turned on as bright as possible (we have a dimmer), then the lights get left on while Ellie leaves the room for 5-30 minutes at a time trying to get the rest of the house in bed.

Lastly, if I'm comfortably lying in bed, Ellie usually finds something that I'm lying on or touch of hers that she MUST move for her to sleep... so I then get thrown out of comfort and rhythm.  I don't usually lie on anything of hers or touch it... It's usually the blankets or sheets.

Did I mention the volume of her voice when she's talking to the Misses during this bedtime process?

It's like she's been outside coaching soccer.

So Ellie... WTF!?

My dearest Ellie, has been...

I don't know how to describe it other than...

Acting way out of character, like a royal pain in the ass and unsympathetic.

Usually when she's not feeling well and she needs to sleep a bit, I just leave her the hell alone.

In the past, she tries the best she can for me, although she really sucks at doing it.

This morning, I was finally sleeping well, and instead of just leaving me alone, she decided right then and there it was time to change and wash the bedding!

When I told her I wasn't sleeping well, she stopped and left for a bit.

Then she came back and started pulling stuff of the bed and woke me up again!

So, WTF!?

Why couldn't she just leave me alone!

Then she acted like it was MY fault.

WTF!?

Well, I got up and went to work instead of just calling in.

I didn't want to be out "sick" with Ellie around.  She normally takes that as "You should be working around the house, since you took the day off..."

Well she finally came into the office and asked me what was "wrong".

With that, I told her that I NEVER did to her what she did to me!

Or rather, I try REALLY hard to not disturb her.

She finally got the idea and eventually apologized, yet didn't seem to think she did anything wrong.

This is the primary reason why I worked today instead of calling in.

I wanted to hide from her because I was so pissed off at how she treated me.

No tooth, no tooth ache... right? (uh!)

Ok, that "(uh!)" is for Big Miss; however, I put it into the wrong phrasing though.

It's supposed to be

I know...
Right?
Uh!

Eh... middle school kids.

I had one of my molars pulled on Friday afternoon, which was fine by me, however, it's become a problem now.

The damn jaw is swollen and hurts REALLY badly.

Thus the title of this post..

No tooth, no tooth ache...
Right?

I suppose, it's not a tooth ache, but rather a

"HOLY SHIT!
My Jaw aches!"

With my dental problems, I don't blame the dentist or anyone else, except for possible genetic markers passed on by my ancestors. (Damn old & dead bastards!)

The real problem is my own lack of oral hygiene.
Or would that be, "Hi, Jean!"?  I don't know her, but ... well.. I'll stop and you can imagine all you want, you perverts!

 I decided to go with the extractions of several teeth because in the long run they're going to be cheaper than doing root canals again and possibly more crowns.

One of the things I'm realizing more and more in my aging Bipolar-ness, is that I don't always care for myself as much as a should.

See previous posts about showering.

Actually, I did search through my posts and realized I never posted anything about my occasional showering habits.. or lack of it.
I'll create a post about that sometime soon then.

 Getting tooth the matter at hand...

I don't always brush my teeth, which often bugs the hell out of Ellie, but I think she's realizing just as I have, that it's not always easy to want to take care of yourself if you're not feeling like yourself. (I don't know how that's logical, but I've read it more times than I can remember...)

At this time, I'm just waiting for the Pharmacy to to fill the antibiotic prescription the Dentist called in, because the fucking jaw hurts so badly.

In fact, it hurt so bad yesterday that I took a single ibuprofen yesterday, which helped a lot....

Butt
(That's one big butt!)

If you don't remember, or don't give a shit about reading my past posts, I usually pee blood when I use NSAIDs.

This will eventually lead to kidney stones, and the most likely problems with gout.

Well, I decided it was worth a one time risk.

I don't know if that was blood I saw this morning or just darker pee, but things were a tad different...

All I can do is pray to God that I can get relief without causing myself additional problems.

I told you they can smell it! They can smell it? Oh, yeah, I have it. I have a lot of it.

This stinks, yet it's good that I know it.

Being bipolar is very hard already.

Not being able to recognize your moods/states is worse for those around the person sometimes than the person themselves.

Everyone around you has no idea that you're having a problem or what the problem is, will often distance themselves really far away

I consider myself very, very blessed for two reasons:

1. I have great experiences/memories of my life before bipolar kicked my ass with its iron shod boots.
2. I have learned how to recognize the mood changes/states.

So right now I know that I'm in a manic state.

Currently it's just mild and so far not too out of hand.

Then again it's only a few days into it.

Hopefully it'll level out OK, without dropping me into the gutter.

Since being under the care of the "Ogre"  shrink, my swings have been less extreme with better self-control.

Today I got really wound up. Enough so that I knew it and that I should stay away from people.

I didn't really want to keep working today but wound up working on stuff at my desk there anyway.

When I was done trying to work I took a Xanax.

I fell to sleep for several hours today which is good.

In the past when I'm in this state nothing could knock me out for more than an hour.

Well right now I'm getting a bit of a headache and can't sleep again.

So far...

Perhaps I'm going manic again, or insomnia...

Last night I couldn't sleep so good.

Ellie and I had a great intellectual discussion, it'd have blown those in Young Frankenstein away! (Watch deleted scenes for info)

After she fell asleep, I couldn't sleep so I picked up the Fever Crumb book I'd been reading and finished it off.

The Damn Kindle keeps getting me into trouble.

It has a time left in book/chapter feature.

So when I look down, I see 1hr 25min left so I'll keep reading.

Then 20 minutes later, I see 1hr left, so I'll keep reading...

About 2:00 AM I finished the book.

Still couldn't sleep so I listened to a radio program.

Despite all the confusion I felt, I got maybe 30 minutes or more of sleep.

Like usual, I got up and started work early.

I'm practically right on top of the crash happening with the RedHat 7 servers.... But not 100% yet.

It's a dependency problem, but I don't know exactly which file it's in.

After working I decided to lay down and wound up sleeping for a good 4 hours or more.

Tonight, I took my regular meds and half of one of my muscle relaxers.

If I didn't take the muscle relaxer, u probably wouldn't be tired enough to sleep.

I hope I sleep.