Got Lamictal? Yep!
Okay, I got my starting kit of Lamotrigine today (Tuesday), a.k.a. Lamictal. I'm scaling down the Lithium and preparing to replace it with that. So, coming from 3x450 mg per day, I go down to 2x450 mg per day for a week (so, Tuesday to Monday) before switching to an "every other day" pattern, alternating between Lithium and the 25 mg starting size dosage for Lamictal. (The starting kit has pills of increasing dosage size.) Then in the following weeks I'll continue the progression.
Also, I got some Wellbutrin pills in the mail on Friday. These are 300 mg extended release ones, which is nice, since I'd been taking two 150 mg pills per day for a while, with the second one being in the afternoon. Now I can go back to just one in the morning for that. I also got another prescription for Fluoxetine today, 20 mg size, so I can take one of those per day rather than a much bigger 40 mg pill every other day. I'm planning to meet with the psychiatrist again in 3 or 4 weeks to see where things stand then, and I may in fact end up getting off of Fluoxetine then. Ideally, I'd really like to just be taking Wellbutrin and Lamictal, and it may very well come to that relatively soon. Lamictal, in theory, could work much better for bipolar for me than most other medications would-- it works more on the depressive size than the manic size, which is good for the depression-heavybipolar II, while also being an anticonvulsant.
Work, so to speak, is going pretty well-- I'm in the 10th week of working with my uncle and a group of interns for the summer, on site at Goddard yet again. The project was supposed to take 10 weeks, but we're extending it at least a little longer. It looks like I'll be getting a little more money too. This is still nowhere near the usual type of salary level I've gotten in the past, but I do think now's a good time to kind of work my way slowly back into the whole job thing, and this is an excellent setting to see how I can do during the workday now, with my progression of medications. Even with Lithium as my primary bipolar treatment, I seem to be doing better with getting work done at work, and not journaling or emailing or goofing off or whatever, as I did quite often in previous jobs.
Also, I got some Wellbutrin pills in the mail on Friday. These are 300 mg extended release ones, which is nice, since I'd been taking two 150 mg pills per day for a while, with the second one being in the afternoon. Now I can go back to just one in the morning for that. I also got another prescription for Fluoxetine today, 20 mg size, so I can take one of those per day rather than a much bigger 40 mg pill every other day. I'm planning to meet with the psychiatrist again in 3 or 4 weeks to see where things stand then, and I may in fact end up getting off of Fluoxetine then. Ideally, I'd really like to just be taking Wellbutrin and Lamictal, and it may very well come to that relatively soon. Lamictal, in theory, could work much better for bipolar for me than most other medications would-- it works more on the depressive size than the manic size, which is good for the depression-heavybipolar II, while also being an anticonvulsant.
Work, so to speak, is going pretty well-- I'm in the 10th week of working with my uncle and a group of interns for the summer, on site at Goddard yet again. The project was supposed to take 10 weeks, but we're extending it at least a little longer. It looks like I'll be getting a little more money too. This is still nowhere near the usual type of salary level I've gotten in the past, but I do think now's a good time to kind of work my way slowly back into the whole job thing, and this is an excellent setting to see how I can do during the workday now, with my progression of medications. Even with Lithium as my primary bipolar treatment, I seem to be doing better with getting work done at work, and not journaling or emailing or goofing off or whatever, as I did quite often in previous jobs.