Cancer Selfies

Excitement and Mania

Something about recovering from a hypomanic episode that I can't remember being talked about is how it's hard to trust yourself again after.

I was making my plans for today over breakfast, and got excited that I think I'm going to finally make it to the end of a long chore chain today. And I had to stop and reflect whether this was a healthy, normal excitement, remnant mania (chores, even the completion of, don't usually cause me joy), or normal excitement retriggering an episode (no idea if this is possible, but I would take great pains to minimize risk).

This morning, based on the speed of my thoughts and the fact I've seen everything I've started through to the end, I'm confident it was normal and healthy. But I have to second guess every elevated state for at least another week because, for me, the real risk comes from having an episode and not knowing it's happening, damage control has so far been simple for me if I'm able to reflect, but that requires a tremendous amount of vigilance.

And it's really hard to enjoy moments of genuine excitement if you have to constantly second guess your own mental state.

From the comments

James Petrosky:The task I'm going to get to is eliminating a box I've kept on the floor since April 2020 as overflow pantry storage. My apartment is shit and has no storage, so this has been the only option until now. Today I will

-sort through some more records, freeing up some living room shelf space -sort through stem ware to see if anything is worth saving or giving away, placing remainder in opened up space in living room -move food into space where stemware was -possibly rearrange kitchen gadgets to fit in remaining food -fill entire trunk of car with two weeks of donations

Is it realistically that much? No, but I no longer have a lot of energy so it's pretty ambitious for me

James Petrosky:Moving anything in this places cascades down several other levels of bullshit, but getting rid of a perminant floor clutter is a major victory that makes all future tasks have fewer cascades. Especially because everything in today's cascade is either getting a real home or getting donated.

Dance (hypo)Mania

The little dance I found myself part way through in the flour aisle is all the proof I need my mental state remains unstill

From the comments

James Petrosky:And this is the challenge with hypomania for me - is so fucking fun much of the time. I love being this free and active and confident. But it would take years more of therapy to get there regularly. Which was the plan before all this.

Guide to Identifying Waterfowl

It's really, really easy to understand why depression is so terrible. Some people are still unrepentant swans about it, but they're dumb and wrong and should be punted into low earth orbit.

It's a lot harder to explain why mania or hypomania are also the fucking worst, in their own grotesque and magical way. Because every creative project I've ever done (lots of 3D prints, the LED crystal glass stuff, ones I've yet to complete like a cat laser turret) was born of hypomania. And a lot of frankly unimpressive and boring ones, too, but their boring and I'm hypomanic so I actually can't make myself think about them. Art critics of all media love to retroactively diagnose someone as bipolar, and use that to explain their output. And who the fuck wouldn't want any favourable comparison to van Gogh, even if it's in the form if an extremely serious mood disorder.

I won't lie, hypomania is the most fun I can possibly have. Because level James or depressed James can only enjoy one or two pleasurable activities at once (eating and watching a movie, for example). But hypomanic James easily gets to, and maintains, five (movie, music, food, cat videos, paper stage designing of 3D print project) without feeling like I'm missing out on anything from any of them. Genuinely, the only way to top that is to add drugs, which I know magnifies the feeling further, but generally don't do because I know the risk factors and apparently statistics have the power to get through to me.

Hypomania looks a lot less attractive from where I sit right now. The party ended days ago. The creativity, joy and way the colours of those lights looked has all returned to a tedious normal, one I'll forget is as mundane as a mallard in time, but a normal that almost hurts for now. I don't sleep much while hypomanic. I don't need to. I can silence my racing thoughts for three hours a night and that's plenty. I still can't sleep, and am really feeling that lack right now, after another night of insomnia and three hours. I also mean the party ended in a more literal way, because my manic ass starts cleaning projects, and would finishs many, but whatever is left over at the point it all crashes down is for my level, exhausted, self to deal with.

I'm so tired. I'm not looking for pharmaceutical, natural, or any sort of supplement remidy here. Between the bipolar disorder, lithium, cancer, chemotherapy, and high blood pressure I simply won't touch anything not okayed by my oncologist, my kidneys and my liver are both in bad shape and I cannot risk further damage.

But I'll accept mental tricks for falling, and especially staying, asleep. Apparently there's some overlap in things that work for jetlag and things that work for bipolar insomnia (preliminary research, not the exact insomnia problem I'm dealing with, but it's something). And no, getting extremely high doesn't seem to help, I'm just uncomfortably high and awake the same amount of time (this does help for regular sleep, though, so it wasn't a bad thought).

From the comments

James Petrosky:Tldr enjoy my hypomanic rant about how hypomania gooses and swans at the same time and how I'd really rather just duck.

James Petrosky:Geese are exciting, fun and delightful. Swans are dicks, jerks and bad. Ducks are just ducks, ducking around, doing duck stuff (but not that duck stuff sicko this is a wholsom waterfowl analogy)

Justine Wiesinger:Things that help jet lag/sleep during the day in my experience: Maintaining a very regular eating schedule Eating lots of fruits and veggies Walking as much as possible Resisting daytime naps by getting involved in other things Things that might help at night: Peppermint tea before bed Wearing a sleep mask Ear plugs if needed Telling yourself a story as you go to sleep that does not involve yourself in any way Visualizing something endless, like releasing a rabbit and watching it run and run over the terrain Setting an alarm for the morning and NEVER looking at a clock during sleeping hours Rejecting stressful things your brain wants to dwell on by reminding yourself that you don't need to problem solve at 3 AM I know all of these might not be possible with your illness but I am throwing them out because I don't know what is or is not accessible to you at any moment, so throw out whatever doesn't suit. Most of my strategies are for fighting anxiety so they might not be applicable to other situations. I have also heard "no screens for an hour before bed" but never followed this

Brennan Moline:Growing up with a bipolar parent, I saw how destructive and painful the mania was -- as much so as the depression. I remember a depressed former friend saying she envied bipolar people because at least they had 'highs' and I had to restrain my anger as I explained those highs were just as painful as depression's 'lows'. I wish I had advice for insomnia -- I delt with a rough bout of it that only got better after a really bad mental crash, but that doesn't help. I hope you feel ducky soon.

James Petrosky:Brennan Moline, when I'm depressed, I wish I had an episode incoming to get me doing stuff again. Sure could use the energy to clean the apartment, it hasn't happened in a month or so at that point. Right now I could go for a week of depression sleep. But really we all just want to be silly ducks, puttering around the pond, having good but uneventful duck days.

Twitting

I've been manic for at least a week now and have been having "twitter thoughts", ideas so profoundly stupid I need to yell them into the void, several times a day. Is that what microblogging is for? Is everyone on it manic at all times?

The narratively correct ways to die of cancer

Boy do I have a lot of feelings about the Terry Fox Run, F🎗️ck Cancer bumper stickers and the like, and the way the media talks about cancer patients. But it really is a lot lot of feelings, and I haven't been able to articulate them in months, so I guess this is all I'm capable of saying to mark the 42nd Terry Fox Run.

From the Comments

James Petrosky: The man did great things, but it sure would have been nice if we, as a society, hadn't decided that running across the second largest country in the world was one of the proper ways of dying of cancer. It's an impossible standard to live up to.
Nobody dare say you don't hold me to this standard. Just don't.
I know you, individually, don't. But I've been scouring the news for months and it is absolutely how we, as a society, feels.
The actual requirement to die this way correctly is to pick a physical feat that a regular person would recognize as difficult and also something they'd never do. Journeying across the country is the best possible choice. The country is fucking huge. Across a province, or a long trail system also work for less physically capable people. Going from fat pre diagnosis to running marathons also works. The important thing is that you have beaten cancer, and are taking a victory lap (and telling society that you care about your health now, because did you really do everything in your power to avoid cancer in the first place?), or are the general, getting yourself ready for the final showdown (you were going to die either way, in the case, but at least you tried by doing something that was never going to affect the outcome)

James Petrosky: I am not about to go policing how any cancer survivor, family member, or terminal case relates to, and talks about, the disease. If you're thinking of a fuck cancer sticker for my benefit, don't. I hate them. I don't need the constant reminder, I already know it's a pretty shit disease. But if it helps you, have at it.
This is complicated by the juvanile jackasses who broke out the Fuck Trudeau signs days after his election. Whether any of us like it or not, a comparison is being made. What was once a flippant say of saying "ugh, this giant class of diseases, right?" now is forever tied up in conservative grievance politics and the fascist trucker convoy. They made a statement against a disease into a statement in favour of another one (that would fuck me up beyond fixing if I got it again)

James Petrosky: Devoting your life to something important to you is one of the three correct ways to die of cancer. The second is to deny the situation, seek out experimental treatments, and fight (because cancer is a battle, and when you lose a battle, you are at least somewhat at fault (unless your a World War 1 general)). So, really, if you don't fight, how can you be upset about dying?
Again, I don't need to hear that you don't think this about me.
Of course it's really complex in reality, most experimental treatments don't work because that is the stage of research they're at. It showed promise in a dish, let's see how it works in a body. But side effects exist, especially on treatments that haven't been proven to work yet. So, really, the treatment probably won't do much good, it's almost certain to leave you with vomiting and constant diahrea. But you're still the general, and it's still your battle to lose.

James Petrosky: The third proper way to die of cancer is only available to people much older than me. 50 is young in a lot of cancer circles. People 65+ can be praised for dying in their beds, surrounded by friends and family, reflecting on a life well lived. I'm 36, so I haven't lived enough. I just get to die an illegal death from cancer.

James Petrosky: Non Canadians. Terry Fox was a young man who died of cancer while trying to run across the country. He started on the east coast and made it to Thunder Bay, Ontario. He's probably the person you can get the most Canadians to say was the Greatest Canadian.