My Bipolar Life

One month down, eleven to go. Whew....The Year of the Pokrzywas is off to a rough start. But that is ok, we have eleven months to turn this bitch around and by George, we are going to do it. Today is not about complaining, it is a great day so far. I woke up alive (yes, as opposed to waking up dead, which I know is not a real thing), I had lunch with my friend Adrianne and Dan is making strides in his new career journey. "New career journey"??? LOL, I just think it sounds better than job hunt. More classy, more refined and I am nothing if not classy and refined. ;) Since yesterday's entry, I had a lot of conversations with Christeen about my writing and it being therapeutic for me.  She thinks I should write a book because books about crazies from the crazy person's point of view are apparently very in vogue right now. Who knew?  When I was diagnosed 11 years ago (yesterday or today in fact) I never thought that this horrific disease would be anything but a big pa

Day 30..... Well hell, it has been quite a rough few weeks.  The previous sentence may even be an understatement but I am working on bettering myself this year and continuing to be grateful for what I have.  Today, I am grateful to be alive. I know cliche, right?  But after the last few weeks, I take nothing for granted. Saturday, January 19, I woke up with a headache.  I went to bed with a headache.  In fact, this was day 7 of the headache.  This morning I woke up with a headache, numbness, dizziness and overall unwell feeling.  I had decided on Friday night that if I wasn't better by Saturday morning that a hospital visit was in order.  I got up showered, packed toiletries (always my good luck charm for preventing an admission) and took the bus to the hospital.  I got there early and was immediately admitted for a stroke workup.(The damn toiletries failed me.) The week became a blur of tests and medicines.  I did not have a stroke. YAY!  I was given a drip to stop the head

On some days, I wonder what I am going to be when I grow up; well besides crazy and sickly. Crazy and sickly suck, LOL.  Today is one of those days. I am going to look back at all the things that I wanted to be and maybe we can find a career most suited to me now. I started out wanting to be a pumpist; you know, the person who pumps well water.  Yes, I know that this isn't a really job but give me a break.  I was eight years old and loving life at Girl Scout camp.  When I look back now, I imagine a simple like in my shack in the country and the most buff arms from carrying the water every where it needed to go.  On second thought, maybe I am not exactly cut out to be a pumpist. I didn't have new career aspirations until much later when I wanted to be a police officer.  This was during the Cagney & Lacey era on TV.  It looked exciting and fun.  I would run everywhere yelling, "Stop, police".  How great would that be?  Well, probably not so great now that I look

Shortly after midnight on January 1, 2013, I declared this The Year of the Pokrzywas and I thought it might be fun to keep a journal of the steps forward and the steps back so at the end of 2013 we will know if it was really our year.    A little background info on us.  The Pokrzywas consist of Dan, Lisa (me), Billy, age 16, James, age 14, Ella, age 10, and, of course, our dog, Benji.  Needless to say 2012 was NOT our year; far from it.  It was just plain bad.  It started out okay, we were living in Gainesville, Florida in a nice neighborhood but we were far from our family in Wisconsin. The good lasted until February when the transmission in our only car decided that it no longer wanted to work.  It was a struggle everyday to do basic things as  there was no busing in our area.  It was especially hard to get Dan to work.  Well once April rolled around, this was no longer a concern because Dan lost his job.  To recap, we lived 1200 miles away from our family with no car and no