Bipolar – Kana's Chronicles

How to Save Hundreds on Prescriptions (I don’t care if I sound like a bad TV ad… everyone should know about this!)

Posted on February 2, 2017February 2, 2017 by Kana Smith

prescription pills Rx We’re kind of conditioned to believe that something “too good” can’t actually be true… So when I happen on something TRUE that’s awesome… Well, I just have to share it!

I know I’m not alone in relying on some prescriptions that are critical to my health (mental and otherwise), and I know I’m not alone in having some really expensive drugs in that line-up, and I know I’m not alone in having insufficient insurance to ease that burden… So I know I won’t be alone in my excitement at finding an actual, viable, lower-cost payment alternative! (And before I go further: no, I’m not getting paid by anyone to share this. I just couldn’t believe that I didn’t know about it till now, and I feel like everyone should!)

Jon and I just got new health insurance, and (glitch glitch) even though we met all the deadlines for coverage to start January 1, it mysteriously didn’t kick in until February 1. That was a nasty surprise when I was standing at the pharmacy on Jan 20 for a refill of my most important insanity-fixer, and a price tag of $665 (for the generic)! Now, we’re good with our budget—but that wasn’t IN the budget. I ended up going ten days without my meds (Jon watching intently for any sign that I might be going off the deep end) and showed up again, first thing on February 1, to find that even with insurance, we’d still owe $250. Ouch. More manageable for sure, but that’s still a real dent in our monthly budget, and that’s just one of my too-many meds.

crazy2 — …and THAT’s why Jon likes to keep my meds filled!

So I retreated to consider options. I could fill the scrip and we’d adjust our budget; or I could ask for a partial fill to tide me over till I see my psych-doc next week, and ask if there’s an alternative that might be as effective but less expensive; or I could just wait another 7 days without the meds and then ask… Jon made the decision for me: he wasn’t going to have me go any longer without meds. Before heading back to the pharmacy, though, we thought we’d look for any online coupons that might apply… and Jon stumbled onto BlinkHealth.com.

I’m betting your reaction will match ours: this thing has got to be in the “too-good-to-be-true” category. Download the app, find your medication, pay (a LOT less) for it through the app, then show your phone at your pharmacy and walk away with your meds. The prescription we’d been discussing was listed at $91. Yeah, right. How the heck could that work?—sounds like a scam!

But… I did my research. And felt my excitement rising as I came across news articles (not ads!) about Blink Health on the New York Times, CBS, Huffington Post, CNBC… This thing looked like it might actually be for real. Continue reading “How to Save Hundreds on Prescriptions (I don’t care if I sound like a bad TV ad… everyone should know about this!)” →

Travel

2017: A Year for Reading Rihla

Posted on January 6, 2017January 9, 2017 by Kana Smith

Boise Idaho is bearing up under record-breaking conditions this week. We have more snow on the ground than EVER. (Well, at least the “ever” that dates from 1875 when someone started measuring.) We have wind-chill warnings for -25F and more snow on the way, possibly to be followed next week by rain, of all things, and likely flooding… All that to say that I’m not going out much this week!

Aside from my “commute” to the RV park office (thankfully, only a three-minute walk) I’m playing Hobbit and holing up in the cozy confines of our RV! Nevertheless, my mind is free to wander. No, wait—that’s not what I meant. My mind is free to travel, and I’ve decided that this is going to be my Year of the Travelogue.

My mom & Jon & I watched “The Way” (Martin Sheen & Emilio Estevez, 2010) during our Christmas visit, and it fired up my already-engaged gears on the subjects of Travel and Experience. I’m ultra-aware right now of the possibilities inherent in living-on-wheels, and the travel-bug isn’t new to me… Even more than GOING places, though, it’s an urge to EXPERIENCE places, which is what that film really explored (in my opinion). And that’s not to exclude whatever place I am right now, even when that might be holed-up-at-home.

For over a week now, I’ve had the Wikipedia-page for “Rihla” open on my iPhone, and it keeps drawing me back.

… the genre of work called Rihla … or the creative travelogue: a mix of personal narrative, description, opinion and anecdote…

I abhor travel guides, but I love travelogues. And I think this excerpt from Arabic culture has nailed the distinction: a travelogue is a creative and personal work. It’s a work about a person’s experience, rather than merely about a place. (It’s what this blog is for me.) Continue reading “2017: A Year for Reading Rihla” →

Lists, Mental Health

Put it on a T-Shirt: Mental Health Edition (List#2)

Posted on December 13, 2016December 14, 2016 by Kana Smith

I hate being bipolar it's awesome Continuing my Weird Lists project…

If you know what’s funny about these, you probably have OCD, or ADD, or … maybe you live with someone who does!

Yesterday my psych-doc seemed inclined to add A.D.D. to the alphabet-soup of my Mental Health Diagnoses… And if I’d had any doubts, I think I have my confirmation in how many of the ADD jokes hit home!

Sayings I Could Wear on a T-shirt (Mental Health Edition)

The Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Wardrobe…

I have CDO. It’s like OCD, but all the letters are in alphabetical order. As they should be.
I don’t have OCD, I just have a very specific order in which I like to do things.
The only reason I check my voicemail is to get rid of the little icon on my screen.
I’m not really a control freak BUT… can I show you the right way to do that?
I adore spontaneity, providing it is carefully planned.
As long as everthing’s exactly the way I want it, I’m totally flexible.
I hate it when I plan my day and no one follows the script.
I could stop being a control freak if other people could stop screwing stuff up.
Hand sanitizer is a gateway drug for OCD
If you’re OCD and you know it wash your hands.
The first rule of OCD Club is that there must be a second rule so we have an even number of rules.

Continue reading “Put it on a T-Shirt: Mental Health Edition (List#2)” →

Mental Health, Recovery, Writing

If God Acts as Travel Agent, Don’t Argue the Itinerary

Posted on December 8, 2016December 12, 2016 by Kana Smith

I dreamed last night that I was back in Safe Haven, the psych-facility where I recently spent ten days, and the dream felt comforting. The place is well named.

landline phone cord "remember these?" — a phone with a cord… and withOUT Google!

My cell phone was one of the things I missed most in there—not for calls, but for Google (I hadn’t realized how many things-a-day I look up!) and for the camera, and for texting. This post gets doodles instead of photos, because I didn’t have my camera!

We were allowed, between group-sessions and scheduled activities, to take turns using the phone at the nurse’s station. My first day (when I was still miserably trying to claw my way out of there) I was calling my husband nearly every other hour. That’s a lot of calling for someone as phone-phobic as I am, but I was raw and out of my comfort zone and looking for the balm of his voice.

Technically, I could have announced my intention to walk out at any time—despite the lock-down conditions, I was on a voluntary hold—but I was looking for someone to tell me it was okay to go. Let me be more honest: I was trying to manipulate the psych-doc into telling me it was okay to go. But by the fourth day, I told her I was maybe doing TOO well. She mistook my announcement for another attempt to get myself released, but I corrected her interpretation. “I’m actually afraid to go home right now. I think I’m feeling TOO good.”

Continue reading “If God Acts as Travel Agent, Don’t Argue the Itinerary” →

Mental Health, Travel

Gypsying (OR: A Borderline Personality Working on Borders)

Posted on November 25, 2016December 19, 2016 by Kana Smith

If you’re not familiar with poker, the thing to understand is that you start a hand with some cards of your own, and you don’t yet know what other cards will be available to you to use in that hand. You have to “sign up” to play that hand by putting some money in the pot before the other cards are revealed, and there’s a minimum amount (the Blind) that’s essentially the baseline price of admission to play. Sometimes people will bid higher than the Blind (if the cards they CAN see bode well for play, or if they want their opponents to THINK that), but sometimes a player will hope to see the next few cards without investing a great deal up front. Calling the Blind, or going in for the minimum amount, is called Gypsying, or Limping in.

RV fifth wheel Grand Design — I literally do live on wheels. Here’s HOME cruising by my workplace one day…

The other day my counselor told me several times that the word “Gypsy” describes me. (I don’t think he even knows that I literally do live on wheels, in an RV!) In that same day, reading a book about Borderline Personality Disorder*, I got forehead-smacked by chapter-headings titled “Playing the Dealt Hand,” and “Learning to How to Limp.”

With the word “Gypsy” on my mind, and the poker-connection of Gypsying or Limping, those headings felt significant, so I read mindfully; I believe in Messages rather than Coincidence. (“As my first Sponsor always said, “Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous!”)

The chapter in question talked about practicing change, which can be “a monumental struggle” for a Borderline Personality. Okay, that sounded odd to me at first, given my own very-varied past performances in Life… On the surface, you wouldn’t tag me as a person who struggles with change.

In fact, if you look at my behavioral patterns over recent years, you’d probably say that I don’t Limp In or Gypsy (at least not in the poker sense) in most decision-making moments. I throw myself headlong into whatever I’ve decided to do, nothing half-assed about it. Continue reading “Gypsying (OR: A Borderline Personality Working on Borders)” →

Family, Mental Health, Recovery

Singing in the Shower

Posted on November 11, 2016December 12, 2016 by Kana Smith

It’s fairly telling that my most “recent” post here dates from almost two years ago. It’s even more telling that I haven’t FELT like writing for two years. (That should be a red flag for a person like me, right?) And the real irony is that there was plenty to be writing ABOUT in those two years, which have played out like a soap opera on the screen of my life… (To borrow the analogy from Fozzie Bear at the left, when suds get in your open mouth, your shower-song becomes a soap opera. I’ve been humming along as if everything were fine, when really I’ve been chewing shampoo!)

But after two years of twists & turns (or twisted turns) I found myself singing in the shower for real the other morning—which is a GOOD sign for me. Even though this particular rendition of “What a Beautiful Morning” took place in the uncurtained shower of a psych ward.

Clinical Depression isn’t new to me (or to this blog), but thanks to my little ~~vacation~~ psych-stint, my medical chart has a whole new line-up of initials added. B.P.A.D… P.T.S.D… O.C.D…B.P.D…. Bipolar Affective Disorder. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder. Borderline Personality Disorder. With all those disorders getting applied to me, I think an out-of-order sign is in order for my forehead!

Joking aside, I’m grateful. For each of those sets of initials, there’s now a treatment plan in effect. And with a new sense of perspective and self-awareness, I’m actually dealing with [cringe!] my emotions regarding events of the last couple years. I’m not good at emotions, but I’m tackling them.

In a blog that has previously served as a pretty comprehensive Journal of my Journey, I feel I should fill in that two-year gap with at least a “Cliffs Notes” catch-up before I start writing about THE NOW… No doubt I’ll be treating a lot of this in greater detail at some point, but for now, for those who wonder what the heck has happened… Continue reading “Singing in the Shower” →