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Journaling Your Bipolar Journey

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Joe

One of the things I regret most about how Cecie and I have managed her treatment is that neither of us has created a journal of it. I’m not talking about journaling our experience with bipolar disorder, although that would be valuable, as well. I’m talking about keeping a treatment journal that would track moods and other details, such as the following:

What made me think of this again recently is the fact that Cecie recently stopped seeing her p-doc (psychiatrist) and has returned to her primary care physician to manage her medications until she finds a new p-doc. She came home after seeing her physician saying that he was going to try her on a new medication, Neurontin. I knew Cecie had taken Neurontin in the past and that she had experienced breakthrough episodes of mania while taking the medication. I never thought that Neurontin did much good, but her current prescription cocktail wasn’t exactly delivering optimum results, and she was in a less stressful job, so why not give it a second chance?

The doctor prescribed 300mg at night to start and planned on slowly ramping up the dosage over the course of a month to 900mg. I thought she took much more before, but I couldn’t be sure. The doctor had no record of it, and neither did we. Had we kept a journal over the years, we would have had much better information to share with the doctor.

After some discussion at home and additional research, Cecie went back to her doctor and explained that we thought 300mg of Neurontin at night just wasn’t enough. He changed her prescription to 300mg three times a day.

We discuss journaling in Bipolar Disorder For Dummies, so you might be thinking, like I am, that I should have known better. It’s just that life gets so hectic at times that even when we know what we should be doing, we simply drop the ball.

Comments

3 Responses to “Journaling Your Bipolar Journey”

  1. Journaling Questions on November 3rd, 2007 1:13 pm

    [...] be keeping journals or diaries these days. In Bipolar Disorder For Dummies and in the post “Journaling Your Bipolar Journey,” we recommend keeping a journal to record medication changes, mood ratings, and so on. If [...]

  2. namegoeshere on May 30th, 2008 1:18 pm

    Wouldn’t that information be in the medical records?

    Don’t doctors actually read the records to see what has been done before?

    Sorry about the sarcasm, but those of us not in the medical profession tend to have unrealistic expectations about those things. It’s truly sad to find out that my mechanic keeps better track of my car’s history than doctors do.

  3. Joe on May 30th, 2008 1:51 pm

    Yes, it would be in the medical records, but several times my wife has come home from a doctor’s appointment to inform me that the doctor prescribed a new medication – with a name that sounds vaguely familiar. I search our records, and low and behold, she was on that same medication a couple years ago!

    I think it’s best to keep your own records, especially in this day and age when changes in insurance often mean changing doctors.

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