WAGblog

Supplement Website etc

There is a new website I can recommend that might supplement this one, especially for consumers/patients/sufferers (whatever term you like to use) or even observant caregivers who want to keep track of continuing symptoms and see how varying circumstances correlate with certain problems that wax and wane etc. The site is www.psychtracker.com and it is free, you just have to register, though you can visit most of the site as a guest. Brand new, open since maybe last August, or so I gather, there are glitches and some pages that still need to be written. But the symptom tracker part works pretty well and yields very interesting graphical information after a few weeks. It also has a journaling feature that lets you add into the tracker more detailed info and observations. Here are parts of my latest entries, to update you on the latest doings of the Divided Minds Duo On Tour. Remember that the top paragraph is the latest and the bottom one is the earliest as with a blog.

March 24th Today after finally getting home from Virginia, I answered more posts at the psychtracker forum but feel very uneasy about doing so. I sense that I am chasing people away from the site, that more and more people who used to come and post regularly are being scared off because I frequent the site and they can feel it through their computers. They sense the heaviness that I bring to the site, the weight of evil, of the Ogre that Ate Manhattan, of Satan's Whore...People are afraid of me and so they leave, and won't come back until I no longer "attend" or show up at the forums. I dunno if I can even return as a guest without infecting them or being detected via computer. I'm afraid of my own power, no wonder they are too. [Okay, okay, Pam...Now, calm down. What is this? You "feel," you "sense"...What were you supposed to tell yourself? Mmmmmm, hm. The feeling is primary, it comes first, before the thought that explains it, the errant spark somewhere in the brain that produces a "feeling" just like a probe does in neurosurgery...the feeling just arises, pop! But the brain has to make sense of it, so it confabulates a "reasonable" story to explain the feeling...What is this called? A delusion...Oh. OH. Ohhhhh...I see.

March 23, 2006 - 9:19 PM Had SRO at Virginia Festival of the Book this morning. Again. Plus all the books sold out at both this and yesterday's events. We're beginning to get certain programs down pat, even though we adapt each one to the particular audience we are presenting to. I am getting braver, too, and can actually start the "act" now, rather than making Lynnie do it all the time...The paranoia has diminished to almost nothing, I think, except for a few discrete episodes - like being afraid that a certain someone (a man I didn't know) from the audience was walking behind me etc. Surprisingly, I did have some trouble w/ voices. This happened about 4 times over the past two days, no more than that, but each time they were loud, absolutely clear and unmistakably calling me by name. Yet no one was ever there when I turned to look. One of the times it happened, I asked Lynnie if she'd heard it but she hadn't...So I did figure out, eventually, that no one was calling me, that it was a hallucination. And I worked through the process of tracking it to the internal spark of electricity in my brain that caused me to "hear" a sound that didn't actually have a source outside my head. But how will this knowledge help me? Will it keep the voices from talking? No, apparently not. It doesn't stop the delusions, at any rate...So what good is it? What good is figuring out that certain things are delusions and hallucinations if knowing what they are doesn't stop you from having them??? I'll have to ask Dr O what I'm supposed to do with this information...

March 22, 2006 - 8:33 PM We did the Medical Center Hour talk this afternoon and had standing room only! Audience ranged from docs to Rn's to high schoolers. I made an embarrassing mistake afterwards when trying to explain the feelings of electrocution while taking Seroquel and Clozaril to someone who wanted to know what side effects I'd had. I said I reached a "climax" instead of what I'd meant to say, a threshold!!!! Couldn't find the word so my brain simply substituted a reasonable synonym...Hah! I meant in fact that electricity seemed to build up in my brain to a threshold and then a kind of frightening seizure would occur, and indeed pre-seizure activity was diagnosed. Needless to say, after I put my foot in my mouth, they didn't stick around to hear more! Tee hee. I guess they'll have a tale to NOT tell their kids about how inappropriate we who have SZ can be in public! Honest, I did NOT do it on purpose. Couldn't have done it on purpose even had I wanted to! It just isn't me...which is what makes it so funny. If I'd had to do it on purpose wild horses couldn't have dragged it out of me! BTW,the delusional thinking and paranoia are melting away ever since we upped the Zyprexa that 2.5mg. I'm only taking a mere 7.5mg yet it's actually working just like the first time! I am beginning to feel quite well. And I have hope that I will be symptom-free eventually, exactly where I want to be, all without untoward or unbearable side effects, knock on wood.

Posted by pamwagg at March 24, 2006 09:20 PM