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:

• Medication adjustments
• Change of doctors
• Missed medications
• Overall mood rating
• Amount of sleep obtained
• Job changes and other life-changing events
• Exercise level
• Recent problems or resolved issues

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.