Well, for the most part I have been doing alright lately. The most recent thing is that I have started having hallucinations. I had some hallucinations during my first manic period before I was hospitalized, and it's kind of weird now because I am not having and episode. I am not manic, I am not depressed. For the most part life is going along fine.
A couple weeks ago I was out and about and I remember hearing something and being weirded out about it...I thought, "Wait a minute...was that really even there?" and then I blew it off as an isolated incident and didn't pay it much attention. Then a couple days later I was out with my kids and smelled the scent of burning rubber, or burning oil or something to that effect. I realized at the time that it was not really there, and again thought "This is weird" but I blew it off.
A few days later, I was laying down to go to sleep and was kinda of groggy, half asleep/half awake. And suddenly I heard the doorbell ring. It jolted me and I thought "Oh my god, I forgot to lock the door!" So I jumped out of bed and locked the door and sat up for a couple minutes. I swear I heard footsteps outside walking around my house and was completely paranoid, convinced someone was outside trying to break into my house and rob me or rape me or some such thing. After a couple minutes of being totally freaked out, I went back to bed. And I laid there thinking about it and wondered, Is this really real? I mean first off, who would ring my bell at 1 am? Nobody. And if someone WAS trying to break in, they wouldn't ring the bell! They would just try to come in a window or something. The thing that really tipped me off that it wasn't real was that my kids would have woken if they heard the bell...and they were in bed, sound asleep. So I thought, Ok, this wasn't really real.
A few days passed...I thought, Ok, it's all over now. Not quite. A couple nights ago I was in that half awake/half asleep state and swear that my kids were walking above my head. I heard and felt their footsteps all around me and wondered "Why are they walking on my head?" Then I heard their voices talking to me, but inside my head. It weirded me out so I looked around and no one was there. My kids were awake but were in their room and nowhere near where I was.
So now I am totally confused. I do have a sleep disorder, narcolepsy. I generally do not have symptoms, I would consider my case to be a mild one. I have had symptoms off and on over the years but usually not severely. Hallucination (in conjunction with sleep) is a symptom of narcolepsy. So that COULD explain why I have had the last couple of hallucinations. But it doesn't explain the hallucinations I had while awake. I am just really thrown for a loop right now because I don't know what to make of it or what to attribute it to. Is it my bipolar? Is it my narcolepsy? Is it both? I really don't know. I do have to say that the hallucinations while half awake are much more disconcerting than the ones while I am awak for some reason. Maybe it is because they are so sudden and so jarring to me.
I don't know if upping my dosage of medication will help. If it isn't bipolar related, it probably won't do much good. I don't see my psychiatrist again until April. It isn't bad enough for me to make an early appointment though, so I am just going to wait to see her. I do have a feeling it will continue to happen though. So I am keeping an eye on it, and documenting it, to see if some sort of pattern will emerge.
