Balancing the Effects of Seroquel

Johnny Cash's song "I Walk the Line" must have been written about the struggle between the choice of feeling better and feeling better about yourself--my struggle with Seroquel.

To a fifty-plus year old woman who never struggled much with maintaining her weight, this struggle is real. Seroquel has launched me onto a teeter-totter where I'm trying to maintain the balance of fat and sane or thin and suicidal.

Seroquel, which I take for newly-diagnosed bipolar disorder, is making me gain weight, despite my attempts to battle it with exercise and diet. The adage "I went on a diet for 30 days and only lost 30 days" is almost true--I lost the 30 days and gained six pounds. I'm sure I would have gained more had it not been for diet and exercise, and I'm tired of fighting it.

For those who have never suffered depression, or any mental disorder, bipolar disorder is awful. You can go from feeling like superwoman one day to looking for a gun the next. It's not at all fun. Seroquel keeps me on an even keel. It also helps me sleep, which is a huge problem for me. I thought fighting fibromyalgia was hard (and it got harder when the FDA took Darvocet off the market--the only thing that worked for me), but fighting bipolar without medication would be impossible. According to my research, no matter what drug I could take for it, it would have the same weight gain side effect.

So I've resigned myself to the fact that I am no longer a size 12. I most likely will never be a size 12 again. I haven't seen sizes 8 or 10 for a long time either, so maybe I should think of this as a rite of passage. I am not looking forward to going bathing suit shopping tomorrow, but I have no choice--I mean, literally, no choice. All the size 14 bathing suits look like something my mother would have worn to embarrass me when I was a kid. My boobs were oversized before I gained the extra weight, now they disgust me. Maybe I should put up a paypal fund so all of my readers could pay for my breast reduction. Maybe not.