Been awhile since I updated on Bear. Not a lot of great news.
- At "A & R" Bear was finally assessed and put on medication. Unfortunately the wrong one, because Elavil can cause mania in people with bipolar disorder. He had severe "gastrointestinal issues" and they took him off of it. Unfortunately they didn't put him back on anything.
- They also offered him Thorazine – which D refused to take as he'd seen a lot of people taking it acting like zombies.
- Bear was moved to one of the scarier private prisons and he's pretty scared.
- The good news is that the new location is only about a 10 hour round trip from our house. The bad news is that makes it feel worse when we still can't visit.
- According to Bear, there's a race war between the Native Americans and the Hispanics, so Bear has aligned himself with the Native Americans. I wish he'd stay out of all of it, but I assume it helps him feel safer.
- We haven't been able to communicate with him much, because until a bunk opened up in a regular cell block, he was stuck in, I think he called it segregation. Now he's finally got a regular bunk.
- He is asking me to advocate for him and get him moved to another cell block and/or another prison, plus he wants me to fight to get him on meds. I don't think I can help, but he seems to think I'm Super Advocate!
- Bear is struggling more and more with the lack of medications, but despite his repeated requests, he hadn't been able to see a psychiatrist until he "flipped out" recently. Unfortunately they chose to put him on Trazadone for sleep and Prozac. Prozac is an anti-depressant, which for someone with bipolar disorder can trigger mania. In Kitty it triggered self-harming. A manic Bear was angry and aggressive. Very scary!
- Bear had told us he was up for parole at the end of January, but he recently told us that he was mistaken and won't be eligible for parole until December of this year.
- He's decided he wants to be Muslim and has asked me to buy him a Quran. If I thought this was a genuine decision based on sincere beliefs and information, I would be supportive. Instead I believe this is like Kitty becoming Wiccan while in residential treatment, just because her roommate had decided to try it and they were into teenage romance novels loosely based on Wiccan principles. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much, but it does.
