Traveling - Chicago to UK

[Bluetwo]

My husband and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. They say traveling with bipolar is daunting. Books have told me to get up early in the morning in increments. This tuesday I got up 5:00 AM. Since we are going into day light savings time I'm taking advantage of the early darkness. Last night I went to bed around 8:30 pm and got up at 4:30. What I'm aiming for is getting up at 4:00 am. When we go back an hour with daylight savings time I will technically be getting up at 3:00 am. In the UK it will be 9:00 am....just in time for breakfeast.

I already have my bag packed week in advance which includes the med's. I have a list that I check off and it's pretty thorough. Can't leave the house without checking off the list first.


I will give a progress report what happen.

[Bluetwo]

I had a hard time adjusting back to a normal schuedle with Day Light Saving Time.  It got dark at 4:30 and I went to bed 8:00pm.  It was hard to get up and be motivated to do anything.  I complained to the doctor and he increase my Wellubtrin.  It has helped alot but I can't wait for Spring.

[Bluetwo]

So far so good. I am getting back to my old schedule. Wake up 5:30 am...go to bed 9 pm. I made sure I got my rest and everything paid off. Even when I got back to Chicago I made sure I rested. Took three days off to get my rest....now it's cleaning the house...my cousin is coming over with her husband. I figure if I spend three hours a day cleaning the house I should have the house clean by Thanksgiving.

[Bluetwo]

Just got back from my trip. Getting up early in the morning paid off. Had no problems getting up in the morning but had problems with the evenings because in Chicago time it was in the afternoon still. I got little sleep and the next day I felt real tired. Instead of going sightseeing I went to bed immediately and sleep for 10 hours. My husband went on a long walk around the neighborhood taking pictures and hitting a pub. After that I made sure I had 10 hours of sleep so I could function. Made sure I took my med's on time. No problems...had a wonderful time. We knew we couldn't see all the places we wanted so we kept them to two places only...we saw a castle called Carnefon and old roman city called Chester.

[moonpanda]

Is sleep an important trigger for your mood episodes? Some people are very sensitive to this, and they are the ones who most often struggle with traveling across time zones. For other people, where sleep changes won't automatically bring about mood changes, there are of course a lot of other factors involved in traveling that can aggravate bipolar disorder. Would you consider yourself stable at the moment? Just in case something gets out of whack, I'm guessing that your husband most likely knows the signs to look out for just in case something gets triggered though and you start to lose insight.

Congrats on the anniversary! You sound very prepared and I think now you should just sit back and enjoy the trip!

[Bluetwo]

Daylight Savings Time will start November 7th. My trip is from November 3rd to the 11th. Darn the luck. I change my waking up schedule to 3:00 AM CST. It's hard to do because everyone else is sleeping and there is so much you can do on the computer. I've looked over the weather report, filled out my weight watchers log and hanging around medhelp.

[lindahand]

You are really smart switching your schedule like that. I find even a couple of hours makes a difference for me.