"Cause you had a bad day, you're taking one down"

I have had the worst week imaginable. Maybe not the worst week imaginable, but a very bad week.
As most of you know, Braden is bi-polar. While there have been, I'll use the word explosions here, because that's what they're like, explosions before, they've been once a month, or every two months, or every three weeks. Good times in between. Calm times in between.
This week, we've had three nights of hell in a row. Tuesday night, he went off over something, and I can't even remember what it was. Something inconsequential. It usually is. Something most of us would be able to shrug off. He gets violent now during his episodes. Throwing things, tipping furniture over, saying he's going to hit Keith or I, threatening to kill himself or run away. Tuesday night's tirade lasted about an hour, but then subsided. The one good thing, as twisted as this sounds, about these episodes is that the days right after, Braden's overcome with this kind of peace. Partly to make up for what happened, and partly because his body feels good to have released it's posion. But that didn't happen this time.
Wednesday night it happened again. But this time it only lasted about twenty minutes, and wasn't nearly as bad as the night before. Just enough to unsettle everyone in the house.
Thursday night was the worst ever. All I did was tell him to call his aunt to ask her how to switch sim cards in a phone before he did it wrong and screwed them up. He went ballistic. And, not spoiled brat ballistic. Just crazy people ballistic. He took a knife and tried to cut himself. He told me I better watch my back because he was going to get me. He kept swinging at me, close enough that I could feel the air swoosh by my face, but not close enough to make contact. With Keith it was a different story. He was punching him and hitting him. We restrained him three times in a 2 1/2 period. The whole time he's crying, "I can't stop. I need to calm down. Make it stop." I thought I was going to have to call the police or an ambulance. And, it's very hard for Keith to stay calm during this. He yells and threatens, adding fuel to the fire. When all was said and done, he was unconsolable.
I talked to his doctor, who thinks it might be a medicine thing, and we've upped the dose of one of them. We've tried to talk to Braden to find out what's going on. He's getting very frustrated with school again this year, and thinks one of his teachers hates him. I know this woman, she had him last year. I think he's imagining it. Also, he's a peanut of a kid. Probably a good six inches shorter, and fifty pounds lighter than his friends/classmates. They're all going through puberty, he isn't yet. He hates that he gets pulled out for learning support english and math, yet he'd flounder in reg ed classes for those subjects. I think that all these frustrations add up all day long, and he holds it in all day. He wouldn't want to have an episode at school in front of his peers or teachers, so he comes home and then the slightest little thing happens, and the floodgates open.
Needless to say, I haven't gotten anything done around the house this week. Dinners have been rushed and thrown together, laundry is stacked up and my part time job has been ignored. We're walking on eggshells. It's really like a battle ground.