The Trendy Disease
I am bi-polar, the day I was diagnosed it was called manic depression, and I was diagnosed after one of my manic episodes. I will never forget finally getting a name for all the weird things that had been happening to me. I was 26 and had been doing really bizarre things like, writing hot checks and not caring that I was writing them and not even needing the things I bought and feeling so high and not sleeping and it kept going and going and then one day the bottom of my world fell out and I crashed. I couldn’t get out of bed. My two children were just barely beyond potty training and they stayed in bed with me, playing with their toys, eating their peanut butter sandwiches that I forced myself to make. I did get out of bed for group baths with them and new pajamas and back to bed and then I started crying and wanted to die but I couldn’t die because who would take care of my children and then I thought we could all die and it clicked, call the doctor and I did and his nurse came and got me and my children and took us to the office, good doctor, and he talked to me and I was crying so hard and he gave me medicine and made an appointment for me to see a psychiatrists and they called my friend, a good friend who came and got my kids and me and took us home and took care of me until I saw the doctor and got used to the medicine. I was lucky. Real lucky because there are women who actually do kill commit murder suicide because of such hopelessness. I was so close to dying and taking my kids with me. First and last time I ever got so depressed that life for my children was not important. So they gave me medicine and I have been on it ever since—well not the same but at least being treated. By the way, my children had a happy childhood in spite of my bi-polar. I stayed alert to the changes in my mental status and when I began to get too high or too low, I called my doctor. Now, or so I’ve been told, being bi-polar is trendy and the disease to have; it’s like the crazy artists disease. Wow, for the first time in my life I am in style. Cool, I say.
posted by zelda1 | 4:40 PM
2 Comments:
Bipolar Disorder comes in many forms, as I'm sure you know. Bipolar I and Bipolar II. Mostly manice, mostly depressed, totally mixed, rapid-cycling, etc. The people with rapid-cycling Bipolar Disorder are probably the worse off. Also, some Bipolar Disorder is very severe, with psychosis and extreme mania.
A lot of people, in my professional opinion, have been diagnosed with BD when what they actually have is Cyclothymic Disorder, or even ADD. Sometimes it is hard to make the call between BD and CD, but many clinicians don't even try. One psychiatrist I know used to be a pretty good doctor, but now everyone who goes to her office comes away with a diagnosis of BD.
I am mostly manic and take a mixture of drugs to control the mania and at the same time to control any depression and because of the mania I have quite a bit of anxiety and take something for that. Years ago it was Lithium and thorazine but I just couldn't take the thorazine. I stayed on lithium for years but recently have been taking anitseizures, which work really well. I am manic but not, if that makes sense. I have been classified as II and do cycle some and when I do, it is so predicatable that the my husband knows before I even have the first really down day. I guess it helps taking the anti-depressant with the other meds. My psychiatrists is really good and was leary to keep me with the diagnosis of BP until he saw me in the emergency room after I totally went off the charts in mania. No sleep, no food, no single thought for more than two or three minutes, multiple thoughts and my brain was going nuts. I'm much better, I think the older I get the easier my mania is to control. But oh do I love the mania and hate for it to be gone and sometimes, and I know it's wrong, but sometimes, I don't take my medicines just so I can be manic as hell and have marathons with everything. My husband realizes it really quickly and talks me down and into taking my meds. It really runs in my family and we think my grandmother on my mother's side was totally BP and always manic. Very mean woman and fought with everyone and went without sleep and had all these grand plans. She was something.
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