I was quite ill in January. I just had three days of major mood swings last weekend.
Today I am fine.
It’s so important to remember that bipolar disorder is an episodic illness. It literally can come and go. I feel like I have to do my best work between the mood swings!
Hang in there if you’re sick today- when you use a treatment plan that works- and when you work on your triggers, you can definitely get better.
Sometimes there are no triggers and the illness just shows up and stays too long. That can get better as well.
It’s up and down with bipolar, but there can also be long periods where it is just in the middle and you can get on in life.
Julie
Related posts: Bipolar Disorder Sick Days | Bipolar Disorder: Over the Top and Below the Norm | Just Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder? |
Hi Julie.
(This turned out to be a kind of epic response, more like a letter than a little blog entry… sorry! I didn’t know how to share my thoughts without putting them in context of the whole story. If you decide to post any of it, PLEASE edit all you want!)
It’s so funny that this is the subject of your post today… I have been wanting to respond on this blog for a while now, specifically about this issue of “getting better,” “recovery,” feeling “normal,”–whatever THAT is — however we want to describe the place in between, the place I seem to keep referring to as where I “feel like myself.” And I’d decided today was the day I was going to write, even if it didn’t fit the subject of the post, but it does! So here we go…
I am still (five months later) in the process of what I keep hoping is “recovery” from a manic/psychotic episode in late September. This is the second manic/psychotic hospitalization of my life, the first one happened 3 years before. Until then I’d experienced depression on and off since I was a teenager, but nothing resembling mania or psychosis–until the age of 34. The first time around even the Docs weren’t sure they could diagnose bipolar (I have to say I prefer Manic Depression, a la Kay Jamison, but maybe that’s just the romantic in me
). I was determined that I was going to find a way to be well, without medication. Largely because for the first six months after the hospitalization I was on several combinations of different meds, and NEVER felt better. Could also see and feel the problematic side effects, which I was not willing to put up with. Finally, the medications (Lamictal, in the end) were so expensive that my prescription insurance ran out, and I didn’t want to depend on my parents to cover the cost. And I succeeded in staying relatively stable for a few years, occasionally taking meds for sleep or just for depression, doing yoga, and trying to take care of myself in every way I could. Then last fall I started a new job in a new city, teaching at a university, and three weeks into it went into an extreme mania and a very scary paranoid psychosis, similar in many ways to the first one, I just got myself to a hospital much sooner. I don’t know why I didn’t think this could happen to me again, but I really believed that it had been a one-time thing. And even though there were signs, like not sleeping much, I wasn’t reading them as symptoms of an illness. I just thought I was energized and excited by work, which I was. But it was more than that…
In mid-January, after almost three months of a horrible post-psychosis depression that medication (wellbutrin, seroquel for sleep, klonapin for anxiety) did not seem to be helping, I saw a second psychiatrist who somehow convinced me in the space of an hour that I definitely have an illness, what he believes is “classic” Bipolar II. He suggested I start on Lithium, which I have, though I’m still on a pretty low dose (600 mg). I joined a DBSA support group. I started telling close friends and family(much to their relief) about my decision to accept that I have an illness. This decision went along with the sense that if I could accept that, and treat it properly, I would be able to live a “normal” life. Which for me right now, means finishing my dissertation and finally fully supporting myself by continuing to teach, research, write, create. But much of the time, I feel like my head is full of mud. It’s difficult to concentrate, to focus, to think. I keep wondering if I’m ever going to get my brain back. In terms of mood I do (generally) feel better than I did two months ago, still depression but not as horrendous. I’m more able to function. I’m sleeping without the aid of Seroquel. But my mind has not come back yet. And I feel like I’ve hit a plateau. I keep thinking, “I’m being good. I’m taking the medication. I’m taking care of myself. Why aren’t I getting better? How long is this going to take? Am I ever going to feel better, to feel like me again? What if I don’t… What if I have to live like this for the rest of my life?” Sometimes there’s nothing to do but just keep going…
Going to your blog helps me feel less alone sometimes. Discovering your website and blog, and just the idea of “Getting it Done When You’re Depressed,” even though I haven’t read the book, gave me a big boost in late January just before I started my second semester of teaching. I can’t say the posts always give me hope. It sounds like you have to deal with being “sick” so much of the time… Maybe I have that impression because I started reading in January. But today’s reminder that this illness is episodic is a great help, at a moment when I really need to hear it. I really need to believe that I’m still in the recovery period from this last manic episode, and that I will come back… Or maybe being on Lithium also means that I never feel like the “me” I used to know? This could also be the difference between recovery on medication versus going off it, which is what I did last time, at about the six month point. I’m not going to take that risk, though. I don’t ever want to experience another psychotic episode… or more to the point, the awful depression that seems to follow them.
I just filled out a job application in which there was a section on health where I had to say if I had any health issues that might get in the way of me being able to fulfill the duties of the position (a pretty high-pressure academic job with a heavy load). I said no, telling myself that I’ll surely be stable and able to work like a normal person by the fall. I wonder if I’m lying. I wonder if I won’t ever be able to handle the kind of workload I want to… I guess I’ve accepted that I can’t “cure” this. I’ve accepted that it’s something I’m going to have to keep managing. I’m not sure if I can accept that this feeling and fact of being so limited, almost like being disabled, might not go away…
In any case, in the spirit of “getting it done when you’re depressed,” or when it feels like your head is full of mud, or both, I plan to start working on the dissertation in about a week, when spring break begins. My therapist and I talked about it yesterday, and she thinks that starting to work on it is actually going to help me get better, to get my mind and my writing self back in shape. I hope she’s right!
Thanks for your endless energy, courage and dedication in sending out information, experience and support!
Michele
Hi Michele,
You are welcome to write as much and as often as you want! Readers find great hope and comfort from reading others’ experiences! Thank you so much for your comments on my work. They are truly appreciated! julie