RealMental

Bipolar-Manic, originally uploaded by mother of divine Jaysus.

Mania is a severe medical condition characterized by extremely elevated mood, energy, unusual thought patterns and sometimes psychosis

The majority of people with bipolar disorder believe that the public are unaware of and do not understand the condition. As a result, as many as one in four do not tell family or friends they have it for fear of social stigma, the results of a major new survey have revealed.

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, is a severe and chronic condition. Those affected experience sustained high moods, followed by periods of sustained low moods. High moods can see the person feeling elated and needing less sleep. Low moods can range from mild to severe depression.

Almost 40,000 people in Ireland have the condition.

I took this off of my blog, because of some negative feedback.  I figure realmental.org is more comfortable with my crazy.

Still around.  Posts percolating but not all suitable for a blog that as of yet, has not been found by my parents.  My poor niece is not telling anyone as far as I know and I actually feel awful laying the smack down when I have always known that at any moment someone really tenacious(and technically savvy AND related to me) could find me.  I am trying to find a new domain name that fits what feels like a big change.  I just had a nice time with my mom and told her that on Friday, I found myself so depressed, so profoundly sad and hopeless that I just broke down and sobbed. In my car at first and then made it home to cry to hard I threw up and peed my pants!  Goodbye readers who don’t like to much information!

Of course my mom asked why.  Lots and nothing.  I am mentally ill.  I hate saying those words, but it is true.  I see a psychiatrist regularly and for the rest of my life medication will be tweaked and fiddled with and I will likely have lots of ups and hopefully only a handful of major downs.  So, know I don’t know why on Friday, some horribly song on the radio seemed to trigger a drying episode.  That is whole mystery of depression, bi-polar, these things we suffer from, there is no cure and often no sense to it.  Sure, THINGS happen and we, OK I do not react the way people who don’t suffer from major depression react, but often there is it.  On my radio.  I feel out of control.  Like my car will swerve into oncoming traffic, literally and metaphorically.  I feel like I don’t have control over my own mind, my own heart.  My poor heart that is abuse by both me and my illness.  I am not an innocent party here.  I still let things hurt my heart that I shouldn’t give power to.  Things I should LET THE FUCK GO OF ALREADY.  I feel way too old to not have learned the lessons of self protection.  Forgiving myself.  I cling.  That girl in grade 7 send a note to some other girl that i found saying i was annoying and i can see the handwriting and remember how i felt like it was last week.  LET IT GO.  It is like my heart has this gigantic database of things that hurt and I can conjure them up at anytime.  World’s most reliable software! !  I can search by any parameters – age, hurt by;name, gender, date, what shoes I was wearing, where the hurt took place (that one in grade 10 in the cafeteria was a son of a bitch), the overalls with polka dots were perfect for 1985 though.  <a href=”http://lauriewrites.typepad.com/weblog/”>Laurie</a>, my friend, made friendlier by sxsw, told me twice, briefly, stop giving that power.  Laurie, is smart and wicked in a good way, a great writer, beautiful, wonderful, and you want to be her friend.  She listened to all manner of my blathering while we were in Austin and feel grateful for that.  I wish she could live on mu pocket, not as angel (not that she is’;t one), but as a compass.  I don’t know my emotional direction for shit right now.

Ultimately I know I need to find my own way right?.  The medication will always be there, but surely I can learn right?  I can hard wire some things in my heart to protect it from others.  From myself.  First job ion order for me is where the hell is magnetic north? At least for me.

Jen

Guest post by JB

My mental illness added a lot of memorable dates to my Mental Rolodex:

January 2, 2007—the end of the engagement
March 16, 2007—diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, Type II. The beginning of The Fire This Time.
March 22, 2007—prescription for Lamictal, the day we started dating again.

They don’t make anything to commemorate diagnoses of mental illnesses. There are no “Happy Anniversary!” cards, no party hats or banners or streamers. No happy horseshit, humorously deprecating cake inscriptions.

Nonetheless, I still “celebrate”it—mark the date in my head, take time out in the day [as if I could help it] to think about everything that led to that point, and—more importantly—all the things that proceeded out of it. My closest friends know, even, about the day. My best friend in medical school is especially good at keeping track of these things, with a certain flair for understanding what this day must mean to me. He indicates the note in the calendar of his Treo [“Jenny’s BP Anniversary”] and remarks, at lunch, “Let me be the first, and last, to wish you a Happy Anniversary.”

I smile, my new-ish this-is-my-smile smile. Whereas my old smile was wide and bright, fake, this one is new, almost a smirk. The left side of my lip pulls back and slightly up—a smile, to be sure, but sometimes only if you’re careful to look. I have a new dimple in my chin on that side from too much of this smile. See—I smile a lot, and for real. I laugh too. Even in these days, these two years of “I have a mental illness, but it doesn’t have me,” these almost-two years of “pop-a-pill and get some fucking sleep,” these two years of “are you sure you took your meds last night?” and “where do we go from here?”

I am fighting the urge to email my testing psychiatrist. “Remember how you told me I would succeed in medical school?” I want to write. “Remember how you told me bipolar disorder is the most treatable illness?” “Remember how you said I would be ok?”

“You were so right.”

So, on this day, I laugh about it and I cry about it, because I have to. Because you have to do both. As has been expounded by other bloggers in much more eloquent tones, the bitter and the sweet are foils for each other—each brings out the taste of the other. Like measuring kosher salt into the caramel I make in my kitchen, my tears bring out the pureness of my laughter and my half-there smirking-until-I-carve-dimples-in-my-face smile. The moments when we yell at each other or are too stunned by pain to speak, the moments when the hurt is suddenly sharp [like hitting your hand on the oven rack when you pull something out] only serve to enhance the beauty of the following moments—when we forgive or resolve; when in the middle of the night, his arms shoot out and draw me in, his lips at the nape of my neck; when he sends a text message the day after a fight that says, “I love you, ok?” [a code phrase, for us—a combination of” I love you, I’m sorry, I’m an asshole and sometimes so are you.”]

The Fire This Time, I call it, a nod toward James Baldwin [a man who knew a whole world of hurt] and his book “The Fire Next Time.” Because the Next Time isn’t enough, and never will be. Turning a corner around March 16th, 2007, I knew this was it. That The Fire This Time is all I get—that this life with these hues are all I have to work with. So it had better be good, and it had better be passionate. The Fire This Time is in everything: how I work, how I play, how I love. It’s the bitter, the sour, the sweet, the salty, the savory—it’s everything it can be and everything is has to be. It’s the love of a boy who stayed through the hurt; the laughter of the friends who are celebrating it with me; the concern of a parent who still can’t quite understand what bipolar disorder is and what it has to mean to me. The reassurance of one testing psychiatrist who said it would be ok, and my tearing-up half-cocked smile [the bitter and the sweet] when I remember his kindness toward me.

It will never be said, of this life, of The Fire This Time, that “everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” But that’s the point, I think. That’s it.

Yeah, hi.  That’s me.  I know I’ve been away for a while, but what better occasion for a return than to tell the world just how horrible a person I am?

My bipolar husband, despite doing all the right things, has been deep, deep, deep in an atypical (for him) depressive cycle for at least the last six months.  It’s actually probably lasted longer, but that’s about how long it’s been debilitating to the point that he can’t work or maintain normal function.  I won’t go into details about everything that’s been tried for him so far, but let’s just say it’s been a LOT.  And that he has cooperated whole-heartedly with every treatment, regardless of how horrible the side-effects may be, because he wants his life back.  Badly.

You know, depression has never been the bugaboo for us.  It’s always been the threat of a manic episode that loomed nearby, and kept us ever-vigilant for the slightest symptoms and early-warning signs.  It’s mania that has scared the stuffing out of us both, because we both know that a good, strong florid mania is capable of ruining our marriage and our family, despite whatever good intentions we may have.  Mania has always been, for us, the Other in our marriage–a beast to fight and fear.  I even used to joke, “Where is the other pole in this bipolar disorder?  I think we could use a swing toward depression right now!”

Ha, ha.  It’s not funny any more.  I am so sorry, but I really had no idea.  I thought I did, which now is very nearly hilarious–I thought I “got it.”  I didn’t.

I did not anticipate, in my wildest dreams, the depth, the blackness, the despair of this depression.  That it could affect my brilliant spouse’s cognitive abilities and physical coordination.  It’s like a malicious, transient form of brain damage, really, and stunning in its power.

And my response to it has been, well…less than stellar, at least lately.  I have been so wrapped up, in the years since the diagnosis, in watching for and combating the manic side of the spectrum, that the depression caught me completely flat-footed.  My troops were all amassed at the Hypomanic Border, and the few straggling sentries and scouts who brought reports from Depressive Kingdom were brushed off as insignificant, or addled.  If only I’d known.

Who knew–turns out that my moods cycle, too.  And that cycle, in regard to my mentally ill spouse, appears to go something like this: Patience, understanding, patience, kindness, patience, concern, patience, frustration, worry, frustration, resentment, impatience, fear, deep frustration, RIP YOUR HEAD OFF AND DISEMBOWEL YOU WITH UNKIND WORDS.  Nice, huh?  I honestly, and truly suck.

That’s right–when a loved one is down lower than you can even imagine being, why not give him a good swift kick, you know, as long as he’s down there?  Go ahead, vent your spleen–after all, you have feelings, too, right?  And you’ve bottled this up for so long, why save it for therapy?  I’m sure that the person who is clinging to you like the only life-raft in a raging sea of misery won’t mind ONE BIT.  Let him know just how displeased you are with this whole depression thing, because almost certainly he’s been doing it ON PURPOSE, and just needs to feel your wrath, resentment, and maybe even a smidgen of contempt, to snap right on out of it, get back to work, smile, and be happy!  RIGHT?

I feel about two inches tall, and I’m so, so sorry.  I wish that what I’d done was to recognize and appreciate the things that he is amazingly ABLE to do right now, even through a thick black fog.  That is true courage, and I DO see it.

Going back to my best attempt at being positive (which is where I should’ve stayed all along, more’s the pity), we’ve pushed the doctors to make some fairly radical (for us) and frightening  (for us) changes in medication regimen, and I can’t help but think that something’s going to happen soon.  It may be too much, but at this point, anything different will be welcome, at least at first.

One of two mood stabilizers has been removed entirely, as has the benzodiazepine.  This will be the first time since diagnosis without Depakote and Klonopin.  This is terrifying.  To exponentially enhance our trepidation, factor in a huge increase in anti-depressant dosage.  Now, realize that this is exactly the time of year when the “ramping up” usually begins, and you have a real “YIKES” element going.

Of course, this is all pretty much what we asked for.  Much the same way ECT jolts the brain out of a repetitive, destructive pattern, we’re hoping to shake up the med cocktail SO much, while at the same time hopefully harnessing some of that very manic energy that we normally fear so greatly every spring, that my dear husband’s brain will HAVE to let go, and emerge from the depths.  I’m just hoping that we have time, once the climb begins in earnest, to get the lid on before it’s too late.

I’m also hoping to be less of a jerk about the whole thing.