RealMental

By JB

This week, I had a very hard decision to make. Faced with a meeting about my less-than-stellar academic performance, I had two choices. One, I could continue keeping my bipolar disorder a secret, continue pretending like I have no extra-ordinary challenges to medical school. Two, I could tell the truth I’ve been aching to tell all along. I’m bipolar. I’m treated. It presents unique challenges to my medical school education, and I am still figuring out all the intricate twists and turns of what it means to be a functioning bipolar person, a functioning bipolar medical student.

I’m only 10 months in, here. I am still figuring out who to tell, how to tell them, when to tell them. When is that magical moment? I told Joe in the line at Subway, I told Thomas while we were floating in kayaks on a river. I told Sahar while we were eating lunch; I told my lab group during one of our first lab meetings. All of these times, I felt, were the right times. These were people who needed–or deserved–to know. These were people I would feel fake around if I didn’t tell.

For all the grief it causes me in deciding, actually telling someone I am bipolar is truly a freeing event. Being bipolar is part of every moment of every day. It is inextricably tied up in my being. There is no point where I am not bipolar. I am medicated, which means I don’t act bipolar, but there is always the chance that my medicine will slip and become less effective, that I will need people in my life who know so that we can catch it early. So we can catch it before anything bad happens. So we can catch it before I ruin my life.

So I decided yes, which is something out of the norm. All materials I’ve read on the subject–and there are not many–by bipolar medical students reveal that they did not disclose. Above that, they refuse to disclose. They say it is the worst thing they could possibly do. Unfortunately, these medical students worry that the doctors who surround them, who decide about residencies, will discriminate against them. And I’m sure the concern is valid, which is a sad state in itself. How can we tell our patients that it is possible to be a whole functioning human being if we don’t believe it ourselves?

The truth is, I want to disclose my mental illness to everyone at my school. I want them to probe and pick my brain, to learn from my mistakes. This is something that my friends who know do sometimes. They get this look on their face, and it inevitably leads to a question. “Why did you seek treatment?”
“What was the worst part of being bipolar?” We talk about the symptoms and signs; we talk about what they should do if they suspect that something wrong is happening, which ranges from the practical [“Get me to a therapist.”] to the absurd [I’ll just run across the horseshoe and tackle you.”] We talk, which is good for me. It’s good for our friendships. It’s good for their future patients. It’s just good.

So, facing the dean of the graduate school, the director of my program, the words tumbled out like an avalanche. “In March, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I am treated, and I have made a lot of lifestyle changes in the last year. The first semester of medical school was a difficult transition for me, because in college, I did a lot of manic studying. I’m still trying to figure out how normal people study.” He was very supportive and inquired about treatment. I assured him that I take my medication, but told him I was currently without a therapist or psychiatrist because of some insurance
problems. He was, thankfully, understanding, and referred me to the school psychologist. I have already made an appointment.

I hope that I–and my generation of doctors–can change minds, opinions, and attitudes about mental illness, especially as it pertains to medical school. People with mental illnesses can perform well in medical school, and they can [and deserve] to be doctors. Although I would gladly trade my mental illness for a clear bill of health, I can do good with it. I can advocate for other mentally ill people, and I will share a true empathetic bond with my patients. It is well-noted that doctors make poor patients, but I hope the opposite is true well. I hope that patients make good doctors.

So I disclosed. So I will continue to disclose, to trusted colleagues and administrators, to anyone who will hear and listen, to anyone who is interested and can offer support. I will continue to disclose, because I owe it to myself. I owe it to future generations of medical students, who I hope will have an easier time of disclosing. And I owe it to all of the patients of all the future doctors I know now, the ones who may have an easier diagnosis because of me.

Originally posted here.

By Coolbeans

The beginning of January is nice. The holidays are behind us, we get back into our routines, and my husband and I celebrate our anniversary. Then something bad happens. After the start of the new year, something in my brain goes haywire. I have fits of rage, tears, self-loathing, and an inability to hold my shit together before we can say “February.”

Things have been okay for the last few months. I’ve felt good. I like my job, my kids are normal enough, my marriage isn’t spiraling down the drain. We faced some tough stuff in December and just before Christmas it occurred to me that maybe the medication I take for depression isn’t working like it should. I was moody, weepy, angry, and tired. I decided to look at the issue after the holidays, hoping that after Christmas madness was over, I’d feel better again. I took a deep breath and held it.

Yesterday, I had a fit. I could call it an attack, but I think “fit” is better. I was angry, I was sad. I wanted to scream, cry, break something. Nobody could do anything right and I hate everything. Hopelessness, sadness, despair, rot. Where does this come from? Why won’t it stop fucking with me? I’m doing the stuff I’m supposed to, for fuck’s sake. I just want to be NORMAL. Normal, la-dee-dah BORING. Sane. Stupidly, ignorantly happy, even.

I thought that I’d be fine this year. I’m taking medicine, life is alright. But no. The inside of my head feels pulled and twisted and right now, throwing things doesn’t feel optional.

2005
At the beginning of January, I had some little panic attacks and struggled with insomnia. The space inside my head where I hear all the voices was really loud and I couldn’t hear one voice over another. I tried to focus on one thing at a time and just couldn’t. It was all a jumbled mess in my brain.

2006
The Funk that lurks in the dark corners of my mental state has stretched its long and sticky arms and is presently trying to suffocate my pysche. For some reason, my marbles get lost this time of year. I decided I’m not going to order medication this time. I called my therapist today instead. Of course, she’s out of the office until Tuesday. Until then, I might be laying low.

2007
Someone I know: “Hi, I know you!”
Me: “You can’t see me. I’m invisible now!”
Someone I know: “You are one crazy bitch.”
Me: *cries*

2008
What is going on here? What is it about January that makes me batshit crazy even when things seem fine, good, great?

By JB

One year ago today, my entire universe fell apart. I reaped the seeds I had sown. I had the unfortunate task of knowing that the falling apart was my fault. I had backed myself into a corner. I had almost ruined everything.

One year ago today, Joey took away the engagement ring, the beautiful one he had designed himself. The one that fit me perfectly, the one that was better than any one I could have built myself. The one with the emeralds for both of our birthdays.

One year ago today, I was presented with a few choices. I could give up. I could start over. I could try to fix the things that were broken. I chose the latter.

January was cold last year, cold in so many ways. I spent a lot of time on walks outside. I chased Joey down sidewalks after he rightfully turned his back on me. I cried almost every day. I started to put my life back together. We started to put our life back together.

I can still remember all of the small gestures of love, the small assurances that let me know he still cared. One cold day in January, I walked into his dorm with a cold nose. Instinctively, he pressed his warm cheek up against it. I knew he cared so much about me. That’s the time I often pinpoint that I knew we could get through this.

In March, after many appointments with therapists, testing psychologists, and a psychiatrist, I got the medical help I needed. The afternoon I got tested, the first thing I did was sit in my car, turning circles in the parking lot. The first thing I said to him on the phone was, “I’m bipolar, Joey.” Then, “We can never adopt babies from China.”

I don’t want to be bipolar. I never wanted to be bipolar. But I don’t have a choice. Regardless of my feelings, I am bipolar. Treated or not, I have a mental illness. I am mentally ill.

But I am also so lucky. The other night, fairly tipsy, Joey looked at me and said, “It’s been a good year.” I pressed my face up to his.

“It has been a good year, baby.” I said. “It has.”

When I tell people about this past year, when I tell them about breaking an engagement, about losing so many friends [including a best friend], when I tell them about finding out I was bipolar, they look at me with pity. What a bad year, they think or say. I am constantly reassuring people.

This was not a bad year. This was a great year. This was a beautiful year. This was the year that my mind got un-cracked. This is the year that I fell in love, over and over and over again, with a patient, loving, kind boy. This is the year that I fell in love, over and over and over again, knowing that the person I am in love with is the person I want to spend my life with, the person who is perfect for me. The boy of my dreams. This is the first year that I’ve experienced a lucid clarity of mind, with thoughts unclouded.

This is the first year in my entire life that I’ve had to fight for things. The first year that it didn’t just come easy. The first year that everything good came, but only after an equally good fight.

This has been an annus miribilis, my year of wonders that cradled me as it brought me home.

Originally posted here.

By Dad Gone Mad

I’m sitting here this morning wondering when our senses of compassion and respect deteriorated to this point.

When did we become so callous and heartless that we started to view a young mother struggling with a mental illness as entertainment?

When did we stop trying to empathize?

When did we find ourselves so miserable with our own existences that we started to distract ourselves by watching someone else fall apart live on TMZ?

I hear the feeble attempts at logic.

When she decided to become an entertainer, she gave up her right to privacy.

Oh, I see. So because she’s makes her living in a spotlight, she can never leave it. Even when that light irrefutably reveals that she’s unwell, that she needs help, that the decent and humane thing to do would be to turn the light off and leave her alone, we refuse.

And let’s not stop at simply broadcasting her breakdown; let’s taunt her on her way down. Let’s call her “Unfitney” and repost pictures of her crotch and act as though we have been personally effected by someone else’s breakdown.

If it bleeds, it leads.

Better her than me.

I’m sitting here this morning wondering if anyone else sees more than one tragedy here.

Originally posted here.

By Kay

One of the ideas that scares me the most (and, unfortunately, gets stuck in my head most often), is that there’s nothing wrong with me at all.

The basic premise of this idea is that while I was still lost in the heartbreak and despair of breaking up with my first love, someone suggested to me that I was depressed, and I latched onto the idea. At some level I know that I’m using it both as a convenient excuse to stay in bed as long as I want and as a ploy to get attention, but consciously I have become so wrapped up in this lie that I believe it to be true, and identify and exaggerate possible “symptoms” of depression in order to make the story more convincing. In short, I am a lazy, attention-seeking, manipulative bastard who is using a mental illness as an excuse, and has become so caught up in this out-of-control lie that I don’t even realize it any longer.

Whenever I consider this notion, a voice in my head breaks through and sarcastically congratulates me on taking my unhealthy practices of self-loathing and negative self-talk to a whole new level. But that seed of doubt is planted. And it’s the closest I’ve come to a rational explanation of the irrationality of my emotions.

It makes me feel so crazy to think like this. It makes me feel like I don’t know myself, and that I can’t trust myself. It also undermines what I believe most of the time to be very real trials I’ve been through, and the effort I’ve put into making things better, because how can I be getting better when nothing’s wrong with me? I wish I could shut it out once and for all, end the vicious cycle, but as long as that niggling idea is still somewhere in my mind, the silent arguments over it can’t be closed.

Originally posted here.

By jb

Being crazy is not a cheap endeavor. In fact, it is such a complicated endeavor that my health insurance provider has a separate branch for psychological care. So complicated, so expensive that every visit has to be pre-approved.

And apparently, even things that have been pre-approved can be denied.

I am currently in a rough-and-tumble battle with my health insurance provider over my psych testing. You know, the psych testing that led to be being diagnosed with, and promptly treated for, bipolar II. The psych testing that helped me answer some important questions in my life, although it was no quick fix, and never any excuse. It just gave a start.

In any case, this is the psych testing that made my year so much more healthy, so much happier, so much better. The psych testing that helped me uncrack my mind, that helped me start to pull together the pieces.

I take my Lamictal like communion bread, knowing that something was broken in me, doing this in remembrance and preservation of my real self.

When I talk about the cost of crazy, I’m talking about the monetary cost, the thing that can be most easily fixed. Crazy can cost a lot more than that: I lost friends, sleep, grades, my own morals, and I almost lost the person that means most to me. All of those things were hard–and in some cases–impossible to regain. Those are the things that should hurt, that should be hard to get together, that should take a concerted effort on my part to put back together because they are worth that time, that effort.

But the actual payment of my fifteen hundred dollar testing psych bill? The one I got pre-approved? The one that is constantly being denied for a whole host of contrived reasons, from “billed from facility instead of provider” to “not approved for outpatient care”?

That should be the easy part. And yet, it’s the one that has proved, somehow, the most difficult.

Originally posted here.

By coolbeans

It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen my dad in person. While I was out with my daughter today, I saw a man who looked a lot like my dad. It was startling how much. I kept glancing over, trying to decide if that’s what my dad would look like with shorter hair and carrying a little more weight.

My brain twisted around and around looking for the answer. I finally asked my daughter to look. “Who is that man?” She looked and said, “I don’t know.” I asked, “Is that your grandpa?” She looked again. “No. He looks like him, though.”

The man got up and left and I was suddenly unable to hide the fact that I was trembling. I put my head down and started to cry. My daughter was perplexed. “Why are you crying?” I told her I didn’t know exactly. That I thought it might really be him.

She said, “I would think I’d be glad to see my dad if I were you.” Then she said something else. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it made me think she believes I don’t see him because of something I did.

I’ve felt shaken all day. I can’t stop crying and I feel lost. I didn’t realize why until just now. I was afraid to confront him and tell people what he did to me because I thought they would see me as a troublemaker. A grudge-holder. A tattletale. Maybe even a liar. I’ve dealt with other people in my life being unable to see why I don’t just “let it go”, but I didn’t think my little girl saw it quite like this. She doesn’t blame me and she’s not upset with me, but she does see me as the instigator. As much as she accepts me and allows my problems to be mine, if it weren’t for what I did, it wouldn’t be a big deal to run into my dad when we stop to get a burger and fries.

She’s not yet ten years old. I don’t want to tell her everything so she’ll be on “my side”. I’m on her side, and being on her side is more important than having her on mine. So I’m telling you. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. I only made it stop.

Originally posted here.