Introduction

I'd love to say this is a well thought out article, with lots of insightful stuff in it. In fact it's not. It's about my disease, and me. It's got some deep stuff about me, which I am only just making public, and I am mainly writing this to get my mind in order. The sections may seem muddled, and the content may be a bit jumpy, but I hope it will help me, and maybe someone else who has had the label Bipolar dropped on them.

What is Bipolar Disorder?

The first thing which people normally ask is what is bipolar disorder. I'm not going to answer that here. There are a number of reasons, but there are also a number of really good descriptions already out there. I suggest you check out the Harvard Bipolar Research Program for a medical definition, or Mind for a longer and more understandable one.

How was I diagnosed?

Well, I went through a really hard December last year. I had four things hit me on the same day, each of which were fairly life-shattering for me, and I ended up lieing in bed crying my eyes out and just wanting to die. Literally I wanted to end it all. The only thing which stopped me was that I would have actually had to do something to end it all, and that was too much effort. I felt drained, empty and emotionally was at the lowest I have ever been.

Here is where I have to admit something which I don't really want to. You see it's part of my past which I am ashamed of, despite the fact that I did nothing wrong, nor was I to blame in any way. In fact it was probably the only time when I was totally innocent in my entire life, and it's the thing I fear most at night. You see when I was a child I was sexually abused. There, I've said it. Believe me, it's not easy to say that. It'll come in in a bit, so please be patient with me.

Anyway, I went to my doctor and asked to see a psychiatrist to discuss my problems. She was of the opinion that the best thing for me to do was to keep the memories, which had started to come back and haunt me, repressed. I found that difficult, especially when I had a flash back when a man in a suit walked towards me in the Trafford centre. I almost screamed there and then but got by with a deep breath and a coffee.  I was feeling so upset and unable to function I ended up going to a private doctor to request a referral to a psychiatrist. I knew I needed help, I just wasn't aware of how much so.

I saw the psychiatrist within a week, due to some helpful advice from my work, among other sources. The psychiatrist interviewed me for an hour, and then said he wanted to admit me to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, preferably the next day.  This actually sounded good to me at the time, which is perhaps a measure of how bad I was.

One piece of advice for anyone out ther in the UK. If you have to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, try your hardest to make it private. Luckily for me I have medical insurance, but I would say the private hospitals are worth every penny. You get one nurse per five patients, as opposed to 50. You get three hours of group therapy a day. You get a private room. You get really good food!

The time in the hospital I changed quite a lot. The diagnosis went from Depression to Bipolar within 24 hours, and I went from suicidal to able to cope with the real world in about 5 weeks. Unfortunately I suffered a side-effect to the medication, which meant I had to stay in for another week. I have been out of hospital now for about three months, and I'm beginning to start putting my life back together.

How has it affected me?

Well, I'm on medication now which I will need for the rest of my life. If I stop taking it I could have fits, or start mood swings again. They are ok, but in the past they have got very wierd. You see one of the sides of Bipolar is mania leading to psychosis. For the lay person out there that means you start off feeling really good, and able to cope, and energetic, but you end up believing in things which aren't true. I believed I was a reincarnation of the Babylonian godess Ishtar. Honestly. I went as far as to try to convince my then boyfriend to go through a ritual to make him a suitable vessel for me. It may sound insane, and in fact that is exactly what it is. Mania leads to insanity, for periods.

The other side of the coin is much worse. In Bipolar depression frequently leads to suicide. One of the papers I have been given to read quotes one in five Bipolar patients end up committing suicide. That's 20%.  Given 1 in every 100 people in the UK have it, that means 1 in every 500 people will commit suicide because of Bipolar. Or to put it another way, if you had Mancester United's home ground full of people, 67,500 to be precise, then 135 of them will kill themselves because they can't stand the way Bipolar makes their life.

Is it that bad I hear you ask (metaphorically of course). Yes, sometimes it is. I just want it all to stop. I want to stop living and be done with the day-to-day troubles of getting up, choosing what clothes to wear, choosing what to eat, choosing when to eat come to that. I want to stop living and end the problems. However this is just at times and I don't want to kill myself. There is a large difference between wanting your problems to go away and wanting to kill yourself. I am aware of the difference, and I don't want to cause the pain that my death would cause to my husband and family. I hope that by staying on the pills then I will get to the point that I won't feel like that long-term or indeed ever, but that is something for the future, and an important thing for me to do at the moment is live in the now.

Sometimes I get very upset over the fact that this is a lifetime sentence. I've struggled with problems all my life, and they are not going to get better. In fact I'm going to be watching myself, and being watched, for the start of mood swings for as long as I live. I've got to make sure I have a routine, and that I monitor my moods on a daily basis. I have to keep track of the major events in my life, and see how they affect me. Sometimes I just feel that it's all hopeless.

However, there is some hope at the end of the tunnel. Recent studies have shown that if you stick to your medication, and have appropriate psychotherapy, then you can live a normal life. The medication can't get rid of the mood swings totally, as far as I understand it, but they do greatly reduce them to the point that they are within the range most people would consider normal. I hope that this is the case. I'm certainly taking my medication, despite the numerous side-effects. I am finding that the mania is greatly reduced, which is really rather annoying as that is when I feel really well, and at one with the world.

I suppose that I'd better leave this now. I'll probably be writing more later, all to do with getting better and learning to be me, but before I go there is one thing I'd like to say to anyone who has been diagnosed with this and comes to dislike the word 'Bipolar', or even 'disability' which Bipolar is. Remember, these are just words. I recently turned thirty-six, I am officially middle aged. I don't feel any different. I haven't suddenly become decrepit or unable to think. I don't suddenly have the urge to wear wooly jumpers or bed socks. I'm still me. Thirty-six is just a word, like Bipolar and disability. I am still me, fortunately and unfortunately, happy and sad, blessed and cursed with this divine madness. That really sums it all up, Bipolar is divine madness.

Catch you all later.