BipolarLawyerCook

I was diag­nosed as bipo­lar in May of 2005, after a long depres­sion and a big mess-up at work. You can read about that process here and here. My dad tells me that when I was a tod­dler, and we were liv­ing at my Nana’s house, she said to him that I was a “ner­vous child.” It was true, and boy did it get worse the older I got.

It didn’t help mat­ters any that my father was a drink­ing alco­holic until I was 12.  There were some seri­ous anger and yelling issues. Nor did the sit­u­a­tion improve inas­much as my mother was chron­i­cally depressed, chron­i­cally anx­ious, chron­i­cally unem­ployed, and chron­i­cally a vic­tim of the forces of the uni­verse, con­spir­ing against her. It was only when she turned 65 and had her first frank manic and psy­chotic episode, described here, here, and here, that she too was diag­nosed as bipolar.

My dad was arrested for drunk dri­ving when I was 12– he there­after man­aged to stop drink­ing, apply the 12 Steps, and turn his life around. He’s never been diag­nosed as bipo­lar, but I think he is, just see­ing the way my behav­iors mir­ror his. Regard­less, through effort of will and sig­nif­i­cant amounts of beta block­ers, my dad’s mania is not an issue, and his depres­sion is under con­trol enough that we need not worry.

My ado­les­cent and teen years were char­ac­ter­ized by “sen­si­tiv­ity” and anx­i­ety. I occa­sion­ally needed a men­tal health day from school, because I was too worked up to stop cry­ing about what­ever I was anx­ious about. Usu­ally geom­e­try. I found out I had a learn­ing dis­abil­ity in col­lege– too late to stop Mrs. Kramer from giv­ing me a C-. I still grad­u­ated Vale­dic­to­rian. And I still can’t do geom­e­try.  But I can par­al­lel park like a whiz.

In col­lege, I had a few break­downs and blowouts which with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, were clearly major depres­sive break­downs. Since I man­aged to (mostly) still get my papers in on time, though, and grad­u­ated magna cum laude, no one thought much about it beyond the fact that I was “sen­si­tive,” not uncom­mon for “such a smart girl.”

I made it through law school with­out a sin­gle major depres­sive episode. I actu­ally had a lot of fun and met my hus­band there. After grad­u­a­tion and tak­ing (and pass­ing) the bar, we moved to another part of the state for my first two jobs. Dur­ing the sec­ond job, which sucked for a whole lot of objec­tive rea­sons, I had another major depres­sion, for which I was pre­scribed an anti-anxiety drug that helped for a lit­tle bit. We moved back to Boston even­tu­ally. It would be another three years before things got so bad that I got the proper diagnosis.

After my bipo­lar diag­no­sis, I started tak­ing Lam­ic­tal, a mood sta­bi­lizer. It worked like a charm, and I slept for eight hours for the first time in more than a year. It saved my life. Later, my shrink and I added an anti­de­pres­sant, Effexor.

And now comes the med­ica­tion roller­coaster.  I went off the Lam­ic­tal because it inter­acted with the Effexor and gave me migraines. We’ve since decided that I am hyper­sen­si­tive to sero­tonin. In Novem­ber, 2007, I switched to lithium. In March, 2008, I finally weaned all the way off my Effexor.  The first 3–5 weeks of the lithium were bad– dizzy, nau­seous, weird white-outs, blurred vision, constipation/diarrhea cycles, headaches.  We changed the prepa­ra­tions around to deal with var­i­ous side effects, but by May 2008 I had swollen lymph nodes, dry skin, hair and nails, fatigue, and swelling of the ankles– not to men­tion crush­ing headaches and smelly urine. Turns out that I was hav­ing a sys­temic aller­gic reac­tion. I went off the lithium cold turkey, started a small dose, 15 mg, of Abil­ify, and promptly had an aller­gic reac­tion to the Abil­ify, fol­lowed by a painful two week with­drawal period.

Psy­chophar­ma­col­ogy– it’s like play­ing darts blind­folded.  I’m now try­ing the lam­ic­tal with 500 mg SR depakote– the depakote keeps the migraines I get at higher doses under con­trol, but we’ve now found– 175 mg of the lamictal’s too lit­tle, 200’s too much.  We’re explor­ing stag­ger­ing the dose to find a medium.  I care less about it being “happy” so long as it’s sta­ble and lets me be pro­duc­tion and mod­er­ately social.  We got ride of the anti­de­pres­sant, since the con­ven­tional wis­dom now seems to be that bipo­lars should just stay away from antidepressants.

All of this med­ica­tion stuff notwith­stand­ing, I’ve been very lucky. As of the time of read­ing this, I’ve never been hos­pi­tal­ized. I suf­fer from a form of bipo­lar called Bipo­lar II Dis­or­der, which means that I’ve never had a “frank” manic episode involv­ing things like psy­chosis, delu­sions, hear­ing voices, vio­lence, promis­cu­ity, spend­ing sprees, drug con­sump­tion, or other things that peo­ple tend to asso­ciate with “manic depres­sion.” I have had (and some­times miss) what’s called hypo­ma­nia– which in its rosy phase means lots of energy, lots of cre­ativ­ity, the abil­ity to get tons of work done in a short time, feel­ing (and being) chatty, social, witty, and being enter­tain­ing as all-get-out. You know when you feel “on?” Mul­ti­ply that by 1000.

How­ever, when my hypo­ma­nia starts wind­ing down, and I start my way on over to the depres­sion that is the far more com­mon man­i­fes­ta­tion of my dis­ease, I am a ragea­holic. Do not, under any cir­cum­stances, drive in front of me, stand in front of me in line, be the unfor­tu­nate sap who has to take my order or ring up my pur­chase, or be a mem­ber of my fam­ily or friends, engag­ing in one of your OH MY GOD THAT IS SO F*CKING ANNOYING annoy­ing habits. I will scream at you, then burst into tears. Oh, and then wake up three hours into my sleep cycle and blog about it and then dust the house and wash the dishes.  And cry some more. For two weeks.

My depres­sion is my pri­mary prob­lem. By way of my child­hood expe­ri­ences, I’m also what the ther­a­pists call an Adult Child. In short, I am an anx­ious, per­fec­tion­ist peo­ple pleaser who is com­pletely inse­cure. Com­bine that with depres­sive ten­den­cies, and you get… well, not a good thing.

I’ve been blessed with a won­der­ful ther­a­pist and a won­der­ful psy­chi­a­trist, the lat­ter of whom refers to her­self as a “shrink,” and gives me leave to do the same. I don’t know what I would do with­out reg­u­lar vis­its to these women, who have the abil­ity to dis­till what’s the mat­ter to a sin­gle sen­tence, and help me solve my prob­lems. They are mir­a­cle workers.

My other bless­ing is my hus­band, the Bet­ter Half, who has been a rock. He doesn’t under­stand my dis­ease but he knows me. Now that there is an expla­na­tion for my actions and reac­tions, he is work­ing with me to keep me on an even keel. And he keeps a thick skin when I am short-tempered, over-tired, or under-medicated.

Bipo­lar is a dis­or­der to be main­tained. I won’t ever be cured. But I can get along. There will be break­through episodes of hypo­ma­nia and depres­sion, but the work that I do jour­nalling, chart­ing my moods and phys­i­cal symp­toms, and work­ing with my ther­a­pist and shrink has so far been enough to allow me to rec­og­nize it, and to do some­thing about it, be it a meds adjust­ment or tak­ing time off. It’s a jour­ney, but not an impos­si­ble one.

You can click on “bipo­lar” in the Cat­e­gory Cloud to the right for an index of all the posts I’ve writ­ten about my experiences.

I have on occa­sion con­tributed at Real Men­tal, a group blog where you’ll find some­one else with what ails you. It’s a safe space on the web, where you are not alone.

I find these books to be help­ful resources and sources of encour­age­ment.

Finally, please don’t be shy about email­ing me at bipo­lar­lawyer­cook at gmail dot com with a ques­tion if you’re feel­ing shy about post­ing it in comments.