BipolarPrincess's Journal

10-07-08

                                                My first Manic Episode: Chapter 1

I am sitting on a chair at my friend’s house.  I was feeling fine until I took my prescribed dose of my meds.  The doctor raised them because I was depressed, suicidal, and anxious.  The next thing I know I act all crazy.  I tear my favorite poster apart and rearrange the letters in the words on my friend’s table.  I fight over the paintbrushes that my friend is sharing with my daughter and I am sad that I am left out of the equation.  My friend begins to question my stability. 

I then take a plastic plate and chicken leg from my daughter and won’t give them up for anything.  I proceed to tell her that the plastic plate and the plastic chicken leg are the keys to the universe.  That’s when my friend decides she is right by questioning my stability and decides to call the cops.  The cops hear me tell them that the toy plate and chicken leg are the keys to the universe and decide I am crazy enough to be hauled off to the psych ward. I land myself in the ER.

 I then call everyone I know trying to explain my theory.  Then a nurse told me to get off the phone and told me not to use it anymore.  I get caught using the phone again and the nurse decides to try and take the phone away from me.  I then,  get angered by this and black out and beat the nurse up.  Next thing I know there’s three nurses holding me down trying to take me to the lock down cell to ride out what I didn’t know at the time—what I now know to be called mania. 

I was then seen talking to a nurse before I was put in lockdown asking her why my name wasn’t in the book of life.  She looked at me confused and I don’t remember what she said.  She tried to rationalize with me, but realized I had gone off the deep end into mania and wasn’t going to be back for a while. 

Next thing I notice is that I am in a locked room and I can’t get out, and I have this episode where I think I am going to die.  I try to look out the windows only to hallucinate and see the depths of hell.  I get so tired from the racing thoughts that I pass out and don’t realize that they had given me food until I wake up and realize that I am indeed not in the depths of hell anymore and am now normal and back to my old self again and had come out of my mania.  I sit and wait and they finally let me out of lockdown and put me in a regular bed in the psych ward.

That day the psych ward doctor put me on Trileptol and Celexa.  I was sitting in the patient room listening to the doctor tell me that he thinks I am a schizoaffective.  I begin to question my doctor’s diagnosis despite the episode I had the previous night.

In a weeks time I am let out of the unit and I miss my daughter’s fifth Halloween.   This is one thing that pisses me off that this illness has taken away from me.  As I watch my daughter being happy in her bratz costume and going door to door asking for candy.  I only get to see the pictures.  Thus I begin to realize that this is only a day out of a life of a manic depressive.

A Day in the Life Of a Manic Depressive: Chapter 2

On the meds that the doctor in the unit that he had prescribed me worked for about 6 months, I only experienced a glimpse of what it was like to live a life of pure normalcy.

When I complained that I was again in the depths of depression again to my current psychiatrist he did nothing.  He didn’t change them.  He just kept me on the prescribed dose from the doctor in the unit.  Then I decided that if he wasn’t going to help me; that I was going to stop taking my meds like they were really helping me anyway.  I decided that since I was no longer taking them that I would no longer see that doctor.  I decided to see no one until a new doctor comes along.  Two years passed.  Then along came my next manic episode.

I decided that I would relish in paranoia land and live there for a while.  I had this perceived notion that everyone in the world was out to get me even my boyfriend at the time that is now my dearly beloved.  I also heard voices inside my head.  The voices asked me to help them.  Then I heard a long resounding…NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Followed by an evil laugh.  I again realized that I needed to find some kind of medicine that took the insanity away.

I then called the guidance center and asked for an appointment with a psych doc.  I told the receptionist that I was going crazy hearing voices and thought that everyone was out to get me, and told her the name of my last doctor and then told her that if she set me up with another appointment with him again that I wouldn’t come back for help.  Then she told me that there was a new nurse practitioner that had gotten hired recently.

 She thoughtfully listened to me.  She put me on Seraquel; and that lasted until it started to make me drowsy during the day and I was sleeping a lot.  She then switched me to Geodon and that lasted until it stole my libido.  It made me sane again, but Oh the price one has to pay for a little bit of sanity.  I then fell into a small bout of depression and the doctor put me on some Wellbutrin and switched my Geodon to Abilify.  And the stability continues once again. 

It is so boring being stable.  I am beginning to go crazy without really being there.  But the price one has to pay to be stable.  That you are forced to live without what you are used to and have known all your life:  The Crazy…..

To be continued following my next manic episode….