This is the first time I've shared any of this outside my family and therapist. Thought maybe this could help me by sharing.
I started getting treatment for depression when I was 14. I suffered emotional and physical abuse from multiple family members and later my first husband.
The antidepressants helped make me functional. Turns out much later that hypomania was what made me functional. In my early 20s, I had a breakdown and had to move back in with my mother for two weeks. I barely moved, cried all the time...the usual. I was put on new meds for depression and hypomania took me back to life. I lived that way for years.
I have a stressful job, but see great success when manic but also great trouble when depressed. I used to get in trouble at work a lot because I was hateful and angry and popped off at the mouth a lot.
Fast forward to last year. Decided at 35 to have a total hysterectomy to control PMDD, which I now realize was mania. The surgery threw me into the worst depressive episode yet. I found a new Pdoc and he diagnosed Bipolar II. It runs in my family. My brother and father are Bipolar I.
After five months of a continuous downward spiral, I crashed in March this year.
My Pdoc hospitalized me for three days while he adjusted my meds. After three days out of the hospital, I crashed again. This time it was hospital or...you know. I laid in a hospital bed for three days crying and begging God to take me.
I got meds adjusted up and Pdoc started me on ECT. I had three ECT treatments before they had to stop because I was going out of control during the recovery from anesthesia.
After 10 days in the hospital, I began intensive outpatient therapy and psychiatric care at a partial hospitalization program. After six weeks, my insurance gave me the boot and I continue with my Pdoc and therapist.
I learned a lot in therapy and still am. My therapist is a gem.
I can control myself better and talk away a lot of automatic negative thoughts that come with depression. I have started grad school in an attempt to find a job better suited to bipolar. I still work part time at the job.
I am blessed with a good support network.
But, I continue to struggle with mood swings. I've been blue for two weeks now. I can function, which is important to note, but it is difficult. I am taking six or seven different meds, eating a sugar-free, gluten-free diet and taking a regimen of supplements and vitamins in order to lessen the severity of the mood swings.
These things have worked, but depression still is very painful for me. I have to remind myself that I came out of it twice before and I can come out of it again this time.
Friends and coworkers have a hard time understanding how I can be so upbeat one week and so down the next. I rapid cycle. I just tell them I'm tired or sick or something.
I hate feeling out of control or that I'm losing control. Control is very important to me. That started when I was young and had to look out for myself because nobody else could or would.
I've gained 50 pounds on Lithium, which pisses me off. But, it was the last drug the Pdoc tried. He didn't want to do that to me, but we were desperate. I guess the benefits outweigh the costs on that drug for me.
OK. There it is. I'll stop here.
Thanks for listening.