Yes, I would get a second opinion. Psychiatry does what it can to try to standardize the diagnosis of disorders, but our illnesses don't read the textbooks and there are many of us who don't fit the DSM mold. While you may not fit into the neat little boxes marked BP1 or BP2, you may still have bipolar disorder. Some would call this simply semantics, that it's the symptoms that they need to treat and not the diagnosis, but very often the diagnosis will determine the treatment and getting the wrong treatment can prove disastrous.

You're at the age at which bipolar symptoms can really begin to develop, and it sounds like you have good insight as to what's going on with you - knowing when things are out of character for you for instance.

Do you keep a mood chart? That would be my next step - documenting all these mood shifts. Here is a link to a good one: http://www.michaelbarbermd.com/yahoo....143191138.pdf

There are others out there if you simply google "bipolar mood chart", but this is the one I have found the most helpful. Start now while you're waiting for your next appointment or waiting to get in to see another pdoc for a second opinion. Sometimes it takes writing things down on a daily basis for us to see patterns and for things to make sense.

Another helpful tool I have used when I was first getting my diagnosis is life charting. You basically make a timeline of your mood episodes, going as far back as you can remember, noting exact months/timeframes and including any significant events (family deaths, start of school, holidays, etc) that may have come before a mood shift. That can help you see seasonal or other patterns you may not have realized were there, which can be another indicator of bipolar disorder.

As far as the ADHD, the two can coexist. Both my husband and my daughter have both ADD and bipolar. They each have their own qualities but can be very difficult to tease apart, so you could very well have both. Granted, there are some impulse control issues with ADHD/ADD, but one generally doesn't see the grandiosity or some of the other issues you mentioned with ADHD.

Hope that helps a bit.