So. My first chance to finish what I started. bipolarnurse, I read some of your blog, I liked it. I also see what you mean and what you have lost and I am so sorry that bp has taken all that from you. I wish you all the best in your search for something to move forward with.

thanks pegasus. my therapist said she thought I had some ptsd from my experience. she isn't the one who was with me when it happened though I wish she had been, I might have come back to stability quicker.

So. I always had some depressions from 6th grade on, but I managed through school, went to college, married a soldier, had kids, raised them through the military lifestyle which meant mostly by myself. I was the rock. Never had problems with drugs, alcohol, the law, hospitals, nothing.

In 2004 at the age of 41, I went back to school for my teacher's license and I did really well in all my classes. Then in 2005, I started chaperoning my sons to concerts and found I liked going, my behavior started to change but no one really noticed. I was undiagnosed hypomanic from summer 2005 through summer 2006 when I went through a moderate depression, saw a social worker who sent me to a pdoc who put me on paxil. I'd been having an online affair with a 22 yr old man from England during this time. By 6 weeks after being on paxil I was crazy manic and bought a plane ticket to England to see the man. Sept 06 Long story short, got caught, affair ended and I crashed into depression and pdoc finally diagnosed me with bp and put me on lamictal. The crash happened during the second week of student teaching and I was in such bad shape I couldn't continue, hell I could barely get out of bed and speak. So I had to postpone until the next semester.

I managed to finish but the momentum was gone, my confidence was gone, I was in depression from Sept 06 through April 07, all that time trying to learn how to be a teacher. I sucked at it. I've never gotten the chance to have a classroom. I've subbed and that is awful. I had another manic episode that lasted 6 months in 2010 that morphed into a mixed episode that landed me in the hospital for 2 weeks for suicidal ideas. I'd been fairly stable since then until this spring when I went into a mixed episode that thankfully was shortlived, about 3 months and my drs were able to rein it in. In 08 I started facilitating a mental health support group and I did that until this past spring when my anxiety issues began to amplify my bp issues and forced me to give it up. I've had cycles of ups and downs over the years without the full blown manic or depressed episodes, my therapist and I are pretty good at catching them before they get too far and my pdoc is in the same office with my therapist. But they take their toll on me none the less, I never feel fully 'there'.


So not only am I not the person I was before I got sick, I've had to change the goal I had set for myself, I've had to let go of things that were important to me and I feel like anxiety is starting to become as big of an issue as my bp. Its created fear. I don't want to work because what if I get sick? I don't want to make new friends because I keep trusting the wrong people. My sons are getting married soon and I am scared to death of the fact that I am going to have to be in a room full of strangers. I'm even more worried about getting sick and going to the hospital because what are these new families going to think of me? Of my sons?

Anyway. Its September. Its a sucky month of anniversaries all around. My husband's parents both died in September. Our marriage nearly died in September. I wish it was October already.