I picked up on what Trippin said too. He meant exactly what you thought he meant.

And not even recognizing the similarity between the two instances of dealing with a child with a mental challenge (mental retardation or whatever he/she wants to call it) and what a person with bipolar disorder deals with.

If you had two children in school with either one of these issues, as a parent you would be going to child study meetings, IEP meetings, talking to specialists and special education teachers and talking about individualized appropriate settings (because special education is a program, not a place, it does not have to happen in a special room). The children may not have similar IEPs but the process for helping the child succeed in school would be the same. So the argument of making the retarded child somehow more important in her circumstances than the person with bipolar is invalid. In my opinion. I'm not sure I could have kept as cool a head as you did.

I will clarify, not all children with bipolar would be in special education, I was just making the point that one was not necessarily more important than the other simply based on the reason for the mental challenge.