I resisted the possibility that I could be bipolar for over a decade....I wasn't even diagnosed until age 53, and yet I've been fighting this thing since I was a small child. When I look back over my life, I can see all the tell-tale signs that should've clued somebody in to the fact that something was wrong, but I grew up in a completely different era and nobody was diagnosing kids with manic depression back then.

I began to suspect BP when my sister and I were shopping at Costco and picked up a copy of Jane Pauley's Skywriting, about her journey with bipolar. My sister said, "I think you have that." I said "I think I might have that too." But all I knew about the illness then was that you had to take lithium for it, and I wasn't about to take lithium. So I bumped along for about a dozen years, wondering why all the antidepressants kept pooping out on me and why I acted so crazy sometimes.

I finally came to the attention of a psychiatrist when my primary care doc referred me for an evaluation after I called him in a panic after freaking out on Wellbutrin. I was also throwing around vague threats of homicide and begging for a trial of still another AD, which was why I got in so quickly. Pdoc diagnosed BP-NOS and started me on a mood stabilizer right away. But he wasn't really sure I had BP until I bounced in for the third visit wearing bright clothes and blue eyeshadow, and chattering incessantly. That was a dead giveaway right there.