My psychiatrist used to call me "the highest functioning patient with this severity of bipolar I have ever treated". Now, not so much. I earned a master's degree just before getting bad and I worked in a stressful job with a lot of responsiblity for 11 years and then a bunch of things happened and I had to stop working. Even when I was working it was hard and there were problems; I was on disability every couple of years and was fired twice (one more because the company fired experienced staff and replaced with new grads than because of me, a reputation everyone but me seemed to know) but I still did it and the last couple of years I worked I was in a different specialty and did very well in it.

Now I more work on keeping my life unstressful and coping with daily needs than anything else. I've gone from extremely high functioning (considering my severity, so not so high compared to some people) to functioning more like where someone with my severity is expected to function.

However until this un-ending mania I had really been doing better with the combination of less stress due to no job and menopause decreasing hormones for a while. My cycling was still there and I never was really stable or level but I was not having huge episodes until this one. The last time a huge one started it was actually easily controlled with only 1 med change, a first for me. This time, not so much.