Alokin,

These are really good questions. I've been thinking about them over the last day or so.

My support system is good...except for one thing: my best friend totally abandoned me in the middle of the acute mania of last fall. We haven't spoken since October 15th. She didn't even give me a chance to explain, which was not like us or her at all. She was like a kindergartener, as odd and inexplicable as: "You bounced my ball, and I didn't want you to bounce my ball, so now you're not my friend!" That still stings, even though my husband points out--and accurately so, I think--that her leaving was more about her borderline personality disorder than it was about me, my episode, or anything else. She's the only one to have done that. I have five or six people I can count on for communication and support every day if I need it and another five or six I could count on for weekly support, and probably a dozen I could count on for monthly support. I am active in our local NAMI, can walk to another day program held by the county on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and see my therapist weekly. So I think we're good there. Being more active on here is an effort to get insight from others who know what bipolar actually feels like and to hopefully make additional friends. I'm a super-social person.

Hormone levels. Except for thyroid levels, my gyno won't test them. She says they will be irregular, we can tell what's going on based on symptomology, and testing them won't change anything--including treatment. That makes sense to me. We discussed those things in detail; here I'm summarizing in a way that might sound brittle, but she's not.

Physical: You get one every time you are hospitalized for psych. I've been hospitalized three times since September.

I still feel lonely and isolated and kind of off. I still don't even have the stamina to keep my house--or even my body--clean and for this neat-freak...that's saying a lot. I'd really like to go back to work, but that's a long, loong way off. It's just never taken so long and I'm frustrated and--truth be told--scared. I'm not good at waiting to find out what my "new normal" might look like. I feel like being a kindergartener myself...watch out! Tantrum immanent!