I first suspected bipolar when my sister picked up a copy of Jane Pauley's book Skywriting: A Life Out Of the Blue and said "I think you have that". I took a look at it and had to agree. But even as a nurse, I knew little about bipolar except you had to take lithium for it, and I did know enough about the drug that I didn't want it.

So I never bothered to get myself checked out until about 10 years later, when my internist said he wasn't going to treat me for depression anymore until I saw a psychiatrist. Funnily enough, no one in my family was surprised when I got the diagnosis, nor were my friends or co-workers. Like my sister, they'd all known for years that I was 'off'---impulsive, irritable, anxious, energetic, moody, depressed, erratic, and so on. Still, it took a long time for me to accept the diagnosis, and even to this day I occasionally question it (which is usually a reliable sign of incipient mania).