I was 14 when I started to self harm and weep every day at school. I confided in a teacher and the school contacted my mom. She freaked out. I saw my 1st pdoc who diagnosed me with clinical depression. I was out of my mind manic as soon as I started the antidepressant but at that time she just lowered my dosage. I saw therapist after therapist and none of them helped. I was mildly psychotic.

At 15, my condition worsened. My mom thought my pdoc was incompetent so we switched and I was quickly diagnosed with bipolar. I don’t remember what drugs I have taken when because there have been so many but I do remember starting on lamictal and zyprexa. That was tough because my tiny frame packed on 50 lbs in 3 months. I had a psychotic break and did and said many bizarre and horrible things. I had to drop out of school my sophomore year and finish school through a home hospital program.

At 16, I switched schools (from a performing arts high school to a tiny private school that housed many children who had various issues) but didn’t get better. I was hospitalized for the first time. My mom started me on “pig pills” which was like this Canadian witch doctor medicine (the best I can describe it) and I literally took about 16 of these HUGE, nasty tasting things. Sometimes I would have to pull over on the way to school to vomit because of them. It was terrible. I eventually stopped them. My pdoc thought it was ridiculous, I think, all along. Later that year, I did an IOP where I met the first therapist I actually connected with and he helped me tremendously. After graduating high school, I slowly recovered.

By 20, I was no longer taking meds and convinced I wasn’t actually bipolar. With the exception of a mild postpartum depression with my oldest daughter, I had no memorable episodes.

At 28, hell broke lose. I had a total break with reality and was blind sighted. I was completely and utterly out of my mind. Once I became aware of what was happening (which was unfortunately after at least 6 months of mania with at least a couple of psychosis) I sought out the same pdoc I had seen as a teen and he put me back on meds. I got pregnant with my 3rd child (5th pregnancy-2 miscarriages) shortly thereafter and he had some ideas about mixing meds with pregnancy that I wasn’t so sure about so I got a second opinion and ended up switching pdocs. I was very, very mentally ill during that pregnancy. I had to be hospitalized with ppd when my youngest was just a few weeks old. I ended up with post partum psychosis. My pdoc moved to Indiana so I went back to the former pdoc. He eventually changed my diagnosis to schizoaffective. However, I soon realized that he was heavily overmedicating me. I switched doctors again. I was very unstable for about 4-5 years between the old and new pdocs. I bounced around therapists and in and out of IOPs. I finally found my current therapist who is by far the best I’ve ever had. In the last 3 years or so I’ve had a few very bad episodes, the last at the beginning of this year when I was in IOP and missed 6 weeks of work, but with my amazing treatment team, it’s been caught quickly and usually resolved in just a few months as opposed to a few years! I’m pretty sure my current pdoc has changed my diagnosis back to bipolar 1 with psychotic features so that’s what I generally claim. I’m in a good place right now.