i had so many good days this week you guys. i've started a new project with some friends, i did fun things with bea, i had some time to myself, i had some alone time with each of my kids, i've felt happy for a bit. i met with a new doctor yesterday to replace the first psych i saw here who i really didn't care for and this one seems like the real deal and that he wants to get to the bottom of what's wrong. he seems concerned that i've been on a certain dose of something for so long and haven't seen any changes and have had so many unpleasant side effects so he switched my prescription. i don't know if that's relevant but today was awful. small triggers that normally would have just been annoying (i.e bea having an accident, ollie throwing up more than usual, etc) sent me over the edge either into a rage or a suicidal depression. i felt like dying after getting mad at bea for having an accident. i literally wished i was dead.
that's not normal
or healthy.
it's dangerous.
i want so badly to stop feeling this way. these small things that are all a part of motherhood really shouldn't bother me much at all. they should be annoying, not earth shattering. i'm exhausted. i'm tired. i just want to be normally keeled. it's been a long 3 months and i'm just so done. i'm hoping it's just the jolt of a new prescription and that i will feel better tomorrow.
the nice thing about bipolar rapid cycling is that i can wake up tomorrow and feel 100% different than the day before. so even though i spent most of today crying, i could wake up tomorrow with a wide, albeit puffy-eyed, smile. i'm hoping for that. i really don't want another day like today.
Friday, October 9, 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015
where it began
i was diagnosed with bipolar when i was 19 years old, shortly after i got engaged. truth be told though, i had been manifesting symptoms for years before that. my junior and senior year of high school i was on a manic spree in which i took several standardized tests, homeschooled half my senior year, applied to college early, and left halfway through my senior year. my moods fluctuated rapidly my freshman year of college from depressed to manic, sometimes sleeping so much i skipped class and other times going days and days with little to no sleep. i spent a lot of my sophomore year depressed and came home for the spring and summer because of it. i got right back on a manic swing the fall of my junior year, was incredibly creative, hardly slept, over-scheduled my classes, got straight As, worked 2 jobs, couldn't hold still, was dangerously outgoing, dated a TON, and ultimately found an eternal companion in my best friend bradley. we got engaged in january and that's kind of when the shiz hit the fan. the wedding planning started and my behavior got very strange. i wasn't acting like myself, i was extremely irritable and belligerent, starting fights with almost anyone who would talk to me, i would break down in tears at the drop of a hat, i started having delusions and auditory hallucinations that my bridesmaids were all talking about me behind my back, didn't want me to get married, and secretly hated me. i wasn't sleeping, i fought with bradley and my mom constantly, and continuously doubted my decision to get married when it had previously been made abundantly clear that it was the right decision. we decided that i needed to get help. something was very wrong and we couldn't right it on our own. we met with a therapist who referred me to the most amazing psychiatrist on the planet and we got me started on what would be a long, hard, painful journey in becoming myself again with the help of medication and therapy. i finally "came to" i guess you could say, maybe a year/year and a half later. and then after that we decided to turn it all upside down again to have our first child. i cycled twice after she was born, and was finally better by the time she turned one, and then a few months later it was time to shake things up again with our second (and last) child. we are donezo with the kiddos now and i am still working to piece together the person i was before. i guess we'll see when it happens. hopefully it does.
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
here's the thing
so you guys. here's the thing.
if you stalk me on facebook or are my friend or read my blog (all 4 of you), you may or may not have read my big reveal about how i've been struggling with ppd (which, by the way, WHY do we NEED to have big reveals for that?! why do we all feel we have to hide it? why!?)
i received so many kind and positive comments that it gave me the courage (almost, who knows how long this will sit around before i actually post this) to spill my guts.
so, a few of you probably have thought "wow she doesn't seem depressed! she hides it so well! i never would have guessed!" (or maybe you haven't, in which case, i apologize for being such a downer.)
but you guys here's the THING.
my depression isn't just "post-partum depression". and it isn't just clinical depression. i'm the "b" word. (not THAT b word!).
i'm bipolar, ya'll. *gasp!*
i've been bipolar my whole life (duh that's how these things work) but i was only diagnosed 6-ish years ago (which you can read about {here}) and have been treating (or trying to treat) it ever since.
so what IS bipolar? i know, i know you think you know, buttttt you're probably wrong. SO i'll enlighten you. or, rather, i'll let wikipedia enlighten you:
"Bipolar disorder, also known as bipolar affective disorder and manic-depressive illness, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of elevated mood and periods of depression. The elevated mood is significant and is known as mania or hypomania depending on the severity or whether there is psychosis. During mania an individual feels or acts abnormally happy, energetic, or irritable. They often make poorly thought out decisions with little regard to the consequences. The need for sleep is usually reduced. During periods of depression there may be crying, poor eye contact with others, and a negative outlook on life. The risk of suicide among those with the disorder is high at greater than 6% over 20 years."
i experience these symptoms almost on a daily basis right now since i'm not back to my balanced state yet since having the baby. but when my medication is right, and i'm not under enormous amounts of stress, my moods still fluctuate but i only have milder versions of these feelings and i'm much more functional.
so, if you've been skeptical about the nature of my depression (which, actually why would you be? no one is feeling that way, caity.) you'd probably be right because like every other day (or rather every other hour) i feel differently. so some days i'm cheery, giggly and productive, and others i'm debilitatingly sad. because i am not your average bipolar, no no! i am a SPECIAL one! i am a rapid-cycling bipolar. what is THAT?! well wikipedia will tell you. most "episodes" (periods of mania/hypomania or depression, or a mix, called a "mixed episode") last for a week, minimum to a year or so. BUT if you're special like me and you rapid cycle, you go through these much, much faster.
wikipedia again:
"Most people who meet criteria for bipolar disorder experience a number of episodes, on average 0.4 to 0.7 per year, lasting three to six months. Rapid cycling, however, is a course specifier that may be applied to any of the above subtypes. It is defined as having four or more mood disturbance episodes within a one-year span and is found in a significant proportion of individuals with bipolar disorder. These episodes are separated from each other by a remission (partial or full) for at least two months or a switch in mood polarity (i.e., from a depressive episode to a manic episode or vice versa). The definition of rapid cycling most frequently cited in the literature (including the DSM) is that of Dunner and Fieve: at least four major depressive, manic, hypomanic or mixed episodes are required to have occurred during a 12-month period. Ultra-rapid (days) and ultra-ultra rapid or ultradian (within a day) cycling have also been described. The literature examining the pharmacological treatment of rapid cycling is sparse and there is no clear consensus with respect to its optimal pharmacological management."
when i'm not doing well, or under a lot of stress (good or bad!), or not properly medicated, i have ultra-rapid and/or ultradian cycling. on the really bad, ultra-ultra rapid days, i will literally be sitting there crying, feeling the most complete and utter despair, wanting to die, and the next minute be laughing like a maniac at something that isn't even funny. like a speck on the wall. it's a scary, out of control type feeling and it's not happy or sad but just scary and awful. not good.
but mostly it's a couple days down, and a couple days up. or sometimes every other day. and it's more than just having a good day and a bad day. the "good day" is an out of control, can't hold still, can't focus, must be multi-tasking, wake-up at 4:40 am to clean your whole house and organize all your closets, exercise, go on shopping sprees, decorate the rooms in your house, make a million lists, get extremely irritated and enraged at the smallest provocation, have thoughts racing so quickly that you can't grab one for more than a millisecond, and start too many projects that will never be finished. and the bad days, i can't get out of bed, can't stop crying, am convinced i don't deserve to live, and literally think of ways i should die.
sound horrible and exhausting? yes, yes it does.
when i'm doing well, properly medicated, and under less stress, this is very different. i still alternate days or even weeks. the good days, i get laundry done, do dishes, take the kids out, keep the house clean, do a project or two, write blog posts, and cook a decent dinner. i'm very productive. more productive than normal. on the bad days, i cry a bit, want to watch a sad movie, feel a little down on myself, and feel a little nostalgic for other times in my life where i was happier. NORMAL PEOPLE THINGS. it's good to be in this place. i haven't been in that place for a lonnnnng time.
in order to get pregnant, i chose to wean completely off medication to avoid any risks to my babies. so i did this with bea, was coincidentally in an "up-swing" my whole pregnancy and first 4 months post-partum, and then took a nose dive into a depressive episode that lasted 7 months. i leveled out the following january (2014), spent 4 months in a really good place surrounded by really good people, and then felt impressed that it was time to add baby #2 to the mix. time to go off the meds again. knowing the effects of this from experience made this a very scary decision, but we knew it was time so we got me started on the weaning process. and then we moved. which, yay. (not. moving is bad.) i was on the lower end of normal for several months, and a lot of my pregnancy, and then, again, we moved. (why do we keep doing this to ourselves?! jk they have all been good decisions in the long run.) that's when things got BAD. bad bad bad. we had a month of instability living with family leading up to oliver's birth and waiting for our moving truck to get here, and then he was born, i had a burst of adrenaline with some hypomanic days in the hospital, and then took the big ol' dive the day we got home. a new home i had never been to except when we viewed it a month before. and i wasn't on my meds yet because i was nursing. and i had no psychiatrist yet because no one would see me until the end of july because for SOME reason, finding psychiatrists in a timely manner IS NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE! (don't get me started. really.)
so yeah you could say conditions were greeeaaaaattttt.
things just were going to be bad. i mean, we knew it, but i guess we forgot how bad "bad" is. it's bad.
it takes a while to work up to full doses of meds, it's been 3 months and i only just got up to full throttle a week ago. so now we just need to wait it out for a bit and see if we need to do some more tweaking.
i've slowly been having more good days (today was a good one, hence the blog post and furniture project), but i have a lot of bad ones. really bad ones. not good when you're trying to care for a newborn and wildly smart and active toddler. but i'm trying. and i have a lot of help. i am so blessed to live so close to family now (not entirely a coincidence. the big old b word is one of the reasons we looked for work out here. more on that another day.)
it's hard to remember on the bad days, but things will get better. it takes a while and it's a wildly painful process, but they always do. and i knew it going into it that this is what it would take to bring oliver into the world, but he is totally worth it. he is the most perfect little boy, i'm tearing up just thinking about the miracle he is. so while i've had to go to hell and (hopefully!) back, i'm trying to keep my chin up about it, because if i had chosen the easy route and just stayed stable i wouldn't have my perfect boy and that would just not do. we needed him in our lives and i'm eternally grateful i could bring him here. i'll be stable again, i mean, that's the nature of the disease. (hooray for finding the silver linings!)
so anyway. there you have it. and if that explains any of my sometimes strange behavior to you, then yippee! and if it's just something i had to share because WHY IS IT SO TABOO IN THE FIRST PLACE?! (don't even get me started on mental illness stigma in life and esp in the workplace. donnnn't even.) then yippee for that too. i've been debating on whether or not i should share this for a while (years.) and each time i get a little closer i shrink back a bit. but the warm reception i got from my ppd post may have just been the boost i needed to get this out there. i'm bipolar and it's gonna be a-ok.
if you stalk me on facebook or are my friend or read my blog (all 4 of you), you may or may not have read my big reveal about how i've been struggling with ppd (which, by the way, WHY do we NEED to have big reveals for that?! why do we all feel we have to hide it? why!?)
i received so many kind and positive comments that it gave me the courage (almost, who knows how long this will sit around before i actually post this) to spill my guts.
so, a few of you probably have thought "wow she doesn't seem depressed! she hides it so well! i never would have guessed!" (or maybe you haven't, in which case, i apologize for being such a downer.)
but you guys here's the THING.
my depression isn't just "post-partum depression". and it isn't just clinical depression. i'm the "b" word. (not THAT b word!).
i'm bipolar, ya'll. *gasp!*
i've been bipolar my whole life (duh that's how these things work) but i was only diagnosed 6-ish years ago (which you can read about {here}) and have been treating (or trying to treat) it ever since.
so what IS bipolar? i know, i know you think you know, buttttt you're probably wrong. SO i'll enlighten you. or, rather, i'll let wikipedia enlighten you:
"Bipolar disorder, also known as bipolar affective disorder and manic-depressive illness, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of elevated mood and periods of depression. The elevated mood is significant and is known as mania or hypomania depending on the severity or whether there is psychosis. During mania an individual feels or acts abnormally happy, energetic, or irritable. They often make poorly thought out decisions with little regard to the consequences. The need for sleep is usually reduced. During periods of depression there may be crying, poor eye contact with others, and a negative outlook on life. The risk of suicide among those with the disorder is high at greater than 6% over 20 years."
i experience these symptoms almost on a daily basis right now since i'm not back to my balanced state yet since having the baby. but when my medication is right, and i'm not under enormous amounts of stress, my moods still fluctuate but i only have milder versions of these feelings and i'm much more functional.
so, if you've been skeptical about the nature of my depression (which, actually why would you be? no one is feeling that way, caity.) you'd probably be right because like every other day (or rather every other hour) i feel differently. so some days i'm cheery, giggly and productive, and others i'm debilitatingly sad. because i am not your average bipolar, no no! i am a SPECIAL one! i am a rapid-cycling bipolar. what is THAT?! well wikipedia will tell you. most "episodes" (periods of mania/hypomania or depression, or a mix, called a "mixed episode") last for a week, minimum to a year or so. BUT if you're special like me and you rapid cycle, you go through these much, much faster.
wikipedia again:
"Most people who meet criteria for bipolar disorder experience a number of episodes, on average 0.4 to 0.7 per year, lasting three to six months. Rapid cycling, however, is a course specifier that may be applied to any of the above subtypes. It is defined as having four or more mood disturbance episodes within a one-year span and is found in a significant proportion of individuals with bipolar disorder. These episodes are separated from each other by a remission (partial or full) for at least two months or a switch in mood polarity (i.e., from a depressive episode to a manic episode or vice versa). The definition of rapid cycling most frequently cited in the literature (including the DSM) is that of Dunner and Fieve: at least four major depressive, manic, hypomanic or mixed episodes are required to have occurred during a 12-month period. Ultra-rapid (days) and ultra-ultra rapid or ultradian (within a day) cycling have also been described. The literature examining the pharmacological treatment of rapid cycling is sparse and there is no clear consensus with respect to its optimal pharmacological management."
when i'm not doing well, or under a lot of stress (good or bad!), or not properly medicated, i have ultra-rapid and/or ultradian cycling. on the really bad, ultra-ultra rapid days, i will literally be sitting there crying, feeling the most complete and utter despair, wanting to die, and the next minute be laughing like a maniac at something that isn't even funny. like a speck on the wall. it's a scary, out of control type feeling and it's not happy or sad but just scary and awful. not good.
but mostly it's a couple days down, and a couple days up. or sometimes every other day. and it's more than just having a good day and a bad day. the "good day" is an out of control, can't hold still, can't focus, must be multi-tasking, wake-up at 4:40 am to clean your whole house and organize all your closets, exercise, go on shopping sprees, decorate the rooms in your house, make a million lists, get extremely irritated and enraged at the smallest provocation, have thoughts racing so quickly that you can't grab one for more than a millisecond, and start too many projects that will never be finished. and the bad days, i can't get out of bed, can't stop crying, am convinced i don't deserve to live, and literally think of ways i should die.
sound horrible and exhausting? yes, yes it does.
when i'm doing well, properly medicated, and under less stress, this is very different. i still alternate days or even weeks. the good days, i get laundry done, do dishes, take the kids out, keep the house clean, do a project or two, write blog posts, and cook a decent dinner. i'm very productive. more productive than normal. on the bad days, i cry a bit, want to watch a sad movie, feel a little down on myself, and feel a little nostalgic for other times in my life where i was happier. NORMAL PEOPLE THINGS. it's good to be in this place. i haven't been in that place for a lonnnnng time.
in order to get pregnant, i chose to wean completely off medication to avoid any risks to my babies. so i did this with bea, was coincidentally in an "up-swing" my whole pregnancy and first 4 months post-partum, and then took a nose dive into a depressive episode that lasted 7 months. i leveled out the following january (2014), spent 4 months in a really good place surrounded by really good people, and then felt impressed that it was time to add baby #2 to the mix. time to go off the meds again. knowing the effects of this from experience made this a very scary decision, but we knew it was time so we got me started on the weaning process. and then we moved. which, yay. (not. moving is bad.) i was on the lower end of normal for several months, and a lot of my pregnancy, and then, again, we moved. (why do we keep doing this to ourselves?! jk they have all been good decisions in the long run.) that's when things got BAD. bad bad bad. we had a month of instability living with family leading up to oliver's birth and waiting for our moving truck to get here, and then he was born, i had a burst of adrenaline with some hypomanic days in the hospital, and then took the big ol' dive the day we got home. a new home i had never been to except when we viewed it a month before. and i wasn't on my meds yet because i was nursing. and i had no psychiatrist yet because no one would see me until the end of july because for SOME reason, finding psychiatrists in a timely manner IS NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE! (don't get me started. really.)
so yeah you could say conditions were greeeaaaaattttt.
things just were going to be bad. i mean, we knew it, but i guess we forgot how bad "bad" is. it's bad.
it takes a while to work up to full doses of meds, it's been 3 months and i only just got up to full throttle a week ago. so now we just need to wait it out for a bit and see if we need to do some more tweaking.
i've slowly been having more good days (today was a good one, hence the blog post and furniture project), but i have a lot of bad ones. really bad ones. not good when you're trying to care for a newborn and wildly smart and active toddler. but i'm trying. and i have a lot of help. i am so blessed to live so close to family now (not entirely a coincidence. the big old b word is one of the reasons we looked for work out here. more on that another day.)
it's hard to remember on the bad days, but things will get better. it takes a while and it's a wildly painful process, but they always do. and i knew it going into it that this is what it would take to bring oliver into the world, but he is totally worth it. he is the most perfect little boy, i'm tearing up just thinking about the miracle he is. so while i've had to go to hell and (hopefully!) back, i'm trying to keep my chin up about it, because if i had chosen the easy route and just stayed stable i wouldn't have my perfect boy and that would just not do. we needed him in our lives and i'm eternally grateful i could bring him here. i'll be stable again, i mean, that's the nature of the disease. (hooray for finding the silver linings!)
so anyway. there you have it. and if that explains any of my sometimes strange behavior to you, then yippee! and if it's just something i had to share because WHY IS IT SO TABOO IN THE FIRST PLACE?! (don't even get me started on mental illness stigma in life and esp in the workplace. donnnn't even.) then yippee for that too. i've been debating on whether or not i should share this for a while (years.) and each time i get a little closer i shrink back a bit. but the warm reception i got from my ppd post may have just been the boost i needed to get this out there. i'm bipolar and it's gonna be a-ok.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
swing low
I have been avoiding this blog like the plague for a long, long while. Maybe it's because I called it "Depression and Mania in Pennsylvania" and then I moved to Connecticut and the name no longer fit and everything seemed so rosy that I didn't feel like writing anymore. Maybe it's because I was finally stable for so, so long (which for me is 9 months). I really can't say why. I was wrapped up in the joy of being a mom and couldn't be bothered to drag myself down to thinking about my illness, let alone writing about it. I had gotten into such a beautiful groove as a mom and really, I didn't need anything bringing me down. I slowly started to wean of my medicine from April to September of 2014 and must have been on a hypomanic high the whole time under the guise of feeling completely normal. I managed a job change with my husband, and inter-state move, a new ward, a new apartment, and being a mom while still living far from family all with style and flair. I was doing so well with so little meds I honestly felt like I wasn't sick anymore. No need for an illness blog when you're cured, right?
Even the whole time I was pregnant and feeling completely miserable, I chalked up every bad feeling to the pregnancy and put the illness out my mind, subconsciously knowing it was waiting for me once my baby was here. And it was chomping at the bit the second he arrived.
My pregnancy with Beatrice was effortless and joyful, as were the first several months after her birth. My timing with her must have been fabulous because I was on a manic high the first four months of her life, needing virtually no sleep and feeling absolutely euphoric a majority of the time. Feeling like one should after bringing a life into this world. Again, instead of considering this could be a result of fortuitous timing, I chalked this up to pregnancy serenity hormones. The fact that I plummeted the week my menstrual cycles started up again seemed to confirm this theory. I spent April-December of 2013 spinning in and out of suicidal depression, numbness, and minimal functioning when I was finally stabilized in January of 2014. Of course, 2 months later, we were impressed that it was the time to start preparing for another child. Time for round two. Our final round.
My pregnancy with my sweet Oliver was, in a word, awful. I experienced horrible symptoms, was tired, unhappy, and uncomfortable the whole time, and as soon as 3 days after he was born, felt so low that I was making plans to end my life. It's been 8 weeks now and I still struggle with suicidal feelings several times a week. My meds have been tuned and tweaked several times but it seems like nothing will ever get me back to normal ever again, though deep down I know that it's possible because we've done it. Multiple times.
But there are days where I look down at Oliver and the only thing I feel is guilt. Guilt that I've brought yet another child into the world who has to rely on someone as sick as me to be their mother. Guilt that I will spend days at a time unhappy with nothing anyone can do to help. Guilt that I may one day not be able to bear the exhaustion of my illness anymore and leave this world forever. The thoughts are so dark and horrible that I just hold my babies and cry. I spend more time like this than I care to admit. I lay awake at night weeping that I will just never be enough for these sweet children and that I've done them a horrible wrong by bringing them into this world. I'm sorry for being their mom. I wish I could die and that Bradley would find someone else, someone healthy, someone normal, someone happy, to step in and be their mom. He could have more than just the 2 children I could meagerly offer and grow a family with someone new. Someone better. Some nights I wish this so hard that I think of ways to set that plan in motion by eliminating myself.
I just had a series of very normal, wonderful days of being myself. Those days are so precious I can't even begin to describe. I like that person. I love that person. I miss that person. She is here so rarely anymore that when she is here, I constantly have this tugging in the back of my mind that she will be gone all too soon, in a flash, and I will be powerless, unable to bring her back, until she decides to randomly pop in again for a short while. Those periods have been so short since Oliver was born. I'm doing everything I can to prolong them but I am at the will and whims of the illness. The illness makes those decisions. Every day is a mystery. Will I wake up Caity? Old Caity, good Caity, happy, silly Caity whom I love? Will I be Super-Caity, who doesn't need to eat or sleep but can literally do anything that the world asks of her and more? Or will I be this empty shell of a person who is so separated and removed from that former person, that all she can do is grieve her loss? Not knowing is a crippling fear that is sometimes too much to bear. I sat yesterday, soaking in the joy of my children, my husband, my family, the beautiful weather and scenery, my beautiful life, in complete contentment, when suddenly I stopped and wondered, how much time do I have? Days? Hours? Minutes? When will I disappear again? How far? And for how long? This thought creeps into my mind every time I'm enjoying life's sweetest moments. It's unavoidable. And it's not going away. It's the fear that anyone without this ailment will never know, understand, or appreciate. I live at the will of this illness and at times, it paralyzes me with fear. No matter how good the good days get, or better yet, how normal the normal days get, I know the darkness awaits, following me and latching on and forcing me out when I least expect it. I tried my best to soak in these past few days, the sweet ones, but they're gone now, I've been forced out, I'm the shell again, and I'm waiting for me to come back and be me again. And it's all I can do to stay alive until then.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)