Asbury Park Press - Asbury Park,NJ,USA
Life has plenty of ups and downs. But when you suffer from bipolar disorder, or manic depression, you tend to have many more than the average person. ...
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/LIFE/503060359/1006

Thank you Andrew......

I past that on to my husband.....After 4 years he's still stuggling to understand and accept his illness.

Original Article:

Bipolar disorder one of life's lessons

Published in the Asbury Park Press 03/6/05
By THOMAS MAHONEY HOLMDEL

Life has plenty of ups and downs. But when you suffer from bipolar disorder, or manic depression, you tend to have many more than the average person. It becomes a burden — at least a challenge — that affects the fabric of your entire life.

Although I was diagnosed with this illness in September 1980, when I was all of 20 years old, it wasn't until a manic episode brought me down in March 2003, in my mid-40s, that the disorder took up the role of an insuperable bringer of change to my life and pushed me toward a definitive crossroads.

I have seen perhaps a dozen physicians in connection with this malady. I fought their diagnoses tooth and nail, weighted down in denial, for about 10 years. The reason for all this difficulty was revealed to me in 1990, when I was diagnosed with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, a notoriously malignant and hard-to-treat variety of the illness, which is unusual in men.

All I could do is take the medications that were prescribed for me and hope that my current doctor and I might find a combination that would, at least, make me more comfortable if it could not "cure" me. Unfortunately, most of the psychiatrists I saw were as much in the dark as to my condition as I was.

By 1996, my condition was causing me to lose jobs and was preventing me from obtaining new ones. (I found out later that I shouldn't have been working because I wasn't up to it.)

When I reached my late 30s, the nature of my illness changed. I found myself saddled with far more depression than mania in my life; this was a reversal of my previous experience with the disease. I was hospitalized for depression twice in succession in September 1999.

The next four years were a long, hard road to walk. I couldn't keep myself in a decent apartment, so I wound up moving back in with my parents. I continued to lose jobs at a rapid rate.

The only thing that kept me sane was enrollment in a paralegal program at the local community college. I thought that if I could get myself into a new profession, everything would be fine and I would be able to put my life back on track again.

I was wrong. Although I found a position fairly quickly and loved the legal profession, it didn't love me. Consequently, in early March 2003, I blew apart. This time, it was a manic episode, my worst ever.

But in a lot of ways, it was also my best experience with the illness. I was hospitalized yet again, but this time I quickly realized that if I were to get through this episode, I needed to let other people help me extensively. This was a difficult proposition for me.

In the past, I had always tried to do things my way. It was a rare thing for me to give up control over my life's situations to others. Once I gave up that control, my hospital stay was much more pleasant.

I stayed in the hospital for about two weeks, focusing on getting well through the intervention of the mental health staff in my unit. When I was released, I realized that, through this ordeal, I had learned a great deal more about my illness.

Following my release, I became constantly watchful of my moods so that I wouldn't find myself in the predicament I was in prior to hospitalization. I found out just how closely my mood swings tie into the being of the person that I am. As a matter of fact, a lot of who I am is determined by the symptoms of my bipolar illness.

I joined a bipolar support group. The discussions I took part in allowed me to look more closely at my illness and my previous experiences with it. I subsequently have been able to grasp that I have had the illness since childhood and that it has colored many of my memories and experiences in relationships with friends and family, as well as in the workplace. I have come into a bountiful number of close friendships as a result of being in such groups. I am glad to have received the understanding that I have been blessed with.

Last, upon being released from the hospital, I discovered a new doctor who has helped me immeasurably. I was lucky enough to find a psychiatrist who understands rapid-cycling bipolar disorder.

Having had to end my employment as a paralegal due to overextension of myself, I have since put myself on federal disability as a means of income and actually enjoy my semi-retirement status.

The experiences I have undergone following my hospitalization of two years ago tell me that I am not a loser with a shocking secret to keep from the world. I am a winner who has learned about himself and his chronic illness. But what seemed like a horrible situation devised by that terrible bipolar illness created an understanding of myself and of others that I could not have comprehended at any time earlier.