Living Bipolar (8 page)

My family history is my dad has five brothers. One uncle has obsession about religion, obsessive compulsive disorder, and a little bit about of a personality disorder. Another of my uncles has obsessive compulsive disorder also. My uncle has two sons and one has a personality disorder so bad he can barely function around people. My sister has depression, and I have Bipolar disorder.

Mental illness is in my whole family, and I was really angry with my dad, because mental illness is on his side of the family. I would curse him, and hate him, and I would sneak out and go do drugs. I was just angry. They put me on lithium when I was sixteen, and everything got better Bipolar wise. For the most part I started feeling better. But because I was feeling better I thought it meant I could do bad things, and deep inside I was still angry because I knew I wasn’t normal. I knew there was something really wrong with me.

My parents coddled me like you wouldn’t even believe. They didn’t know what to do, and I was so manipulative. I was in mania a lot. The doctors were upping my meds, up and down, when I was 16 and 17. My meds were so off that I went into neurotoxicity multiple times.

With all the med changes I started wetting the bed around seventeen. The next year when I went off to college I wet the bed once, and I was so embarrassed. It wasn’t my fault at all, because the doctors had me on so many pills. I was probably on four or five meds, and it was hard. It was hard adjusting.

College was just lots and lots of drugs. During college my drug use went up a lot because it was a lot easier stomaching drugs to control my moods than the actual medicines that were supposed to help me. I could smoke a joint before bed and I could fall asleep. But if I took my meds I would have a stomach ache, I would be ill, and I wouldn’t get a good night's sleep. Also, I could take ecstasy and it would make me happy.

When I came to Florida for treatment it was really hard. I had a manic episode once a month. It was really difficult because I would have the episode the third week of the month, and the second week of the month I would get ready for my manic episode. The third week of the month I would have the manic episode, and the fourth week of the month I would be dealing with repercussions of my manic episode. It was terrible.

My mental illness is definitely related to my menstrual cycle. And I didn’t have a menstrual cycle one when I was using, and I didn’t have one when I first got clean. This through me off (my body) a lot. I had a manic episode once a month, and it was terrible. Because I hadn’t learned to deal with the episodes yet. I’d eat like a whole week's worth of pixie sticks, and then I wonder why my manic episode was so bad. I wasn’t being good to my illness during this time. I would go shopping and go on psychotic shopping sprees. My eating was bad. It was mostly sugar and coffee and things like that.

I think a large part of my mental illness is taking care of myself. That’s the biggest thing. I wasn’t taking care of myself for a while. I was twenty when I came to treatment in August of 1999. For the first couple of years down here…I don’t consider life…they weren’t good years. I wasn’t taking care of myself, and I don’t think I was hanging out with the nicest people, and the best people.

My therapist didn’t encourage me to eat better. But when I started doing it…better eating, exercise schedule, sleeping at the exact same time, taking my meds at the exact same time…when I started doing these things my therapist said it was good. My doctor never told me to do these things either, except for the sleeping. That’s the one thing my doctors want from me is taking my meds at the same time, so I can sleep at the same time.

I pretty much found out on my own what to do to live healthy with my mental illness. I stopped drinking coffee all together about three years ago. I drink tea, lots of tea. My sugar intake is quite low. I cook well balanced meals three times a day. Eating better is good and it makes me feel better. I work out every day. I try to do things that make me happy -- like art. Art makes me happy. So I do that.

ECT Electroconvulsive therapy (
ECT), also known as electroshock, ECT is generally used in severely depressed patients for whom psychotherapy and medication are proven ineffective. Also, it may be considered as an option when there is an imminent risk of suicide, because ECT reacts much quicker than antidepressant remedies. Typically, the procedure is performed on an inpatient basis, and maintenance may be administered on an outpatient once a week.

The patient is required to fast for 8-12 hours prior to treatment. Administration of ECT is usually done by a psychiatrist, anesthesiologist, and other medical personal. The patient is anesthetized an electrical current is then passed through the brain, inducing a grand mal seizure. The seizures generally last thirty seconds, to over a minute, and the patient does not feel any pain.

During the seizures there are a series of changes in brain waves. Upon awakening the patient may experience headache, nausea, and temporary confusion and muscle stiffness.

There are different opinions on how memory is affected by ECT. Many patients report loss of memory for days, weeks or months after ECT. Sometimes memory may return, but this is not always the case. Some patients report their short term memory continues for months after ECT.

ECT can be effective for the treatment of severe depression. However, ECT is the most controversial treatment in psychiatry.

What lead to me having ECT to treat the Bipolar illness was I fell in love. Then I met this guy in my Organic Chemistry class. Things really changed when I met Roy. I was clean about three years, and I was with him for about a year. Roy had bad habits and I fell into the bad habits as well. He wouldn’t go to class, so I wouldn’t go to class. He had something about him that…I don’t know. He was half Indian and half Israel. He was pretty. He was smart, and I liked that.
I fell in love without looking
.

Eventually, he broke my heart. He said that he couldn’t be with me because I’m not Jewish, so let’s not go on another further. I lost it. I was so upset. I couldn’t get out of it. I was so devastated. And he would continue trying to be in my life. But then pull away again. H would do it over and over and I would cry and I’d cry and it was so much. He was just so awful to me.

And I couldn’t be with anyone else. Even though I’d date other people, I would break it off because I was so messed up over him. This was from the time I was twenty-two to twenty-four, and I was really messed up over him. After the break up the manic episodes…they didn’t end. Normally my episodes would last a month or two months. And now it lasted nine months. And it wouldn’t go away.

I couldn’t be in school. My dad came to stay with me. My sister came and stayed with me. Everybody tried taking care of me when the manic episodes wouldn’t stop, and no one knew what to do. The episodes just wouldn’t stop.

The doctor was one who approached me about doing ECT. He said, “It’s been nine months, you aren’t responding to the medications”…and I was all messed up and manic and I just agreed to it.

With ECT you have to go under anesthesia for a very short time. First what happens is you sit in a waiting room. Then this one guy who worked there, this really hot guy, he would come and get me every time. And he was always really nice.

There were six beds in the hospital all separated by curtains. And they always would put me in six, and I would say please put me in the first bed, because I wanted to get the ECT over with. But they’d always put me in the sixth bed. I would lay down and the worst part about this is your head faces out toward the center of the room.

I would just hear beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and beep, beep…And when you heard the beeps you’d know someone just got shocked. I can’t tell you how scary it was just sitting there while you hear five people before you getting shocked. Ugh, hearing the sound. Hearing the beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep…

When it was finally time for my turn, the anesthesiologist would come, and I would beg him,
please give me something for the nausea.
Please give me something for nausea, and then I would go under. Next I would wake up, and be thrashing around, and yelling and I’d want to throw up, because of course I wasn’t given the nausea medicine. I would say when is it going to be over! And they would say Cassandra it is over. And my teeth hurt, oh my teeth hurt so much from biting down on the rubber mouth guard.

I had a bad headache, I was tired, and I had dry mouth. And then I wouldn’t remember anything. I didn’t know my daddy’s name. I didn’t know he was my dad. I didn’t know my name. I had no idea where I was at all. My head hurt. It feels like your head got smashed against your frontal lobe, which of course it couldn’t never do, because you have enough fluid in your head that it would never do that. But never-the-less, it feels like your head got smashed against it.

The first time the memory lost lasted about a day or two. I lost my memory for a day the first time I had the ECT’s done. But then something changed, probably after the sixth time I had ECT’s. My memory didn’t come back…
at all
. It just didn’t come back. My short term memory, my long term memory, both just stopped. For example, my dad would do flash cards with me, and I would do well for the first six, but then my nothing -- my memory just stopped, and it kept getting worse and worse. My memory was terrible.

I had shock treatment done around eight times, but I don’t particularly remember all of them. The first time I had ECT done the nine month manic episode went away. While ECT did help some
the experience was absolutely miserable.
Today I still have memory problems. Sometimes it’s really good, but it just takes work. Like if I’m listening to music, watching a music video, where there is audio and visual I will remember it a lot better. But when I’m sitting and reading a familiar book, even though I read it years ago the memory of it is gone. Sometimes I have to sit and read and I have to read pages over and over and over and over again.

Now I can’t be in school. And I tried. I tried so hard to be in school. I’ve gone to so many classes and I’ve had to leave. And the process just becomes painful. I want to finish my degree. I would love to finish my college my degree. But I can’t even read a fiction book!!!

MEDICATION

When I was little…well, not even when I was little, I’ve struggled my entire life with finding the right combination of meds. When I got clean from drugs it became quite obvious that one mood stabilizer wasn’t going to do anything for me. However, I
can’t survive without lithium
. That’s the one medication that if I don’t take it my life becomes miserable. I take nine hundred milligrams of it right now which is very low. The lithium level is kept at .7 for my body.

I’ve always been very, very sensitive to prescribed drugs. Anytime doctors would increase the lithium to above .7, I go into lithium toxicity. My whole body starts itching; I’ll be covered in sweat. There is too much salt, so I’ll be retaining all this water, headaches, and things like that. Even without the toxicity being on lithium is having a life of excess, sweating, holding in water, being a little lethargic, if you eat salty food -- and I love salty food -- you get itchy afterwards. I get headaches, I can’t be out in the sun light, or I get sick.

Notes on Neurotoxicity:

Neurotoxicity occurs as a result of exposure to natural or man-made toxic substance, called neurotoxins, which alter the normal activity of the nervous system causing damage to the nervous tissue. Eventually, this can disrupt or kill neurons which are key cells that transmit and process signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Symptoms of neurotoxicity may appear immediately after exposure or the symptoms may be delayed. Symptoms include limb weakness or numbness, loss of memory, vision, headache, cognitive and behavioral problems and sexual dysfunction.

The Term “Neurotoxic” is used to describe a substance, condition, or state that damages the nervous system, and/or brain. Generally the term is used to describe a condition or substance that has been shown to result in observable physical damage.

Neurotoxicity is kind of like your high I guess -- but wrong. I use to envision the road had pot holes everywhere, so when I walked I tripped over the pot holes because I saw them, but they weren’t really there, but I saw them. It was bad.

I’ve taken a sleeping pill since I was 14, and I have to because I can’t sleep on my own. I have to take a thyroid medication in order to counteract the lithium. I’ve been on almost every single mood stabilizer offered. Some of those caused me to go into neurotoxicity, some of them don’t do anything. I have seizures because of the medications. When I was eighteen and nineteen years old I had multiple grand mal seizures, and it was because they put me on Wellbutrin. I’ve had multiple seizures because of medications.

I have to take an anti-psychotic whenever I have a manic episode. Anti-psychotic kind of stop Bipolar episodes in their tracks. Some are better than others, but three top ones are zyprexa, risperdal, clozaril. Rixperdal messed with my head a lot. Clozaril is very difficult to take because you have to get blood levels taken every week. And zyprexa is wonderful, because it stops the mania right in its tracks, and it makes me feel absolutely wonderful. But you gain a lot of weight on it. Weight gain is common with a lot of the medications

Antipsychotic Medications

A
person who is psychotic is out of touch with reality. People with psychosis may hear "voices" or have strange and illogical ideas (for example, thinking that others can hear their thoughts, or are trying to harm them, or that they are the President of the United States or some other famous person). They may get excited or angry for no apparent reason, or spend a lot of time by themselves, or in bed, sleeping during the day and staying awake at night. The person may neglect appearance, not bathing or changing clothes, and may be hard to talk to--barely talking or saying things that make no sense. They often are initially unaware that their condition is an illness.