Cake, anyone?

Thought I would share a journal entry from when I was manic in hospital. It makes me laugh...

3/5/2012

To be honest, what the docs call my 'mania' is pretty damn fun. Well mostly. There are some unpleasant aspects to it. But after enduring months of that monstrous depression 'mania' feels good! I want to make a cake. I want to DO stuff.

I didn't realise what was happening until I was immersed in it. And once I was in it there was no way I wanted it to stop.

It started with lots of ideas. I couldn't


Yep. That's it. Couldn't even finish a sentence, never mind a journal entry ;)

Stockholm Syndrome

Some of you say, 'Joy is greater than sorrow,' and
others say, 'Nay, sorrow is the greater.'
I say to you, they are unseperable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with
you at your board, remember that the other is
asleep upon your bed. Kahlil Girbran

The world is full of peculiar paradoxes. Have you ever touched something so cold that it burned your skin? Or laughed so hard you cried? Have you ever felt so much pain it’s pleasurable?

I think I have a touch of Stockholm Syndrome. I’m in love with my captor. I hate mania, I hate it, I hate it, I hate. But oh how I love it too. Flat as a pancake I find myself yearning for the high’s. Knowing full well the consequences of doing so.

For me the high brings such revelation, I suddenly understand my life and the world around me, everything makes perfect sense. But now nothing makes sense. I don’t understand how I am supposed to feel. I don’t understand how I got here. I don’t understand why bad things seem to happen to good people.

I don’t feel, when I know I should.

I just want to feel that manic/hypomanic energy. I want to be productive. I want to feel the unabashed joy and love. I want to dance because the music means something to me. I want to understand the universe again.

But will that come with a price of irresponsibility, risk taking, and psychosis?

Probably.

When I was about 18 I went through a period that I can retrospectively diagnose as mania...or perhaps hypomania. For about six months I didn’t sleep, I wasn’t tired, I became loud and argumentative in classes, I completely changed in personality,  I drunk too much, I got myself involved in all sorts of risky situations. I cared about very little.

And that is the crux of it really. I want to care. I want to feel those high’s but I want to care for my family and for myself. I want to be the best mother I can for my son, and the best wife I can for my husband. I want to be the best I can be, and I can’t do that when I am high.

So I keep taking the medication. If I were young, if I were single I would probably experiment with skipping doses. See if I could find a happy medium. But as a mother I can’t possibly risk that.

So I stay here, flat and stable. I’m in love with something I shouldn’t be. I’m in love with something that isn’t real. I’m in love with something that could potentially destroy my life.

But more than that I’m in love with what I have, my beautiful boy and husband. And so I will never succumb to the infatuation. For the pleasure, and the pain, are inseparable.  

Feeling Good

It's a new day, it's a new dawn, it's a new life
For me.
And I'm feeling good. 

- Nina Simone

I knew something was going to happen because my eye kept twitching. Twitch, twitch, twitch for four days, like a ticking bomb. When I was in hospital the exact same symptom preceded my manic episode.

I didn’t even realise I was immersed in it until it was over. But let’s get the facts straight, this certainly wasn’t a full manic episode. I never lost touch with reality, I never believed to have magical powers. I didn’t put myself in danger.  To the best of my knowledge I didn’t irritate the people around me.  Infact, I don’t think even the people closest to me realised anything was any different to normal. Maybe it was the more discreet ‘hypomania’, which literally means ‘below mania’. Perhaps my symptoms were prodromal of mania. Perhaps it was just one of those things.

What I did experience was euphoria, and ideas, projects. Despite the fact that I was physically very unwell, I couldn’t sit still. I had to start these projects. The only thing was, while I was in the middle of one project, I would spy something else that needed to be done and would move onto that. My ordinarily organised life was becoming somewhat chaotic. Highly productive, but chaotic. I absolutely loved playing with my little boy, we laughed and laughed together. I felt confident in myself. I felt in control. I felt good.

Of course there were some down sides. I  started experiencing psychomotor agitation again. All the pacing, twitching, jogging that I remember from before. I had amazing problems sleeping. When I went to bed my body suddenly felt like it wanted to run a marathon. I would get so angry at this that I would leap out of bed at 2am, storm into the kitchen and take two or three times my normal dose of medication just to try and get some shut eye. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. My thoughts raced, or sometimes I would just have one thought that would repeat over and over again in my head. I seemed to get bored easily, even when doing things I usually enjoy.

But all in all, it wasn’t an unpleasant experience at all. I think I enjoyed it. Nobody was hurt in any manner, and I did get an awful lot of things done. Does that make it ‘disordered’? Is it ‘symptomatic’? Or is it just pleasurable?

Why? I would say it was something to do with the fact that I was physically unwell. Lithium will only work if a certain level of the drug is maintained in the bloodstream. Too much will result in toxicity, too little will result in very little at all. This is why if you are dehydrated, such as during gastro, you need to stop taking the medication. I had fevers for a week, and became very dehydrated. I also took medication which interferes with Lithium. I suspect that my blood lithium level went a little awry and precipitated this experience. The lack of sleep would have further exacerbated the symptoms.

My ‘high’ ended rather abruptly one night in a rather humorous manner. I woke up in the night, sure that something had bitten my rear end. Envisioning all sorts of poisonous critters, I leapt out of bed, turned on the light and thrashed around trying to see what had bitten me. At 4am, Steven was less than impressed, but still agreed to perform a thorough examination of the bed and my bum (have I mentioned that I love this man?). After, I lay in bed fuming. Now I had probably been bitten by something hideous, I’d have to go to the doctor AGAIN. Probably add another prescription to my collection. It was such a trivial thing, but I’d had enough!

Since then I’ve felt....flat. Certainly not depressed. But, it’s true, I miss the excitement and the euphoria and the energy. I miss being ‘high’.  The colours just seem to have faded. And as if for illustrative purposes, the sunshine outside has bleakened into rain. Steven calls this ‘the crash’. And in a day or so I will be fine.

I still feel like I am learning so much from this experience. I still don’t feel like I know the first thing about bipolar disorder, and my bipolar disorder in particular. I’m trying to chronicle and examine and evaluate what I feel. I’m trying to make sense of everything. Is it ok to enjoy the ‘highs’? Isn’t the high part of the problem? How can something that feels nice be a bad thing?

The mind, and the mind-body relationship fascinates me. Perhaps one day I’ll be a step closer to understanding it all J

The Dark Side of the Mood

Mania is like a whirlwind romance with someone who is no good for you. At first everything seems wonderful. You giggle, you make plans, you forget to eat because it just feels that good. It’s a sudden ego boost. Before you know what has happened you have eased into it, you have fallen in love with it, you have committed to the high. And once you reach that certain point, you can’t turn back, not without a fight anyway.

I read recently that one of the tell tale signs of mania is a complete denial that anything is wrong (when it is obvious to others around you that there is). I was irate when the doctor told me that she thought I may be experiencing a manic episode. I think part of the problem is the name of it. I mean manic? Really? I was so against the term ‘mania’ when I was in hospital that the nursing staff used to refer to my highs as ‘productivity’ instead. When I was depressed I was incapacitated. When I was ‘productive’ I had ideas, felt creative, completed tasks, and generally just got things done.

And how, I tended to think, is that a bad thing? How is it unhealthy to be productive? How can something that feels good possibly be an illness?

Retrospectively I realise now that I have experienced manic episodes in the past. But of course then I had no idea what they were, and I welcomed them. Now, occasionally I feel a slight twinge of mania wash over me. I feel the euphoria, or the confidence. I become engrossed in a project to the point of obsession. Or I just plain become ‘productive’. In that moment when I realise the rise in my mood I need to make a decision. I can sink into it, encourage the euphoria, and ride the wave. Or  I can attempt to stop it. Remove myself from any risky situations. Calm myself down.

But you have to understand, refusing that mania is like refusing a drink when you are on the cusp of intoxication. Are you going to get drunk tonight? Or are you going to stay sober?

But like many drunken experiences the aftermath of a manic episode often involves embarrassment and regret. And like intoxication, once you reach a certain point it is very difficult to remain in control. Mania, despite its allure, has a dark side.

In hospital I was protected from any kind of physical injury during my manic episode. But even so, I did walk out in front of a car, and was found standing on top of window sills. I was also largely protected from any kind of later humiliation. The staff who dealt with me were accustomed to mania, and my euphoric and antagonistic behaviour was really just another days work for them. Steven was the one who bore the brunt of my mood, and I know that if I were to continue the way I had been our relationship would begin to suffer. There is only so much patience a man can have.

But in the past, where I wasn’t protected by the hospital, my mood placed me in potentially dangerous situations, and hurt the people around me. For me, the euphoria, the creativity, the ideas and the confidence is just not worth that risk. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still happy, I’m still content, and I still allow myself to be so. The manic euphoria is distinctly different from everyday happiness and pleasure, and I’m able to recognise the difference.

So a few weeks ago, when I finished my shopping only to realise I had been singing out loud as I pushed my trolley, instead of giving into the euphoria I went home to bed instead. Then I completed the most mundane everday tasks you can think of. Cleaning the house. Doing the washing. And that night, when Steven and I sat down to watch TV together without fighting over my mood, it was worth it.

I’m sure there will be times where I am unable (or unwilling) to harness my moods in the way I have been recently. The memories of hospitalisation are still fresh in my head, and perhaps in a year or ten years those memories will fade. But I hope I always remember the trade off, the dark side. The dark side of the mood.

My Mania

I have put off writing about my manic episode for a while. For starters my mania, I find, is very hard to write about. How can I begin to describe an experience that was so fast and loud and bright? It’s hard to remember, let alone describe, in what order events occurred. And can I even rely on my recollection of events anyway? I’m not sure. Steven and I joke a lot about this particular manic episode. But in no way do I mean to make light of manic episodes. I was in hospital, safe and protected from any kind of danger. In other words, I was lucky. Manic episodes can be extremely dangerous. Indeed I fear mania far more than I fear depression. This was not my first manic episode, but it was the most extreme episode I have experienced. It all started one morning when I woke up with a ZING! The first thought in my head was “I’m cured!”

I felt good. Better than good. Brilliant! For the first time in months I had energy. The blackness had gone! I had ideas and plans racing around in my head so quickly that I could barely keep up with them. I called Steven at the uncivilized time of 5:50am to tell him that I wanted to go to a restaurant and bake a cake. Afterwards I bounced out of bed and raced in to tell the nurses that I had been cured. I then informed them that I wouldn’t be attending meditation that morning, because I didn’t want to sit still. I had decided to go for a walk instead. My nurse that morning wasn’t terribly impressed warning “don’t get me into trouble Rachael!” as I waltzed out the doors. 

I   got no further than the park next to the hospital. The trees, the leaves...everything was so beautiful. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before! I lay down in the grass under a tree marvelling at the beauty that was surrounding me. The feel of the breeze on my face, the grass under my skin, the sun...the beauty was literally overwhelming. Finally I stood up and made my way back to the unit. I was so focused on the beauty around me that I very nearly got hit by a car.

Back at the unit I started to tell a student nurse about my experience. Well. ‘Tell’ is a nice way of putting it. The clinical term for it is ‘pressured speech’. I myself prefer ‘verbal diarrhea’. I talked and talked and talked, not pausing for a breath. I told her about the trees, and the leaves, and how I wanted to write a book, and where I wanted to travel..and...and..and...and! I’m sure she was cursing the moment she had initiated a conversation with me. But she was far too polite to tell me to shut up.

It was then time to see the doctor. I sat down on the sofa and waited until I had the attention of both doctors and my nurse before dramatically proclaiming “I’m cured!”.  Then I talked and I talked. I remember at the time watching all three of the staff looking at each other, raising their eyebrows. But I didn’t care. I was having a fabulous time holding court.  And man, I had some interesting stuff to say!

 When my doctor was finally able to interject, she told me that I seemed to be  ‘high’. I agreed and told her it was fantastic, before launching on a rather random tirade about how I should have never been put on ‘special’ supervision. I think after a while the staff  realised that it was absolutely pointless to try and have a sane conversation with me. It was at that point that my doctor snapped my file shut and turned to the second doctor. “I’m canceling leave”. She said firmly. I was devastated, I had been supposed to go home that weekend  for leave. I burst into tears, I pleaded and begged, but no amount of tears were going to change my doctors mind.

After the appointment I decided to call Steven to tell him the tragic news. What I wasn’t expecting was:
“GOOD! I’m glad they cancelled leave. I’m not saying you have Bipolar, Rachael, but there is something not right about you at the moment.”

Yeah, that pissed me off. From that moment on I started waging a war. A war of ‘us’ against ‘them’. And in my opinion Steven had very firmly planted himself with ‘them’.

At this point I must say that the nursing staff in that unit must have the absolute patience of a saint. From this point on I became, for lack of a better term, a thundering pain in the neck. Someone who can’t sit still, can’t concentrate on any activities, doesn’t sleep and won’t shut up is annoying enough. But someone who does all of this in addition to making it her mission to antagonise as many people as possible must have been a complete nightmare to deal with.

I went to group and attempted to derail the topic of conversation with inane questions and comments. I interrupted private conversations between staff and patients to have my say. I concluded that some flowers that were delivered to the hospital were evil, and asserted this to everyone who commented on how nice they were. And Steven, poor Steven, I took my frustration out on him the most. I’m not surprised that he was glad that I was not coming home that weekend!

As the days went on I just seemed to get higher. I didn’t seem to need to sleep, I didn’t feel hungry. I felt sexy, and confident,  powerful and in control. Given my lack of need for sleep I  started to suspect that I was, in fact, superhuman.

 I was allowed home for an hour or so and I selected a short little dress to wear (I hadn’t thought to bring cocktail attire to the hospital). While at home I put on some music, took off all my clothes and danced around the house. Unsatisfied with this I decided I should go out to the street and dance naked in the rain.  Surprisingly, I felt, Steven was less than impressed with this idea and decided it was time for me to go back to the unit. I then refused to put my clothes on until Steven started dialing my doctors phone number. Beaten, I put my little dress back on again.

But what goes up must come down, and come crashing down it did. Back at the unit I held my crying baby, trying my best to comfort him. Tears ran down my cheeks as I watched him cry, all I wanted to do was help him. Steven saw that I was getting upset and offered to take David from me. Something flipped inside me and I became angry, telling him that “I was his mother, I should know what to do”.

Sensing that things were escalating Steven left then returned with two nurses. I shouted at them to stay away, they tried to take David away, but I held onto him. Finally the nurses grabbed my arms, physically restrained me and took my little boy away. I know that I was aggressive and out of control, I know that the nurses did the right thing, but I will never ever forget the feeling of my baby boy being ripped from my arms. My heart shattered into pieces.

I was then, quite literally, frogmarched into my room to be shouted at. Finally I was left alone and I cried and cried and curled up in a ball on my bed. After a while the nurse came back and invited me to come out of my room, I declined. She came back again and again, trying to tempt me with hot drinks, movie’s on the telly and coming to see what my baby was doing. But I was terrified of leaving my room. I was so embarrassed, so humiliated of all the silly things I had said and done. I didn’t feel powerful anymore, I felt tiny.

But eventually I tiptoed to my door and looked down the hall. Steven was standing there holding David, he grinned at me and beckoned for me to come and join him. Taking a deep breath I left my room and slowly walked towards him.

“I’m so sorry” I said, both to him and to David. He could have embarrassed me, or told me off, said he was ashamed of me, he would have the perfect right to have done any of this, considering the way I had treated him. But instead he just said the three words that I desperately needed to hear.

I love you.