Three

 

Over the past few months many people have asked me whether I will have another baby. My answer? “Of course!”

There is a reasonable chance, I suppose, that I will succumb to another ‘episode’ post partum. I also have a higher than average chance of developing post natal psychosis. But as cliché as it sounds, it’s worth it. He is worth it all, and I would do it all again in a heartbeat. Many mothers who undergo even the most traumatic of births choose to do it all again. This is no different to that.

If you had asked me a few months ago, my answer would have been “Hell, no!” I remember my doctor talking about future pregnancies while I was in hospital. I shut her down and told her I didn’t want another. I simply couldn’t go through this again.

But now.... I honestly don’t think I would go through it all again. The difference between now and then is that we know what we are dealing with. I have a diagnosis, I know which medication works for me. I have also been informed that any future pregnancies will be classified as “high risk”, so I will be taken care of by a clinic at the state’s main maternity hospital who specialises in mothers with severe mental illness. I have also been told I may be transferred back to the MBU following childbirth for a week or two so doctors can keep a careful eye on me.

 In other words, there is a huge amount of support out there. If I showed any signs of instability I would have access to help. The people closest to me are aware and supportive. I'm certainly not alone.  

The other week I asked my doctor, out of interest, about future pregnancies and the medication I am on. She looked vaguely horrified and encouraged me not to rush into things, and to just concentrate on maintaining my stability for now.

But I’m not rushing into things. I’m not ready for another baby now. There are things I want to achieve before being a mum of two. I also want to savour this time with David. I missed out so much of his first year through being so unwell. I want to enjoy now and him and us for a little while.  

One day we will be a family of four, I have no doubt in that. But right now I’m enjoying the three of us. Me, you, and toddler too.

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

Just a little patience...

I’m not a patient person. I’m really not. I’ve tried – believe me! But patience really seems to be a virtue that I don’t have.

Don’t get me wrong. I can be patient with people. Or with animals. But when it comes down to tasks, work, ideas and such, I just can’t seem to wait. I want things done now. No, I want things done yesterday.

I’m the type of person who, mid lunch, decides a yellow wall would look good in the dining area. I’m the type of person who leaves her lunch, goes out, buys gallons of yellow paint, and sloshes it onto the wall before her husband even comes home from work. “Surprise!” I’ll say, before telling him to stay out of the way because “I will do a better job”.

Steven calls me impulsive at best, occasionally silly, and always impatient. You see, Steven is the opposite of me. He’s methodological. Calculated. Careful. He spends months researching things before buying them. I can’t be bothered with doing all of that!

Anyway, where am I going with this?

If there is one thing that I have learned over the past 12 months, it’s that when you are a patient in hospital, you have to be exactly that. Patient. You wait to be seen, wait to be admitted, wait for a diagnosis, wait for a treatment plan. The waiting is seemingly endless.

When I was in the MBU I remember complaining to Steven one afternoon that I wanted to go home. I was so homesick it hurt. I’d had enough. “You need to be patient!” Steven told me. “you can’t expect things to change overnight.”

“But I’m not a patient patient!” I complained. “In fact. I’m an impatient inpatient!”

A few nights ago I ended up in hospital.  It was a combination of a nasty virus and severe dehydration – probably not helped by the fact that I had unknowingly taken medication which interacts with lithium. It was a long night for both Steven and I, longer for him though, it would seem.  I was surprised when I did the math. We were in hospital for around 12 hours. 4 of those hours were spent waiting in the emergency room. Add on perhaps another 1 hour for seeing the doctor and getting hooked up to an IV. That leaves SEVEN hours unaccounted for.

I asked Steven what I was doing, and he said that I was asleep.  Not surprising after a combination of narcotics, sedatives and anti-psychotics. The point of this is that my poor Steven waited for seven hours in an uncomfortable plastic chair by my bedside, without a single complaint.

You see, patience isn’t the ability to wait. It’s the ability to wait without complaint. And boy, this man has patience.  Through depression, through mania, through sickness, through hospitalisations, through psychosis and everything in between he has never complained. I wish I had the patience that he possesses.

It never ceases to amaze me the love and support that this man offers me. He lights my way through the darkest of days. He holds me down lest I fly away. He is always, always there for me. My best advocate, my greatest support. 

So Steven, I hope you understand that words are inadequate in describing the length and the breadth and the depth of the love and adoration I have for you. I know sometimes I am infuriating. I know that sometimes it may not seem like I appreciate you. But please, please know that I always love and adore you. I hope you know that I can never understand what you have been through – for in some ways I believe this can be harder for the supporter than the patient  - but I appreciate it more than I can ever describe. Every day I wake up, thankful that I have you standing by my side. Thank you for everything, my love. You are my world.

Traces of Nuts

The first time I was hospitalised, when I was about 17, I started hearing voices. Well, to be more specific I started hearing a robot voice.

I tried to ignore it at first. Get on with things. Go about my business. But this robot voice was every where I went. In my room, in the dining area, in the halls. This voice was starting to (if you’ll excuse the irony) drive me completely insane. I began to feel more and more dejected. Here I was. In a psychiatric institution. Hearing voices.

Then I became angry. I couldn’t even understand what the damn thing was saying.  I couldn’t even be a normal crazy person.  Someone who could actually understand their stupid voices. This is ridiculous!

One day I was waiting for a group session to start when I heard the robot talking again. I decided I had to settle this matter once and for all. I turned to the guy next to me and asked him:

 “Did you just hear that robot voice?!”

He looked vaguely startled and looked around. “Robot voice?”

“There it is again!” I exclaimed. “See! That robot voice! Please tell me you can hear it! I’m being driven insane. I know I shouldn’t say that here...but seriously....can you hear it?”.  

It was then that he burst out laughing. “That’s Harold!” he told me, in between snorts. “He’s had a tracheotomy, he speaks through a tube. I guess he does sound a bit like a robot.”

We were both silent for a moment. “Well that’s a relief,” I finally said. “For the last week I have been convinced I was hearing robot voices”.

Oh we laughed and laughed after that. I felt a huge range of things. Guilty for starters (poor Harold!), embarrassed, but most of all relieved. THANK GOD! I wasn’t crazy. Well, at least not in that way.

But this experience got me thinking. What is crazy anyway? Do you know if you are crazy? I’ve heard that the craziest people often believe they are sane. But sane people can think they are crazy too. Are you crazy if you are sane but think you’re crazy? Who defines it? Where is the line between crazy and sane?

One day, in the MBU, I was trying to make some lunch for David. Another patient was experiencing a manic episode and was pestering me, talking a mile a minute, following me around the kitchen. In between peals of laughter she managed to say “wow! You must really think I’m crazy!”
“Yes,” I responded rather grumpily. To my surprise she just burst out laughing again.
“That’s because I am!” she sung, before waltzing outside to the garden.

She certainly thought she was. Did I think I was crazy? I’m not sure. Do I now? I don’t know. What I do know, is that the deterioration of mental health results in a need for intervention. Some people resist it, but I was open to it. Perhaps that was the sanest part of my condition. I believe that everyone has their own eccentricities, some are just more obvious than others. I believe eccentricities need only be a negative thing should they threaten the wellbeing or reputations of themselves or the people around them.

Although I can’t define what I was before, at this point in time I’ll conclude that for now I’m swinging around the ‘normal’ end of the continuum. Normal. With traces of nuts ;)

Girls, Interrupted.

Having spent a fair amount of time at the MBU, I was able to see many different women come and go. As much as I was happy for the women that were discharged, I was hit by unexpected jealousy as well. Jealousy and then self incrimination. “What is wrong with me?! What can’t I get my act together and get better like everyone else?!”.

But aside from that, what struck me was just how different we all were. I began to see that postnatal mental illness spared no one. No cohort, no demographic group, nobody. There were older women, first time mums, black women, white women, Catholics, Muslims, professionals, teenagers, city women, country women, single parents, smokers, vegetarians and everyone in between. This is why I feel it is so important for EVERYONE to be aware of mental illness, particularly in the postnatal period. You never think it’s going to be you. Your partner. Your daughter. Your mother.

Anyway, although I was in the MBU for a significant amount of time, there was one woman, let’s call her Sophie, who had been there longer. We didn’t really speak much, but we were always kind of aware of each other. Every time I had a meltdown I’d glance around and see her in the background, pretending to ignore me. But that’s ok I pretended to ignore a few of her outbursts too.

One night, increasingly frustrated by my lack of sleep, I stormed out to the nurses station to try and get some sleeping pills. Sophie was waiting there too and we awkwardly stood next to each other for a few minutes.

Finally Sophie asked: “can’t sleep?”.

“What’s sleep?” I replied with a wry smile. Sophie laughed and then gestured to our dressing gowns.

“We should swap” she said. I looked down and noticed we were both wearing purple gowns. She was short in stature and wearing a long gown trailing the ground, I’m tall and was wearing a short gown cropped below the knee. I laughed and then saw the nurses arriving back at the station.

“You should take this,” she said, thrusting a magazine into my hands. “If you can’t sleep. It always helps me sleep.”  I thanked her. I was willing to do anything to get some sleep, and read whatever this magazine may be.

Later back in my room, having been denied medication, I took out the magazine and started to read. And would you believe it? I actually fell asleep! I kept it in my room for emergencies. Nightmares. Insomnia. It was a first aid kit for the weary. When I left the MBU I made sure to leave my magazine on the nightstand, just in case someone else should need it.

Sophie and I were both discharged within days of each other. I still think about her a lot, and I hope that she is doing well.

The magazine? It turned out to be a Coles advertising booklet. Perhaps it was the boredom of reading it that worked so well for us. Or perhaps it was just the comfort of knowing someone else was going through the same thing. Either way, I do remember having a fair few dreams about cooking... ;)

What's your status?

Yesterday, during an appointment with my psychologist at the hospital, it came to light that I was apparently an involuntary patient under the Mental Health Act for a period of time during my hospital stay. To say I was surprised is an understatement. I assured my psychologist she was mistaken, until she read out my file notes from my doctor at the MBU.

“Rachael was an inpatient at the MBU for two months, much of the time under one to one supervision and under the Mental Health Act”.

The thing is, I don’t remember that at all. I remember being threatened with the Mental Health Act should I worsen, resist treatment or abscond. But that’s about it. Other patients who were of involuntary status seemed to be aware of it. I certainly wasn’t. 

But then again, I wasn’t aware of much. I wasn’t aware that I was on one to one supervision until one day another patient asked my nurse for something. My nurse declined and the patient glanced at me and asked “oh, are you still on one to one supervision?”. It was only then I looked around and realised that I was the only patient with a nurse chained to my side all day. For most of my time in the MBU, the unit was in 'lockdown'. I didn't even realize that the unit could be unlocked until the end of my stay. It was only at then that I realized that the  lockdown  everyone complained about was initiated because of me (along with another patient). Sorry guys! 

The fact that I had psychosis adds another layer of complexity to the whole issue. Trying to piece together fragmented memories is difficult enough, but trying to remember when you are not even sure what was real and what wasn’t is nearly impossible.

I spent a few hours yesterday afternoon researching the matter. Trawling through pages and pages of government documents, searching through the endless 1996 Mental Health Act, trying to find anything that would give me some answers. Surely I would need to fill out a form? Or Steven would need to be aware?

My search was inconclusive. The complexities of the system are really beyond my patience. Is written evidence from my doctor enough for me to believe what happened? It should be, but somehow it’s not. A written report should stand firm against the unreliable memory of a psychotic patient. But this is me, not just anyone. Surely I should remember something.

I know that most people reading this will think ‘well what does it matter?’ I went into hospital, I came out of hospital, I’m feeling better, are the specific details of my stay really that important?

But to me they are. To me there is a big difference between seeking help voluntarily, and being treated as an involuntary patient. The legalities of my treatment matter. What happened to me matters. But most of all it matters that I can’t seem to trust my own memories and recollections.

Who do I believe? Me or them? Who do you believe?

New

This week was one of those annoying weeks where everything seemed to go wrong. Broken plates, broken appliances, broken sleep, missed appointments, sick printers, forgotten forms, lost pieces of priceless jewelery. You name it, it happened. 

I wouldn’t say it was a ‘bad’ week as such. Just an incredibly annoying one.

I had one of those familiar “fuck it all” moments the other day. Skidding around the kitchen, trying to mop up chocolate covered water from the dishwasher with a freshly laundered towel on a freshly mopped kitchen floor, listening to a screaming baby. Fuck. It. All.

But today is a new start. It’s been a cracker of a week, and a hell of a year, but I’m ready to leave that behind and start fresh. It’s my birthday next week, and for my present my mum has bought me a haircut. For the first time in a long time I’m going to chop it off. Not *really* short, but shorter than it is now. I like my long hair, but the truth is, I don’t have the time or energy to spend styling it each morning. It generally gets clipped back, tied back and otherwise neglected. I’m looking forward to something a little less high maintenance! I also splurged on some new dresses and jewellery. Something I very rarely do.  I’m generally a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl, but with summer coming up I figured it would be nice to have some pretty dresses.

  I have also spring cleaned the house, weeded the garden, changed the layout of the living room and bought a new rug. I’ve planted my favorite herbs outside, and I’ve started buying my fruit and vegetables from local farmers at the markets. I’ve gotten myself into a household routine that works.

This all probably seems fairly insignificant. But you see, more than anything I need a CHANGE. I want to physically separate the ‘old’ me from the ‘new’ me. I’m happy, I’m in control, and I want that to be represented in the way I present myself, and in the environment I live in. I want a fresh start.

Now let’s just pray that the hairdresser doesn’t destroy my hair today ;)