Have you been diagnosed with a medical condition? Struggling with PTSD? An illness or disability? Do you have chronic pain? A mental disorder? Do you have severe allergies? Do you fight seasonal affective disorder? Or maybe you struggle with ADHD, anxiety or depression?
My Label is Bipolar.
Let me share with you how I was diagnosed, how I’ve been battling with my label and now how I thrive with my mental disorder.
Where, When, And How it All Began
The year was 2001. The day…October 26 2001. That day changed my life forever. That’s the day I found out I was pregnant with triplets. I was 5 months along, I had been going to regular doctor checkup and seemed like a normal pregnancy. Until that day, I had my first ultrasound. Doctor announced that I was carrying triplets but there was no heartbeat. Doctor then matter-of-factly informed me that I would have to give birth the following morning. I was so completely shell-shocked, my body immediately went in fight mode, survival instincts
kicked in.
I had to be strong, I had to deliver three babies, I didn’t know how much it would hurt, how long would I be in labor for, would I need epidural or possibly a c-section. Would I be in labour for hours? Days? Doctors didn’t know themselves what to expect. But here I was, a 24 year old just finding out I had triple occupancy without any heartbeat. I didn’t give myself the chance to be sad or to grieve. I had a job to do. I had to deliver these babies. Then I had to get healthy so I could go back to work. That’s how it works right? In my mind, that’s what I needed to do to survive. Three days after giving birth, I was back at work.
Do you think that was wise? Have you been in a similar situation? Were you just doing what you needed to do to survive, or better yet to think of just surviving the day, the moment. Living day by day, just trying to keep it
together? Thinking you are doing the right thing by just plowing through life, in survival mode. Well I thought that's what I needed to do in order to grieve, I thought I needed to return to my normal routine, my work. I didn't talk about my loss, I didn’t go for therapy, I didn't really cry over the loss of my babies.
Is it a surprise that my mind had a total shutdown 8 months after the loss of my triplets? I’m shocked that I was able to function for that long.
In the Spring of 2002, my mind came to a halt. At first, neither my boyfriend nor my parents were sure what was happening to me. At the time, I didn't realise anything was happening to me either. They saw a change in my behavior, in my humour, and in my mood. Then in May 2002, I had several sleepless nights, and the consequences were no longer having a need or desire to sleep. Thoughts started racing, my speech accelerated, and I started experiencing feelings of grandeur as well as an excessive amount of energy. I started hallucinating and having ideas that weren't based in reality. I'll share more on my hallucination
and grandiose ideas in future blogs. But for now, let's just say I was literally going crazy. My mind stopped functioning correctly. I can now interpret my mental breakdown was a way for my mind to protect my body from crashing. In other posts, I’ll describe more my traumas but for now let’s stick with the biggest trauma, the lost of my babies.
My family didn’t know what was happening with me. It escalated to the point that my parents were scared for my safety and they brought me to the Emergency Room at the hospital. By that time, I was so high and out of it. I want to clarify that drugs or alcohol did not play any role in this transformation and mental breakdown. Once I was finally admitted, I was given so many pharmaceutical drugs that I don’t remember my first 2 weeks at the hospital. That’s how nice and drugged up I am when I need to be tranquilized. To give you some context, my psychiatrist says that my psychosis (psychotic episodes) can be compared to a cocaine high. I become invincible (or so I think), my mind is speedy and I have a ton of ideas, projects and plans I want to do. No wonder when I have such a high, it takes months for my body to recuperate.
Living With My Label
I stayed in the mental health ward for 3 weeks during that first hospital visit. That visit changed my life as I knew it. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was prescribed mood stabilizers and anti-psychotic medications. I later learn through therapy that the trauma of losing my triples with the emotional and
sexual domestic abuse I had been living with resulted in a chemical imbalance in my brain which triggered the symptoms of bipolar. I was given a label that to me was so limiting, was so full of condescending and negative implications. At the time, I didn’t know all of that. I wasn’t given a handbook on how it would change my life, how it would impact my lifestyle, how it would transform the way I see myself, how that simple word bipolar would limit my next 15 years. Back then, when I returned home from the hospital, I just knew
I needed and wanted to sleep, rest and eat.
How much sleep, rest and eating did I do? Well, as downers, those drugs really slow down your metabolism. I needed to recuperate from all that lost sleep and all the energy that was squeezed out of me while in manic state. So rest, sleep and eat is what I did. I would say the worst side effects are the lethargic feelings and the cravings!! OMG, I never craved junk food so bad. Not just chips or chocolate but also hamburgers and fries, pop and candies. I gained 60 lbs in the first 3 months of being diagnosed. I have not been able to lose
those pounds since then. The struggles of living with side effects of medications are real. I never struggled with my weight before, I never had an eating disorder, I never had to worry about exercising.
Prior to my hospitalization, I had a relatively healthy lifestyle. But from that point on, I had to accept my new reality, my new journey. I couldn’t just wake up and exercise. Or wake up and be productive. I had a hard time just getting up and getting dressed for the day. I had this heavy weight on my shoulders, this immense fatigue was weighing me down. Even my eyes were glazed over and out of focus. I had a hard time staying awake, let alone concentrating at work. My family and friends will be the firsts to attest that I was basically a zombie.
Those 5 years after my hospitalization, were the worst of my life. I was a living zombie. Getting up, barely functioning at work, coming home and going to bed. Of course, there was eating involved. This went on all day, every few hours even (chocolate bar here, snack there, fries and burger for lunch, maybe pizza for supper). Oh it was my survival mode. I didn’t intentionally choose to live like this. The cravings were so strong. They governed my life. The fatigue and tiredness ruled also. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have an active life, or a healthy life. But during that period of my life, I had to focus on just taking it one day at time. I focused on accepting where I was, I couldn’t afford to be hard on myself. I really would have loved to go exercise or do things with family and friends. But, I was barely surviving, barely functioning. I kept seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I knew that one day, things would be better. I had HOPE. I believed in myself. I knew back then that it was a temporary phase and that my God was present and helping me through it. I learned to love myself through it and to accept that junk food and laziness were my coping mechanisms for that period of time. Loving and accepting myself in the gloomiest days were probably the hardest yet most beautiful steps I took in my healing process.
While those years were the darkest and hardest in my life, I would not change my past or my struggles. It makes me who I am today, ME. I don’t hold particularly fond memories of that period of my life following my first hospitalization, however, I know that I needed to go through that in order to shine later.
Thriving With My Mental disorder
Whatever your label, we all have medical composition and conditions that make us who we are. We may feel shame, imperfection and vulnerability. We may feel that we are weaker than others. We are humans. We are in human bodies that have human illnesses, disorders and diseases. Some have mobility difficulties, some live
with diabetes or a chronic illness while others like me, have a mental fragility caused by trauma. It took me so many years and many many hours of therapy to be able to accept that my body is not perfect and I live with some limitations. We all have limitations, health issues or difficulties. Mine happens to be related to my mental health.
Love and accept yourself and your labels. Love yourself where ever you are in your journey.