After 30 years and three major episodes I have finally been diagnosed with bipolar. It first
started when I was around eight. I remember having a lot of trouble making friends. I remember being very sensitive and not being able to express my
self very well. When I started school, I had a lot of problems concentrating and with organization. I remember one of my teachers knocking my desk over because it was messy and her telling me to pick it up in front of the whole class. One teacher got this idea to make a giant cardboard blinder that went around my desk and said that it would help me concentrate. It made me feel like I was a real reject. I hit high school and things started to get a little
better. My grades got better and I even made honor roll my freshman year. I kept really busy in school. I was in all the plays and a CNA part
time at the nursing
home in town.
At first Collage seemed to be going well. I took to classes in the summer before, a Chemistry and Bible Class and got B's in both of them. When I attended class in the fall was when the bottom fell out of my World. I remember talking to my self a lot and then I began to
think that I had super human powers. I remember thinking that I was growing really fast and that I could read minds. I remember asking for help from the one of the counselors but by then I was too late. I was completely out of my head. My mom and dad were called and
told to come right away and pick me up. I remember when they got there and told me that I smelled and needed a bath. I remember taking a shower and losing track of where I was and dad had to come in and get me. He said I was in there for an hour but at this point I have lost track of time and space. I remember getting to the hospital and getting checked into the stress center. They gave me a shot of what I would later find out to be Haldol and falling asleep. I think about four days passed till I remember what was going on. I remember earning my clothing. The room they put me in had a door with a window and I think the walls were padded. I found out later that they thought I was trying to kill my self in collage because they found a pair of scissors beside my bed. I was not trying to kill my self but doing some strange cutting of papers in shapes in my dorm room. The hospital food was good except they would not let me have a knife or fork. After three weeks in the hospital my parents talk the doctor to letting me go home.
When I got home, I had another bad depressive episode. It lasted at least a year and it was hard for my parents to motivate me to do anything. After about seven months and much frustration of my parents my dad finally told me the truth. He told me that if I didn’t get better I would end up on disability and or live in a hospital. That seemed like a mean thing to say to someone who was depressed but it some how gave me the motivation to go back to work. I started working part time as a CNA at the nursing home that I had worked at in highschool. I fought through the panic attacks and depressing and was able to work an 8-hour day. Now I work fulltime and was just diognosed with bipolar. I finaly feel like I should. I don't have the names of the medicine here to write down but they are working great. I hope in the future Doctors get better at dignosing Bipolar early to prevent what has happened to me and others like me.
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