Meet WinnyNinnyPoo

I am going to do this individually, because you are all pretty regular here and deserve recognition.  I tend to stink at answering comments, something I'm trying to do better at.  I have comment moderation off now, which makes it easier for me to do this. I think.

Anyway:

WinnyNinny PooPoo said...

1. I'm always tired.

sounds about right to me....I will be so glad when I'm declared stable enough to be less medicated.  I hate being tired constantly.2. Amish people live next door.

Did I ever tell you that I used to work in a county with one of the highest Amish populations in the country?  So I had Amish patients and Amish co-workers.  In fact, remember the reality show "Amish in the City"?  I worked with one of the stars of that show after it was over, until she moved away for nurses' training.  I learned a lot doing that, because I had to learn to manage Amish clothing to help them learn. Let's just say they do not get dressed in a rush when they are running late.....I also learned that by appealing to someone to appeal to the church I could actually get permission for my patients to wear English clothes (sweats usually) while healing if they couldn't manage their regular clothes. I don't remember doing this for any women, but did for men several times.  I've also lived on the edge of Pennsylvania's Amish country.  I also experienced first hand the high rate of bipolar disorder in the Amish population.  It tended to be severe and was sad.

3. I love fall.
Me too!  I think I mainly love it because I finally won't feel tired and sick from heat all the time. Assuming fall ever comes here.  It's been in the mid-90s all week.

Are there any other bipolar individuals in your family? [I have a relative who is bipolar, and her father is bipolar]

Probably.  My father is nearly definitely bipolar, and like me he'd be severe mixed type.  There are many ways we differ in illness (including my actual diagnosis and agreement to treatment and he would just be paranoid and run away if confronted with it, and he is much more impulsive and violent than I ever was.  But the fear that his rage could become mine is something I am just now starting to work on.  (OK, something I just realized as I typed that).  I know I don't seem scary now, but I had my moments years ago of being 63"of sheer rage.

My mother also thinks her mother is probably bipolar.  I've never met this grandmother because when she was about my age she moved to Florida after her divorce, then brought my aunt and uncle back up here to stay with relatives, I think "for the summer".  During that time she just walked out on her life.  Either she was on drugs or suspected of it,  and she was assumed to be dead when my whole childhood.  When I was 19 she suddenly called first her sister then her mother.  She's spent the last 16 years being manipulative.  My mother went to visit her last year and found her to be horribly selfish before anything else.  I've spoken to her on the phone once, but that it is all the contact I'll ever have.  There's nowhere to start.

I also have at least one cousin with probably bipolar/diagnosis of bipolar?  I'm not sure which; I've not seen this cousin in 20 years.  Her brother told me that he's nearly positive and again a glance at her life shows the likelihood of it.  Or he said she'd been diagnosed.  I can't remember.

And I have an uncle who lived a bipolar-like existence; he just died.  Again, hadn't seen him in 20 years so this is based on faint memories and family stories.  On the other hand he was the one my grandfather severely abused in that generation.  I don't know about sexually, but physically it was severe.

So genetically I had little chance.  That's part of why I'll not have children, I will not pass this on and it would be quite likely.