Who I Am

I am a 36 year old woman in Ohio.  I enjoy sewing, knitting, playing with/being the servant to my cats, and reading.  I have a master's degree in occupational therapy and have worked in nursing homes, home health and long-term psychiatric facilities over the years. Since August 2011 I have been on disability after a minor surgery had major complications.  It is unknown if I will work again and I am trying to come to terms with this new reality.  I am no longer employed because of no expectation of return to fulltime work.

I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2002 although I was symptomatic for years before that.  A combination of an odd presentation and skill at hiding symptoms delayed my diagnosis until I was 26.  The next several years were challenging as I proved to be medication resistant and allergic to numerous medications.  As time passed it became clear that I had a severe form of bipolar including mixed episodes (mania and depression at the same time) and very rapid cycling.  In my case I can cycle as often as every 3 minutes based on my therapist's calculations.  This blog started in 2006, on my 30th birthday, and initially I anticipated an abstract blog discussing how I was managing life with this illness.  Soon after the blog began I became more ill than I had been to date and over the next few months it evolved into what it is now, a sometimes painfully honest story of my life with bipolar, PTSD and other anxiety disorders.  It was not until 2007 that we succeeded in decreasing the severity of my symptoms and slowing my cycling.  In 2008 a new version of Seroquel, called Seroquel XR, was released.  I started taking it before it was even readily available in pharmacies and it rapidly changed my life.  I was able to come off of sedating medications, lost 60 pounds, and felt good for the first time in my life.  I began to sleep more normally; I had always had severe insomnia.  In November of 2009 I switched to Emsam, an MAOI antidepressant that changed my life even more drastically.  Within 6 weeks of starting it I was diagnosed as "in remission" for the first time ever.  I started to sleep on a pattern, from 10 PM to 4 AM daily.  It was strange but it worked and for the first time in my adult life I had time for hobbies.

In November of 2010 I changed employers.  I had been working for the company that now employees me as a contracted employee and had developed their OT program.  I loved what I was doing and was excited to work for this employer.  Unfortunately 2 weeks before I was to change employers (but the same job) I caught whooping cough.  I was allergic to the shots as a child and simply was not immune.  After 2 weeks off work I returned and coughed through another month.  Several months later it was clear that I had developed asthma.  It turned out that the office where I was working was contaminated with black mold.  Even after it was allegedly cleared I had difficulty in the office, but I didn't need to be there very much.  However a combination of pollution and difficult home environments constantly triggered asthma attacks which were hard to treat without causing bipolar cycling.  My doctors recommended I consider changing jobs.  I refused on the basis that bipolar had dictated so much of my career and I did not want to give up the first position I loved and had been able to really choose. By July I had decent control of my asthma because I was able to get a nebulizer to do breathing treatments in my car between patients.

In spring of 2011 I began having pain and very heavy periods.  I was scheduled for surgery at the end of August.  Working became increasingly difficult as the pain became more constant and the first week of August would be my last working as I had to stop at that point to have adequate pain management.  Surgery removed the cause of the pain and I eagerly anticipated returning to work 3 weeks post-op.  By three weeks post-op it was clear that something that gone wrong in a surgery that was so carefully planned by anesthesia, my psychiatrist Dr. Brain and my gynecologist Dr. Sweetheart.  Because of my MAOI anesthesia was very carefully planned and only specific people were allowed to administer or prescribe any medication to me during the surgery or hospitalization.  I seemed to sail through it, at least for a few days.  Some medication, probably Reglan which is a nausea medication, was given to me that resulted in severe agitation called akasthesia.  Dr. Brain tried as hard as she could to stop this but even drastic combinations of antipsychotics failed to help and I was hospitalized on the psychiatric unit 5 weeks post op.  My agitation was controlled but the medication used resulted in depression, paranoia, confusion, and visual disturbances that kept me out of therapy with my psychologist, Dr. Mind as I couldn't drive.  As soon as it was feasible I came off that medication.  I tried to return to work the last week of October but work asked me to take longer to recover.  This made sense as I was severely depressed and unable to sleep.  For a short period I felt better but rapidly became worse.  Eventually I began to hallucinate and spent a few hours in a psych "safe room" in the ER then was admitted to medical with lithium toxicity.  The weeks after that are a blur but I requested hospitalization by mid-December as I knew I needed help to manage.  By that point I couldn't do anything and was showering only for appointments, eating nothing but cereal, and was very suicidal.  I was in the hospital for another 10 days for treatment of suicidal plans and intent.  I came home on a "safety plan" (aka I have little access to anything remotely dangerous until Dr. Mind says otherwise).

It is now March 2012 and I am trying to face life without the career that filled most of my time for the last 11 years, as well as working hard on managing my feelings in a better way than wanting to die.  Medication adjustments are ongoing, particularly lithium which is back at a much higher level than it has been in years since my first toxicity.  I have very few other medications left at this time and am needing to wait for other meds to be released.  Until then we try to get the maximal result out of what there is.  I still can't do much of anything, including cooking, most hygiene, laundry, cleaning, etc. without help or partial completion then I forget and have to start over.  I just washed one load of clothes 4 times before getting it clean and dried without forgetting/getting smelly.

Depending on my mood this blog varies from very serious to occasionally light-hearted.  It is my journal, my memory, the source of some wonderful friends, and my heart.  It is where I think my way through things.  I am often blunt and I try to be extremely open about living with mental illness.  I also write about child abuse, childhood sexual abuse, family relationships and how those are affected by my illness, and anything else that comes up in my life.  I welcome respectful discussion of anything with the caveat that I have the write to stop discussions that I feel unable to handle.  I have been amazed at the respectful way nearly everyone on this blog has addressed very sensitive topics.

CAST OF MAJOR CHARACTERS
Just Me Jen:  Initially the blog was kept very anonymous and I wrote under the name Just Me.  After seeing a friend's son experience stigma at 9 years of age I decided that part of the problem that allows stigma is that not enough people are open about mental illness.  At that time I made a point of decreasing my anonymity while maintaining professionalism.

Dr. Mind:  My psychologist since a few weeks after the blog began.  He has helped me through many of the hardest aspects of my life and has believed in me when almost nobody else did. He is firm and blunt and requires me to work hard and together we've made my life look like my dream goal of "normal", at least for a while.

Dr. Brain:  My psychiatrist of 9 years.  She is amazing and seems to know through intuition how to best treat me.  If she had not keeping systematically trying one med after another and listened to my concerns and requests and how I felt a med was impacting me I would never have worked this long or had the life that I have had.  She is a  marvel with meds and is just as willing to hold me while I cry as she is to hand out scripts.  She has spent enormous amounts of time with me as opposed to prior psychiatrists who wrote me off or ignored me.

Dr. Body:  My family doctor.  He is very invested in helping me feel as good as possible while being frustratingly restricted by my allergies and meds I can't take.  I went to him when he was new out of residency and asked him if he was willing to work with me, never judge me, and be willing to accept that my psychiatrist has overruling power over anything other doctors do but that she would happily help him learn about me.  He agreed and while he finds it frustrating that he can keep me alive but rarely offer much comfort because of restrictions he is consistently ready to jump in and help me, including spending hours trying to find a pulmonologist willing to treat me and then giving the pulmonologist both a phone call of information and 3 typed pages of history and hints when we couldn't find anyone to treat my asthma.

My mother;  enough said.  Sometimes she really gets it and sometimes she really doesn't.

Anne:  A pseudonum I use for my niece who is one of the great loves of my life.  Since I've been so sick I do not see her nearly enough.  She is an amazing little girl who at  17 months expressed that she is a toddler, not a baby.  I never knew I could love anyone like I love her.