The biggest thank you

I cannot explain how grateful I am to Julia for helping me with this blog while I was in the hospital. The days that I was most sick it helped so much to email her whatever had been happening and let her sort it out into English. I had a hard time making much sense through some of that, and it is very helpful that she kept things written, plus I can look back at what I wrote to her and know more about what happened. I couldn't write well enough to keep track of it until about Friday, so until that time my journal is a combination of one huge list of things I wanted to remember and then when I could write more the bits I remembered of the earlier days.

She also took on the task of getting my email to me while making sure I didn't get any mean emails. I was far too sensitive through most of that to have handled a mean comment, and I really needed the comments I did get. I can't begin to explain the help I got from that.

One of the worst parts of the hospital, at least this time and at least for me, was that there was very little 1:1 support. I'm used to having tons of support between Dr. Brain and Dr. Mind, and that whole week I had none of that. I had groups where very little was addressed towards my situation. I had people to talk to, but all of them were people with major depression who were having trouble with meds not working or not doing things they needed to do to keep up with feeling ok. In contrast, I was bipolar, I was there for a scheduled admission to change a med, and I wasn't just having an episode. So many of the things I deal with were at least somewhat different; and to top it all off because I was depressed nobody bothered much to talk about bipolar and there is a difference. It wasn't until I started repeating "I'm hypomanic, I'm hypomanic" the last day and a half that I had anyone recognize the difference.

So the support from people reading this blog was precisely what I needed, because you all treated me as who I am. And if it hadn't been for Julia I would have missed out on something I needed so desperately.

So, thank you a thousand times.