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Bi-Polar Disorder: One Man's Story: 1955-2005
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
BI-POLAR DISORDER: A 50 YEAR STORY: 1955-2005.
My experience both long-term with manic-depression and in recent years with this illness and other maladies as well as my personal circumstances at home in relation to my wife’s illness should provide you with an adequate information base to evaluate my situation. This wider experience will place by bi-polar disorder in context and should provide others with what I hope is a helpful perspective on their own condition and situation. THIS IS ONLY ONE MAN'S EXPERIENCE...there are permutations and combinations for everyone with this disorder.
1. Manic-Depression: Preamble
After half a dozen episodes, varying in length from several days to several months, and many experiences on the fringe of manic-depressive illness between 1955 and 1980, I was treated with lithium carbonate in Launceston by a psychiatrist. It seemed appropriate to provide some detailed statement since the issue of this bi-polar illness is a complex one, varies from person to person and has come up many times over the more than forty years that I have had to deal with its symptoms in my personal and working life. It is difficult to characterize my condition and it is for this reason that I have sent to you this somewhat long statement. I hope the account below, in both long and short term contexts, will explain adequately my reasons for not wanting to serve in any employment position.
2. Manic-Depression: Long-term 1955-2002
At the hypomanic end there were experiences like the following: "violent emotional instability and oscillation", "abrupt changes" and "a sudden change in a large number of intellectual assumptions."1 Mental balance, a psychological coherence between intellect and emotion and a rational reaction to the outside world all seemed to blow away, over a few hours to a few days, as I was plunged in a sea of what could be variously described as: emotional heat, intense awareness, sensitivity, sleeplessness, voluble talking, racing mental activity, fear, excessive and clearly irrational paranoia--and in 1968 virtually total incoherence at times--at one end of the spectrum; or intense depression, melancholia, an inner sense of despair and a desire to commit suicide at the other end. The latter I experienced from 1963 to 1965, off and on; the former from 1964 to 1990, on several occasions.
The longest depression was in 1963 and 1964 with perhaps two six month periods from June to November and July to December, respectively. The longest episode of hypomania was from June to November 1968. The hypomania in 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1990 were treated quickly with medication, although the 1978 episode, beginning in January, seemed to last for at least three or four months and had a mostly depressive component. I had no experience of this variously characterized illness in childhood although, beginning in 1955/6 at the age of 11/12, I manifested symptoms which, in retrospect seem to me examples of a lack of control of my emotions. It was not until I was 19 in 1963 that any characteristics of this illness became more clearly apparent in my day-to-day life.
The account above has none of the fine detail that I could include like: mental hallucinations, specific fears and paranoias, electroconvulsive therapy, psychiatric analysis and diagnosis, the many years of dealing with a death wish, experiences in and out of several hospitals with a great number of people, situations and, looking back, often humorous and absurd events.
There are a variety of manic-depressive profiles, different typicalities. It is bipolar because both ends of the spectrum, the mood swings, were experienced over the period 1955 to 1990, 35 years. Thanks to lithium the extremes were treated by the time I was 36 years of age. It took another ten years for me to fully accept the lithium treatment. From time to time I tried to live without the lithium. Such, in as brief a way as possible, is the summary of my experience over the years. I would like, now, to focus on my more recent experience of the last several years.
3. Manic-Depression: Short-term 2002-2005
My supervising psychiatrist in Launceston in 2002 suggested I go onto fluvoxamine in addition to the lithium treatment. Fluvoxamine is an anti-depressant. The fluvoxamine removed the blacknesses I experienced at night, from late in the evening to early morning. The death-wish has always been associated with these blacknesses. With the fluvoxamine, gradually the blacknesses, the depressions, disappeared. The death wish remained as did sleeping problems. Frequent urination, periodic nausea and memory problems related, in part, to the shock treatments I had back in the 1960s were new problems. But the dark and debilitating feelings, I had experienced for so many years, were at last removed. After forty years of bi-polar disorder with periodic debilitating episodes, most of the worst symptoms seemed at last to have been treated.
4. Other Physical Difficulties:
Three years ago I was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema which gives me a shortage of breath. I also suffered from RSI which I treated with exercise, thus lessening the effects. These two conditions exacerbated the remaining bi-polar symptoms by making it difficult to engage in an activity for more than short periods of time. The memory problem also contributes, as you can appreciate, to many practical problems in day-to-day life. I mention these things because, although my bi-polar disorder is largely treated, there is a constellation of physical and psychological difficulties remaining. For the most part in community life I rarely talk about these things and most people who know me have no idea of my medical history or the difficulties I live under physically. I have for many years regarded these difficulties as part of my own spiritual battles that I must face.
5. My Wife’s Illness:
My wife, Christine, has also not been well for many years since we moved north of Capricorn in 1982. The doctors do not know what the cause of her physical problems is, but they are problems that make life difficult for her and our life together. Her symptoms include: dizziness, nausea, back-ear-and-eye ache, headache, among some two dozen or more maladies. Sometimes, with the aid of steroids, she seems to recover for a time, but when she goes off the steroids her symptoms get worse.
Perhaps the one advantage my wife’s ill-health has is that it allows me to focus on her problems, to talk about her problems, when the subject comes up in community life and thus take the focus off of my own disability. Consequently, people have little idea of the physical problems I face and much more of an idea of hers. I don’t mind this for I am not particularly interested in talking about my disability, but it has the disadvantage of people having little idea of the battles I face in my personal life.
6. Concluding Statement:
This brief and general account summarizes both the long history of this illness and where I am at present in what has been a life-long battle. I think it is important to state, in conclusion, that I possess a clinical disorder, a bio-chemical, an electro-chemical, imbalance having to do with brain chemistry. The transmission of messages in my brain is simply overactive. One to two percent of the population suffer from this illness. The extremes of this illness are now largely treated by lithium carbonate and fluvoxamine but a residue of symptoms remains which I have described briefly above. The other factors that describe my personal situation I have also outlined and need to be taken into consideration as well.
I have gone into the detail I have above because I wanted to give you some idea of the extent of this illness and its subtle and not-so-subtle affects. I really feel quite exhausted from the battle with this illness and would prefer to continue to serve in community and everyday life in ways that my health allows.
I have had a radio program for more than three years in Launceston and have been involved in small writing and community tasks here in George Town. All these tasks involve only short bursts of energy and activity. I am also involved in various domestic activities here in George Town again involving short periods of time. These activities are all within my capacity for short time periods, periods also necessitated by my chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but that is a separate issue which I do not want to overemphasise.
In three years I will be 65 and will go on the Australian Pension. I have not worked in full time employment for seven years for reasons associated with this illness. I have been on a Disability Services Pension(DSP) for three years. Although I have been treated for the worst side-affects of manic-depressive illness, I have little energy, enthusiasm or capacity for full-time employment and it is for this reason I have been granted the DSP.
I trust the above outline provides an adequate information base for you to evaluate my situation. I apologize for going on at such length, but I felt it was essential to put readers in the picture, so to speak, if they were to get a reasonalbe outline of one person's experience over half-a-century with this disorder. I look forward to hearing from anyone in the weeks ahead should my experience be relevant to your own.
Ron Price
October 2005 :thumb:
My experience both long-term with manic-depression and in recent years with this illness and other maladies as well as my personal circumstances at home in relation to my wife’s illness should provide you with an adequate information base to evaluate my situation. This wider experience will place by bi-polar disorder in context and should provide others with what I hope is a helpful perspective on their own condition and situation. THIS IS ONLY ONE MAN'S EXPERIENCE...there are permutations and combinations for everyone with this disorder.
1. Manic-Depression: Preamble
After half a dozen episodes, varying in length from several days to several months, and many experiences on the fringe of manic-depressive illness between 1955 and 1980, I was treated with lithium carbonate in Launceston by a psychiatrist. It seemed appropriate to provide some detailed statement since the issue of this bi-polar illness is a complex one, varies from person to person and has come up many times over the more than forty years that I have had to deal with its symptoms in my personal and working life. It is difficult to characterize my condition and it is for this reason that I have sent to you this somewhat long statement. I hope the account below, in both long and short term contexts, will explain adequately my reasons for not wanting to serve in any employment position.
2. Manic-Depression: Long-term 1955-2002
At the hypomanic end there were experiences like the following: "violent emotional instability and oscillation", "abrupt changes" and "a sudden change in a large number of intellectual assumptions."1 Mental balance, a psychological coherence between intellect and emotion and a rational reaction to the outside world all seemed to blow away, over a few hours to a few days, as I was plunged in a sea of what could be variously described as: emotional heat, intense awareness, sensitivity, sleeplessness, voluble talking, racing mental activity, fear, excessive and clearly irrational paranoia--and in 1968 virtually total incoherence at times--at one end of the spectrum; or intense depression, melancholia, an inner sense of despair and a desire to commit suicide at the other end. The latter I experienced from 1963 to 1965, off and on; the former from 1964 to 1990, on several occasions.
The longest depression was in 1963 and 1964 with perhaps two six month periods from June to November and July to December, respectively. The longest episode of hypomania was from June to November 1968. The hypomania in 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1990 were treated quickly with medication, although the 1978 episode, beginning in January, seemed to last for at least three or four months and had a mostly depressive component. I had no experience of this variously characterized illness in childhood although, beginning in 1955/6 at the age of 11/12, I manifested symptoms which, in retrospect seem to me examples of a lack of control of my emotions. It was not until I was 19 in 1963 that any characteristics of this illness became more clearly apparent in my day-to-day life.
The account above has none of the fine detail that I could include like: mental hallucinations, specific fears and paranoias, electroconvulsive therapy, psychiatric analysis and diagnosis, the many years of dealing with a death wish, experiences in and out of several hospitals with a great number of people, situations and, looking back, often humorous and absurd events.
There are a variety of manic-depressive profiles, different typicalities. It is bipolar because both ends of the spectrum, the mood swings, were experienced over the period 1955 to 1990, 35 years. Thanks to lithium the extremes were treated by the time I was 36 years of age. It took another ten years for me to fully accept the lithium treatment. From time to time I tried to live without the lithium. Such, in as brief a way as possible, is the summary of my experience over the years. I would like, now, to focus on my more recent experience of the last several years.
3. Manic-Depression: Short-term 2002-2005
My supervising psychiatrist in Launceston in 2002 suggested I go onto fluvoxamine in addition to the lithium treatment. Fluvoxamine is an anti-depressant. The fluvoxamine removed the blacknesses I experienced at night, from late in the evening to early morning. The death-wish has always been associated with these blacknesses. With the fluvoxamine, gradually the blacknesses, the depressions, disappeared. The death wish remained as did sleeping problems. Frequent urination, periodic nausea and memory problems related, in part, to the shock treatments I had back in the 1960s were new problems. But the dark and debilitating feelings, I had experienced for so many years, were at last removed. After forty years of bi-polar disorder with periodic debilitating episodes, most of the worst symptoms seemed at last to have been treated.
4. Other Physical Difficulties:
Three years ago I was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema which gives me a shortage of breath. I also suffered from RSI which I treated with exercise, thus lessening the effects. These two conditions exacerbated the remaining bi-polar symptoms by making it difficult to engage in an activity for more than short periods of time. The memory problem also contributes, as you can appreciate, to many practical problems in day-to-day life. I mention these things because, although my bi-polar disorder is largely treated, there is a constellation of physical and psychological difficulties remaining. For the most part in community life I rarely talk about these things and most people who know me have no idea of my medical history or the difficulties I live under physically. I have for many years regarded these difficulties as part of my own spiritual battles that I must face.
5. My Wife’s Illness:
My wife, Christine, has also not been well for many years since we moved north of Capricorn in 1982. The doctors do not know what the cause of her physical problems is, but they are problems that make life difficult for her and our life together. Her symptoms include: dizziness, nausea, back-ear-and-eye ache, headache, among some two dozen or more maladies. Sometimes, with the aid of steroids, she seems to recover for a time, but when she goes off the steroids her symptoms get worse.
Perhaps the one advantage my wife’s ill-health has is that it allows me to focus on her problems, to talk about her problems, when the subject comes up in community life and thus take the focus off of my own disability. Consequently, people have little idea of the physical problems I face and much more of an idea of hers. I don’t mind this for I am not particularly interested in talking about my disability, but it has the disadvantage of people having little idea of the battles I face in my personal life.
6. Concluding Statement:
This brief and general account summarizes both the long history of this illness and where I am at present in what has been a life-long battle. I think it is important to state, in conclusion, that I possess a clinical disorder, a bio-chemical, an electro-chemical, imbalance having to do with brain chemistry. The transmission of messages in my brain is simply overactive. One to two percent of the population suffer from this illness. The extremes of this illness are now largely treated by lithium carbonate and fluvoxamine but a residue of symptoms remains which I have described briefly above. The other factors that describe my personal situation I have also outlined and need to be taken into consideration as well.
I have gone into the detail I have above because I wanted to give you some idea of the extent of this illness and its subtle and not-so-subtle affects. I really feel quite exhausted from the battle with this illness and would prefer to continue to serve in community and everyday life in ways that my health allows.
I have had a radio program for more than three years in Launceston and have been involved in small writing and community tasks here in George Town. All these tasks involve only short bursts of energy and activity. I am also involved in various domestic activities here in George Town again involving short periods of time. These activities are all within my capacity for short time periods, periods also necessitated by my chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, but that is a separate issue which I do not want to overemphasise.
In three years I will be 65 and will go on the Australian Pension. I have not worked in full time employment for seven years for reasons associated with this illness. I have been on a Disability Services Pension(DSP) for three years. Although I have been treated for the worst side-affects of manic-depressive illness, I have little energy, enthusiasm or capacity for full-time employment and it is for this reason I have been granted the DSP.
I trust the above outline provides an adequate information base for you to evaluate my situation. I apologize for going on at such length, but I felt it was essential to put readers in the picture, so to speak, if they were to get a reasonalbe outline of one person's experience over half-a-century with this disorder. I look forward to hearing from anyone in the weeks ahead should my experience be relevant to your own.
Ron Price
October 2005 :thumb:
0
Comments
As an attempt of generating something worthwhile out of this thread - my friends think I might be bi-polar based on my dramatic mood swings. What are other possible diagnoses and what should I do to check? I don't want it to affect my medical career.
Speak to a gp. I'd have thought the depressive episodes that are part of bi-polar would have you seeking help anyway. Not everyone knows they are manic but most people can see when theyre feeling depressed.
Other diagnoses-if you really do suffer from manic/hypomanic episodes then it'll be a bi-polar diagnosis.
Like I said I have looked after people with bi-polar and I must admit initially I was very ignorant to it and was very very cautious around those with it but that is coz I neva understood anything about it, but more people suffer from it that what I actually realised!