I think, therefore I am: I can’t think, therefore I am sick?!

Sick: definition:
1. afflicted with ill health or disease; ailing.
2. affected with nausea; inclined to vomit.
3. deeply affected with some unpleasant feeling, as of sorrow, disgust, or boredom: sick at heart; to be sick of parties.
4. mentally, morally, or emotionally deranged, corrupt, or unsound:
a sick mind; wild statements that made him seem sick.

Being sick in actual terms to most of us simply means being unwell. But for the purposes of this post, for me it means being cognitively impaired (unable to think!) in some fashion. As the title says: I can’t think, therefore I am sick!
Day to day I am able to function, but I find myself functioning ‘slower’ than I remember myself doing when I was younger. (I remember a vibrant, outspoken, cocky, self-assured, ‘I can take on the world’ 20 year old who thought she had the world at her feet, ready for the conquering.)
Now, I just seem to think slower, take longer to recall information, forget things/conversations/events/promises altogether, take longer to make a decision and just simply seem to operate slower altogether across all spheres of my life. I notice it, others might not. It annoys the hell out of me, especially the recalling of information. (Ever have the feeling that something is on the ‘tip of your tongue’, a word, phrase, an event… just out of reach of your working memory.. yep, that’s me too…)

The medical profession have, for years, understood that cognitive impairment goes hand in hand with psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s. It is only in the last few years that the idea of lasting cognitive impairment in those of us struggling with bipolar disorder is being given any weight.
We all know that during spells of mania or depression that cognitive impairment is part and parcel of our dysfunction/spell. But lasting cognitive impairment even in euthymic/stable individuals is a new train of thought for the medical profession. I don’t for the life of me see why it took so long for neurologists to even think this. As someone who struggles with bipolar I could have told you I had some sort of deficit.; but no one asked!!?

Unlike patients who are schizophrenic, those of us with bipolar do not have to deal with IQ deficits, but we do have to deal with difficulties in attention span as well as short and long term memory difficulties, – at least I do. I can recall events from twenty years ago with a crisp clarity, but ask me to recall an event that happened two months ago and I will ask you what month that was?

Bipolar disorder/illness is really the ‘poor relation’ among psychiatric illnesses. We are the ones whose ‘illness’ appears not to matter as much as others, whose symptoms are not worthy of being studied or not studied as much, and despite being on the WHO’s radar in sixth place in the top ten causes of disability worldwide in the 15 – 44 year age group, it is only now that neurological/psychiatric studies into the long term effect of bipolar illness on memory/cognitive functions are taking place.

There is no doubt that some of the medications from the myriad of meds out there can actually exacerbate the problem of memory loss/recall and perhaps it is for this reason that we have been left behind in the field of long-term studies. It’s been seen as a ‘med thing’ and not a ‘symptom thing’. Or perhaps it is because depression of any kind has for so many years been brushed under the carpet and ignored as were/are the people struggling with it. Any sort of medical treatment is expensive. Specialist treatment by expert professionals is even more so, so perhaps it is a matter of cost that hardly enough study has been conducted into the side effects/symptoms of long term depression. It has been ‘bean-counted’ and we have come up as disposable or not worth the risk – until now.

At least the sands appear to be shifting. At least now, more research is being done – it’s better late than never I suppose. And it’s not too late for me. I have a tendency to write myself off – hey, that’s a symptom of my bipolar, but I’m not dead yet and until that happens there is always hope – an anticipation that things will improve for those of us struggling with bipolar and an expectation that better medications will appear and more studies will be done so that one day, perhaps, we can be symptom free – completely- for the rest of our lives. Now wouldn’t that be wonderful?

February’s here and that means………

I have family in Australia. The land of sunshine and red earth, they all call it Paradise.. Hey Edel, we live in Paradise…!! I hate ‘em..
I emailed my brother last Spring and described the swans nestling on the banks of the local canal where I walk. His email came back filled with the dolphins he sees in the river every day as he travels in to work, blinded by the sunshine… No comparison really now is there?

My sister and two of my three brothers have all been in Australia for the past eight years, my eldest brother has been there for the past 23. He’s an Aussie now, even the Irish brogue is well gone from his voice and believe me, that’s difficult to get rid of.
Winter is a difficult time of the year. November/December are the most difficult for me. Christmas brings little joy as most of my family members are not even in the same hemisphere as me. There can be a bit of the “bah, humbug” about me. Then comes January and it (depression, sadness, general grumpiness) just seems to get worse. Spring is not quite here yet, Summer (and holidays) seems along way off and the Christmas holidays are now a distant memory. It is statistically the month of SAD, seasonal affective disorder….. Follow this link for a really good general article:

10 Winter Depression Busters for Seasonal Affective Disorder
(I hope that works…. I’m really shit at embedding permalinks into my stuff…)

Anyway, under normal circumstances, I am looking at facing into a long and dreary few months. But it’s February and that means Australia beckons. I am lucky enough that most years I can make my way to my siblings to spend a few weeks with them and while there, soak up the warming, uplifting sunlight. Last year I crawled there on all fours (metaphorically speaking). I almost didn’t come home. The sunshine didn’t really lift the heavy veil of sadness that seemed to have just wrapped itself around me. This year, it’s better. And I am a few weeks away from heading down under, to my beloved sister and brothers when I can bathe in the light and joy of my family. I can taste it. I can’t wait. And then I feel ashamed at feeling so euphoric.

This past year has brought many changes in my life. I’ll be turning 47 in April so I am no spring chicken, but I find myself facing into this year with a ‘blank diary’. It is the first time in my life that I have nothing planned, I have no work, my ‘children’ are almost reared, my life is my own. To be honest, I am a bit scared. I can fill my days with housework and washing if I want, but there is more to life than clean clothes and a spotless kitchen! So what to do with my life is the next question, or perhaps more aptly, what to do with the next phase of my life. I’m not ready, able or willing to go back to work of some sort yet. My career of the past twenty years is over for the moment. I have to either reinvent myself, or find something along the same lines as what I know to do for the next god knows how long until I can formally retire..!

For the moment, I am looking forward to the next few weeks where I am with my family. That is enough for me, for now…….

This is my daughter….. and I am so proud

Okay, so this link doesn’t work if you just try to click on the link to follow it. But if you cut and paste it to a new tab it brings you to the video…. Hope this works folks… Let me know if it doesn’t!

Just when you thought things were getting better……….

What a strange journey is this life….

I find myself at a strange crossroads. The past year has not been an easy journey. It has been filled with doubt, fear, loathing, and such a sad sorrow. Even describing it like this just doesn’t do it “justice”. It’s been crippling, emotionally, physically, every which way. It’s a year, almost to the day since I went to my psydoc and got the diagnosis that on top of my now swinging bipolar I was also suffering severe depression – unrelated!! Go figure!!

I’ve been wondering at the highs and lows of the past year, wondering how I got through the year to start with, how I’ve come out of the worst of it, what will be the lasting effects of it and where to go from here…

I’ve often felt I must have done something terrible in a past life to deserve this bipolar. I’ve often felt that I am the luckiest person on the planet to have the family I have. I’ve often wanted to go to bed, take a pile of pills and not wake up the next day because at that particular time in my life, it was just too hard to try and live each day. I’ve often thanked my lucky stars I didn’t do that.

There is a part of me that knows this illness is responsible for some of the worst times in my life. There is also a part of me that feels I deserve the worst times of my life and then some. There is a part of me that feels like I deserve the treatment I receive from friends – that I am less important than them in some way and therefore deserve to be left by the wayside as some have chosen to do. There is a huge part of me that really resents that, but deep down somewhere there is a part of me feels that I must have done something or said something to actually deserve it. I’ve often said before that without a support group we don’t get through this unscathed, none of us. But unless your ‘support group’ sign up to that willingly, can you blame them for vamoosing.. I’m using the pronoun ‘you’ here, but I really mean me.
I don’t really know what I want to say, or write here today, I just know that for some reason the last few weeks I have been doubting who I am. Things are not easy at the moment in this house. Tensions are high and bubbling away ready to burst at a moments provocation. I don’t like it. It makes me feel nervous. Because of the depression, we have all had a tough year. My kids have to put up with a lot when I’m ‘absent’. So does himself. Everyone does. Its insidious – it affects everyone, no man is an island and with depression you can’t live alone so you affect those around you too. So I suppose this whole family is in recovery…. We are all trying desperately to just get through it. And it’s hard. Today is hard. Today I just want to go back to bed and pull the covers over my head and wait for tomorrow……