Hi, this is my first ever post on Mumsnet, but have been reading several threads and feels like this is a good place to be.. In the house on my own today as dh has just gone back to work after 3 weeks of hell..
He's had brief periods of severe depression before, and when I was pregnant with dd1 he went hypomanic (scared me to death). Then fine for 5 years. 2 years ago he had another depression, then 3 weeks ago he went from completely fine on Thursday morning, to overdose in a&e on Saturday night, like he literally fell off a cliff into the darkest place possible. He tried to cut his wrist with a knife in front of me, at which point I rang 999 as dd2 was upstairs ill asleep. Hospital for 5 days, which was horrendous, but he came out of suicidal thoughts with one dose of olanzapine & a nights sleep, & 3 weeks later on olanzapine & fluoxetine he is pretty much himself again. Now we have a clear bipolar diagnosis, and we are trying to cons to terms with a future that doesn't look like we expected it to. I am trying to carry on as normal but I'm very scared of this happening again. Usually he has years inbetween and episodes only last 2-3 weeks, so it's not had a big impact on out lives, indeed most people would have no idea it ever happened. He is really stable inbetween, a very chilled out contented man. I know how scared he is too, he wants to take lithium to stop this ever happening again but we have to wait 4 months to see the doc, and I'm not sure if the side effects outweigh the infrequency of his condition.
Thank you if you got this far. I think I just needed to put it down somewhere, we have very supportive family & friends but they don't know all the details as its no fair of me to share things about him that he doesn't want to. If anyone here is in a similar boat it would be nice to hear from you, or if anyone can give any insight into long term treatment & how if helps, would really appreciate it.