Just been diagnosed with bipolar. Feel utterly grim about it all

[LeGavrOrf]

Bipolar and elements of PTSD apparently.

Have been off work for 8 weeks and initially diagnosed by the GP as depressed, am on 225mg of venlafaxine which hasn't worked at all. Last week saw CPN and now have been given quietapine to take as well, 25mg.

I feel so low and have had suicidal thoughts mixed with feeling very down, and then other days where I am dashing about feeling as if I have had 20 double espressos.

I am just so down at having bipolar and worried about work and what this all means, I have also looked on the Internet and seen that 25mg of quietapine is a very small dose and should have a higher dose, I haven't been told to increase this at all. Plus I haven't seen a psychiatrist at all. Is it normal just to see a psychiatric nurse? I am seeing her again tomorrow, she is coming to my house as when I spoke to her yesterday I was so low and worried.

It's just a bloody horrible thing to come to terms with.

I've joined Netflix just to watch Luther from series 1, so I know who the fuck Alice is!
how are you feeling lovely? I've got my 'ticket for life' for wychwood so am committed to it now!

Lol yes forgot about the drunken domestic in shiney catsuits!
That will NEVER be you Getorf

Haha we were looking at them and drunkenly wondering what they row was all about.

Dolly I was completely nonplussed by Alice as well and started a thread on here 'who the fuck is Alice?'

I am definitely going to wychwood next year, might actually camp. Actually that is a lie. I am not going fucking camping for crying out loud.

OH MY CHRIST was Luther in subtone?

I don't forgive your son either.

I've got Luther on DVD dolly. You could have borrowed it. Tonight we have communicated by three mediums.
Mn,text and twitter. Tee hee.

Lol at three mediums, you sound like Derek Acorah.

I STILL don't understand twitter.

You must gav its good and we can make tea in my van and drive to one of our houses for poohs and showers but still camp. It's not exactly glasto is it?
Wonder who's headlining next year.
Hope Idris is dj ing and no he was in ku Kuee
I could barely speak to ds. I think it was mean of him not to text me at 2am for his mum to rock up in her pjs with hair in a ponytail to lust after the dj.

Me neither, I only tweet dolly ha ha

What in the name of Christ is ku kuee? Is that what they call mightclubs nowadays?

Your ds should have text you, so you could have let us know,and there could have an embarassimg contingent of mums turn up at the gig, can you imagine,a wonderful way to show ds up.

It's that chavvy place by weather spoons. Used to be Lorraine's in my day.
Yes I can just see us all crashing in. "Idris Idris we are here, yoohoo!" Barging those young uns outta the way.

Hahaha at a nightclub called Lorraine's, and there I was thinking Cheltenham was sophisticated. Yes I can imagine us lot rolling up looking like mums going to a Take That concert shouting for Idris.

Christ he is a perfect specimen of a man.

I'm old enough to remember Lorraine's, had a reputation for ladies of the night working there! So my dad said anyway!

I've got camping tickets for life, god help me, so I'll see how I feel at the time. If its sunny maybe, if the kids are with me we may camp for one night. Maybe

I think my jet lag must be worse than I think because I don't understand this thread at all now. Lorraines? Ku kuee? And weatherspoons in cheltenham and Luther and shiney catauits? Wtf?

I did get the part about Idris Elba though. Mmmm yummy.

GetOrf hope you're doing ok! Don't worry about talking bollocks, that's the mania as someone else mentioned. If talking bollocks is the worst that's not so bad! My worst bout of mania involved all sorts of dangerous crap with me thinking all the while that I was invincible.

My mum was also diagnosed a couple of years ago. She had quite a lot of fairly harmless psychoses - thinking that squirrels were talking to her (there are a lot of squirrels in Toronto), thinking there was a Facebook & twitter conspiracy against our family, there were messages on the radio and in newspapers for her that she had to decode, etc. Now I come home to find another classic OCD / schizo / psychotic symptom - she has taped EVERYWHERE around the house with sellotaope, masking tape and 3 colours of duct tape. Ostensibly it's to keep the cold out. It's fucking 30 degrees here mum, and it's um, August?!?

I might start a thread actually, I'm quite worried.

Sorry. We digressed. It cheered le gav of up though a d confused hearts so that was good.
Right back to bi polar now.

Oh shit hearts that is so bloody worrying for you. Does your mum live on her own? That's hard for you to deal with when you are only there for a while. That sounds really scary.

Sorry for the complete digression - me, dollytwat and ledkr met up at a festival in Cheltenham in June, we parked ourselves in chairs, drank a wine box and watched the world go by. It was great fun, and we said to each other how surprised we were that we had drunk wine all day and weren't plastered. We were a lot more tiddly than we thought and ended up singing and dancing along to the Human League. It was great fun.

Hi there, my grandmother had bipolar. She was diagnosed aged 20 and lived to the ripe of old age of 82. She was on meds since she was 20, she had her levels checked fairly regularly and kept her balanced most of the time, so try not to fear the medication too much, get it right and it will help you. She definitely had her ups and downs too - she had a good support network around her to help her through the lows but also to make sure she didn't go too gung-ho during her highs. Do you have family members or friends who you can really talk to about it? I remember her having some bad times during my 20s.....she would ring me up in the middle of the night when she was trying to harm herself, I would just keep talking to her....we got through it. She was an amazing woman, who achieved a lot, was very successful and who taught me a lot about life, she definitely wasn't defined by her bipolar and I'm sure it won't you either.

OMG shit no! I was not complaining!! Digress away, as much as you like! I was only trying to be funny I could tell it was cheering people up which is a great thing!

Yama that's a lovely post. Medication is right - someone told me at the beginning that it was like a diabetic person having to get their insulin levels right and I think that's a very apt comparison.

Thank you much Yama. That is really reassuring and thanks so much for posting that. I am scared that I will be a burden to dd, I had a funny five minutes today and she was frightened. But she is being so cool in comforting me and saying this is not me and I will get better. But I don't want her to see this at 17 and I don't want her to worry.

Hearts you would LOVE tha festival, it's a family festival and loads going on. It's called Wychwood and is held on the Whitsun bank holiday every year in Cheltenham. It was fantastic fun.

That is a really good thing to think of re a diabetic person, it is quite difficult to think of it as a physical problem, because it is a mental issue people think you should be able to control it and snap out of it. I just bloody wish I could!

Hearts how is your mum?

Getorf I'm sure I've told you this before, but I take citalopran as I get very stressed out otherwise. I think depression etc is a chemical imbalance so once I've changed everything in my life I can and its still no better, I know I need ad's to help.

Tiredness is a big trigger for my depression. So I try to watch my late nights if I'm working full time. I also recognise better when I'm feeling depressed as its starting.

I'm sure once you get your meds sorted you'll feel so much better, and your dd loves you to bits, it's ok for her to be there for you too. She's lovely and very sensible so I'm fairly certain she's proud to be your rock for a bit

I've heard of Wychwood before, it sounds great. Whitsun is right around my birthday and DD2's so would be a great thing to do! DH would take some convincing...

My mum's ok. She is the main carer for my darling Dad who has stage 4 cancer, in the middle of chemo etc, so not ideal for either of them. She refuses to admit anything is wrong, but her OCD behaviours are getting worse. Fortunately none of them are dangerous and they don't seem to interfere with daily life too much, unless you count the number of minutes (hours?) she wastes every day wiping down surfaces and washing the floor. Actually, it's funny, she won't talk about her bipolar, is still VERY angry about her sectioning in 2010/11, will not see a psychiatrist or therapist, BUT she is religiously taking her meds. You would think with my diagnosis (and she was there on the front lines for me when DH kicked me out) she would be able to talk to me and lean o. Me a bit.... But no.

Enough of a highjack!!!

GetOrf, when you get your head around all of this, you could think about talking to someone together with DD. DH came to a therapy session or two with me, and then we also involved the (very young at the time) DDs. It came out that DD1 thought I had been in hospital because I had cancer Anyways my point is, I think it's good to be open if you can, to an age-appropriate level, because the unknown is always so much worse for kids.

Having worked with a few people who've had a bipolar parent, I'd say the most scary thing (from their POV) has been when a parent has refused help/stopped taking their meds and then had a manic episode.

But that's not what you're doing. I agree about trying to explain it to her (in as much as you can, given that your diagnosis hasn't been confirmed, and also only as much as she needs to know) and also explain that you might not yet be on the right meds, but if not, then you will be soon.

LeGarv

I was diagnosed a few weeks back (June I think) with the same, Bipolar with elements of PTSD, after talking to my psych more and more (I see him every 3/4 days just now) he thinks I am/have Bipolar and he is unsure about PTSD.

I was terrified as I am a single parent but Psych has been really nice and told me he just needs to stablise my over thinking (hypo mania) and I might not be on the anti-psychotics for longer than 12 weeks (if I am better).

I also asked how this happened but he couldn't answer me, he had been to see a 91 yr old that very day and she had her first diagnosis.

It good the Quetiapine are making you sleepy, I got up to 750mg and they didn't work (which worried me even more) but I'm now on another anti-psychotic and praying it works.

It is horrible to come to terms with but now you can get the treatment your need.

Hi there OP - Apologies, I haven't read through this thread and may well have already replied lol!

Anyway, I have bipolar type two and was diagnosed a few months after my son (now eleven) was born. I think I had it before but it wasn't diagnosed. I had a very bad nervous breakdown several years previously and was in hospital.

What I would say is this - BP is a nuisance of an illness but one that can be managed successfully. I have been on various medications over the years because some didn't work well and others became less effective over time.

I would also say that medication and management of the illness brings liberation from the ups and downs. It isn't very nice to wake up each morning and not know how one will feel that day.

Suicidal thoughts are, sadly, very common with BP. They are also serious and need to be monitored by you and discussed with your psychiatrist. Obviously, if you feel you might harm yourself, then that is a medical emergency and you will need help - you are perfectly entitled to call for an ambulance in this situation.

I am mainly well nowadays. I do have bad days still but life is better, by far, than it was. Hope you are okay.

Just popping in to see how you're doing - and to say I'm sure 'burdened' is the last thing your DD will feel. I know it's not at all the same, but my mum obviously has some kind of mental health issue, and steadfastly refuses to see a doctor, as she has done for years, although quite plainly there is something wrong. It makes me much more cross than knowing any diagnosis ever could - I guess I'm saying what minnie is saying, but it doesn't hurt to repeat I hope.