New to BP and need help please

[pcrash12]

Hey there everyone. I'm new on here so bear with me, lol. First, a little background on myself. I'm a average 37 year old guy who's married, has 3 kids, good job and pretty set in life. Well, things are taking a turn. I've noticed for years that something was just not right in my head. I get worked up easily, meaning, somedays, not all, but some days, every little thing irritates the heck out of me, stupid small stuff, for example, if my coffee cup from leaking when I go through the drive through, usually, I blow it off, but sometimes, I get so irritated, I'll through it out the car window and rant on for an hour over this. I can feel my blood pressure shoot sky high and almost like I'm running on auto, just acting on impulse. My wife would say to relax, it's just coffee. Well, I understand this, but my brain just doesn't except it. Stupid small stuff like this. I also yell a lot when I get worked up. I start sweating, racing my speech, yelling and my wife would say I'm stuck on a loop. I keep repeating something that happened a few hours ago and try to justify why I acted like this but after awhile, it sounds stupid, even to myself. I'd go through a few days acting like this and then i crash. I get depressed, miss work, cry which I never really have not done before and feel like why even live anymore. I promised my wife I'd go and get checked out. So, back in May, I went to my family doctors, he put me on 300mg wellbutrin and 1mg Ativan 4xs a day when needed. This seemed to do the trick. I was happy, things that used to anger me, I can now laugh at or at least, breathe through it without letting anyone know I was upset. It was a relief. Well, things took a turn October 1st. I went to work and my employer had to confront me regarding my attendance. I just kept saying that it was a personal issue but things are better now. Well, when I got wrote up for my attendance, I snapped. Not that moment, but the next day. I called my union rep to setup a meeting. I was planning on disclosing "some" of what I was going through with meds and all. I was hoping I just needed a tweak in meds to fix this. Durning my meeting at work, i lost it. I was on another planet. I knew what I was saying but I wasn't thinking things through. I threatened to take my employer to court, and started yelling at them. I wasn't violent, just out of control yelling. I was sweating bullets, hands were shaking all over the place, talking a mile a minute, stuttering over my words, not having any thought of what my actions could result in, I just didn't care. I felt like I was in the right and everyone else was dead wrong. I thought my actions were justified, at that time, but durning that meeting, I looked in the eyes of my employer and saw she was starting to tear up a bit. It was a I'm so sorry look. My union rep even asked if I needed to outside and relax. I said no, I'm fine, but I wasn't. I was realizing, something's wrong here. I was getting the look as if I just got a call that someone in the family just died look. I was able to, just by a hair, calm myself down enough in the meeting to regroup my actions. At this moment, I broke. I started crying for the first time in front of anyone. Now, I'm telling my employer that I am so sorry for my actions. I lost it, and lost it bad. I knew something was very wrong. My whole meeting felt like I was in another world or in my own zone and when hat feeling broke, it really broke. Thank god, my employer was very professional about this. My line of work is working in the health care sector assisting people with the rehabilitation from brain injury, so I knew that in order for me to properly do my job and assist other people, I needed to,get myself better first. I love my job. I have a good reputation at work and with the clients I assist everyday. I asked my employer if they thought based on what they just witnessed, if I should take a LOA. They said yes, they said that may be a good idea. So, now, I'm on short term disibility started on Oct.7th and went back to my doctor. He set up an appointment with a PDoc. I saw him last week. He asked me a million questions, sent me for blood work and a EEG scan. I was told today that I'm bipolar. He placed me on valproic acid to be added with my other meds that I still take. Well, now I'm scared. I wasn't expecting news like this. Now, to make the situation worse, over the last month, my wife has been on the verge of a nervous breakdown for stress in her job. Her job took a restructuring and now she is doing a job she completely hates and it's killing her. My wife thinks that I should suck all this up and go, back to work. She wants to quit her job and get another job but with me on disibility, we cannot afford that option at the moment. I would love nothing more than let her leave her job and find something she likes. But at the moment, I also need to help myself. She does not understand how this is effecting me. I'm stuck in a situation where I know, I need help, not just for myself, but for my family. I also know that I need to help my wife as well. She has been crying and emotionally exhausted from her job for months, before I left mine, and now there is resentment. She needs to look for another job for her own good and well being and I.need to get fixed. Part of my problem I realize is that I love my wife so much that seeing her in such distress and hurt and knowing that I can't take her pain away, caused my "episode" her pain caused my breakdown if that makes any sense at all. The stress of it all tore me apart. Ive been married 15 years and now my wife resents me for being on a leave. I've tried to explain that I didn't want this. I would gladly go back to work if it would help her but I know deep down, I am far from ready to assist others with there lives when I still need to fix mine. So what should I do? Do I suck it up and go back to work now against doctors recommendation and hope to god, I can properly and effectively do my job or do I stay and let this new med take hold first and then go back. My PDoc wants me off till mid December but I don't know if my wife can hold on that long. Help please!! Any advise on this is greatly appreciated. I know,what bipolar is, I just don't fully understand it as how it works. Are there triggers I can spot that can cause episodes or is it just random? I'm trying to look at all angles here and see what the best option is. If there is anyone who can kinda hold my hand in advise over this illness, please help. Just talking about this right now, I can feel my heart start racing almost like a panic attack starting. Is this normal with BP? I'm so lost at the moment, I have to try and get myself fixed, while helping my wife, and still be a parent to 3 great boys and all this while starting a new medication. Something has to give. I can feel it all building up, making sure our mortgage is in the account, kids are looked after, trying to make my wife feel better anyway possible while she is starting to resent me more and more everyday cause she can't understand what's going on in my brain. Do I suck it up? I'm fearing my marriage is holding on by a thread and my bipolar is the cause of this. I keep telling her, just hang I there, once I get on the proper dose, things will be better but she still thinks im just wimping out of work which is honestly not the case. I enjoy my job and the people there. Sorry to make my first post a long, drawn out rant but I'm honestly at a crossroads of what to do. I don't know much about BP except what I have read. Are these symptoms something I can control and deal with later. Was my major episode, which I honestly think looking back at now, I should of been put in the hospital for 72hrs, was this a sign that I should be ok for a long while and just go back to work and let the wife do what she needs to do or are these symptoms going to get more frequent and intense if I leave it unattended to for a little while longer.

Please help

[uni]

Hello Pcrash12, and welcome to the forum. I believe you'll find a lot of compassion and support among the members; I know this place has been a lifeline for me at my darkest times.

In reading your post it occurs to me that one of the best things you could have done for yourself is to write and get your feelings and thoughts out there. It's a small step, I know, but a positive one.

My personal bugaboo is depression, but there are others on the forum with experiences similar to yours so can no doubt relate. I do have a suggestion as my two cents worth, and that is to allow yourself some "reaction time" before making any important decisions. For example jobs, relationships, finances, health, legal etc. Breathe for a bit if you can, just for the moment. I don't know if this helps, but in any case I hope you will post again and let us know how you are doing.

[pcrash12]

Thanks uni. That does make sense. Posting about my situation was one of the hardest things I've done. I've kept it under wraps for along time. Finally, some people can relate or at best, understand what I'm dealing with.

[pcrash12]

No, that does help Lia. I need someone to be blunt with me. Don't sugar coat it, lay it all out. I can handle it even if it is not what I want to hear, it does help. Thanks

[AJ]

Welcome to the forum Pcrash12. Thank you for sharing something of yourself with us. You'll find this to be a very supportive group of people.

[paul m]

Hello Pcrash12 and welcome to the forum. I cannot tell you what to do, but I can relate my own experiences.

I too was 37 when the dam broke. Unfortunately I wasn't diagnosed properly and in any event I kept trying to work. I would have anyways. Bad mistake on my part. Just like an athlete who tries to come from an injury too soon and ends his career, I tried to come back too soon and ended my career.

Like you, I had a genuine illness(bipolar). Bipolar tends to be progressive until it is arrested in some way. That's a generality, but for most people it's true. So by not taking time off work and by not getting the right treatment, my illness worsened until I could no longer work and lasting damage was done. (not to mention that I got canned out of my last few jobs due to poor behaviour, caused by bipolar and good references would be hard to come by)

You didn't wake up one morning and have all of the symptoms that you have now and you won't wake up one day and discover that you are well again. Just like cancer generally takes a while to develop and to destroy your life, so does bipolar and just like cancer you don't get well over night and if you don't get it treated properly it has the potential to destroy your life.

Perhaps you will be lucky and find the right combination of meds and treatment right away. However even if you do, the average length of time for recovery is 6-12 mths. (assuming everything goes perfect, usually it takes much longer). Some do get very better and return to work in just a couple mths after a major breakdown, but very few.

In regards to panic and/or anxiety attacks, not everyone with bipolar gets them, but about 80-90% of us do. Once again , proper treatment can help to alleviate this.

In regards to sucking things up and walking them off, that's usually not possible. I loved my job and I was very good at it, but when I became seriously ill I just couldn't do the job.

When my wife and I got married we agreed that when we had kids she would stop working and become a full time homemaker and I had a good enough job to enable us to do that. However when our kids were young bipolar stole all of that from us and my wife was very resentful at her having to return to work while I laid around the house being moody. It caused a lot of emotional and financial problems and several separations. (and yes I felt very guilty about it)

Having said all of that, my wife and I still live happily together many yrs later, but for a number of years our lives can only be described as hellish.

The two best pieces of advice that I can give you are 1) for both you and your wife to learn all that you can about the illness. That includes what treatments are available, what medications are available and what side effects that you may get from the medications you take. You also should have wife attend a few sessions with your psychiatrist and you. In fact it may even help you as your wife may be able to describe a few symptoms that you haven't noticed.

2) examine your budget. It's surprising what you can cut out or change. My wife and I live on 20% less now, than what I was making alone 25 yrs ago(there has been a lot of inflation in 25 ys). Yet we are still surviving and enjoying life. Unfortunately we didn't examine our budget at the time because we expected for the best and didn't prepare for the worse. It would have been a lot easier to cut our spending at the time then try to repay the increased debt with much less income.

I wish you luck on your recovery and hope that it is a speedy one. However please remember that you are a good person with a bad illness, not a bad or lazy person with good excuses.

Please don't hesitate to ask questions, answer other people's questions or use this forum to vent out some of life's frustraions. Take Care. paul m

[pcrash12]

Thanks Paul m. What you posted sounds like a carbon copy of my situation. I appreciate you sharing that. It gives me sense of hope that life and my marriage can still thrive. I know what you mean by the wife being irritated/resentful. I hear it everyday. I'm at home and she's off working a job she hates. Believe me, I would much rather be working than staying home. I debated a few days ago to return to work just to relieve my home stress but on my way to speak to my employer, I had to pull over. That voice in the head and the feeling in the stomach telling me that it was a bad idea and I'm not ready yet. I turned around and came home. Thank god my employer is very understanding and willing to accomidate my needs. I just hate the disibility stuff. I get approved for for short term disibility on a month to month basis which I hate. My PDoc and family doc both signed me off till at least jan1. But I have a dr. Appt, every few weeks so,my insurance company always says they will cover me till my next appointment and then I have to all them, let them know what was done/said and they still contact the doctor and them extend my benefits for,another month at a time. Just frustration that's all.

[Determined]

Hi pcrash. I also just want to welcome you to the forum. I am sorry to hear that you have become victim to mental illness. It is harsh and unfair, as is any illness, but as Paul has shared it doesn't mean that your life still can't be just as rewarding and full as it was before. I am not BP but I have battled severe depression and anxiety since I was 19. I suppose if nothing else I learned how live with it and how to adapt to the change. I don't really have much to add. Paul has summed it up so very well and he, along with everyone else here has been reason enough for me to continue being a part of this forum. It has been very beneficial to me in getting through some very difficult times.

As far as work goes I will say this. A few years back I was stricken with the most devastating depressive episode I have ever experienced. My conventional means of working through it were ineffective. Doctors, therapists, pdocs, a hospital stay were all useless. I had just started a very good job and was devastated at the thought of losing it. After a couple weeks of pure hell I convinced myself that I could ride it out and still work. Big mistake. That thinking put me into the hospital and sent me on a downward spiral I didn't think was ever going to stop. On top of the depression itself I had to deal with all of the nasty by products of the illness, the guilt, the worry, the embarrassment, etc. Ultimately my employer had to let me go because I just couldn't "snap out of it."

The bottom line is that you have to look out for yourself right now. Hopefully your wife will learn to understand the severity of you condition and the time required to even begin recovery. Like all of us I know you hate to be sideline like this but if you don't allow yourself the time you need to recover you will quite simply be no good to anyone. It can be a long and difficult road to recovery but it is so worth it in the end.

Just on a side note, I have some friends in town who are BP and they are leading very productive, fulfilling lives. Never think it can't be the same for you.

Wish you all the best my friend and I hope you will continue to post here.

[pcrash12]

Thanks determined. I didn't realize how many people are out there that understand and helpful. Gives me hope

[dave]

hey bipolar is a lot to handle.both for the person diagnosed and those close to them. from my experience education is a significant component of managing your wellness. i would recommend the library as a good *place to start. also if the hospital has any programs to help you learn strategies for managing and preventing your symptoms i would recommend these. peer support is becoming increasingly more available. if there are any peer groups near you they are definitely worth a look. being around others with similar challenges is a good way to learn coping skills. sharing your issues with someone who has been through similar experiences can bring comfort. theapry can be helpful if you connect with the therapist, the connection /relationship is what can make the difference here. you may be suprised how helpful it can be verbalizing your concerns. meds can be a big part of the recovery process but from my experience they are only one component of a complex and personal journey.* my mom always used to as me if "they" found "the" pill yet to make me better. i wish i had but i don't think such a pill exists. meditation and breathing excercises can help to lessen anxiety and panic attacks (these are ****in horrid). excercise, healthy food and sleep are tremendously important. be kind and forgiving to yourself..be patient with others..no matter how things are going do your best to remain hopeful..things can and will get better it just takes time and effort. if its your thing you may want to do some prayin to. its not for everyone but for many people its big help


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[paul m]

Great points Dave and Determined. Take Care. paul m