They say you don't get diagnosed with bipolar for at least ten years after symptoms first show up. In my case, it was more like fifteen.
When I was a teenager, I'd hear voices call for me, while I lay in my bed in the middle of the night. I thought it was my sister whose room was right next door, so I'd get up to go see what she wanted. She was asleep. If I woke her up, she'd be confused and wonder what I was up to.
At about twenty, I had my wisdom teeth removed. I stayed at my mom and dad's place with my dad as my mom was out of town on business. After the surgery, I was home on Vicodin, or something similar; I always thought what I'm about to describe was to do with that, but now I'm convinced its not. In fact, I asked my friend who is a behavioral pharmacologist if pain meds can cause this sort of thing (hallucinations) and he said "Not a normal dose in someone without bp*." The condo my parents lived in was built into a hill so that the back of the living room was higher from the ground than the front and front door. The balcony with sliding glass doors was at the back on the second level. One day, I saw aliens standing at the doors, knocking for me to let them in. I did not. They were short and pleading. They didn't say anything, and in fact, were completely quiet except for their sotto voce knocking. Later that same week, I was in the basement. There were no curtains, so that the black of the nighttime filled the windows and the sliding-glass door. I knew that the black was coming to get me. The oneness of it consumed it. Somehow, my mom called (pre cell phones) and I told her of my fear about the black. She said, "The black can't come get you," "I know!" I agreed, "but its coming anyway." She suggested that I maybe had had too much of my pain medication. It sounded plausible at the time.
Around the time when my daughter was born in 1999, I was in the bathroom looking out the window into the back yard. I saw many very large orange rectangles in the sky. I checked if they were really there by looking back in the bathroom and out again. Yup: Every time I looked outside they were there, but inside they were not. I called my husband to come look. He did and said there were no rectangles in the sky. I don't remember how long they took to not be there anymore, but my doctor was not called. I recall taking Zoloft around this time, so I must've had a psychiatrist. Again, I didn't relay my experiences.
In early 2001 when my youngest son was born, I had some vivid visions. When I was giving my daughter- then 2- a shower, my hands would crush her head- blood, broken bones, warped skull! It was as if it had really happened. I'd gasp! I went on with the shower, but it kept happening over and over. I did call my psychiatrist about it at the time, but she still said I had post-partum depression and kept me on my anti-depressant. I am thinking this was post-partum psychosis, not depression, but my doctor did not agree. Around that same time, I also had visions of driving my car into the opposite lane of traffic with the kids in the car. I got picked up and stayed at my sister's apartment for a while. I did call my psychiatrist that time and she said to stay put and not go anywhere. Aside from this last bit, I still don't think my case was managed very well at the time, especially since my psychiatrist was big into post-partum depression: she had many patients with it and had written books about it; therefore, in my case, I think that's all she could see. My OB/GYN, on the other hand, warned me and my sister about psychosis after birth, telling us to tell her if we got any symptoms that were even sort of like psychosis. This was when I woman named Andrea Yeats had drowned her five children during the post-partum period.
About four years later, I was taking my youngest to preschool and was walking the halls when I saw vivid spines being ripped out of the children at the school- body parts flying against the walls and blood splattered over the floors. I managed to call my psychiatrist, who said, "Don't drive!" and prescribed me Celexa. This was when I was in my early 30's. So close to being diagnosed (about age 33) but yet so far. The Celexa didn't do much to calm the psychosis and in fact, I went driving to Wendy's that day and was very confused about where I was and what I was doing. No anti-psychotics were added. In their minds, I still must've had post-partum depression? How could that be when my youngest was four? In all those years, what were they thinking? How could they STILL not diagnose me as bipolar? My parents didn't see it. But today, its so plain to see.
*bipolar
