The Insider's Perspective Manic Depression After A Loss

I often find it difficult to convey to those who are not bipolar exactly what happens, what the thought process is, and what it means. Forgive me if I repeat some things from other posts but I wanted to write clearly the inside perspective, at least in part. This may take more than one post.

I cannot tell you how many times I have gone through different cycles of manic, mania, depression, overtly happy, hyper-focused, etc. I do not know how many times I have fought irrationally, or even started rational and became irrational. It's one of the hardest things to deal with. Imagine feeling like you cannot control what you say, how you are feeling, or even who you are sometimes.

To give a good idea of what it is like I am going to refer to the hardest time of my life because it spiraled me into the worst manic depression I have ever known. Some back story is necessary. I have endometriosis, a disease of the uterus that causes womb tissue to grow outside the womb, causes scar tissue to form, and causes cyst growth. I had had two surgeries to remove this tissue growth and went through a time where my menses was way off. My doctor informed me that I was not dropping eggs on a regular basis which was causing serious issues with my endometriosis. At the time I was dating my now husband Nathan. Not long after we started dating I got pregnant. I knew me and Nathan would be together no matter what so I was ecstatic to find out I had actually gotten pregnant. We were both crying tears of happiness and just so excited.

A few days later I felt a pain ripping through my groin like I had never experienced. Now I have some pretty bad back issues that cause me severe sciatic pain so my first thought was that the growing of my womb was somehow causing bad sciatic pain. I called the Dr and he told me to go to the ER immediately. Obviously I knew I had tried to talk myself out of knowing the truth. I went to a hospital that did not treat me very well, and sent me home saying they weren't sure. The next day, during my finals, the pain erupted from my abdomen. It was so bad I walked out of the class room and when I just about fainted I knew I was losing the baby. I went rushing to my professor, crying my eyes out, and told her what was happening. (she let me do the final at home). I rushed to a different hospital, Metro, and the immediately got me in a room, injected me with diluated (sp?), and prepped me for an ultrasound. Sure enough the fetus was in the fallopian tube, the size of a golf ball and I was bleeding inward, which explained why I did not bleed out which made things a bit confusing. I ended up in emergency surgery bc we couldn't wait or the pregnancy would have ruptured and caused sepsis. I lost my baby and my left fallopian tube.

The fact that I was just told I wasn't dropping eggs regularly and that it may take a long time to get pregnant, if I could, this hit hard. By hard I mean like I was ran over by every single semi in Ohio. I was absolutely devastated. My tube was so scared from endometriosis that the egg was not able to get to the womb. My husband was devastated. It was the first time I saw him cry. I'm crying right now just picturing that moment in the ER when we looked at each other and I started to wail. Now one can imagine how hard this is in general, and then you add on bipolar disorder and it becomes a whole other thing

The couch became my sanctuary where I just laid for hours. Yea I would go ride my bike but I didn't care about it. I didn't care about anything (besides caring about my families well-being of course). I did NOT care about myself. I felt tricked. I felt cheated. I felt anger, rage, sorrow, such deep deep sorrow. I couldn't see a life in my future. I could not imagine how anyone could deal with this or deal with that kind of depression. Now I fall into manic depressive states when other very important loved ones have died, but for whatever reason this one brought me to my knees. I believe it is because I felt my baby dying inside me. I felt my body dying. I felt the world coming in on me. I had the scars to look at. I had the knowledge that now I would have even less chances of pregnancy because I was now more prone to ectopic pregnancies (which it happened again almost exactly a year after this one but my tube was salvaged), and I was missing a tube.

My world filled with darkness. While I got a new perspective on what was important, and what maturity really meant, I was falling down a very demented rabbit hole. I could barely sleep. I stayed up until 6 am many nights playing video games where I could kill monsters because I was so full of anger and sadness that I needed an outlet that took me to a new reality. Me and my husband became closer though. Very very close. He dealt with everything I went through. My non-stop crying days, my silent days, my aggressive days, and etc.

In my mind I felt worthless and like the life I had was nothing anymore. I lost my dad two weeks after losing the baby. Talk about a horrible month. When he died I thought I couldn't grieve for him. Well I did but it was delayed. I had to grieve over that pregnancy first.  I tried to control my emotions, and I didn't do well because I took it out on others by yelling, or by quitting my job, by throwing my manic fits of rage. Finally when it really hit me that I would never get the chance to build a real relationship with my dad I drowned.

Imagine yourself in a dark ocean bottom. So dark you cannot see anything. Lonely and frightening you sit. It starts to feel like things are around you prodding you, hurting you, tearing you apart slowly. Your brain feels like it is just melting, that is the best way to describe it. Just mush. Your thoughts seem to be continuous streams of negative dark thoughts. Then out of nowhere change to self defeating thoughts ( like what if's and imagining what your baby would have been like, how beautiful it would have been, how you and your dad could bond over the baby, how I will never hear my father again, and I will always still be sitting wishing I would hear him on my birthday). You get the point. And then you start thinking- is anything worth it? I am going through so much misery and pain and everyone else is able to keep going and living , so does my existence even matter? Would my lover be better off with someone without problems, who could have a healthy pregnancy, who won't be medicated for their whole life because they are depressed, because I feel so differently day to day or even hour to hour? Would it matter if I disappeared? Would my family really feel my missing presence? Would it have been better to die with the pregnancy? And then it emerged into this

I wish I had died with the pregnancy. How many times do I have to feel so down that it feels like it be better to not exist at all? My body and my mind are against me and here I sit self loathing and pitying and that makes me pathetic. My lover deserves better than me. I am truly nothing ( I did not mean this I the philosophical sense, bc I do believe that in the philosophical sense which isn't as dark as the sense that this was in).

I did not care if I got hit by a car and died, or if I was murdered, or if I simply died from a broken mind. I felt crazy. I felt like I was falling so deep into a hole that I would never get out.

This is what mental illness does. But still more than this. It goes beyond what I have written just now. It is much more complex. To say a few last important things:

Eventually I got into a horrible fight (verbal) with my now husband. I just yelled and yelled and never got what I truly wanted to say across (hang on I will tell you what it was in a minute). I would then break and start sobbing and fall to my knees or lay in the fetal position and he would just suck it all up for me and hug me. He knew. Then I went rage out a couple days later, and I spurred out "I wish I had died" and that's when it all poured out. Every thought I had either knowingly held in or every thought I didn't even know was causing all my manic problems, came gushing out of me. My mind felt like it was on fire. Searing with pain and suffering. If I hadn't had my husband I don't even want to say what I think would have happened to me. He let me get it all out. He dealt with it all. He took me to a doctor who gave me anti-depressants. Big mistake because I flew into a whole other whirlwind so we went back. I literally broke down in her office. I told her all of my dark feelings, and how my anxiety was very severe. She drug tested me!!!!! Can you believe that. Here I am finally being honest and she drug tests me to make sure I am not lying trying to score drugs. REALLY! I passed by the way. (She checked for crack, meth, heroin, PCP, cocaine, and marijuana! Really do I look like I take hardcore drugs or something. I came to you because I needed to be medicated not because I was self medicating). I have been diagnosed since I was like 19 or so. Anyway she put me on my meds and it was a miracle.

I had never been given Seroquel, even though I had asked to try it several times as I heard it combated severe bipolar and anxiety well.

While I still feared that everyone was going to die, or got scared I would somehow lose Nathan to something horrible happening, the medicine smoothed me out within a couple weeks. I was put up to 500 mg total, which I am currently at today, and my perspective on life came back slowly. While I still do go through manic depressive episodes and have anxiety still, the Seroquel helped a great deal. Then klonopin was added thanks to the NP at psych, who didn't feel a need to drug test me. Rolls eyes. Then also lamictal. However, after several months I stopped taking my meds thinking I was fine and normal, and didn't need meds to keep control. Typical bipolar person! Seriously I have never met a truly bipolar person who hasn't done that. This is after I got married to Nathan, and got accepted into the upper division Honors program at school. Guess what? J got pregnant and again it was ectopic. So the story goes on, but not now, you have to wait until later.

To be continued....

Lea