Bipolar disorder type 1. A disease/condition that I will have to face chronically during all my life.
It’s a long story that started back in 2008 when I was 20 years old. The spark to this was a heavy depression. I mean deep depression, I was sleeping around 20 hours a day during this time. I would just go to the university and sleep all day inside the car. No classes, nothing, just an instant deep sleep. Sometimes I got at 7AM at the uni and woke up inside the car at 8PM. That was a real problem.
At first I took anti-depressants. For years, lots of pills and no result at all. While I was suffering. Well It was terrible, my life collapsed. I had to stop my course at the uni, none of my colleagues contacted me, I was completely isolated and without social interaction. This deep sleep happened during some months. After that I got a stable condition for some weeks, and the cycle continued, many times.
3 years taking pills with no result at all. No way to change habits or start new projects because all of a sudden a new depression cycle could start. In fact, it is a terrible condition to live in.
And my psychiatrist decided to try new pills, now lithium. Well, I got better but not 100% restored. New drugs added, new possibilities. From 2008 till 2012 I tried at least 10 different drugs.
Then 2012 came, with a psychotic crysis, suicidal attempt and I was checked in a mental hospital for 3 weeks. A maniac crysis, for sure, that could have taken my life. Those were the worst 3 weeks in my life. I will not get into details about the mental hospital because it was completely stressful and traumatic.
After these 3 weeks my doc got it, it was for sure bipolar disorder type 1. The most complex type of this disease, with the highest suicidal rate that exists in psychiatry.
Type 1 is hard, I mean, it is a mix of humour changes that can go from heavy depression to high maniac euphoria. In my case the psychotic crysis also comes with schizophrenic problems associated.
After the mental hospital I tried new medicine for 2 years till I found paliperidona, 6mg paliperidona and 450mg lithium, my “cure”. Well, it is not really a cure because I need to take these pills my whole life. But it solves my problem. My problem now is paying for the drugs, one of them is basically 20% of my monthly earnings, quite a lot. But… There is a solution.
Today I have a monthly consultation with my doctor and I do have some problems. 3 or 4 times a year I have a “shut down”, I literally wake up feeling intense pressure as if an elephant was stomping on my back. Then I go to bed and again, 14 hours of sleep. A short experience of my heavy depression but this one lasts for one day.
And habit changes are my cure as well. Pills do this job but some different approaches to life reduce many problems associated with BD-1.
After all these changes, having a doctor that follows my routine and that I can rely on for humour changes in my life is quite necessary. I still have peaks of mania and valleys of depression, but those conditions are not prolonged for a long time. These changes happen 2 or 3 times a year and usually last less than 5 days. To be considered a problem these conditions have to last for weeks or months.
Bipolar disorder has no cure, but I can mitigate the symptoms. Changes in my routine and life had to be done to achieve my goals, and today though I still face some problems some weeks of the year, it is a problem completely solved. 4,8% of the population have this disease, in a hard and complex situation like mine, 1% of the population. The worst of this is the fact Iĺl have this till I die.
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