“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” – Hillel
Not only does your world get turned upside down when you are diagnosed with a serious mental illness, there are so many other things that need to be considered too. I was told I could not drive after I had my first psychotic episode, as I had to let the DVLA know that I had, had said episode. This meant that the DVLA had to reach out to my doctors to check my stability. And now this happens on a yearly basis, my driving licence is only valid for a year. And every year I have to fill in forms, the DVLA have to contact my consultant and then make a decision on whether I can have another year of a valid driving licence. This was daunting to me from the beginning, I really don’t know how I would survive without being able to drive, I don’t live in an area close to many consistent travel links furthermore, driving is a massive part of my independence.
I also, had to consider my travel insurance for any travel abroad. I had to disclose my illness as I didn’t want to be in another country and have an episode with no cover. I can only imagine how scary that would be for me and those traveling with me, let alone those waiting at home. But with this disclosure comes a HEFTY price tag, one single trip to India amounted to £659!!!
Without having to say, I am on medication each day and some of the ones I have had to take, mean weight gain. I know most would say what’s weight gain if they help you? Well, consider having all these changes in your life you can’t control and then also having to manage your weight with it. Especially when I so meticulously pay attention to my physical health. With all this medication comes blood tests as there may be changes to your internal organs and so you have to be monitored.
The dynamic of your family changes as where you once used to fit in now changes. People, of all ages are now in a position to take care of you and give you advice. During times of deep darkness being passive and accepting of any help this is not too much of a hard feat but also something I am eternally grateful for. But when I am feeling better again, it’s hard to have people take your power and then not realise you are coming back into your own again, it’s such a tug of war. Which gets harder each time because there is another element of trust slightly lost as they think you are less responsible for yourself (well that’s how it feels anyway).
Going back to work is another battle in itself, I didn’t have the best experience of this ,the second time and I potentially went back much earlier than I should have. I had lost all sense of being able to be an adult and work in my role. I thought I had lost all knowledge and painfully used to go day to day hoping no one would notice. In total, I had been off work on an off for about 8 months in just one year. A long time and when I was kind of back in the better care of my CTO I had to go back into hospital. Whether you want to or not you really have to be realistic about what you are capable of and have to be really transparent with your colleagues because normally when people see you back at work the assumption is always that you are fine. I had to phase myself back into work, picking up small things I could manage during the days I was able to work. And then slowly but surely you are able to get back into it all again. But it’s just another set of people that are wary of changes in your mood.
You have to get used to everyone always wondering about changes in mood, battling with feeling better and people wondering if you are going Manic again is hard. You have to be at the mercy of others because more often than not when you are in the midst of mania you will not think anything is wrong because you have all this energy and the possibility of doing everything. Which is why most people don’t want to listen to others, why would you want to give that up when you have spent so long wanting to get back to your normal self. It’s a really thin line and you have to be more over cautious than not.
The obvious one is the changes in mood, now most people think Bipolar is the change of mood on a day to day basis. Well for me it is not, mine is over a period of time and in reality this is the case for most people with Bipolar. Obviously, each human has a tendency to be annoyed to fine in one day but the severity of the change in Bipolar is on another scale and really shouldn’t be compare to the ‘Bipolar British weather’ because it is far away from that.
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