Okay so two days later annddd I'm not gonna continue the 'My Story' post now. I've been sleeping for over 15 hours after having had a crazy week. I'm still exhausted and have loads to do today, which is why this post isn't part 2. I just thought I'll quickly talk about bipolar and work/studies. As you guys know, I'm going through a rough patch right now and both my depression and anxiety are back. The timing sucks but then this isn't something that comes asking 'is this a convenient time for me to stop by?'
So I stayed home this weekend, yes I'm finally admitting to it, school was just an excuse, I felt like crap and couldn't get out of bed. The studying was from the bed.. well it eventually was me studying in bed. Me being this exhausted is partly because of my studies and work but mostly because I've had to deal with those two while fighting to get small things done, as in getting out of bed or into the shower. I have no idea how I got it done but it lead to me sleeping 15 hours and still feeling like crap.
So back to the subject, bipolar/depression(well I know how depression feels as well, I've had it for longer than my bipolar..) and studies and/or work. I'm going to start with the experience I've had that's been horrible so don't freak out or get pissed at me thinking I'm giving the wrong picture here 😋 just read till the end...
When I studied in Poland, I think I've mentioned that I studied at med school for two years, I had no help. I really mean no help, no meds, no doc that cared and on top of that I had to study around the clock. I was blogging while studying there, it was my only way to cope but it wasn't enough. Those of you that's had the diagnosis for a while or know someone with it, you know just how important it is to have a structure in your everyday life. You need enough sleep and food and just really good structure all in all. I slept maybe 2-4 hours a night and sometimes would just blackout for 10 hours or so, impossible to wake up, or I would not sleep for maybe a week, not just during my manic phases and I had loads of those as well, just to pass all my test( one week that I really remember is when I had 10 huge tests divided into four days). I got my diagnosis a few months before I went to med school. To be honest, my applying there is another story all in all and I'll share that one as well in another post. 😋
Things were really bad and I tried to commit suicide between my first and second year. I passed everything my first year and part of my second year but I dropped out in the middle of my fourth term and eventually moved back home. I had to stay there until November because of all the paperwork of me taking Dean's Leave. At this stage, I was actually planning to return a year later.
Well, I was back home in November 2015, living with my parents, but that didn't work out so I convinced them to let me move out and I moved to a small city about 4 hours away (I still live here 😊). I moved here in December 2015 and tried to get help here but the Christmas holidays were close and I wasn't even from this state so I was having a really hard time. In the end, things got so bad that I went to the emergency room and talked to a doc there. I was told that I had to be hospitalized but I refused. Since I wasn't in a manic episode then (I would never have gone there if I were) they couldn't force me and I know that you might be thinking that is was stupid of me to say no when I was finally getting help. But considering my past and the fact that I was in such a bad place that I knew that once admitted to a hospital, I would end up staying there for a while and the fact that my brother was getting married in about two weeks time, well there was just too many reasons for me to say no. So I got some meds and was promised a doc appointment in about 2-3 weeks time, even though I was from across the country, I went back home, to my parents that is and helped prepare for the wedding. I ended up firstly having a reaction to the meds and then a few days later, a psychotic episode forcing my dad to call an ambulance.
By the time the ambulance reached the hospital, I was 'back' and I managed to convince the doc to let me go home. The ambulance personnel told me and my dad that I couldn't remember or connect small details about myself and that they couldn't get proper contact with me which is why I was brought in. I got really strong calming meds and was told to seek help as soon as I could. The only reason that they let me go, was that it was around new year and they had no spots available and of course the fact that my brother is a doctor as well.
I slept for around 48 hours after that and was so exhausted that I couldn't even sit up in bed on my own. I looked like a freaking ghost.
Well, it took me about a week to get up on my feet and during this time I got loads of crap about me faking it and that I was killing the mood and making my parents worried just for attention. Yeah, we all get it this shit every now and then!
After that I went to my brother's wedding, it was abroad as the girl and her family lived there and I was full on manic for the entire week there. I mean I didn't sleep for the entire week, my sisters kids were living with me in my hotel room so I took care of them at night and during the entire day I would be running around fixing things for the wedding and I would be with the bride before, during and after the different functions (except for the actual marriage of course 😂😋). I had so much to do and everybody knew that I wasn't sleeping and nobody understood how I managed to run the entire wedding and take care of the bride and the kids and our guests(close family). Oh, and did I mention that I can hardly do my own makeup, this is almost 3 years later and I barely manage.
During that week, well I've never gotten so many compliments in my life as I did during that week and to top it I was forced to do the brides makeup during one of the functions. She looked really good and nobody could believe that I did that. Everybody told me that I was so different, it was as if I was glowing and well they had never seen me like this. I usually put up the perfect, calm girl act and they've been buying it for my entire life. This was different.. 😋
Well, it changed it the car back home.. I became so quiet and just shut down and everybody just assumed that it was the crazy week getting to me and let me be. Once back I left my parents home about two days later and returned to this city. I didn't have an apartment of my own so I was crashing in small room at my brothers. Because of this, I had no address here which is why it was so hard to get help. Well, I had a week before my appointment and stayed in bed during most of it, during the rest of the week I tried to find shops so that I could eat. The day of the appointment I was feeling so depressed, it took me hours to get out of bed and get there, I lived less than 5 min away from the hospital, it was literally across the parking lot. So once there the doc took one look at me and told me I needed to be hospitalized, and I was. For almost two weeks. After that, it took me over a year and a half just to get back on my feet. I was put on lithium and a bunch of other meds to go with it. My doc told me that if I got back to med school (well that university), it wouldn't take long for me to get, not just back to were I was when I dropped out, but to a far worse place and she couldn't tell me how long it would take for me to get better again. She said that it took me over a year and a half just to get back on my feet this time, she couldn't guarantee that she could help me get better next time. My bipolar has progressed so much during these last two years and it's still progressing at too fast a pace, to this day. She didn't think it would have gotten this bad this fast if I would have gotten help earlier. This was Poland and that university sucked!! Before I make all of you freak out and say that bipolar stops you from studying continue reading!
A year and a half after I ended up here, more accurately in January this year, I decided that I wanted to get back out there. My doc wasn't 100% sure if I could handle it, but she said that I was really stubborn and that this was the reason to me making it this far and to have gotten better this fast, so she said that she was behind me and my decision since me being that stubborn might take me longer than expected.
I began studying at a university here in this town in January. About two months after I began studying here I could feel the pressure was getting too high but I continued to fight and stayed. Eventually, somebody told me that the school might help me. I contacted them and got something called 'disability aid'. As bipolar is counted as a disability here, I have the right to different things like for example, I get more time when I'm writing a written exam(not exam paper though), I get a room of my own to avoid anxiety attacks and to have some privacy if I get them during an exam etc. etc.
Damn, I'm getting really late, I have an appointment in less than an hour. Promise, I'll finish the post later.. ;)
xoxoxox L
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