The Aftermath
After about seven
days, I felt myself coming out of a fog. The first thing I remember is my
therapist talking to me, asking me if I am aware of who I am and where I am at.
I had figured out that this was a mental hospital, but I didn’t know how long I
had been there, how long I would continue to be there, and what exactly
happened to me. My therapist explained that my diagnosis was Bipolar I, manic,
severe, with psychotic features. I had been taking and would continue to take
an antipsychotic medication along with my antidepressant and an antianxiety
medication. I was told I would soon move from the acute wing of the hospital to
the wing with the more stable patients.
I fell into the
normal schedule and routine at the hospital, and I started making sense of my
surroundings and activities. I started to feel somewhat normal again. I
participated in group therapy, individual therapy, and sessions with the
psychiatrist. I became a model patient. I often talked and shared my experiences
and feelings in group therapy, more so than the other patients. I was getting
back to my old self, outspoken and overachieving. I remember a nurse telling me
that people like me is why they do what they do, and they loved to see
turnarounds such as this. After a few more days of doing well, with no symptoms
of psychosis or mania, the hospital allowed me to go home. I felt pretty good,
and I was more than ready to see my husband and children. I was to continue
with outpatient therapy and medication management, and to come back if the
symptoms returned.
So, I went home.
Thankfully, I was given six weeks’ FMLA time off, which I spent at home mostly
resting. While I was gone, Jason had converted our extra bedroom into a “coping
room” for me where he set up my desk, office supplies, and art supplies so I
could come in there and relax, be creative. I spent a lot of time in there painting,
drawing, doing puzzles, and writing. I was doing pretty well for several weeks.
I attended my therapy and medication management sessions faithfully, and took
my medicine correctly. During my time off, we took a vacation to Universal
Studios in Florida with the kids. It was a blast. I even went on to do the live
audition for America’s Got Talent in Memphis (this time singing a different
song, of course). The time went quickly though, and soon it was time to go back
to work. I was nervous but excited to get back into my normal routine. The only
things amiss were the continued symptoms of pregnancy. It turns out that the
pregnancy in the hospital was definitely a figment of my imagination, but I
believed it so much that my body actually began to exhibit the symptoms, even
after I was out of psychosis. Had the pregnancy tests not been negative, I
would have sworn I was pregnant; turns out, I had a hysterical pregnancy. After
several more weeks, the symptoms subsided.
In March, only a
few weeks after I returned to work, I began having the old, familiar, intense
pains in my abdomen and I was immediately worried about my bile duct again, as
this was the primary symptom before. I went to the emergency room with level 10
pain; a CT revealed that indeed my bile duct was occluded, and I would need to
be sent to Jackson for an emergency surgery. I began to pass large amounts of
blood and this continued even after the procedure, in which they replaced the
plastic stint with a metal one. I passed so much blood that I required a blood
transfusion, and I stayed in the hospital for a week. I found out that the
source of the problem, causing the continued blockages and bleeding, was something
called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC). It is an autoimmune disease of the liver
and bile duct where the liver attacks itself and degenerates over time. I was
told that I will likely need a liver transplant within 10-15 years. It also
makes me overly tired and weak. This combined with my Crohn’s disease made me
feel like I was falling apart.
After discharge I
went back to work again. Other than my medical problems I’m not sure what
exactly triggered it, but I began to fall into a depression. At first I thought
little of it; I’m no stranger to depression and anxiety, as I’ve suffered off
and on since I was 14 years old. I even had an inpatient stay back in 2012 for
severe depression leading to suicidal ideations. This depression started out
normally, feeling sad, hopeless, and wanting to sleep more. But over time, the
depression worsened. It became incredibly hard to get up in the morning. Work
tasks that were old hat became very difficult, as I couldn’t concentrate more
than a few minutes. I could no longer think critically or problem-solve, and
talking about cases in work meetings was near impossible because I couldn’t conceptualize
problems or formulate goals. I found it hard to help clients when I was
struggling with my own problems. I no longer found joy in my work, and I feared
that I wouldn’t be able to do it much longer. My personal hygiene declined; it
was a chore to make myself get in the shower every few days, and brushing my
teeth was a thing of the past. I had very little energy, no interest in using
coping skills, and found happiness in absolutely nothing. Not wanting to, I
even began to detach from my own two little boys.
Within just a
couple weeks, the depression twisted and darkened. I began to ruminate on what
happened to me in December with the onset of the mania and psychosis. I felt
like a terrible, worthless, crazy human being that had put my family through
hell. I couldn’t handle that mental illness that severe happened to me. The
psychotic break became a trauma in and of itself. I worried that it wouldn’t
stop with just one episode. My husband did not deserve a crazy wife, and my
children did not deserve a crazy mother. There was no telling what I would do
after everything that I did do. What if my medication stopped working? What if
it was only the beginning and the manias and psychosis would just continue to
get worse? My Christian faith did little to help me, as I began to question God
about everything. It felt like my heart literally almost broke in two when I
admitted to myself that I was never following God’s will in December, I was
simply very, very sick. It was like the wind was knocked out of me. Before I
got sick I had been very faithful, probably the most in my life. I was reading
my Bible every day, in fervent prayer multiple times a day, and attending
church regularly. I prayed with and read Bible stories to my children every
night. I was doing everything right, and I was so convinced when God told me I
was a prophet…only to be very, very wrong.
The depression was
unrelenting. I became so miserable, so dark, so lonely, and so scared that I
could do nothing but think of death. For days I debated the pros and cons of
the different ways to die. I knew hanging wasn’t a good idea; I was afraid that
I would suffer too long. I wanted to die quickly and with as little pain as
possible. We had guns, but nothing that would be easy to use by myself. I
decided that taking all my pills would be the best way to do it, as it wouldn’t
be messy and hopefully I could just go to sleep and not wake up. I was scared
to actually do it though. I was scared that my children would find me. I was
scared that it wouldn’t be enough to kill me but instead leave me with organ
damage and I’d live a miserable, sickly, disabled life. Admittedly I was also
worried immensely about how my children would fare without me. I knew that if I
was successful in killing myself, I would seal the deal for their fate. They
already had a biological predisposition for mental illness, and if I died in
this way it would make their chances even greater. I hoped that focusing on
them would keep me from doing anything stupid.
But as much as I
tried, I couldn’t just will myself to get better. As much as I pleaded to God,
I couldn’t pray myself out of the pit. As much as I listened to the preacher
talk about giving my burdens to God, it didn’t make a difference. The intrusive
thoughts that death was the only way out continued and became smothering. One
day, I had had enough. It just so happened that I had a therapy session
scheduled that day, and I confessed my feelings to my therapist. I shared that
I had to go back to work after the session and somehow muster a good enough
front to conduct a therapy session and then make my way back home to my family.
I didn’t know if I could do it, and I felt certain that one way or another, I
would be dying soon. My therapist strongly encouraged me to go back to the
hospital. I texted my husband and told him what she said. He was completely
blindsided. He knew that I had been depressed but didn’t realize how serious it
had gotten, even though I felt like I had told him. He was very obviously
frustrated with me, but I knew that I had to go to the hospital. Death was
imminent otherwise, I was afraid. So I let my therapist call Crestwyn, and they
agreed to take me back.
And back to the
hospital I went. It was different this time, because while I was greatly
depressed I was more in my right mind than the first time I had been there. I
was miserable. It felt like prison. I hated going to group therapy sessions.
They seemed so cheesy and pointless. Boring, useless worksheets: “List out your
positive qualities and notice how much better you feel about yourself!” It was
bogus. This was not going to help me. Just a couple days after entering the
hospital, I was begging to go back home, promising my therapist that I was
ready and I could handle it. She told me that I would have to stay at least a
week. So each day I counted down the time until I could go back home.
My therapist
explained that falling into such a deep depression after a mania was normal, as
is the course with bipolar: cycles of manic highs and low depressions. Of
course with my background in mental health I knew this, but it frustrated me
that one day I just woke up depressed, months after the mania, with no one
specific trigger. She said that these cycles were just a normal part of my
illness, and that I could expect it to continue to happen, but that with the
proper medication it would lessen. I was pissed, for a lack of a better word,
and I didn’t understand why I just became Bipolar randomly. While I had
struggled with depression, I never had the mania or psychosis at all until
December, at 27 years old.
While I was there they made some changes to my
medication, increasing my antidepressant to a more therapeutic dose. After
several days I no longer felt suicidal, but the depression itself remained.
Without suicidality, the hospital couldn’t keep me. However, my therapist and
psychiatrist were very worried about the severity of my Bipolar, with the two
hospitalizations within three months of each other. The prognosis wasn’t good,
they said. They believed I could and would get better over time, but the course
of my illness was unpredictable. They told me that it would be a huge risk to
go back to work, and wrote out a letter deeming me disabled.
In an instant, my
career was ripped away from me. I could no longer work, and I knew that my
illness may or may not stabilize to the desired outcome. Once I was discharged
from the hospital, I sadly went back to my workplace and resigned. I didn’t
know how my life would play out next. It did little to remedy the festering
depression that remained.
TO BE CONTINUED...
