between the broken places

Archive for June 18th, 2009

About Me

Diagnosed in 1999 with Bipolar 1 Disorder explained a lot about me. The crazy mood swings, the outbursts and the feeling of being locked in a cage from which I couldn’t escape. Stabilization took a while but did happen after much therapy, meds and a great deal of love and patience from my loved ones. I’m am writing a book called “Out of Context – Bipolar Chick 2 the Rescue” telling the story of my journey through this often misunderstood disease.

My hope is that by sharing my experiences others will seek the help they need for themselves or their loved ones. No one is alone in this and help is available.

Here’s the story…of a crazy lady (Brady Bunch theme dancing in my head)

These are the basics: My name is Deb. I currently live in North Carolina with my husband, JC.

We have three lovely and talented daughters (see for yourself-below), who shall from this point forward be known as the Chickletts. I’ll have to check with them before I start posting identifying information…you know, to protect the potentially embarrassed.

We also have three very spoiled Chow Chows: Bella (12 yrs old) and Sam & Lilah (1 yr old on 6/25). You can see their pictures as well as the family at my website.

the insipid circle of my life

Sorry, I haven’t been writing.
I’m feeling a bit out of it and it’s causing me to sleep a lot though not well. This leaves me tired and confused and really pretty useless most of the day. I’m supposed to return to work in a couple of weeks, been on medical leave since April. Going back is both stressful and something I look forward to. Yes, I know, don’t end a sentence in a preposition but it sounds so strange to say something to which I look forward…just not the way I speak.

So, what’s been going on? I started working out a couple of weeks ago, this is really important for both my mental health and my physical health. I tend to start out too fast and hurt myself thus stopping too soon. Part of the reason I get hurt…

I broke my neck in 2005…a compression fracture that came along with a ruptured disc. This caused a great amount of pain and took the military doctors 5 (count them…FIVE) months to figure out what was wrong. The military sent me to physical therapy, luckily the same day I had an appt. with a Neurologist. The Physical Therapist didn’t even look at my MRI and told me that I would be fine in a couple of weeks. The Neurologist told me that it was the largest ruptured disc he had ever seen and that I need to see a Neurosurgeon immediately. I had an appt. with the surgeon the next day and was told that I could not go back to work, had to come off my meds and was having surgery in 4 days. As for PT? The remark that I got was…”Christopher Reeves, that could be you!”. Alrighty then! I now have a cadaver bone and a titanium plate in my neck…No, I don’t set off airport alarms.

I hate the insipid cycle of feeling like crap causes not working out, which can cause eating badly which makes me feel like crap…the friggin circle of my life.