Chasing a Diagnosis: A Reckoning with Bipolar II Disorder

Chasing a Diagnosis

A Reckoning with Bipolar II Disorder

Susan Turnbull

Copyright © 2012 by   Susan Turnbull

Smashwords edition

Contents

Chapter One:   A Good Start

Chapter Two:   The Feeling 1980

Chapter Three:   High School 1980-84

Chapter Four:  The College Years 1984-1988

Chapter Five:  Indio, California 1988

Chapter Six:  Volunteering: 1988-89

Chapter Seven:  A Real Job: 1990

Chapter Eight:  Starting to Live/Daughter #1:  1991

Chapter Nine:  Lynden WA/Daughter #2:  1996

Chapter Ten:  Friday Harbor:  2002

Chapter Eleven:  1st Hospitalization: 2004

Chapter Twelve:  2nd/3rd Hospitalizations: 2005

Chapter Thirteen:  4th Hospitalization: 2005

Chapter Fourteen:  5th hospitalization and Amen Clinic: 2005

Chapter Fifteen:  Finding rTMS: 2005

Chapter Sixteen:  Discovering Deep Brain Stimulation: 2006

Chapter Seventeen:  Meeting Dr. Greenberg: 2006

Chapter Eighteen:  Dr. Stevens: 2007

Chapter Nineteen:  Finding Mary Ellen O’Keefe: 2007

Chapter Twenty:  Meeting Mary Ellen O’Keefe: 2007

Chapter Twenty-one:   Kay Jamison: 2008

Chapter Twenty –two:  Bipolar II disorder: 2008

Chapter Twenty-three:  New feelings: 2008

Chapter Twenty-four:  The Calm after the Storm

Chapter 1

A Good Start

My upbringing was fairly ordinary, to a point.  I was born in Spokane Washington in May of 1966.  I was the second oldest of five children with both a mother & a father in the home.  My older sister is 2 years older than me, a set of twins (Jack & Teresa) 4 years younger than me, and Michele, 5 years younger.  My mother worked outside of the home as a nurse and my father was an accountant.  They were hard workers and life was busy but good.  We lived there until I was 9 years old then moved to the San Juan Islands.

In the summer of 1976 I was 10 years old and we moved to Friday Harbor Washington.  Just off the coast of Washington, The San Juan Islands are located in the Straights of Juan de Fuca. Friday Harbor was a great little town with a population of about 4000 back then.   Everyone knew everyone.  I was just starting the 4th grade and was a happy kid.  I made friends rather easily and fit in fine.  We first lived in town then moved onto a property out of town.  We were close to beaches and so spent a lot of time beachcombing.  Because our family was so big, there was always someone to play with.

In 1978 my parents built a bar and began a new venture in their lives.  Mom & Dad worked long hours at the tavern and so relied on my older sister and me to watch my younger siblings.  I took mothering them seriously; it was just my personality. In the spring of 1979 Mom and Dad surprised us with the news that we were moving onto a sailboat in Florida.  Neither Dad nor Mom had ever sailed before but they had read and studied sailing, navigating and charting the Caribbean, and were excited to embark on this new adventure.  The plan was to tour the Caribbean, go through the Panama Canal, sail up the West Coast and end back in Friday Harbor.  So in June of 1979 my parents bought a rather over-sized wooden sailboat and once school let out for the summer we headed to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We drove from Washington State to Kansas City Missouri where my grandparents lived. We stayed with them while my parents drove on to Ft. Lauderdale to get the boat ready.  We then followed by airplane two weeks later.

The trip was wonderful.  That year we cruised through the Bahamas, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Virgin islands.  We all were enrolled in correspondence courses; Anne was in tenth grade, I was in eighth, the twins in fourth grade and Michele was in third.  We had so many adventures and stopped many interesting places along the way. The Bahamas were amazing as were the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. We were quite an anomaly as you can imagine; five children living on a wooden boat, traveling to remote ports around the Caribbean. It was an amazing trip.

However, the year was not without problems.  It turned out that the boat had a lot of mechanical issues and we didn’t go as fast or as far as we had originally planned.  We spent three months in Samana, Dominican Republic, and six months in St. Thomas, Virgin Island. We met many people during this time and enjoyed running into them again and again along the way.  In May of 1980 we had the boat hauled out at Isletta Marina, a shipyard in Puerto Rico.  The plan was to clean the hull and remodel the inside and then proceed to travel through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast to Friday Harbor.  However, in the world of boating nothing was easy.  When we hauled the boat out of the water, the hull turned out to be rotten and it was going to take a lot of time and money than we first thought to get the boat ready for our next trip. With this new information Mom & Dad had to make a decision: keep renovating the boat or head back to Friday Harbor and decide what to do then.  It was at this stage of my life that I experienced the most dreadful, awful, overwhelming feeling that I would deal with for the next 30 years.

Chapter 2

Cue The Feeling 1980

I couldn’t sit still and I was sobbing uncontrollably.  All I could do was rock back and forth in the deck chair.  I felt a horrible tightness in the pit of my stomach, feeling as if I could crawl right out of my skin. The anxiety was so bad that I could barely stand it.  I felt such utter and deep despair and the circular thoughts would not stop.  Over and over the same thoughts kept sloshing around in my head.  The thoughts were all so negative, all so guilt ridden.  Why was I feeling this way, what was happening to me?  I was miserable and scared to death that I was going to die.  It was very late