Not Major Depression, Bipolar II

Hey fellow forum followers,

I'd like to share my journey to my arrival at a diagnosis of Bipolar II. I apologise in advance for my verbosity!

Other than tripping on my nappy and splitting my head open on the coffee table when I was about two years old, I can't remember much about my early life until I contracted viral encephalitis and spent my sixth birthday in hospital. After that, my school life alternated between achieving good marks, throwing tantrums, and holding up in my room doing nothing for hours and days on end.

After school, I was accepted into the Army, but that only lasted 18 months before i left to chase the first love of my life. That didn't last long either.

After 12 months of unemployment, I finally landed a full time job as a laboratory aide. The plan was to work there until I was accepted into the police force, but my manager offered me a traineeship to become a medical scientist when I told him I was leaving to join the police. It was a chance to study a university degree part time while I worked full time. It sounded like a good idea at the time, and so I accepted the offer.

The study lasted, but the job didn't - I was terminated after three years for not showing up to work for a couple of days after a workplace accident. I managed to find another laboratory traineeship, and held on to the job long enough to finish my degree.

After graduating, I was offered a role in the army as a Medical Scientist, and grabbed at it with both hands. After a couple of years back in the army, I was deployed overseas to work in an army field hospital. While there, I developed really bad headaches, and was referred to both a doctor and a psychologist. The psychologist suggested I was depressed, and in 1999, I was started on the first of many antidepressants. I remained on deployment, but after a particularly raucous New Year's Eve party, I was sent home facing a disciplinary hearing.

I scraped through the disciplinary hearing, only to be medically discharged from the army a year or two later with no compensation and no ongoing medical support. I continued civilian treatment for my major depression, but none of the antidepressants ever seemed to keep me grounded. As such, I always found myself getting in to some sort of trouble at work, and bounced from job to job every two to three years.

I have held my current job for almost six years (my career ambition is to stay at a job long enough to earn long service leave!), but I have been given several 'final warnings' about my workplace behaviour. My general practitioner has done a fantastic job at managing my depression, but I always felt that there was something more than just depression plaguing me. I asked my doctor for a referral to a psychiatrist, and last year, after 16 years of treatment for major depression and five different antidepressants, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder within 20 minutes of my first psychiatrist consultation.

In the past, I had only ever sought medical advice when I felt down, but never when I felt what I now know as hypomanic. I always felt that my grand ideas, excessive gambling, unchecked spending, drug taking, and extramarital sex was just part of who I was, but another part of me kept telling me that "normal" people don't do those sorts of things. After the gambling, spending, and sex, I would feel guilty, and start spiralling down into depression. There were periods of "normality", but they never lasted.

This year, I spent a few weeks in a mental health clinic, had my medications reviewed, attended behavioural workshops, and really thought I had started to get things under control. Then the urge to visit the seedier side of the internet and take drugs crept back in. I knew exactly what it meant - they are some of my red flags - but chose to ignore them. With the high comes the low: I have been off work for almost two weeks, constantly on the verge of tears, and worried about my return to work next week.

This time around though, there is a huge complication: I recently got back in touch with that girl I knew in the army over 25 years ago. She is recently divorced (I didn't even know she was married), and it has made me question everything about my own marriage, where my life has been, and where it is going. My wife has been a huge support with my mental illness, but I can't help but feel that now might be the time to change my life for the better, knowing that marriage might not be right for me.

Part of me knows that I shouldn't be making any huge life decisions right now, but I have become more or less obsessed with my ex-girlfriend - and part of me also knows that might also be just a symptom of my illness.

Now that you've read my autobiography, is there anyone out there who has been in a situation like this? Is it a symptom, or is it, dare I say, fate?