Oct. 30, 2018
I think I'll always remember that day, even if some of the details slip my mind.
After two full months in Portland, OR, I needed to see a psychiatrist if I was going to continue taking medications for the complaints of the past nine months.
In hindsight, that was a gift of God's Grace right there. I could have let that date slip by, let the prescription go unfilled, gone off of the medication cold turkey. But I didn't. I wanted a doctor's opinion, probably because I didn't trust my own fully. I wanted someone outside of myself to tell me I was doing better, that the depression had subsided, that we could try tapering down the medication and see how I did.
Spoiler Alert: That's not what I got.
I spent the morning at my host mom's house rather than at UGM as I normally would have on a Tuesday, because I felt like God was calling me to work on my New Covenant Vow that morning and do some self-care rather than go into the internship and potentially have challenging situations before my appointment.
Because I had no car, I had to ride a bus or two an hour and a half or so to get to the appointment. I had found this psychiatrist in downtown Portland, not too far from my internship location. I chose her because she identified as a Christian on a website, and I desperately wanted a doctor who would not disregard the spiritual side of my story.
Her office was one room on the fourth story of a building of offices. No waiting room with chairs, just an anteroom and then the office itself with a big desk and the doctor's chair, two patient chairs, and a wall of glass windows.
We talked for two and a half hours that first day, so there's no way I can remember or record all the details. But one thing stood out to me at the time and still does today: I was so nervous talking to her - I had updated and printed out a timeline of the events for the past nine months. She asked me why I was nervous, and I said something about telling her everything that had happened (going back over it all again). She was picking up on something there that I didn't even see.
I think after a while she asked me something along the lines of "what do you want from me?" To which I responded that I wanted help getting off of my medication. And that's when she dropped the bombshell:
"I think you have bipolar disorder."
It shouldn't have come as a complete surprise--the doctor in Uganda had mentioned it as a possibility as well months prior--but it was like a bucket of ice cold water nonetheless.
Looking back, I can see how I was probably experiencing hypomania in the days/weeks leading up to my appointment. I wasn't sleeping so well, was writing voraciously, and there was the nervous energy the doctor had commented on.
But in the moment, I did NOT want to accept what she was telling me. She tried talking about a treatment plan involving weeks of gradually increasing a medication that would counteract the mood swings. My plans, however, were to get back to East Africa with the Servant Teams program sooner than that!
She kept talking to me, including telling me that she'd have to see me for a year in order to confirm the diagnosis--but my mind was trying to digest the ramifications of that initial assessment:
"I think you have bipolar disorder."
Finally we finished and I left. It was like the whole world looked different than it had before. I had gone into the appointment with such high hopes that the worst was behind me, that I could start getting back to "normal" life. But with this diagnosis??? I was viewing it almost as a death sentence of sorts.
I remember needing to think and process, so I looked on Google Maps and located a park not far from the doctor's office. I headed there, sat on a bench, and called one of my "safe people" - a lady who I had gotten to know during my time at JBU, from my church there. For reasons of my own, I didn't want to call family or anyone from Dallas.
I sobbed on the phone to her as I tried to let that initial diagnosis sink in. And then we prayed. I remember praying to God, declaring that the enemy couldn't have me--that he couldn't hold me in defeat because of this diagnosis.
Eventually we said goodbye and I made the trek back on the bus/buses to my host mom's house.
The next day I finally called my mom and emailed the couple who had walked with me most closely in Uganda. And slowly, gradually I began to absorb the possibility that I have bipolar disorder and that I would probably deal with it for the rest of my life.
One final comment here: Before I was diagnosed with this disorder, I used to think and say that a person was bipolar. But now, being one of the crowd, I don't anymore. People are not bipolar. People have bipolar, just like people have diabetes. It's something we live with, not something that defines us.
As I thought about writing this chapter of the story, this is the song that came to mind--especially the bridge that starts at 3:00.
Written Oct. 1, 2020
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