A Family in Turmoil

the things we learn

I apologize for not making any entries lately. It has been a busy semester and many things have happened and are curently happening. first thing first, I made a comment in one of my entries about how I thought that us kids had some effect on the duration and severity of my mothers episodes. That somehow it felt like just our presence seemed to help feed her mania. I just want to say that it is not true. Since she is not having treatment of any kind and has suffered from this illness for forty some years she is what many call a burned out schizophrenic. She was and always will be a horrible mother, she should never have had kids. but I think god every day that she did, because I would not have my brother or sisters, their children, and I myself would not have had the privelage of having my own. things in this world and in our personal lives happen for a reason, that reason sometimes is unexplainable, and its importance is not clarified until some years later.
recently I was evaluated for different learning styles and to see if there were problem areas that could be improved. this was done through the nursing program at school and I have to say many things have come up. I filled out test after test and answered endless questions. At the end of my session I was referred to a man in the area who dealt specifically with ADD and ADHD. I have been told that I show many similaritys to someone who has ADHD. This was brought up in shcool quite a few times and it got me to thinking that maybe there was something there that needed further investigation. I have never been tested with any disorder of any kind accept depression. I followed through with my curiousity and saw a clinical psychologist who was closer to home, Actually I just got home from her office an hour ago. I have only seen her once so there is no diagnoses of any kind yet. what surprised me is that not only is she trying to eliminate ADHD, but bipolar also, this brought tears to my eyes. Reason why is that about a week ago my older sister who is 30 was just diagnosed as bipolar. She wanted me to get tested and evaluated because she felt I was struggling still with some issues, and its heredity. I have gotten fairly good results from paxil, but I always felt that it didn't help enough. I have had two, probably three episodes of depression and from what I was told a manic episode usually follows with someone who is bipolar. Many times the person not showing these signs until late twenties to early thirties. Also there are many similarities between the symptoms of ADHD and bipolar, They can get mixed up in diagnoses. So needless to say the profesional who does the actual diagnoses has to be careful and fully test for each disorder. From what I hear, back in the day many times a person who actually had bipolar was also misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. of course that was not what I wanted to hear. There are times when bipolar can be so severe that their manic episodes include delusions and who knows what else. this was why they were frequently mistaken for schizophrenics. I have a follow up apointment next week and will be back, so until then, goodbye.