DH just diagnosed, major decisions

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Registered: 11-16-2006
DH just diagnosed, major decisions
8
Sun, 04-15-2007 - 1:57am

I found this board thanks to the stepmother board I visit. My DH and I just got married this past Oct and got pregnant on the honeymoon (the second week, the first week wasn't fun). Since the wedding we basically live like room mates, he in one room, me in another. This started because he tended to want to sleep alone and the fights we had were constant and horrible. I've never been someone who was part of an angry shouting match and it didn't seem to matter what I said or did DH always jumped down my throat. I finally got to the point a few weeks ago where I couldn't take it anymore. After 2 weeks of more arguments, a few completely sleepless nights and losing 4lbs I said I was done unless he figured out what the problem was and got some help. He said he thought he was depressed and so he went to the doc. I gave a list of the problems with day to day conversations, how he remembers events, problems with lying (and thinking he's telling the truth), sex drive, etc etc. The doc said he is classic bipolar and put him on lamictal (his sister has been taking that too).

Right now we're still in limbo. I have this baby coming and I want her to grow up in a decently stable family - and I know thats possible if he does what he can to stay in control. However, he knows he'll have a hard time not taking the drugs if he's feeling fine - he hates medication and won't even take prescription drugs if he needs sleep. I want to have more kids, we had talked about 4. He already has 3 from his last marriage and wanted 4, but that was last summer when I think he was manic and saying whatever he thought would make me happy so he could continue to be happy. I guess I'm not sure exactly what day to day life is for someone on bipolar. He's in the process of deciding if he wants to make the commitment to the consistent doctors, therapists and work out routine that the doc said would be required for him to be steady. He knows he doesn't want to make things worse in the future if he can't make that commitment. The hard part is, his ex always told him he had bipolar and he never did anything about it - and he never told me because I would talk about my brother who I thought had it and how hard it was to grow up with him untreated. So yea, he married me knowing he may have a problem and keeping it from me. Anyway.

But has anyone had success with this drug? Any suggestions on any of this?



Jess





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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2006
Sun, 04-15-2007 - 3:30am
Oh PS. He'll probably have to find a drug to fight depression since this one is basically a mood stabilizer and he doesn't shift from manic do depressive fast - he's been in a depressive stage for 6 months. The problem is finding one that doesn't turn him into a zombie like prozac and a bunch of others he tried. :(



Jess





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Registered: 09-01-2004
Sun, 04-15-2007 - 8:28pm

Wow, you got handed a load of crap--I'm sorry he didn't have the courage to tell you about the possibility of BP, but then it sounds like he's pretty big into denial.

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Registered: 08-11-2006
Mon, 04-16-2007 - 1:52pm

First off....CONGRATS on the baby....maybe she'll be ornry and slip birth a few days and she'll be a July 30 baby, that's my birthday. LOL.

Now to the bi-polar....it is interesting listening to the other side of the fence. I don't think I was as bad about jumping down DW's throat, but I DO know my rages were not pretty (just had another bad one this weekend, I think may be due to the wacked sleep schedule I find myself keeping on the weekend and taking my Lamictal at strange times). I didn't even know I was bp until about 8 yrs ago when my DS was dx'd and started doing some research on that and I recognized myself.

I just started on Lamictal about 10 mo ago or so and have started noticing a difference....DW said she noticed a difference AS SOON as I started taking it, but don't expect that quick a response. I am what is called bp II which doesn't have the really high manics....I am also Early Onset bp (eobp) which is quite a bit different set of symptoms than adult onset. Unfortunately, with the meds and the therapy, that is where you come in....making sure he does what he needs to do to stay stable. I didn't want to start med's either, but after being urged to try them by my personal tdoc as well as the MC we were going to at the time I started on the Lamictal. I got lucky and the first med seems to be working. I know of some people who have spent yrs trying to find the right med cocktail....my DS is still a work in progress what with the interaction of his allergy meds and his bp meds....if one goes out of whack it affects the whole package.

Good luck and I will refer DW here to try and give you some input on living with a bp person.

tk

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-10-2006
Mon, 04-16-2007 - 3:57pm

Hi lylabell, I'm Brenda TK's wife. He sent me to your post to see if I could be of any assistance.

I've been married to my DH for almost 18 years. Up until about 8-10 months ago it was with him unmedicated/untreated. We didn't even know the problem until about 8 yrs ago when we had trouble with our DS. Up until that time I just thought DH had an extremely bad temper, was easily frustrated, angered easily, had an extremely HIGH sex drive, and could be down in the dumps or on cloud nine at the drop of a hat, just because of his personality. It was part of his personalitly but it was more extreme then "NORMAL" people. He had been that way since I met him and I just learned to deal with it. I had to develope an extremely thick skin and learn not to take his outbursts personally.

Like he said it can sometimes take years to find the right kind of medication to make one stable. Also anti-depresents without a mood stabilizer can put a person into rapid cycling. There are many kinds, subsets if you will of BP the main two are BP I and BP II, there is also EOBP with both BP I and BP II. I have recently found this site that explains BP as being on a spectrum from your typical BP I with wild mood swings to a manily depressive disorder where the "Mania" is more like a normal persons stable state and you never get the HIGH manias. That site is http://www.psycheducation.org/index.html
Also read over the websites that Marci gave you.

One of the best things you can do for yourself and your DH is inform yourself as much as possible about this disorder. Try to get him to read some also and let him know that it isn't something that can be controled by mind over matter but needs to be medicated and treated just like diabetes, heart disease, or any other chornic condition. You will also have to be there for your DH to remind him to take his meds when he is feeling good.

Now something else I want to say and I'm not saying this to scare you but I think you need to be aware of it. With mental illness on both sides of the family there is a good chance that your child could develope a mental disorder also. Like I said I don't say this to scare you but thought you need to know. There is an excellent book called The Bipolar Child by Papalos. It might be something to think about.

If you would like to discuss any of this off board feel free to email me through my profile. I will be glad to be of any assistance I can. You are also welcome to post here with any questions or concerns you might have. You will find lots of support here.

Oh, incase you are wondering what my qualifications are twords this, my family consists of DH and DS who are EOBP BP II, and myself who is BP II depressive, and DD who is suspected of being EOBP also. So I have done tons of research and continue to learn things every day.

Take care and keep us informed.
Brenda




Edited 4/16/2007 4:22 pm ET by melissacat66
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-16-2006
Tue, 04-17-2007 - 1:51am

Thanks TK and Brenda,

I wish I could say I could have gotten to know his moods. He's bipolar II also, but his moods do not rapid shift, so since our wedding he's been in a deep depression and miserable. The problem is, that before the wedding there are a ton of things he didn't tell me, lied about, or totally blanked out in conversation. So I feel like I don't know who he is before that either.

Right now its just waiting for the drugs to really kick in and him figuring out if he can do what its going to take to try to stay stable. I'll do whatever I can to help him, but he wants me to guarantee that if he does everything I'll stick around no matter what, and I can't do that. If there is no relationship and I'm miserable I'm not going to stick around forever and live my life like that nor will I put my child through that.

Thanks for your advice everyone. I'll try my best to make sure he's on his meds and doing what he needs to stay stable if we decide to stay together. If not, he has his own choices to make on how he wants to live his life and how strict he wants to be with being stable.



Jess





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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-12-2003
Thu, 04-19-2007 - 8:39pm

Hi Jess,

I have to tell ya, reading your post was like I could have written it. I recently realized that my DH is BP after dealing with his mood swings for 7 yrs. He hasn't actually been diagnosed by a doctor yet but usually I'm pretty good at doing my research and figuring out what the problem is.

The reason we haven't seen a doctor yet for BP is for a number of reasons. First, my DH is a pilot and it wouldn't look good if he was taking any type of drugs. Second, he was diagnosed with sleep apnea a while back (I diagnosed him w/that before we went to see the doctor as well). We wanted to see if after he got his C-pap machine (sleeping aperatus)if his mood swings would improve once he started getting a good nights sleep. He got the machine 2 weeks ago and he hasn't had any outbursts with me since he got the machine but it's still too soon to tell. He's told me about having a few "blow ups" with people at work but without being w/him during his "blow up", I'm not sure how bad it was. There is definately a difference in his anger level at times if YKWIM. If he's having one of his "spells" it's as if he cannot control what he says at all after he gets to a certain point. Is your DH like that?

Would you mind telling me exactly how your DH's doctors diagnosed him as BP? Did they ask him a lot of questions to see how he would react or was he given some sort of a stress test? I'm just wondering how they go about diagnosing someone with BP and what they look for.

J

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-11-2006
Fri, 04-20-2007 - 9:13am

I can answer some of this....for dx the pdoc will look at family history (relatives with mental/emotional disorders, alcoholics, quick tempers, etc) then ask about symptoms from the patient. Unfortunately there is no "definitive" test for bp at this time, it is all based on symptoms.

tk

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Registered: 11-16-2006
Sat, 04-21-2007 - 12:24am

Well he went and did a clinical trial psychiatric evaluation a few days ago and they told him that he is full blown highly-functioning bipolar. He goes to his doc this weekend (he's mainly an email doctor, its weird, but he will SEE him only once a month or so and the rest is by email or chat online). The first psychiatrist wants to put him on lithium but he doesn't want to go on lithium. So this one will have to come up with something different. I think he still needs an anti-depressant and when he starts taking those he'll probably be very subdued since thats what they typically do to him.

The whole situation has gotten very complicated. He lied about so many things before we got married that I can't believe half of what he said and his disease was a huge factor of that, we're getting an annulment. I absolutely don't want him to be able to have custody of this baby. If I'm not living with him I won't know if he's stable and its going to take quite some time until we know thats even probable since he will probably have issues with meds that cause him negative side effects (like weight gain, confusion, lethargy, etc). He is going to sign a contract with me stating that he will sign over parental rights at that time, so I don't have to worry about him changing his mind when she's born. He doesn't want to pay child support if he can't see her all the time, so the contract will say that he won't have to do that, and that in agreement he gives up all parental rights as trade for no custody. Anyway its a disaster. I hope to talk to a family law person soon so I can get this under way and get papers signed so I can stop stressing about this.

I don't plan to keep him from ever seeing her, but I don't want her tossed between houses and he knew that when we got married and still kept things from me and thought it was a great idea to get pregnant. I feel like he was trying to entrap me and I won't live like that. I know... its quite a strange scenario.



Jess





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Jess


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