Ah dear reader how dar we’ve come. It’s been three years now since my manic depressive, bipolar 1, remission settled in after a sixteen night stay introducing my body to what it needed all along: Seroquel. Days of reckoning and appreciation are coming. Hello there Dr. Rajasree V. Praturi (who diagnosed me in five seconds with no sight of any intake evalutation, questionnaire or even a single question). Let’s not forget Todd M. Antin, and your crackpot office filled to the brim with of medical students in lab coats. Your six month debacle drained my mind and my finances. Somewhere between Trazadone knock out punches to late night Lamictal suicidal actions I eventually got the hell out of dodge. Looking back, though, no one ever reevaluated me after that knee-jerk condemnation. This post will grow as I have time to give. I’m not airing dirty laundry. What I’m hoping to show is how the system is both infinitely broken yet also a chance for mental health redemption if given the proper series of support systems.
“A five second diagnosis, more like a glance, led me on a sixteen year journey of terribly inhumane and torturous tactics and divinely inspiring awakenings. Some might want to hide while others step forward and accept your gold stars.”
Referred by family to Dr. Bruce Rudisch (hi Facebook, thanks for the friend recommendation in Bruce, I’ve let HIIPA know you have my sealed medical records), a private elite-level psychiatrist at $300 an hour, was the first to try lithium. Unfortunately he also added an anxiety-deadening power drug benzodiazepine called Klonopin that had some severe adverse side effects when I was taken off of them. Lithium was the one med that was never questioned until thirteen and a half years later when my Agent Smiths realized I was toxic. I was close to going into kidney failure so there was no time to step down. Within thirty-two hours I my mind awakened. I wrote a short essay on the finite and infinite connectedness of everything and everyone in an all-encompassing universal system where the highest vibrational energies of love at our collective core.
So strap in and get ready for a wild ride of triple-secret agent reviews of the light and shadow of the mental health care system in Atlanta, Georgia, and Greenville, South Carolina. After dropping out of college after only two and a half weeks, I was given a clean bill of physical and mental health. Fast forward to November 2009 when a five second diagnosis, more like a glance, led me on a sixteen year journey of terribly inhumane and torturous tactics and divinely inspiring awakenings. Some might want to hide while others step forward and accept your gold stars. Hello there. I’m looking at you PACT Atlanta and Peachford Hospital for the former. The latter includes Skyland Trail and Carolina Center for Behavioral Health, both a refuge of hope and mental illness remission. I’ve been in full remission of bipolar 1, manic depressive disorder, for three years.
So much more to come…