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It is interesting how pervasive the fear of being labeled with a mental illness is. I hadn't thought about how much my own fears play into it until I was waiting for the registration email for this "alterego" I created to post about this topic. When I was thinking about it, I had to admit that I am always worried that people will disregard my thoughts and opinions on other issues if I talk about my mental illness history, even 13 years later. For the record, what I am going to share happened 14 years ago, and I have been "in remission" for the last 13.

I started having seizures out of the blue. I was hospitalized and had a full neuro work-up. (Thank goodness we had good, employer-based insurance at the time.) When it was determined that my seizures were non-epileptic and some form of mental illness, the treatment that I received became less desireable. I was shunted from one doctor to another, almost every one changed the prescriptions I was on. No one seemed to specialize in treatment, jsut management of the symptoms. I did finally find a therapist who was on our insurance plan and had some experience dealing with somataform seizures. Through all of this I was in a wheelchair, wearing a helmet, have up to 20 grand mal seizures a day. I was literally locked into my room at night when my husband would go to work, because we never knew where the next seizure would come from, and if I was out of the room, which had padding on all the floors and walls, I might break another bone.

I gradually started recovering the memories of being molested by my father. At first they were only the memories of the fear I felt while it was happening, and then the things my eyes had seen as I "floated" over my body. The memories are still not completely coherent, and it is only with ongoing therapy that I have been able to integrate them into my life, and help myself make sense of my childhood memories, or lack thereof.

Even as I was having fewer seizures, because of the processing I was doing in therapy, the doctors kept increasing my medication dosages and "tweaking" with the cocktail of meds. Their theory was that they could get them to completely stop if they just found the right combination. I still regret that I didn't question it more, but mentally the meds made me so sluggish, I began to have a hard time even thinking in my therapy sessions. I quit going to therapy, because it seemed that it wasn't helping anymore.

I have to say, the best thing that ever happened to me was having my gall bladder need to be removed. While I was in for the surgery, I had to come off all the medications I had been on. I didn't have a single seizure while I was off the meds in the hospital, and when my doctor wanted to put me back on them, I refused. I was labeled "noncompliant" and warned over and over that I would regret not following their advice. I have never regretted it. I switched doctors, went back to therapy, and while I had a few seizures after coming off the meds, three months later I was seizure free and haven't had one since.

Too often I think that we have doctor's who do not understand the psych meds they are prescribing, or psychiatrists who don't see their patients long enough to really evaluate the effects of the medications and other factors in the lives of their patients. I think the entire system is focused on how to medicate a problem better, rather than figuring out how to create a life worth living for the person with mental illness.

I still have nights where I hide in a corner when the memories overwhelm me, but they are fairly rare. I still go to therapy once a week, but those sessions tend to focus on coping skills, how to help my children deal with my divorce, or how I am going to solve a situation with my new husband. I am not "cured" but my mental illness is in remission, and I make sure I am getting the mental tune-ups I need.

Thank God for my bad gall bladder.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
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