Mental Illness After Brain Injury

My name is Dawn Corbelli and I have bipolar disorder and a moderate traumatic brain injury. Many people have heard of bipolar disorder, but for those that don’t know what it is, it is a mood disorder. Another name for it is manic depression. Most people are unfortunately familiar with depression because most people have suffered from it at one time or another during their life. During depression you may have a lack of energy, feelings of worthlessness, low self-esteem, and possibly suicidal thoughts. Many people have heard the word manic, but do not truly understand what it means for someone who is mentally ill.

Many Symptoms of a manic episode:

-having inflated self-esteem, thinking you are invincible.

-being more talkative than usual, talking so much and so fast that other’s cannot interrupt.

-having racing thoughts-having lots of thoughts on lots of topics at the same time. These are called a “flight of ideas.”

-Having abnormally high activity or energy.

– feeling extremely happy, even euphoric.

-Not sleeping or only getting a few hours of sleep but still feeling rested.

 Source: Mania: What are the Symptoms of Mania? my.clevelandclinic.org

There is Bipolar 1 and Bipolar 2. I used to have bipolar 2 where my less manic, or hypomanic, episodes only lasted for days. Now after my brain injury I have switched to going full blown manic for much longer, with hallucinations, and have been rediagnosed as having bipolar 1.  There is much more to it if you do want to read the full resource I have provided above, but today I am going to tell you about my experience of the worst manic and depressive episodes I have ever experienced. They took place three years after my brain injury. It was early November 2011. There was no snow on the ground at this point. I woke up with an unusual amount of energy one day and decided to go for a long walk. I walked 10 miles. Within a few days, I was walking 12 miles at a time. I was not sleeping but a couple hours at night and I would get up in the middle of the night to clean. This mania lasted at least six weeks. Day after day I would get up and clean. I dumped out every drawer in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, the closets. I would sit on the floor and organize and clean everything. In the bathrooms I pulled everything off every shelf. I remember my husband coming to say goodbye to me before work and I was sitting on the floor of our daughter’s bathroom with not a bit of the floor showing. Around me were unfolded sheets sets, towels, lotions, shampoos, hair stuff, anything you can imagine having in a bathroom. It was on the floor with me and on me. I folded and cleaned and organized every room before I was done with my six weeks of mania. After cleaning I was walking my 12 miles. Soon the snow came. I bundled up and walked in it. When I had no more drawers or closets to clean out, I began doing crafts. I was making a little candy cane ornament. I made enough ornaments to take to Memorial Central Hospital rehab floor and passed one out to every patient on the seventh floor. I was working some of these days as well. I was extremely energetic, taking on many tasks. I forgot to tell you part of mania can include being irritable or unusually angry.  It took me three hours to walk 12 miles every day, eight times around our neighborhood and around the outside of it.  Veronica would be left at home and if she called me being worried about me, I would yell through the phone at her. I would tell her not to call me unless it was an emergency. She would call her dad at work to talk to him, crying. This was a very hard time for our whole family. I was baking dozens and dozens of cookies and for no reason at all, yelling at my older daughter for eating them because I wanted to give them away. Nothing made sense. I was on medicine to help bring me down, but it can take up to six weeks for psychotropic medication to become fully effective, so I went on my way. Spending. Manic people sometimes spend money without a care in the world and without worrying if they need it for other things. Thank heavens, I am not one of those people. Another thing many people with this mood disorder do is cheat on their spouse or significant other. I couldn’t be more grateful, that is not me. I have been married 35 years this year. Although I thought about it a time or two, I never acted on it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that was something I was not going to do. Instead, I became hypersexual and very aggressive with my husband. To the point he didn’t want to be with me in that way. OH I would get so angry at him!! I would yell and say really degrading remarks. It’s amazing he stayed with me, but when I later asked him why he never left, he said, “Because I knew you would come back to me.” Meaning myself, not my sick self.

One day I woke up and I didn’t want to walk anymore. I had a couple weeks of peace. It was so nice to be myself again, but I was scared. With every up comes a down. We have been doing this dance since we were first married. We knew what was coming.

I woke up one day and didn’t want to get out of bed. Not much later, I wanted to drive my vehicle into a cement building as fast as I could. We called the doctor that day and she put me on another med. Nope It didn’t start working right away. I gained 11 lbs. in about a week and a half and took myself off that medicine. I told my provider (she wasn’t a psychiatrist, but she was a nurse practitioner that was responsible for prescribing my mood meds.) that I stopped taking the medicine and she became very angry. She told me that if I ever do that again she will have me committed to a psych ward. I have never been in one throughout all these years because my family has taken care of me. Soon I was bedridden, crying for hours a day. Veronica would lay next to me in my bed to make sure I didn’t hurt myself, which at that time, I thought about often. Greg would call home several times each day and our older daughter, Kylie, would come to see me. Unfortunately, when I am in such a bad place, I forget weeks at a time, every time I go through this, and she tells me about it later. I do remember asking why she never came to see me, and she was so sad that I couldn’t remember her taking the time to lay in my bed and rub my hair till I fell asleep. Greg stayed home from work some days. I do remember one day Kylie came over. She brought me a lavender scented candle and a chocolate bar and painted my toenails. It’s all I can do to hold back my tears as I try and write this. My family is so good to me.

Next step was spending my days on the couch. I didn’t bathe for days, do dishes, clean the house, or cook dinner for my family. I laid on the couch from early morning, about 7 am, until 10pm. On the television every single day was Law and Order: SVU. I would drift in and out of sleep all day long. I forgot to tell you, shortly after becoming manic, I took a three month break from work to get better. It took about six weeks after my depression began for me to heal and begin feeling like myself again. I felt like I had been gone for a long time. And I was. After I was well, I saw some things differently and my priorities changed. I decided staying home with Veronica was where I needed to be. I needed her and she needed me. We have spent practically every day together since.

If I get too stressed out and don’t get enough down time and rest, I begin feeling off. I phone my doctor right away and he adjusts my meds and I have never had such a bad bipolar disorder episode since. Thank you, God!

I have to tell you, because of all our family has been through over the years due to my bipolar disorder, Greg says, “If you stop taking your meds on purpose and fall apart, I will not stay.” He also says, “If you take your medicine the way you are supposed to and fall apart, I will always stay.”

Greg reminds me often to take my meds and I do my best because it is hard enough for my family to live with someone that wants to be well and sometimes isn’t. Honestly, Greg says if I wasn’t on meds, I would probably live in a cardboard box on the streets downtown. Scary thought, right? But true.

Thank you for reading my blog.

If you want to know more about our lives as we live them having brain injuries, please read my book titled,

A Miracle a Day, One Day at a Time: Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury

It is available on Amazon right here from my website. Go to Menu, press Book, and scroll down. It is available in paperback and kindle.

Take your meds if you need them. I know some people don’t believe in taking psychotropic medication and we all must do what is right for us. But I always will. It has saved my life more than once and I want so badly to be here to enjoy the wonderful life I am blessed to live.

Please like, follow, and subscribe to my website. I am so sorry, I am technologically challenged and cannot share with you how to do this yet, but I know it is possible because I receive email notifications that people are doing it. If you do, you will automatically receive notice by email that I have posted a new blog.

Have a beautiful week everyone!