I was adopted at birth so while others have family history, I do not. I have a long list of birth defects that I have dealt with and that's got a lot to do with they way I am today. I was born with Diabetes Insipidus (water not sugar) because of several things in my brain that were damaged or never fully developed. I also have never been able to smell though I taste things and somethings once in a great while I think I can smell or taste a scent.  I'm blind in my left eye, optic nerve never developed fully and when I was young, my Mom had an eye dr who tried to strengthen my eye and they would put patches over my good eye, so in effect it would blind me. I can still see shapes and colors but it looks very dark to me.  Luckily I am still able to drive and do so pretty good, except for the fact that I am a speed demon. I am also small...or actually a little person.  again a thing dictated by my malfunctioning pituitary gland.  I stand currently at 4'7".   As a child I developed asthma and a slew full of allergies which kept me from being active but when I was living at home, my mom would always have me drink protien shakes and I was really as healthy as I could be. 

I had a kind of breakdown when I was in my early 30's which kind of started this whole journey of mine into the depths of hell and out the other side.  Shortly after the break down I got myself pregnant, my choice, not so much my husbands, but I always wanted to have 2 kids.  My oldest at the time was 7 1/2 years old. For a while the hormones associated with pregnancy kept me on an even keel, or so I though.  Turns out people I worked with at the time couldn't wait for me to go on maternity leave. After I had my youngest which had to be an emergency cesarian because I had asthma bad for 3 days striaght and the doctors couldn't get it under control, so they had to intebate me and sedate me in order to make sure the baby was ok.  Turns out She was born less than a month before my 35th birthday.  My last Hoorah!.  After the pregnancy ended I started having symptoms again, stress was the worst thing for me. I was one who would let things build up insde me and would explode either in fits of rage or crying or constant attemps to overdose or cut myself or drown myslef in alcohol.  In fact because of this illness I lost a job becuase of attendance issues.  I was lucky though and was able to get another better job right away.  I was able to go to Kaiser Permanente.  Now alot of people have bad things to say about them, but I have never received better psychiatric care anywhere else.  They are way into groups which I found a lot of help in...in fact I'm waiting for a space to open in a bipolar group now.  I had a psychologist nurse who handled me at first. She was a wonderful person.  After several hospitalizations she was able to get me into a crisis house and that did me a lot of good.  I actually stood up for myself and finally learned how to take care of myself.  It was a good experience for me. After a total of 4 hospitalizations, I got a social worker to help me out.  Her name is Sara and she has been the best thing for me.  I was in a group with her call seda which was socialization and education for anxiety and depression. That so rocked. I learned so much from that.  I now know what things trigger my syptoms and that I need to reach out to get help instead of feeling alone and spiralling down and winding up in the hosptial again.  From this date as I write this, it has been over 5 years since I have needed hospitalization.  For the longest time I had no idea what I had just that the drs called it a mood disorder.  One day in SEDA we watched a film which talked about the symptoms or bipolar disorder and the light bulb came on over my head. Everything in that film explained exactly what I had been going through.  I was amazed.  I finally asked at my last dr's appt which was a few months ago what my diagnosis really was.  I called myself bipolar light.  But found out it was called bipolar 2.  So that is kind of a synopsis of my story.  There is so much more about me but I'll leave it for another time.