My Side of the Story

In this episode, Wendy gets off topic and talks about herself, and some of her experiences with bipolar disorder. 


Wendy's novel on psychiatric hospitalizations is out on Amazon! It's called "Involuntary Hold." Check it out~ There is a plot twist you won't see coming!



International Helpline Info

 For those living outside the United States, I finally found some helpful information. The International Association for Suicide Prevention has a directory of crisis centers and helplines for over 50 countries! 

Just got to the internet and type in:

       findahelpline.com/i/iasp

And it will bring you to a drop-down menu where you can input your country and region, and it will give you the information for your location. Granted, it doesn’t cover everywhere, but it’s a start!

** Remember if you, or a loved one, is in emotional crisis... Help is just a phone call away. Simply dial 9-8-8 for the Suicide and Crisis Hotline, or text "HOME" to 741741 to chat with someone via text 24/7 across the United States. **

Please contact us at bipolarforlife@myyahoo.com with any questions, suggestions, or comments.

Transcript

 Bipolar for Life
 Episode 9-My Side of the Story

Welcome to Bipolar for Life, a show dedicated to survival. This podcast examines the day-to-day struggles with this life-threatening mental illness.

 I’m your host, Wendy Foard, and I have lived with bipolar disorder for 43 years now; it hasn’t always been pretty—I’ve survived several suicide attempts, four psychiatric hospitalizations, and one disastrous trip to rehab. Yet, I’m still here!

 Let me say at the outset that I am NOT a medical doctor. I am simply a seasoned manic depressive, trying to help others survive this deadly condition through information and shared experiences. 

 Tonight, we’re going off topic, for we will not be discussing self-medication and addiction. (Inhale) Shocking, I know!

I was looking back over the episodes and realized that I have given you a great deal of general information… but only a smattering of my experience, and precious little about myself. So, I thought that we’d get to know each other better tonight as I fill you in on… my side of the story.

 I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia while my dad was in graduate school, on his way to becoming a college history professor. The year was 1962—we survived the Cuban Missile Crisis, while Chubby Checker was doing the Twist, and John Glen was the first American to orbit the earth. Yes, it was a long time ago. 

 I actually had a great childhood. I lived in a time when you didn’t lock your front door, your phone had a chord, and kids could play outside by themselves. It was a simpler time, and we lived in a simple place. I grew up in Franklin County, Virginia, the moonshine capital of the world. It’s nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains and has a rich Appalachian tradition. There is a small liberal arts college there, Ferrum, where my father taught history most of his career. 

 A small community had built up around the college. I went to Ferrum Elementary School, just across the road from the campus. We lived on campus back then, in faculty housing, so all the professors and their families were in one place. It was a tight-knit community, and we watched out for each other. 

 We went to school with all the kids growing up in the county but were separated from our fellows by the monicker “Campus Kids,” and by the rural culture. This caused problems on the bus, and for some kids in school. This became especially hard for my brother and me when the locals found out that we had lived outside the country. Anything outside the normal rural experience was met with suspicion and fear. But there were ways to get along, and I never had a problem with anyone. 

 My family lived in Spain for a year in 1969 and, then again in 1976, while my father did his sabbatical, or rather, had a year off from teaching to do research. In the world of academia, it’s “publish or perish,” so we lived in Spain while my dad did research for his book. We didn’t live on an American base, or anything like that. We were out in the Spanish community. Our apartment was just outside of Madrid in 1969, and 3 blocks from the Bay of Biscay in 1976. It’s a very different life when you don’t speak the native language! But, that’s another story…

 I went to Franklin County High School located in Rocky Mount, Virginia—Not to be confused with Rocky Mount, North Carolina… We had a band that was to play for Homecoming one year, that made that mistake. But that, too, is another story. 

 I enjoyed my time in high school. I was lucky enough not to have to study hard for decent grades, so I was involved in loads of extracurricular activities such as drama, public speaking, the newspaper, yearbook, and student government. I was doing well academically, and was even elected to Girl’s State, which is a leadership program. Things were going great! Everyone was telling me how bright my future was, and that they expected great things of me. Hell, I expected great things of myself!

 Then, I started feeling poorly in my senior year, which would have been 1980. I began running low-grade fevers constantly and had absolutely no energy whatsoever. This made it very hard to keep up with the schoolwork and all my activities. Trying to maintain my regular schedule was almost more than I could do. So, we started medical testing to determine the cause. My white blood cell count was through the roof, and they suspected Hodgkins Disease, so we even did a bone marrow test. No matter the test, the results came back negative—No answers. 

 All this was going on in my senior year, yet I managed to graduate and parade across the stage to accept my diploma. 

 That year, I had auditioned for, and won, an apprenticeship at Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia—It is the oldest living repertory theater in America. Although, feeling run-down, I couldn’t pass up this chance of a lifetime, so I went to Barter the summer of my senior year, just before entering college.  

 It was the greatest summer of my life, and I believe my first manic episode. We were immersed in the theater world, and I thrived there. I knew that was where I wanted to spend my life, in the theater, making fantasies live. We were in the morning shows for kids, while working the matinees and evening shows. I’m proud to say that I never had to usher. I spent my time on a ladder with the lighting director. But that, too, is another story… 

 We worked insane hours both day and night with one day off a month. If we weren’t working a current production; taking tickets, ushering, or running lights and sound, or in a play for the kids where they brought barter to attend, we were building sets and creating costumes for the upcoming show. It was a non-stop world, where we partied as hard as we worked. 

 This was my first introduction to needing no sleep, yet having the energy to thrive in such a fast-paced, creative environment. I still had the high white count, which had so depleted me the year before, but mania held the trump card. I spent most of my time in the theater loving all aspects of production. I was not expecting the crash that came when my body wore out!

  I had to leave Barter early, much to my chagrin. I was exhausted… It took me the remainder of the summer to recover a reasonable semblance of myself. I pushed my recovery because I was starting college in the fall and didn’t want to miss the opening of classes. 

 Now, I have to admit that this is where my befuddlement begins. Dates and the exact train of events often derail for me. I think it only proves that the manic and depressive minds do not process time the same way. But I digress…

 I hit the floor running, so to speak. I was taking Russian and was in the Russian Chorus, I was president of my dorm, was heavily involved with the Model United Nations and was enjoying classes immensely. It was the best of times…

 Then, it became more and more difficult to find the motivation to go to class. I skipped only one or two at first. But the lethargy increased, and my sense of guilt began to build for I knew I needed to be in class! That’s when I started using drugs and alcohol… to mute the guilt. 

 This guilt was exacerbated by the fact that I knew the professors whose classes I was cutting… I had decided to go to Ferrum for college; it was cheaper for my folks. Hell, it was virtually free since my dad taught there. I just had to get permission from each professor to take their class, since I’ve known most of them all my life. As a courtesy… you know.

 I was living on campus in the dorms, making friends and loving life, when I started to skip classes. I kept doing the extracurricular activities, like Russian Chorus and Model United Nations, but I basically started to sleep thru classes, and partied at night. This is a familiar pattern for many college freshman so, I don’t think anyone was seriously alarmed, at first, that I wasn’t going to class. 

 And here is where the cheese started to get binding for me… that negative voice sounding off inside my head. 

We all have one; you know the one, the self-critical voice that tells you that your ass does look fat in that dress! Or, that girls will never go out with someone as short as you! 

Yeah, that voice. 

It has been my experience that one negative voice becomes many vile voices when you’re in a depressive mood. And a chorus of “You’re no good,” or “You’re so stupid,” or “You don’t matter anyway,” began resounding in my head. This litany of doom and despair ran non-stop in my mind, 24 hours a day! It never let up, and it got nastier as time went on, “Kill yourself already! No one would care!”  

As these voices intensified their attacks on me, the more I would try to drown them out with drugs and alcohol. It seemed to work at first… The more I smoked or drank, the harder the voices became to hear.

Soon, I was missing even the fun activities. My focus became drowning out those horrible thoughts. Nothing else mattered. I was being verbally assaulted every hour by myself… I had to find an escape! When the drugs and alcohol no longer silenced the raging voices, I began to think of suicide. ANY escape!

 That’s when I began the great debate on ways to die. Gunshot would do it… but I didn’t have access to a firearm. How about hanging? Hell, I was too short to get the rope over anything high enough to do the trick. I racked my brain for the easiest and most affordable way to kill myself, all while desperately trying to maintain a happy outward appearance. Nothing must appear to be wrong! Soon, the only things I attended were the evening parties. I slept most of the time. I was exhausted, but I had to keep up appearances… At least to my friends. 

 I suppose what happened next was inevitable. I had been thinking of ways to die for weeks and had decided that poisoning would be the least trouble out of all the methods. In other words, it left no mess. I didn’t want to do that to my folks. 

I went around the dorms buying up pills to have a collection of different meds to take, quaaludes, speed, and anything else that was in pill form. I wanted to mix a lethal cocktail. I actually spent all my money on these pills. That’s how committed I was to die. The more I thought of my death, the more I felt liberated. I’d found a way to escape the maddening voices… Now, the only questions were when and where?

 The perfect opportunity arose when I was invited to a party in another of the dormitories. I thought it would be nice to depart this world where people were happy and laughing. So, just before the party, I took the entire handful of pills with a long pull off of a whiskey bottle. As I brought the bottle down from my lips, I felt lighter than I had in my entire life! I had started my escape from a world that wouldn’t miss me, a place where I could never achieve happiness or find true love. I was about to be free!

And off to the party I went to drink myself into a stupor from which I would not recover… 

 Needless to say, I wasn’t successful in my attempt at killing myself. I got physically sick before the full effects could take hold. I was sick for the next couple of days as well, from what I remember. I don’t remember much after losing at beer pong, but I was very unhappy to wake up in the college infirmary. I remember crying because I couldn’t even kill myself correctly… a serious failing on my part. The deal was supposed to be that I’d wake up dead! 

 I was then sent to a series of psychologists. The first one turned on a tape recorder, so I talked about the weather. The second one was able to talk about the theater, so I spoke with him.

 It wasn’t until years later that I found out he had told my parents that I had manic-depressive tendencies. But no one knew what that meant back in the 1980s, in the backwoods of Franklin County. He hadn’t come right out and said I was a manic-depressive, so nothing was done. They all kept an eye on me, but no one had said what to look for… 

 So, I flunked out of my first attempt at college. I went to work for a while, and then tried college again. It was decided that I could go to Ferrum and live in the basement of my parents’ home while attending. 

It was like an apartment, so it was perfect… they could keep an eye on me, and I had my own place near campus. It worked out very well. This time, I managed to get my two-year diploma. I am a college graduate! It wasn’t easy, as I still had the mood swings. And to be truthful, I almost didn’t graduate… I had a great deal of work to catch up on, after the most recent suicide attempt. But I made it!

 Since I had graduated, my dad was anxious that I get a four-year degree, and we made plans for me to go to Virginia Commonwealth University, VCU, to study theater. I ended up coming home from VCU, having been unable to go to class and flunking out. 

I worked for a while and felt better, so we made plans for me to attend American University in Washington, D.C. to study International Studies. I was good at Russian and the thought was I could work at the United Nations. So, off I went to live in the dorms on campus.

You guessed it, they came to pick me up from American University too! Always asked the same question of me each time they came to pick me up… “What happened Wendy?”  And I never had an answer for them… it always just seemed to fall apart! 

 I guess after American University, my dad finally gave up on my having an advanced college degree, for attention was turned towards finding me a good job. 

I did find several good jobs, but those ended in failure as well. The cycle of starting off well and ending poorly continued into my work life as well. I’ve gone through a host of different jobs. I’ve worked mostly as a receptionist or a cashier at some interesting places. I would start off doing just fine, even excelling in my job, but then the depression would kick in and I couldn’t make it to work. Thus, I’ve lost many an interesting job. 

 Then, one day my dad came home from work with the name of a doctor at the N.I.H. who had helped a colleague’s daughter, and it was thought that he might be able to help me as well. We made the appointment, and that day changed my life forever.

 In a small office in Alexandria, Virginia, Dr. Llywellyn Bigelow saved my life. I spoke with him for a bit, I don’t remember about what, but at the end of our session, he looked at me and said, “You are a classic manic-depressive.” Those words changed me… Finally, I had a reason why!

 I wish I could say that those words had absolved me of all my sins, but I still carry tons of guilt about my college days. I didn’t realize just how much until, writing this episode, I started shaking!

Anyway, those words condemned me to taking psychiatric drugs for the rest of my life. I decided if that’s what it took for me to live in the world, and avoid the streets of hell, then okay, I’d take the drugs. But there was a major problem. 

 As it turns out, I’m allergic to Lithium in any form—The primary drug they prescribe to disrupt the bipolar roller coaster. It attacks my central nervous system, and I can’t stand up straight, my hands shake, and I wet the bed at night. It even gave me the taste of a rusty pipe inside my mouth that wouldn’t go away, no matter what I did! Talk about a bad scene… 

 Therefore, I had several trips to psychiatric hospitals as the meds I was on would stop being efficacious or would get to a toxic level and needed to be straightened out. I’ve had a hell of a time finding the right combo of medications to keep my mood swings under control. 

 We would get my moods stable for a while, and I directed a cable TV show and edited radio shows while working a full-time job. So, it wasn’t all unproductive time waiting on meds. I was creating perpetually. TMI Productions, a company I co-owned, thrived for several years. I kept trying for my life in the arts!

 But the pattern of my life reared its ugly head again— we started off very well, and then everything fell apart. That pattern survived for many years and still haunts me to this day. I always expect things to fall apart… 

 That’s the way it was, until I found a job at Parks and Recreation in Loudoun County. I registered kids for any, and all, of the programs PRCS offered. I stayed at this job the longest of any; fifteen years! In fact, I retired from there. 

 I can’t tell you the ending of the story, for I have yet to get there. I still struggle with mood swings, though not as bad as in previous years. I have been lucky enough to find a psychiatrist who can get me back on my feet if things go awry. We still have to adjust the meds from time to time, but I think we’ve got a good combo at present. 

 I do not live alone. I learned the hard way that I need to have people around me to avoid the pits of hell. I owned my own house for a while and that was… a disaster! I know that housing is a problem for many people with mental illnesses. There are not many options for housing patients with a mental illness. Hell, housing for anyone is ridiculous right now, but again, I digress… 

 I have been blessed with a friend who has allowed me to come into her home and be a part of her family. Otherwise, I believe I’d be living on the street right now. I’m also lucky, in the fact that she has lived with bipolar people before, so she helps me keep an eye on things, and is surprised by very little. I wish all manic-depressives could find such a friend! As I said, I have been blessed.

 But, if you find yourself in a bad place, and are thinking of hurting yourself or are planning your suicide, PLEASE reach out for help, dial 9-8-8 to talk to someone at the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline! Despite what those voices are telling you, you are needed!

If you’d rather not speak to anyone, you can text H-O-M-E to 741741 and chat with a counselor that way. But reach out for help! Contact your closest friend or talk to your doctor. All of these people would be glad to help. 

 I hope that you feel we know each other better now, for we have spoken of some very intimate issues together, you and I—suicide, depression and hospitalizations. 

 Speaking of which, if you’d like to know more about what life is like on the psych ward, I’ve written a novel based on my experiences there. It’s called Involuntary Hold and is available on Amazon. I have incorporated what I saw there with a tale of personal discovery, and the ending has a twist you won’t see coming! That’s Involuntary Hold by Wendy Foard and is available now on Amazon.

 The last name is spelled F-O-A-R-D. Yes, there is an A in Ford. F-O-A-R-D. It’s Welsh. There used to be an E at the end, but I’m glad they dropped it. The jokes on Fo-Ard were bad enough, I can’t imagine Fo-Ard-E would have been much better!

Nevertheless, there will be one more episode before the end of Season One, and I’d like to open the topic to you. What would you like to talk about? What do you need more information on, or would like to hear more about? Please email me at bipolarforlife@myyahoo.com. I realize that it’s an imposition, because you have to make time to tell me, but I’d really appreciate hearing from you. I’d like this last episode to be something special, so let me know your thoughts! Again, email me at bipolarforlife@myyahoo.com. It’s also listed on the opening page of this podcast, so please, let me hear from you. 

Well, that’s all the time we have for tonight. The next episode will be up to you! Take care and be safe in all your travels. Good night, my friend. Good night.