Just This

I thought long and hard about what to write about this, but there is very little that the video doesn't say. I wanted to quote a portion of it but I empathize and relate with almost every word. So don't read this. Read this.

Liar, Liar

Having bipolar disorder has made me a wonderful liar. There are so many little lies I tell every single day. What's that medicine? Oh, it's the end of a course of antibiotics. What doctor's appointment? This one's tricky - physical therapy is a great excuse. Why aren't you drinking tonight? Most recently, most poignantly: Why do you want to be a doctor?

$20 a Pill

Due to a variety of insurance adventures, I recently discovered that the cost of one of my mood stabilizing (and arguable life saving) medications without insurance is approximately $20/day. I'm not going to write a post about insurance companies or patent laws or Obama's health care plan because I don't think I have anything particularly new to say about them. I just want to say that $20/pill sucks.

Ironically, yet striking an all too familiar tone, the people who do have to pay these exorbitant prices are those who are especially unable to afford it. What if you don't have health insurance that covers name-brand drugs at an affordable price? What if you didn't realize you had a mental illness before a psychiatric emergency and don't have coverage at all? What if you're homeless, walked into an ER, and emerged with this prescription with no idea how to pay for it? What if you just made a bad decision about your insurance plan?

These are the what ifs that keep me up at night. They make me think about public health legislation and patent law. I don't have any answers and I don't even know if anyone is to blame here (I believe that free markets promote innovation and that we wouldn't have these drugs if someone couldn't charge $20 per pill, at least for awhile). I don't even know what the right questions are, but I hope people smarter than me are working on them because $20 a pill is too much. Especially when you depend on the pill keeps you alive, keeps you sane, and keeps you functional. Especially when you're already facing insurmountable challenges and this pill could help point you toward a halfway house, not prison, or a job, not poverty. Especially then.

Modern Love

Maybe this post is part 2 of 2 with my previous post, because it deals with similar subject. As I've thought about the pros and cons of sharing my stories, it's started to dawn upon me that they aren't my stories alone: they are our stories. I own my life and many things have happened exclusively to me, but many things have also happened, because of me, to other people.

Our Stories

Writing this blog has been a tremendous experience for me. I've found an outlet to process and express complex and evolving feelings and I've been touched beyond expression by the response from friends, colleagues, and strangers who emphathize and sympathize with the comments I post here.

As I've received positive feedback about my writing, I've started to think about other projects. There is a whole genre of topics that I can't write about in this forum, particularly related to relationships, that I could share in other formats: short stories, newspaper articles, maybe a book. Why not spend more time writing, both improving my craft and building something worth sharing more broadly? Last week, I remembered why not.

Meditation and Mania

Recently, I've been meditating on planes. The ~80 minute flight I've been taking is the perfect opportunity to enjoy a quiet, seated meditation and I've enjoyed having that time built into my day. Yesterday, I was experiencing some hypomanic symptoms while I tried to meditate and the results were quite interesting.

Maybe This Time

Apologies for the delay in posting - there has been a lot going on in my life, related to bipolar symptoms and otherwise, and I feel like I'm in a bit of a craeative black hole. However, I thought I'd pull together a post about some recent events.

One of the worst things about this illness is regretting actions I took and choices I made before diagnosis and treatment. To an outsider, I was a healthy and even highly functional human being but to those I allowed close to me I was a mess. My decisions were driven by fear: fear of something that I couldn't identify (until later, when it happened and a cruelly honest part of me was relieved to finally understand what it was I had been trying to avoid for all this time). I clung to people I thought could protect me and I pushed away those I thought might bring me closer to the edge. These were often the same people.