Sometimes i womder...

@badwolfblackwolf451

I went through years with periods of high energy, irritability, excessive spending with no concern, some wreckless behavior, insomnia (it's great being awake for 4-5 days **roll eyes**), and running on very little sleep in general (3-4hrs most nights)... I also had a lot of periods of running on empty, sleeping 8-10hrs and still being exhausted, giving up hope... I was essentially stuck on a rollercoaster of energy and emotion, up and down, up and down, what the hell was that?, up and down...

My GP and I were in a "watch and see" stage for a few years, and I finally broke down and more or less begged him to get things moving a couple years ago. My psychiatrist greatly appreciated me handing her 4-5 pages of typed history (a couple months of work), it helped her speed up diagnosis by being able to look at her notes alongside that. Saw a few professionals in various areas of practice, had a number of unofficial diagonsis for bipolar 2 (and the psychiatrist's unofficial diagnosis of bipolar 1) over that first year before we had an official diagosis of bipolar 2.

Funny thing is that my GP's putting me on what was essentially 2 antidepressants before the psychiatrist saw me for the initial helped speed things along. The psychiatrist seeing me cranked up to 11, and then seeing me start to level out after stopping and adjusting meds, made it quite obvious for her.