Is My Left Index Finger A Carrot?

09/01/201209/01/2012 ~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 3 Comments

Prior to all this mental illness mumbo-jumbo, my hands Left and Right, fraternal twins with Right seconds older (Left, it is said, grabbed anything within reach to avoid birth). They’ve developed a symbiotic relationship on the one hand, while on the other they’ve taken completely diverging paths and developed distinctly disparate identities. As Left was once quoted as saying, “we’re not two of one thing; we’re one of two things.” Which is an important distinction in their world, a world where two things are commonly referred to as “one thing:” The oft pedestrian reference: A Pair.

The human body is classical in terms of design styles. It is proportional, balanced, and harmonious. Its design style highlights the importance of parity, especially object parts divisible by 2. Parity is reduced in importance only by singularity. However, singularity is an expression of a Prime Object. Unlike Parity Objects which if divided by two would result in one (not one-half), Prime Objects cannot be divided which results in an increased degree of importance. Further, for many Prime Objects, the statistical probability of locating a perfect replacement is less than one percent. A few Prime Objects are impossible to replace thereby aggrandizing their importance and diminishing the importance of two Parity Objects. It’s because of the human body’s classical design style and a common belief that a human body can exist with one-half of a pair of Parity Objects that Parity Objects often develop the kind of relationship that honors longevity, but also promotes independence.

Left and Right have been inseparable for as long as I can remember. Left is the quiet, ostentatious one when it comes to pretentious accessories (watches, bracelets); but Left is also the bearer of an object of significant proportion: the wedding ring. Meanwhile Right is clearly the winner when it comes to handedness and the Brain’s division of labor. Right was the first to learn that 90% of humans prefer to use his side as the “heavy lifter.” As such, it’s Right who reaches out for a handshake, gives a panhandler a quarter, hails a taxi, scolds a child, dials a phone number, beckons a suitor to approach. Unless the activity requires both the left and right hands, for instance playing the piano, forming a snowball, applause, typing this post, Left will wander off by himself, and routinely ends up in a jacket or trouser pocket catching a cat nap. Right couldn’t care less. He sees himself as invaluable, impossible to live without, the go-to-guy; deputized to effectuate distinguished gestures including devotional, patriotic, insulting, and vulgar (the latter is used so often it hardly qualifies as “distinguished”). As a matter of fact, Right’s not entirely sure if Left has the ability to execute the oft practiced and drilled Ambidextrous Transmutation which Right first discussed with Left the night immediately after first grade when Right snatched the yellow stick from Left and began to trace the alphabet. Right said, “Now Left, you should pay attention too; I know your holding the paper, but you’ve got to practice in case. . .” Left reached across to Right, alarmed, “In case of what? What?” Right patted the top of Left, “In case I get hurt, wrapped like a mummy; you need to be ready to jump in!” And Right made it his duty to train Left in skills like handwriting, key-turning, locker-combinations, can openers, hairbrush, toothbrush, razor, utensils, and the secret one, the never-discussed-one, the door-locked-under-cover-personal-exhaustive-and-bemoaning-ritual. Almost every night for fifteen years; sometimes more than once; then later in life strangers appeared and Right simply followed orders. Left has seen action in 3rd grade (broken wrist), 6th grade (broken arm), and 11th grade (dislocated elbow). Right beamed with pride when Left took ahold of the reins.

As of late however, Left has really taken a beating. My new found interest in cooking and woodworking has led to a number of instances in which digits on my left hand can’t retreat fast enough and feel the razor-sharp edge of a chef’s knife (or bread knife, or lock-back knife, or 3/8″ wood chisel) slicing, stabbing or chopping. And Right just keeps slicing in total abandon utterly unconscious of Brain’s danger alerts. So Left wanted to try an experiment to gauge Right’s ability to distinguish Left’s forefinger from a carrot. The picture above was taken a few moments ago. We’ll keep you apprised of the outcome.

Whew! 15 Minutes Is A Long Time!

08/28/2012 ~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 3 Comments

Being the subject in a feature article which appeared in the first section of the Sunday edition of a US major newspaper like the Chicago Tribune was wholly a great experience, but also one in which I am relieved is diminishing in attention. Like a child standing abreast the Sundae Buffet Bar at a local eatery piling one bizarre topping atop the last, the news cycle here in Chicago has a short attention span, especially when the subject (me) is an unknown (me).

It was the condition (bipolar); its manifestations before diagnosis; the odd behaviors preceding a mental breakdown; the swath of tawdry details, hateful accusations, and trust-damaging honesty laid bare which piqued their interest. The reporter who, with an eye focused on sensitivity, remained intent to anatomize sequential events like they were the identifiable behavioral ingredients required to produce a blue-ribbon breakdown pie. She often returned to the timeline which, like a mooring buoy, guides a diver safely to the wreck. However, my timeline represented a fall from grace, a clawing desperation numbed by opiates, acts of treason undermining my relationships; and finally, any semblance of sanity or allegiance to life was pitched like an unwanted circular. The drilling for details only struck bedrock when trivial yet salacious activities, freely offered as context, had to be included in the article to highlight the stakes of my all in bet.

Absolutely not! I would not be drawn-and-quartered on page 8, section 1, the entrails of my privacy displayed like human anomalies hawked at second-class side-shows!

I made it very clear: I’m not ashamed nor am I proud of my behavior, the pain it caused others, my professional devastation, the annihilation of trust, or the surrender of an identity. But there’s a difference between honesty and privacy when it involves my life and the lives of those dearest to me. I have been candid and explicit and straightforward. But if your newspaper can’t respect what I say is private, then they must not respect what I’ve determined to be public. In which case they can’t have any of it!

And that stand on my own behalf was my take-away. Before 2008 I always felt like I had too keep going, had to get promoted, had to make six figures, because there was always somewhere to go, a place just beyond my reach that would be better, easier, calmer. And on I went, like so many of my friends, pursuing. . .something. . .

After 2008 that place which had been so important to get to disappeared along with the constant gnawing I heard, and the “coveted by others” baubles bought to fill an expanding void where truth-to-self and character once resided, and year after year after year of acrimonious evaluations designed to hobble my self-worth.

I find great joy and comfort and silence knowing there really is nowhere else than right where I am.

Chicago Tribune Feature – Published Sun., Aug. 26

08/26/201208/26/2012 ~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 14 Comments

No rhetoric; no sublime style; no lexicons or etymology. Pure and simple disclosure of disquieting issues.

Please, REPOST THIS ON YOUR BLOG. Personally, I prefer privacy over publicity; I exposed my life in the hope that the stigmas of mental illness, obesity, and homosexuality might be reconsidered to be human conditions worthy of respect and empathy.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-bipolar-20120824,0,3948031.story

Bipolar II disorder: Another Chicagoan’s story

Like Jesse Jackson Jr., Harlan Didrickson has the illness and has had weight-loss surgery

Harlan Didrickson poses outside his Rogers Park home. (Chris Walker, Tribune photo / August 17, 2012)

By Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune reporter, August 26, 2012

Harlan Didrickson was a model of middle-class stability.He lived with his partner of more than two decades in a handsome Victorian on a leafy North Side street. He worked as manager of executive and administrative services for a high-powered architectural firm, where he made hospitality and travel arrangements for large meetings and oversaw budgets that ran into millions of dollars.He was not the kind of person who would go to lunch with friends and come home having spent $4,500 on a puppy and a month of obedience training.

Or who would get up at 2 a.m., go to Dunkin’ Donuts, then drive to Indiana and back, snacking on Munchkins.

But that’s who he became.

Four years ago, his life was upended by bipolar II disorder, the same illness recently diagnosed in U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

This is not Jackson’s story. People with the disorder — nearly 6 million in the U.S. — have unique experiences with the illness, which cycles between moods of manic energy and deep depression.

“The symptoms of bipolar disorder can be very different from one person compared to another,” said Dr. John Zajecka, a psychiatrist with Rush University Medical Center who specializes in mood disorders.

Manic states leave some people euphoric, others irritable. “There are people who can function their whole lives in these hypomanic states,” though they may lose marriages, jobs and money, Zajecka said.

Depression, too, can appear in a variety of ways. Some sufferers stay in either mania or depression for decades; others cycle between them many times a day. And people respond differently to treatment.

But Didrickson’s struggle provides one look at how bipolar II disorder and its treatment can affect a life.

And he does have one key factor in common with Jackson. Like the congressman, Didrickson, 54, had weight-loss surgery before being diagnosed with bipolar. He had a gastric bypass procedure; Jackson had a duodenal switch.

It became a serious complication in his treatment. The weight-loss procedure, which causes the body to absorb fewer calories, prevented him from absorbing the full dose of his antidepressant medication.

Didrickson’s illness began when he started feeling extremely stressed at work. He considered himself skilled at his job but felt beleaguered by office politics.

“I felt as though I was fighting a lot of fights on different fronts in my life, and that I didn’t have the wherewithal, the energy,” he said. “I was profoundly unhappy.”

He changed jobs, twice. He still felt miserable. And he also felt trapped, having to do work he now found unbearably stressful.

More than 60 percent of people with bipolar engage in substance abuse as they try to self-medicate their inner pain. Didrickson was among them. At night he would wash down some hydrocodone, an opiate he had been prescribed for a back injury, with beer. He would stay up till 4 a.m. watching TV, then take Ambien to fall asleep.

“At 6 o’clock I woke up, got dressed and went to work. I was probably still high,” he said. “Then somewhere around noon, I would crash. I would go to the men’s bathroom, go sit on the toilet and fall asleep.”

His partner, Nick Harkin, a publicist with an entertainment and lifestyle marketing firm, had no idea how deeply troubled Didrickson had become.

But then Didrickson didn’t show up on time for a planned out-of-town getaway. When he arrived the next day, he was morose, secretive and exhausted. “It was a very abrupt shift,” Harkin said. “It was quite obvious that something was very seriously wrong.”

Didrickson was thinking of ending their relationship, he told Harkin. And he wanted to move to California’s Death Valley. He wanted to start a new life.

“I was falling apart,” Didrickson said. “It was this desperate: I will do anything to get out from under this pressure.’ It was like having a heart attack, and if you don’t get out from under it, it will kill you.”

Back home, he called a friend who had once been his therapist. She asked if he was suicidal.

“I was, like, ‘Of course I am. I think about it all the time,'” he said. “‘It’s the only comfort I have.'”

She told him to see a psychiatrist. He did, and was told he had depression — a common initial diagnosis for people with bipolar, who generally seek treatment during a depressed phase of the illness.

The antidepressant the doctor prescribed didn’t work. Didrickson developed memory problems, to the point where he forgot how to do simple tasks like using a phone.

“I could not take a shower, because I couldn’t recall the sequence of activities … turning on the water, stepping into the spray, getting wet, washing,” he said.

He lost 40 pounds and neglected bathing and grooming. And yet there were also times when Didrickson felt powerful, energetic, nearly like a superhero. He could do anything he wanted, no matter how dangerous or destructive, with no consequences.

He ran red lights. He drove the wrong way down one-way streets. “I felt like I was back to being in charge, like I was back to saying, ‘It’s going to go like this because I said so,'” Didrickson said. “I felt kind of emancipated.

“I thought, Wow, this (antidepressant) Paxil is really working.'”

But it wasn’t. A psychopharmacologist gave him a new diagnosis: bipolar II disorder, a form of bipolar disorder with less extreme mood swings.

His new doctor told him to stop self-medicating — Didrickson said he hasn’t had a drink or abused a drug since — and put him on a mood stabilizer. And then began the painstaking process of trying to find the right antidepressant: six weeks getting to a therapeutic amount of a drug, then six weeks being weaned off when it didn’t work, again and again.

“My symptoms came back. I just felt terrible,” he said.

He was still manic, once getting up at 4 a.m. to drive to Lake Shore Drive to look at newly fixed potholes. He spent money recklessly. He spent hours obsessing over the paper stock to use for custom stationery.

The manic states always turned dark, ending with him lashing out at people — usually Harkin.

“When I begin my mania, it’s a great party,” he said. “But when it gets to be months into it, it gets uglier and uglier and uglier, to the point where you really are a monster.

“Mania isn’t happy; mania is crazy,” he said.

No antidepressant worked. Then a friend with bipolar recommended Adderall, the stimulant often prescribed for attention deficit disorder.

His doctor prescribed a standard amount. It did nothing.

So Didrickson took another dose. And he felt a little better.

“I started to feel buoyant,” he said. “I always talk about feeling underwater. I felt like I was finally breaking the surface.”

He didn’t know why he needed a higher dose. But then he came upon online message board postings by people who had undergone gastric bypass surgery and then found that their antidepressant medicines stopped working.

The gastric bypass surgery he had undergone years earlier to lose weight, he concluded, was keeping his body from absorbing the medicine.

Indeed, Zajecka said, gastric bypass surgery can change how people absorb medicines given for bipolar disorder.

The Mayo Clinic statement announcing Jackson’s diagnosis also noted that the weight-loss surgery he had “can change how the body absorbs food, liquids, vitamins, nutrients and medications.”

Didrickson’s doctor would only marginally increase his dosage of the notoriously abused amphetamine. It wasn’t until he switched doctors because of a change in his health care coverage that he got what he found to be an effective dose.

His longtime internist, Dr. Eric Christoff, assistant professor of clinical medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, gradually increased Didrickson’s dosage, with weekly appointments to check his blood pressure.

The depression lifted. He has been on the higher dosage for a year and a half.

“We have never seen any evidence of drug toxicity or high blood pressure,” Christoff said. “He’s really not absorbing much of any dose he’s taking.”

Many people with bipolar disorder are able to resume their previous lives.

“It’s one of the most treatable illnesses we have in medicine,” Zajecka said. “If it’s diagnosed properly and treated appropriately, there’s no reason they can’t get back to resuming a normal lifestyle and their normal goals in life.”

But Didrickson has been unable to go back to work and still has periods of depression and mania, though much milder ones. He manages the house, cooks and has taken up woodworking.

“Going out in the evening can be very, very, challenging for him,” Harkin said. “If we go to a concert or a dance performance and it’s too noisy, he’ll have to leave. If … there’s someone in a film who’s violent or cruel, that’s very upsetting to him too.”

“It’s nothing like I thought my life would be,” Didrickson said.

“The good thing, I guess, is that I don’t hold on to yesterdays,” he said. “That’s a blessing, I think, frankly. But I also don’t have tomorrow. My life isn’t about tomorrow.”

He has gone back to writing, which he did in college. He writes a blog about his experiences with bipolar, under the name T.M. Mulligan. The moniker stands for “Taking My Mulligan.”

“I’m having my do-over,” he said. “I’m taking the second chance.”

Chicago Tribune Feature – Set to Appear This Week

08/23/201208/23/2012 ~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 7 Comments

Early last week I was contacted by a staff reporter from the Chicago Tribune newspaper asking if I’d be willing to share Life With Bipolar II.

I’m a private person by nature, but also an author rummaging through his past looking for experiences which, when written in my style will leap from me and land on you resulting in some degree of change expressed through your thought or action. I don’t write for the sake of writing. I write with purpose; with hope that my style captures your attention; and with honesty so that a kinship occurs as you read and when finished actually feel something whether it be acknowledgement, empathy, entertained, or moved. If you don’t experience any shift then I have failed you as a writer.

So many people know so little about mental illness generally, and Bipolar specifically, that to decline the opportunity to be featured in a full-page story in one of the top five newspapers in the country (not too mention their on-line edition) would be foolhardy. There’s no possible way that I and this blog occupying a little corner of the internet could reach the number of readers that this article will touch.

I have spent ten hours on telephone interviews; two hours of photography here at my home; my partner’s been interviewed, and so has my physician. The process has been, frankly, unnerving and profoundly confronting and nowhere near as safe as if I’d been writing it. But I agreed because too many American’s need to understand that mental illness is a disease. Doctor’s need to understand that a post-gastric by-pass patient won’t respond to medications as expected. Patients living with mental illness need to believe that sharing themselves with others is the only way to dilute discrimination based on mental health.

Please watch for it!

The Night My Liberty Was Nullified (Thursday, July 10, 2008)

08/21/2012 ~ Harlan Didrickson ~ 5 Comments

Thursday, July 10, 2008 started out normally: cotton had been stuffed between my ears sometime throughout the night; my body had gained an enormous mass as well, its weight pulling me deeper into the feather bed, my heavy legs swinging to the edge like cast iron bells; my feet encased in iron felt ready for the ocean floor; I pushed my body upright using arm strength and sat motionless for five minutes in a kind of stupor; a man with no goal; no alarm; no schedule; no deadline. Simply a man with time. And this time continues to tick, on and on, and in this stupor it doesn’t stop, it simply continues to drum, and I am oblivious to its march. In the mornings time fails to exist; there’s simply the stupor and the weight and me, or what I think is me, trying to read the details of an unfamiliar map in poor lighting and without spectacles.

It took two hours to complete my morning routine which Nick and I have outlined on two cards and placed in the bottom edge corner of my medicine cabinet. The cards remind me of the order of bathing: brush teeth, start shower, hair, body, face, shave, squeegee, towel dry, brush hair, after-shave balm, deodorant, patch, hang towels. If I fail to use the list I forget where I am in the sequence and either stop altogether or restart from the beginning. My inability to concentrate on even the most menial activities is another symptom of my depression. I suppose I’m fortunate though, in this fog I find myself in, I don’t really judge the degree of my disability. It’s not as though yesterday I had two legs and today one. This disease is invasive: it’s a brown-out; not quite a black-out, but enough surge to switch off delicate systems and place them in a suspended mode. Next came dressing. The simple selection of items was daunting. Incapable of processing difficult code, I simply grabbed shorts, shirt and sandals and hoped I wouldn’t look like a clown.

I was exhausted by the time I made it to the garden. Nick was there working on a crossword and presented me with a cup of coffee. I opened my laptop and quickly discovered I was unable to concentrate on even simple navigation. Pulling myself up from my chair I hoisted myself onto the sofa and fell back asleep.

During sleep I began to hear the quiet invitation of the river. “Come to the river,” it asked. “Come to the river, it’s quiet here,” it pleaded.

I heard Nick’s voice far away, in the distance, miles behind me, “Harlan,” he yelled. I awoke, looking longingly for the river but all I saw was Nick, “I heard your yelling outside, about going somewhere; where were you going?” he asked. “To the river,” I said, “It was calling me.”

After a number of telephone calls I found myself in our car speeding to the hospital to be admitted. By this time exhaustion had overtook me. My resolve against the disease, its voices, its demons and magic and trickery had ceased. I was a harm to myself. I was in significant danger and unstable and required hospitalization in order to save my life from itself.

Upon entering the hospital the stark reality of mental illness was immediately evident. Once announced that you require psychiatric care you are moved through a well-oiled machine. I was placed in a triage room and asked a simple question: have you had homicidal or suicidal thoughts? A simple “yes” answer thrust my welfare to the front of the line: papers were shuffled, calls were made, registration was completed, body searches conducted, personal belongings and shoes removed and bagged, a personal security guard assigned, and the single most powerful yet profoundly simple right was revoked: my right to freedom. I had now become a legal liability requiring constant supervision in a small waiting room with other psychiatric patients. And I was incapable of leaving without seeing a doctor. I had been incarcerated by my own volition.

I found it impossible to sit in the holding cell with severely psychotic patients: one yelling someone was stabbing her; another rocking and laughing/crying; a third belching and retching; a fourth pacing like a caged cat. I asked to sit outside, right next to the pen. My guard agreed. About two hours into this episode there was a guard shift-change and I was ordered – ordered to get back into the holding pen. When I flatly refused the guards began to don rubber gloves and said, “Don’t make us lay hands on you, sir! Do not make us lay hands on you!” as though I were a criminal. I said, “I’m simply depressed! Christ, had I known it was going to be like this, I’d have simply killed myself!” and Nick and I walked back into the cell.

Nick and I sat in that holding cell for a total of five hours until at last my name was called and we (Nick, my guard and I) were escorted back to an empty emergency examination room. A nurse threw back the curtain and asked Nick to step out while she interviewed me. She was an angel, I thought, looking at her compassionate eyes and heavenly smile. She inquired as to why I found myself at the ER and I explained the days events. I told her that my language got out of hand, I talked of suicide but had spoken out of turn, and I really just wanted to go home with Nick and did not wish to be admitted.

A platoon of doctors came and went and finally I was discharged honorably into the night. It was determined that I was not a suicide risk and would see my personal psychiatrist the next day and that Nick would have to remain at my side until that time.

This mental illness has kidnapped my sanity; it has revoked my right to free thought and happiness; it has sentenced me to life with a chance for parole only if I continue to absorb Paxil at night before bedtime. But even this mindful incarceration, this disease and its disability pales in comparison to the penal colony operating under the guise of patient safety. Having willfully turned over my right to freedom was the most eye-opening, chilling, humiliating experience of my life and one in which I will not soon forget.