This is under the Twirling My Skirt category because when I wrote this I was pissed as hell. Several months ago at my last Doctor’s visit. My Doctor’s told me she thinks I have Bipolar Disorder. And the basis for this lovely denouncement of my mental status…. my promiscuity.
I was shocked. But should I have been? She’s happily married, happy in her life with her new baby, living the Armenian Wife’s dream. And if I find happiness outside that “norm” how can I possibly be normal? And according to her narrow minded belief’s if I’m not normal I must not be sane! Top it off, she admits she has watched a family member who is Bipolar destroy those around them by denying they have a problem. (Got teary-eyed telling me.) So she’s prejudiced to see this disorder in ALL her patients.
I immediately look around at my relationships in my life and scrutinize them to see if I’m “destroying” anyone. Other than my ex-husband (who doesn’t realize how much happier he’ll be without me demanding unrealistic expectations from him) and my religious family members who worry I’m going to hell due to my pre- post– UN-marital sex , I couldn’t see anyone I was doing harm to!
My kids are loved and fed and I do a hell of a job as a mother. Am I perfect? No. Do I lose it sometimes? Yes, because no one is perfect. But doesn’t the definition of BI-polar mean I should have mood swings? EXTREME mood swings? Irrational moments of bliss and then irrational moments of sadness? Well, guess what.. I do get irrational moments of bliss… DURING SEX!! Haha! But I don’t get irrational moments of sadness just because I’m not FUCKING someone!!!
Did I mention I was pissed. Breathe, Heather, breathe.
See, according to my doctor (who admitted that the patients she has been right about this have all thanked her and the patients who’s she was wrong about this did get angry… I wonder if any of THOSE patients ever forgave her!!) Sorry.. sidetrack.. My Doctor said, “People who engage in risky behavior, in full knowledge of the consequences and disregard them, these people may be Bipolar Disorder.”
“So race car drivers are all Bipolar?” I question her. She babbles on about a study being done to measure the serotonin of risk takers and its high and she’s amazed I brush that aside.
OF COURSE its high! A percentage of any population has to be risk takers.. or how would anything get done! Risk Takers went after the big woolly mammoth. Risk Takers left their village to begin a new village far away. Risk Takers got on that boat and went to America. Risk Takers took that idea/ invention and pushed it into reality. Risk Takers look for, reach for, and grasp the Brass Ring. I ask you, where would the human race BE without the Risk Taker’s genetics popping up every so often in the gene pool!.
What I don’t get is WHEN Risk Takers as a group suddenly became Bipolar Disorder! Who decided that trait falls into any disorder much less THAT disorder?!? And WHO decreed it had to be “FIXED”!
To be fair.. if you swing into a depression that immobilizes you for days, weeks and months on end and swing out of it into an equal extreme, I can understand how you would need and want drugs to balance that out. But what if you don’t swing into such extremes… are you still Bipolar? How can anyone justify saying that? Because I live my life the way I want? Isn’t there a difference between accepting the consequences of my actions and denying the risks? I seem to see the difference, can’t they?
AM I YELLING??!!….. sorry… this is a personal pet peeve button she’s pushing. Anothers judgment of me… drives me insane.
And that’s where we come to the crux of it. THEY have decreed my behavior abnormal.. yet it seems completely normal to me. And I’ve met many (MANY!!) who feel/ believe/ behave/ the same way. Are we ALL Bipolar?
“Yes,” my doctor said when I put that point to her.
I was stunned! The closed-mindedness of it all. My automatic response, “Well, I’d rather be one of “them”; happy, hanging with like-minded people, than be your definition of normal and be unhappy.”
All this because I wear condoms in sex but prefer not to do so with oral sex. Because I’ve made a personal choice, knowing there “MIGHT” be risks (and pretty slim ones at that), she now worries I “Might” be Bipolar. Never mind the “Choice” I make to drive over the speed limit (risk of dying a horrible death in a car accident). Never mind the “Choice” I make to let the sun burn me occasionally (Cancer! Cancer!). Never mind the “Choice” I make to leave my house every day knowing I might die in some unforeseen way. We all make those choices and take those risks in little ways every day. Some of us take more in some ways, hello Stockbrokers! Some of us take fewer. Some of us take none.
To me it comes down to the same thing as religion. If it makes me happy, if I harm no one, why are you trying to tell me I cannot be me. Why is my being unique, being me, being different than YOUR norm, have to be labeled a disorder and wrong. Because I’m putting my health at risk? Is it healthier to be unhappy?
Lets see how “healthy” it is to find a new doctor.
Bottom line… she is wrong. She is making a judgment based on her definition of “risky behavior” and her own traumatic experience with it. And that is bad medicine.
I always thought smoking cigarettes was an addition… now I wonder if the medical community may soon dub it a symptom of Bipolar Disorder!