When I was a bit younger, I used to have really bad PMS. It was probably bad enough to be diagnosed as PMDD, but if anybody ever did diagnose me as such, they didn’t tell me. Every time I attempted suicide, I think it was just before or during my period. The worst thing about it was that my period was also extremely irregular, so I never even knew when the PMS was coming. Although there was a good side to that, too — I’d suddenly become intensely suicidal, but when my period would come, I’d be so relieved to know that there was a concrete reason for my mood, I wasn’t “going crazy” again, and I’d be feeling better in a few days. That’s an amazing sense of relief to have.

This was a major issue for me until I started taking the birth control pill. I wanted to start taking it a few years before I actually did, but I couldn’t find a doctor who would prescribe it for me. The reason? I was on Topamax, and Topamax can sometimes make oral contraceptives less effective. This only holds true if you’re on 200 mg or more daily, and I think I was on 100 mg at the time, but who’s counting?

How did I eventually get prescribed oral contraceptives? Well, one day I went to a clinic to get the morning after pill (yes, we’d been using protection, but we had a condom breakage issue) and when the doctor was asking me some questions, I told her that this was the third or fourth occasion that I’d taken emergency contraceptives (over a span of three years).

She said, “Polly, Polly, Polly, what are we going to do with you?”

She had never seen me before in her life.

I said, “Well, for starters, somebody could prescribe me the birth control pill!”

And so she did. Yes, she knew that I was taking Topamax and that it could make the Pill less effective. I should point out that the other doctors I’d asked about birth control had all been male.

I never took the morning after pill again. I have never been pregnant. A couple years later, I stopped taking Topamax.

I know that oral contraceptives cause really bad mood swings in some women, but they actually help prevent them for me. It’s also nice having my menstrual cycle regulated, so that I know when a possible time of PMS is coming up. On the other hand, since I now only rarely get depressed and irritable before I get my period, there’s still that element of surprise. If I’ve gone for many months without PMS, I’m not expecting it to happen.

Which is why last week, I spent a couple of days feeling like I wanted to go lie down in traffic, but was cheered up when I realized that I only felt that was because of PMS. Then I got a little too cheered up, because I had an insomnia thing going on, and I got hypomanic. I was so jumpy and hyper that I was seriously afraid that I was going to have to call in sick to work one day because of it. I had a cup of coffee the day before, like an idiot — I try not to drink coffee at all normally, and when I’m hypomanic, coffee is an incredibly bad idea. IT MAKES MY BRAIN FEEL LIKE IT IS JUMPING UP AND DOWN. AND IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE EVERY NERVE IN MY BODY IS JUMPING UP AND DOWN INSIDE MY SKIN, TOO. And that’s actually a lot of fun, even if my pitiful, inaccurate attempts to describe it make it sound uncomfortable. The uncomfortable part comes because I. Can’t. Keep. Still. and any situation that would require me to stay still is horrible for me. If I’ve got free rein to climb on stuff and do whatever I want, then it’s tons of fun.

You see why this might be a problem when I’m at work, though.

I guess caffeine does this to a lot of people, but if you are not manic-depressive, I don’t think that ONE CUP OF COFFEE can make you feel like this for TWELVE HOURS STRAIGHT before you start to come down a little.

Anyway, I somehow started feeling a lot more subdued, and I was able to go to work, and it was all good.

Um, I have no idea where I was going with this. I’m still a wee bit on the hypomanic side, but not in a bad way. Oh, yeah. I wanted to mention that although I don’t eat as well as I should, for a long time now I’ve been doing really well at trying to make sure my sleep schedule is as regular as possible, because I know how important it is for me to sleep properly if I want to stay well.

Ha ha ha, I’m standing up at the computer again because I’m still not so awesome with the sitting still. Sit down, you.

Anyway, my sleep being messed up through no fault of my own and the subsequent consequences provided me with additional proof that I should definitely stick to a regular sleeping schedule. I’m so much more stable when I do. I know, duh, right? Although the insomnia wasn’t brought on by anything I did, for a few days I didn’t try hard enough to get my schedule back on track, and that only served to remind me that it is dumb not to try to get enough sleep. It is also dumb for me to oversleep, or to sleep at weird times, especially since I have a more-or-less nine-to-five kind of job.

I’m trying harder now, though. For really.

Things I wanted to do tonight: Heat up frozen mini-pizzas and eat them, take a shower, do two loads of laundry, write a long blog post, pack my bags for the long weekend. This doesn’t sound too hard, does it?

Things I managed to do tonight: Eat Lunchmates (using the oven and washing dishes seemed way too complex), do one load of laundry, start writing a blog post, get distracted in the middle of it because I’m trying to find a certain envelope that had stuff written on it, wander around looking for the envelope, get really frustrated that I can’t find it, think I should clean the bedroom but I don’t want to, sit back down and try to write the blog post but instead find myself rocking back and forth. I’ll pack in the morning. I’ll shower tomorrow night. No, I’ll take a bath tomorrow night. You don’t even have to stand up to do that. Scrap the blog post that was supposed to be long and semi-meaningful, and start writing this one instead.

I hate that sometimes, even when I’m not particularly depressed or hypomanic, I still can’t do things that everybody else can do. I mean I literally can’t do them. At work, I am always organized, often hyperfocused, and have no problem multitasking. In the rest of my life, though, the simplest tasks frequently seem unbearably complex. Tonight the thought of washing my hair or turning on the oven made me want to crumple into a little heap. I’m not even sad. I’m not even tired. I’m not having particularly intrusive racing thoughts. I’m not just being lazy, either. Trust me — I’m lazy frequently enough to know when I’m being lazy! I’ve got plenty of experience in that area.

I’m not always like this. Just far more often than I’d like to be.

I’m going to visit my family for a few days over the holidays, and this year I’m even more worried than usual about it, because my brother is completely unwilling and/or unable to consider anybody else’s feelings, ever. He wasn’t always like this. I can’t picture visiting for a few days without him marring it by, at best, starting arguments and running off. I don’t even want to think about any of the worst-case scenarios. Maybe I’ll be lucky and nothing too bad will happen, just the normal petty squabbles that everybody’s family has. You never know. It could happen.

Via Liz Spikol, I came across this article: Lawyer defends firm’s decision to dismiss worker with bipolar disorder.

Stephen Bird, who represents ADGA Group Consulting Inc., said the company discussed employee Paul Lane’s condition with him after he revealed that he had bipolar disorder and researched the condition on the internet before making the decision to dismiss him.

According to the written human rights tribunal ruling, what managers learned convinced them that Lane, who was hired to test artillery software for a Department of National Defence contract, would not be able to meet the rigours of a stressful job with tight deadlines.

Ooh, tight deadlines! Sooo scary! Look, some people can handle tight deadlines and some people can’t. Having bipolar disorder does not necessarily mean that you can’t.

Liz says, “are you kidding?” re: the company researching bipolar disorder on the Internet and whatever they learned there apparently being a deciding factor in the decision to fire Lane. Which I totally have to agree with when you consider these paragraphs from the article:

Not only does the company believe the tribunal erred in its decision, but Bird alleges that it also over-stepped its jurisdiction in the way it handled evidence in the case.

For example, the tribunal heard from experts on bipolar disorder who didn’t even know Lane, he argued during the case.

“The evidence should either not have been accepted at all, or should have been accepted for very limited purposes,” he said.

Okay, so ADGA looking up stuff on the Internet about bipolar disorder in general, presumably all written by people who didn’t know Lane, and not liking what they found is an okay reason to fire the guy, but when subject experts who also don’t know Lane have their say about bipolar disorder, that shouldn’t be allowed?

On the basis of that article and a previous article about Lane, it would seem that he hadn’t actually had any problems at that particular job; the company just assumed he couldn’t handle it based on what he told them about his illness and whatever the hell they read on the Web about it.

According to the facts presented in the ruling, Lane was dismissed in October 2001, eight days after he started work as a senior test analyst as ADGA. He had told his supervisor that he had bipolar disorder and his behaviour should be monitored.

I am lucky that I’ve always been able to do my work without any special accommodations whatsoever. It wasn’t the case with schoolwork, but it’s been the case with work-work. (Wow, what a mature phrase… “work-work”… clearly someone of my maturity level should have no problem handling a career!) Thus, there’s never been any reason for me to disclose my manic depression to any employers I have had.

The company denied that it discriminated against Lane on the basis of his disability. It alleged he was dismissed because he was not capable of performing the essential functions of the job for which he had been hired. It also said he had lied about the amount of sick time he had taken during a previous job that would have alerted the company to his illness.

However, tribunal adjudicator David J. Mullan found the company did not, as required, make a significant effort to accommodate Lane or properly assess the situation to determine whether it could accommodate Lane’s disability without “undue hardship.”

Lane was hospitalized almost immediately after being fired. I know being fired due to discrimination is a lot more stressful than merely having tight deadlines, but I’ve got to say that I’m pretty sure that if I were fired tomorrow, I couldn’t see myself winding up being hospitalized because of it. It’s really easy to say what you’d do in a given situation when you’re not actually in that situation, so maybe I’m being way too harsh here. Or maybe he actually isn’t a guy who can handle a lot of stress, but still: you should actually give someone a chance to see what they can do before you fire them, and if they have a disability, you do have to take appropriate steps to see if it can be accommodated without undue hardship. Lane didn’t think he’d need much in the way of accommodations.

I know I’m getting just south of coherence here, but mainly I’m frustrated at not knowing nearly enough of the particulars of this case and realizing that it’s my own damn fault that I don’t know. I’ll read the actual tribunal report after the holidays. I don’t have time now.