This community is pretty quiet, but I wanted to drop a short check-in post anyway.
On Wednesday, I will see my pDoc to be evaluated for bipolar II. I just came off what I (and my wife with bipolar I) think was a hypo episode that peaked for about 9 days (after checking my computer history and sleep/mood journal). According to my wife, I get hypo every spring, but this one was the first one where sleep was completely optional for me. Some days I would sleep for 2.5hrs. Some days I wouldn't sleep at all. During that time, I was doing three things: playing my digital piano, playing games on my PC, and editing a mediawiki fandom site, creating 275+ updates with more than 1k characters in five days, over 170 of them on May 5.
I thought I was just being really creative and multi-tasking. I know that I really did level-up with the piano. I have third-party confirmation of that, but, yeah, I think that maybe I wasn't as awesome as I thought I was. Like, I know I got better at piano from playing basically all day for almost two weeks, but I also know I am only self-taught, and I didn't become a wizard or something.
After reading the bipolar sections of the DSM-V, I am fairly confident the diagnosis would be Bipolar II rapid cycling with mixed features and seasonal pattern.
So, I don't know if our suspicions will be confirmed or not, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to belonging to this community, and feeling like a label actually helps me when it comes to this.
Anyway, I don't know if anyone will see this post, as this community seems sort of fizzled out, but oh well. I just feel better sharing this. It helps me come to terms with it, I think.
I began titration with Lamotrigine today.