Through the Looking Glass 4 – a result

Picture of Dr. Suzanne Black and Stuart

Psychologist Suzanne Black and former patient Stuart Jessiman (leaving the option open to reapply).

…The Becks Questionnaire II business continues. What brings it alive are the questions that Dr. Black continues to ask me throughout the test until we arrive at, what for me, is an astonishing discovery…

At some point Dr. Black tells me there is a store on Martha s Vineyard, a ritzy, gentrified island off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, that has a store called ‘The Black Dog’.  It is also markets clothing, a cafe-restaurant, and maybe a beer.  This store is effectively off-limits to all but the well-to-do a, she says. Cod is a not a fish that spells class to me, but I let that one go, but it sets me manic mind thinking.

If Bipolars have a cafe what would they call it?  ‘The Cliff Dive Shopping Emporium?’ Would they sell brand products too? Maybe bicycles that can only do sharp circles for hours before straightening up and shooting off in one direction at substantial speeds as the cyclist decides to head for the cliffs.  Maybe a strong medicinal drink distilled from rocket fuel, poured into reinforced brown bottles and label ‘Calamity Champaign?’  Black dog? Pah! They no more than have the black dog than I have operatic gonads…mind you with carefully constructed tympanic underwear and concealed microphones should the more talented gonad decide to dig deep and issue a song or even an aria I wouldn’t want to miss this. There sitting on a bus then abruptly from your nether regions the muffled  sound of ‘Hey Jude’…mmmmm….and with a mini mixing board in my pocket I could apply echo and a drum machine…

“Stuart”, says the psychologist bringing me back to the present with a direct gaze:  “Are you familiar with Bipolar?” No, no I’m not. It sounds complicated and rather serious, and yet for silly reasons I think of polar bears. A curious term Bipolar a soft word that turns out to be one labelling hard misery.

Bipolar? Unipolar? Tripolar?  Multipolar? Solar-Polar bears? I am BAD. No apparently, I am. I just found out that BAD is an acronym for Bipolar Affective Disorder. Sounds good being BAD. Actually it really is. My therapist  has thrown me a life line. Dr. Black, this pearl-wearing superhero willing at a moment’s notice to throw herself through the open French door windows of her Parisian apartment to fight all manners of mental ailments; wafting or shooting across the Parisian skyline, a cross between a chic Mary Poppins and Superwoman still wearing her slippers off to administer unto the mentally afflicted…oh rubbish, just rubbish just stop this nonsense Stuart. Gosh, if I could harness this stupidity into something more useful – like, oh I don’t know, writing scripts for daytime TV or lawnmower adverts.

“I explain Bipolar to Stuart, and as I do, he becomes less talkative. I pause and ask him how he feels. He talks of snippets of memory from across two and half decades of his life, and how some of it begins to make the faintest of sense now with this Bipolar diagnosis.  Something of who he is tallies with this assessment. He said it was as if I known him already, outlining examples of myriad behaviours and thoughts, sentiments that comprise Bipolar. 

I arrange for him to see a British psychiatrist for a second opinion, to concur with my initial diagnostic impression. However, I am very familiar with this condition and am very sure Stuart is Bipolar – has the condition of bipolar.  I did not need the Beck Depression Inventory II to discern his level of depression and suggest a differential diagnosis. After seeing countless patients with Bipolar over many years, I can sense it on a rather primal level ( bipolar holding court in my family – It s eerily familiar sitting with Stuart)  – the Bipolar – and certainly his symptoms indicate it could most likely only be this.”

For me, this is a strong cathartic and emotional moment.  For over two decades, as a very heavy drinker, I believed

Man in school uniform

Concerned client wants the Beck results.

my failure to get to grips with my problems was due to my inability to do the AA twelve step programme. But this bipolar diagnosis seems to give me a solid reason for why I did what I did in the past – the way I acted, spoke and thought (and to an extent still do).

So this this diagnosis does not depress me.  In fact, I feel mildly euphoric. For the first time in 25 years, I am hearing someone explain a condition that describes my behaviour – Finally, finally, finally… I see Dr. Black exuberantly rejoicing with me in my newfound relief at being able to explain years of challenging abrupt emotional knots in my existence.  She has saved the day! Tremendous. It is a lovely day – isn’t that a song that a Bill Withers song? He didn’t sound like Leonard Cohen so I doubt he was being ironic. I suspect he was just in a good mood under a deep warm blue sun – and why not?

Later that week I am referred to the psychiatrist who confirms the Bipolar diagnosis. So there we are: I’m a forty-eight year old British male with Bipolar II, the rapid mood shifting kind of bipolar, but now what? The “black dog” is not unique to Winston Churchill’s. It now lays claim to me.  For a moment it is nice to compare myself to this brilliant strategist with me a modest IT Consultant – me.  However, irritating British modesty interrupts this muse and maintains my dog is a very dark, but angry Gerbil with an irritating habit of running up my trouser legs at inappropriate times. Damn, still my mind is afoot and loose! and with a reason for why it is.

But what now? What next? It’s one thing have the past partially explained by discovering one has had a mentally debilitating condition that lasted for decades, but I’m now faced with the future. I have to change the script.