Support Q's Battle Against Bipolar Disorder

My name is Mercurial, but most people know me as Q. I’m asking for a few moments of your time, and if you can, some help.

I am a lifetime rapid cycling bipolar one. This disease has caused immense destruction in my life. That is another story, but suffice it to say that I have lost two careers, filed two bankruptcies, and destroyed my marriage all because of the crushing impact of my episodes. Every doctor I went to just threw more medicine at me, until I was on about 16 pills a day by the time I was 40. And yet even with all that medication, I could not stabilize.

In 2019 a doctor in my community asked me why I wasn’t going to the VA for help. I served in the army for about four years, but didn’t get a formal diagnosis until a year or two after my discharge. Once I went to the VA and got plugged into services, my doctor worked with me for a while and understood quickly that the problem: I was treatment resistant. Medication was never going to hold me, and would only ever be an adjunct to other treatments. She began the process, and in February 2021 the VA sent me back into the community for two weeks of electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. I was off work for a while, and I had some challenges immediately following my first series of treatments. ECT does impact your memory, and the first clear memory I have after my series of treatments is my emotional support pooch, Pippin, passing away after 15 years by my side. But, on the other side of things, the treatment was life-changing. For the first time I could stabilize, and I could do the work I need to do in therapy to help not only manage my condition, but to unlearn all of the broken survival habits I picked up along the way. I had entered vocational rehab at the VA in 2019 and after getting all the help I did from my mental health care team, I was able to get promoted four times in five years until I was the inventory management specialist at the hospital, providing all the expendable medical supply for 1/2 of Northern Indiana. I was very good at my job, and I was proud to work hard every day to make certain that every provider had what they needed to care for every person who came to the facility. I was finally able to start building good credit, take my first vacation, and learn how to be good to other people. For the first time in my life, I was stable, strong, and healthy. and I had hope, as most people only ever need the initial six sessions of ECT to stabilize them, though a few might need to come in some years down the road for a little more help. I was happy, though I grieved Pippin desperately, and felt the loss of his companionship acutely. Because I loved him so much, I couldn’t just replace him, and so waited before bringing home another friend. And in February 2023, two years after my treatments, I rescued a cat from the shelter, my Phoebe. My life was good, in a way I never could have hoped.

Tragically, in mid October 2024, I began to develop symptoms of a manic episode, and by November it was full-blown. That is where my memory begins to fail me, and as I write you six months later, very few things from the past six months are clear. Knowing that I would have an episode four times a year like clockwork, and knowing how destructive they were, my doctors and I decided to undergo more ECT, and in January of this year, I began new treatments. In the process of getting these new treatments, a CT scan revealed some minor abnormalities on my frontal lobe and my amygdala, areas of the brain that control executive functioning, stress management, and emotional regulation.

These abnormalities are indicative of what is called neurodegeneration. The short version is that diseases like schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder inflict damage on the brain with every psychotic episode. Basically, I am losing gray matter, and this last episode was enough to reveal where the damage has started. This sort of damage reduces what is called neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to heal from an episode or fight off the next one. To top it all off, I have begun showing symptoms again.

Now, I am told by my care team that I will need ongoing maintenance ECT. It is imperative that I do not have more episodes, but a schedule of treatments hasn’t been determined yet. Ideally, you want as few treatments as possible, but enough to maintain stability. My first maintenance treatment was in mid February, and now in the last week of March, about six weeks later, I have symptoms again. They have moved up my maintenance treatment, and I will be receiving another session this Friday, March 28.

ECT treatment impacts your memory. Until I can find out how often I need the treatments, I will likely not be able to work, and when I do, it may well be that I am not able to do the data analysis or complicated processes that I was doing in my previous job. And I have noticed changes in my cognitive functioning. I am terrified that after all these years, and even after all the hope I had nurtured over the past several years, that too much damage has been done, and now I begin to lose the fight.

I need your help. I do not have much in the world, just a small apartment that I rent and share with my cat. The VA is covering the costs of my treatments, but I am at risk of losing my home and having to give up my Phoebe, to say nothing of the crippling uncertainty of what I’m going to be able to do when all this settles out. The doctors tell me that some people only need two or three treatments a year, while some need 10 or so. Given the short term memory impacts, if I need treatments more frequently, I do not know if I’m going to be able to work.

It will be a little while before I can apply for unemployment, and I have contacted an attorney to begin exploring the possibility of Social Security disability, though in the current environment with the social programs suffering so many cuts it is nothing I can count on. I am pursuing every avenue I can for as long as I can, but bureaucratic process does not move quickly.

Anything you can donate will go to my food, my housing, my basic utilities, and my transportation (I do not own a car, so I often have to call for rides or arrange for groceries to be delivered, which is too expensive for me to do any longer). I am terrified, not only of what might happen in the short term, but of the fact that it is possible overtime that cognitive damage will seriously reduce my ability to live in this world on my own. Please help if you can, or share my story with others via social media. (I have no social media of any kind, and even you passing the link along to my page will be a great help.)

Thank you for reading all of this, and taking the time to consider my story.