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Saturday, February 25, 2012

Me and Madness?

I was kind of crazy on Friday night when K was here. I was overtired to begin with, and quickly got overstimulated. This is a really bad combination. I got hyper. When we were outside, I was running and sliding on the ice. A and K were getting freaked out that I was going to fall and hurt myself, but I could not walk slowly. If I had stopped sliding, I would have had to run, spin, or do something. Later I was seriously having trouble watching the movie. I literally could not sit still. I was moving around, resettling myself, getting a drink just so I could walk around some, etc. When I was still, I was flapping my hands, chewing on my jacket sleeve, kicking the table, etc. (I said to K, "I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me, I don't actually have ADD....")

I'm not sure what was up. It was a sensory issue to some degree, I think, but it had some seriously freaky features. I could not stop my mind. We went back to our rooms around 4am, and I lay awake in bed with my mind racing till at least 5am. I was awake at 7am (I'm not sure when I fell asleep), and stayed awake until 8:15, at which point I gave up and got out of bed. It's now 4:30pm, and I have slept less than two hours since 6:30am on Friday. I'm only slightly tired, and my mind is still going faster than I want it to.

I looked up the definition of hypomania out of a vague memory of relevance, and these are the diagnostic criteria (from Wikipedia):

The DSM-IV-TR defines a hypomanic episode as including, over the course of at least four days, elevated mood plus three of the following symptoms OR irritable mood plus four of the following symptoms:

I put the ones I was experiencing in green. Five where three are required, and the elevated mood. The only thing missing for a hypomanic episode is the time span.
From farther down the page:
When a patient presents with a history of one or more hypomanic episodes and one or more depressive episodes that meet the criteria for a major depressive episode, bipolar II disorder is diagnosed.
This is kind of freaky to me, because I've had a major depressive episode (atypical, I believe related to seasonal affective disorder). The only thing separating me from bipolar II disorder is that this episode only lasted about 24 hours. Edit from later: I thought I was back to normal when I wrote this, but it actually wound up being about 48 hours until I was really back to my usual self. The peak was about 24 hours though. Bipolar disorder has a genetic component, and it is present in my family history. So that's not super cheering to me.

Now obviously I don't have bipolar disorder in a way that affects my life enough to require treatment (if I did, I would know). I don't even fit the diagnostic criteria. But it does concern me how close I come. Something to keep an eye on, I suppose.

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