Husband might be Manic right now

My husband has not been acting like himself the past couple months and things seem to be getting worse. His mother and grandmother are bipolar. He has had 2 major depressive episodes and is on antidepressants. My husbands has become obsessive with doing triathlons and beating out some guys that he knows. He’s been wak8ng up at 3am and working out. He has lost a ton of weight. Has become very self absorbed and arrogant. He does whatever he wants, constantly lying and making up stories. Has been snapping very irrationally. Gets very angry at things that normally people would not get upset like that over and then lashes out at me verbally and tries to make me feel like I’m a horrible person. I have been sick with Lyme disease/Bartonella and Babesia from a tick bite for close to 7 years. That has been very difficult on our family and our 3 children. The way that he is acting is really stressing me out and making it harder to heal. I feel like he doesn’t care about me at all and only cares about himself. I really don’t know what to do and how much more I can take of this. I think he enjoys being in this state bc he’s able to do so much more than he was able to before. I see a psychiatrist for ptsd and mentioned to her what’s going on with my husband and she thinks he’s misdiagnosed and needs a mood stabilizer. Anyone have any idea how I can address this?

Reading your post is like reviewing my life. Like looking back at a nightmare. The part about doctors, right.

Oh. However, a gleam of hope there, when you write: " I see a psychiatrist for ptsd and mentioned to her what’s going on with my husband and she thinks he’s misdiagnosed and needs a mood stabilizer. Anyone have any idea how I can address this?"

The most upsetting part was, "He has had 2 major depressive episodes and is on antidepressants."

As a bipolar, I was about to go manic reading that. That's me and my psychiatrists decades ago. I thought psychiatry was over this. It's good that you wrote in, for if you stay in, like I do often because of difficulties, it's hard to reach outside of your own thinking and get new ideas, so a website like this can be very helpful, for you don't even have to leave your house. It's good that you took the time to find this site.

I just had a big problem with my helper a few weeks ago with her none/bad advice and I realized, I don't even have a counselor, I have a helper who if she wants to get me, she gives me bad or no advice. I have a psychiatrist, for about 10 minutes every one or two months, but no counselor to help me make decisions on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. What was I thinking?

Whew, let me clam down. I'm also on new blood pressure medicine that has me rived up, and I'm already manic-depressive. I'm trying to get my doctor to change it, and she's slow to return my calls for help. So, I'm going through some stuff, too.

Oh, gosh. OK, here's the routine. Patient goes to psychiatrist cause he's depressed. Doctor sits through the entire session and doesn't say a word, like, "OK, so you're depressed. Do you ever have racing thoughts?" "Do you ever stay up late at night? "How have you been sleeping?" "Do you ever become obsessed with a project or idea?"

Well, how could the psychiatrist ask that when they don't ever say anything for the entire 30 or 45 minutes session?

If a patient comes in depressed, why don't they ever ask a few questions to see if the patient might be manic-depressed?

Why is that so important? Because, like your doctor said, if the patient is misdiagnosed, he will be miss-medicated.

In this case, and millions of others involving bipolars, if you give a manic-depressive only an antidepressant (an upper), it will throw him into mania. Oh, wow, how hard is that to understand?

Like your doctor said, he needs a stabilizer to ward off the antidepressant throwing him into mania. Go through this real slow with his psychiatrist. My psychiatrist gives me Lithium for that reason. I've had several psychiatrists many years ago who did not. The next step to being thrown into mania will be he will start having panic attacks, like I did for years, from not having a stabilizer.

Ask your doctor for the name of a good psychiatrist in case his quack won't give him a stabilizer, and because you're going to need a good psychiatrist if your husband doesn't calm down.

It would be good if your husband would discuss his mania side. It would also be good if the psychiatrist would ask him about that possibility, if he already comes in as depressed.

It's hard to get the patient to be the doctor. The patient is sick, and he can't see the mania. He thinks he's free of depression and that he's cured, and anybody who tries to talk him out of that is jealous.

Can you talk to his psychiatrist? Can you call over the phone or go there? Can you download a list of symptoms from the web and point out which ones your husband has?

mayoclinic.com said: "a manic and a hypomanic episode include three or more of these symptoms:"
•Abnormally upbeat, jumpy or wired
•Increased activity, energy or agitation
•Exaggerated sense of well-being and self-confidence (euphoria)
•Decreased need for sleep
•Unusual talkativeness
•Racing thoughts
•Distractibility
•Poor decision-making — for example, going on buying sprees, taking sexual risks or making foolish investments

So, you know, this is so very sad. In a way, the saddest is that the doctor is not doing her job. I just recently told my helper that my new doctor, new to me and her being new as a doctor, had just taken my off blood pressure medicine, on the first visit, as soon as she walked in the door.

I told this to my helper when she picked me up, and my helper didn't say a word. What? When I get down, I don't have a lot of strength to do my job, and to do the other person's job, too. I don't have the strength ot say, "Well, what do you think about that?"

I'm so down from the shock of my doctor saying that on the first visit, that I feel my job was to report it. I don't have anything left after that. What am I supposed to say, "You don't care about what I just said? You don't care about my health?" It's like, what am I supposed to do, make them care. Make them like me? I just don't have anything left after I've told them that. My spirts are already down from the disappointment of what the problem is. I can't go around to the caregiver and shake her.

So, this blood pressure issue caused a problem, and I told my caregiver about that, and, yeah, she came back at me verbally, showing, right, she didn't care. I can hardly stand to be in the same room with her since that, and I don't say a whole lot, and finally she just leaves.

So, I don't know what encouragement to give you. It's like, when the strongest person in the group is sick, herself, what do you do. Take on the role of the doctor? How?

Can you send her an e-mail or a letter? With the symptoms and what you've seen him do around the house? Do you have the doctor's e-mail address? Tell her in the body of the letter what he's doing around the house, and send her the symptoms, maybe in the body of the letter.

Implore her to give him a stabilizer, that the anti-depressant is throwing him into a mania, and your family is at stake, not her family, your family.

I had something I was suppose to tell somebody one time, and I didn't have the guts, to maybe break down on the phone. Years later, I thought, why didn't I write them a letter? You can't break down in a letter.

Can you write an e-mail to this doctor. The fact that she's female is in your favor. She should be more understanding.

Can you do that? You can send it tonight and she'll get it in the morning. If you don't have her e-mail address, on her bill has she written her e-mail address?

If not, can you look on the search engine on your computer and type in "psychiatrists for your hometown" or type in her name and title of psychiatrist for your hometown on the search engine, to see if her name and e-mail comes up?

I think you can reach her. I have confidence in her and in you. And your husband will take the medicine, as soon as she says, "I want to try you on this new medicine." And he will calm down. You won't believe it.

It all depends on you and you're not feeling well. Can you do that?

So, did you ever get a chance to talk with his psychiatrist? How is everything going with that?

inspiredby3, I have Lyme and Bart too with a few other infections. How are things going? Have you been able to come up with a solution as to how to address it? I have bipolar and Lyme. Feel free to email me if you need to talk. I understand both sides of your story.