With the limited information I had given my doctor, I did get my Prozac prescription. I took my first pill on a Wednesday and by Friday I knew something was up. I was feeling the best I had in years. In fact, I felt so good that I worked through the whole weekend. I became the Prozac poster boy, even more so since the company I worked for, Eli Lilly and Company, manufactured Prozac. The only problem now that I was feeling even more invincible. Which meant I could handle more, or at least I thought so.

So with this super power, I made my world more complicated. I started feeling worn down again, so I would double my Prozac (without telling my doctor). Anyway, as I described earlier, this is about when my wife and I were reading up and came to the same conclusion that I was in fact manic depressive. One of the interesting facts that I read was that one of the possible side-effects of Prozac for someone who is manic depressive is that the Prozac can throw them into a manic episode. The minute I read this I realized why I had worked for two days straight after starting on Prozac.

I went back to my doctor and we talked about what the counselor said and the research I had done. I am not sure at that point that he was totally convinced that I was manic depressive, but we began to treat it. By this time, I had stopped taking the Prozac. Its effects seemed to wear off, so I had stopped taking it on my own without talking to the doctor. The doctor now put me on lithium. As I mentioned earlier, once I came to the realization that I was manic depressive I started to simplify my life. I killed off the construction business I had on the side so that I could focus on my job at Lilly, my marriage, newly adopted daughter, Hanna, and getting better.

The lithium did help, but made me lethargic and slow. So after a period of time, I stopped taking it. I did so without talking to my doctor. As a replacement, I threw a lot of energy into exercising. I would play basketball three, four or five times a week, and work out with weights two or three times a week. I think this helped control my mood swings to a certain degree. I was dealing with the cleanup financially and emotionally from some of the decisions I had made and I think the exercise also helped take some focus off dealing with the aftermath.

I managed my condition like this for a couple of years. I still had mood swings, but at least now I knew why. Exercise and life simplification helped me deal with it and helped those around me deal with me.

Over this two year period, I started having some old familiar and some new physical problems. I really felt like with all the things happening to me, while maybe not life threatening, were an indication of a general decline in my health. I would make semi-joking comments to family that they should not expect to see me around much longer. I did not go to the doctor because I thought it would be near impossible to figure out what was causing all these different things. My family got so sick of me complaining that they all demanded that I go see the doctor.

Before I went to the doctor I wanted to document all the things that had been happening to me so that I would not forget anything. I also felt this would show him that I was serious about trying to figure these things out.