Managing comorbidities

Since I got out of hospital I have spent a lot of my time and effort managing my bipolar and doing everything that I can to keep this period of stability with my mood going for as long as is possible. As that experience opened my eyes to just how serious my condition actually is, and also showed those people that care about me how bad it is too.

But in acting in that way I have been taking my eye off my anorexia, and going back to the beginning of all of this going in a downward spiral it was both conditions playing up at the same time that caused the problems.

The difference was that I spotted the anorexia relapsing I didn’t see the bipolar going the way it went. But there is a difference between spotting it happening and doing something manageable about it, a combination of grief, lethargy, shock and having a small appetite as it is caused me to drop a large amount in a very short time. The most I have lost in such a short period, even at a quicker rate than when things got really bad before.

After the first psychotic episode and being put on a decent dose of diazepam and sleeping pills the level of sedation slowed my metabolism down and so what I was eating caused me to put back on some of the weight I had lost. So by the time I got to having telephone appointments with the eating disorder people it was only about half the weight that was missing.