The Bi-Polar Express: Ride the Life and Death Roller-coaster of Mania and Depression with Mother and Daughter

The Bi-Polar Express

Ride the life and death roller-coaster of mania and depression with mother and daughter.

The Bi-Polar Express – Natasha’s Ride

All my life I knew I was different, I didn’t fit in. I always felt I could do everything – but things never worked out for me, I’d either get depressed for no reason or be hyper-active.

As you read my book, you will follow the ups and downs, the twists and turns, the high highs, the low lows, back and forth, faster and faster, my Bi-Polar roller-coaster life. But always keep one thing in mind: you can put the book down and get off my roller-coaster ride…..I can’t.

The Bi-Polar Express – Ela’s Ride

This is a funny, sad story of a mother’s search from childhood, through the teenage years and beyond, for the correct diagnosis for her ‘different’ daughter, whilst desperately trying to battle with her daughter’s alienation, dramas and crises.

This book is for all people who know someone, a friend, relative or acquaintance with a mental disorder – and that’s just about everyone. Read this book – you’d be crazy not to.

Reviews

Bipolar disorder is truly a roller coaster condition, sometimes coming on in adolescence or adulthood but occasionally appearing in childhood with a range of protean symptoms that can lead to quite incorrect diagnoses. People with that condition can effectively lose large segments of their life, while pluralistic treatment strategies can generally bring the condition under control. The Simons take us into the world of bipolar disorder – with Ela describing the progression of the roller coaster condition in her daughter, while Natasha provides her own bright, whimsical and percipient insights about her recent experiences. Both authors write vividly and without reserve, with raw experience writ large. The reader can only wonder how each kept up the pace, one with a condition that was often out of control, and the other trying to pre-empt disaster and collateral damage as she sought help for her daughter. An inspiring book!

PROFESSOR GORDON PARKER,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BLACK DOG INSTITUTE

"I am delighted to recommend this warm, heart felt and easily readable book by Ela and Natasha Simon. It is a rare privilege to be let into the heartbreaks and joys experienced by this courageous mother and her daughter as they cope with and triumph over Natasha’s bipolar affective disorder.

…emotionally honest and clear piece of writing that fill in the gaps that text books always have...get a sense of the day-to-day and lifetime experiences of people who suffer from bipolar disorder and the impact on their families.

…readers will enrich their understanding of the experience of bipolar illness through this fantastic book.

The ‘life and death rollercoaster of mania and depression’ ride has a happy ending It would appear that both Ela and Natasha and other members of the Simon family have triumphed, not only over the illness but are living life with gusto and exhilaration – far more than if they had opted to go on a sedate merry-go-round ride instead of the rollercoaster!"

PROFESSOR JAYASHRI KULKARNI

DIRECTOR, ALFRED PSYCHIATRY RESEARCH CENTRE

The Bi-Polar Express

Ride the life and death roller-coaster of mania and depression with mother and daughter

Ela Simon & Natasha Simon

This is an IndieMosh ebook

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO BOX 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2016 © Ela Simon & Natasha Simon

All rights reserved

www.thebipolarexpress.com.au

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Dedicated to my Natasha

who was willing to accept help

and share her story.

In memory of my mother,

Klara

PART 1 – ELA’S RIDE

by

Ela Simon

My thanks and gratitude

To my dearest friend Cathy who is always there for us and always knew it was the Demon inside and not Natasha we had to fight and for editing this book, to my parents – the best grandparents in the world, to Jeanne; a guardian angel to both Natasha and me, to Joseph; a kindred spirit, to the Crisis Centres, to the Clinic, to Dr. Davies who didn’t give up on Natasha, to Dr. Bob Silberman – who saw the ‘Tulip yet to open’, to Dr. Minogue whose support over the years keeps me going, to Leanda who breathed life into me, to Sister Yvonne Mary for her help with learning difficulties, to Ed Manson for his vision, to Nor and Kaye – for encouraging me to write this story, to Michelle – for recognising Natasha’s illness before we even knew it existed and for all her support and help over the years, to Sandra for her ongoing and generous support and to my sister Jaga – for the first edit and for that pink diary.

To my loyal friends who stand by me whilst I ride the roller-coaster. How does one get by, especially through hard times, when we are so fragile, without them? To Suzy, who was always just a phone call away, to Renee, Nilly, Doreen, Suzanne Logan and little Viv – for listening, understanding and their constant caring.

And to Arthur, who hopefully is ‘The One’.

And finally, special thanks to my partner and Natasha’s dad, Peter – my soul mate, our ‘scaffolding’ – strength, structure and unwavering support, for his endless patience and being such a wonderful father to Natasha.

Cyclone Hits Randwick

On a quiet morning in April 1984, Cyclone Natasha struck our relaxed home in a small and quiet cul-de-sac in the Sydney suburb of Randwick. With incredible intensity, the havoc she created has lasted not minutes, hours or days but years. Clearing up and making good was futile as the next round would follow the moment she awoke to strike again with full force.

Totally unprepared were we for an onslaught of this kind, after all we were ‘experienced’ parents. Our first daughter, Michelle, albeit milk intolerant, colicky and often crying, was over-cautious and hesitant, tidy, methodical, mesmerised by books and learning, ‘all ears’ for stories, she had colour coded rubber bands, books in height order and a systematically organised room, so we wondered what people meant when they said child-proof locks were required on cupboards. Until now.

Having recently moved to a larger house for the coming arrival of our second baby, while stripping wallpaper with my partner, Natasha’s dad, Peter, in the lounge room, the bleeding started. An ultrasound scan, requiring a bladder full of 2 litres of water, oh, I want to pee, I need to pee, revealed a condition known as Placenta Praevia. Normally the placenta that sustains the growing baby, lies above the baby in the womb so that the baby can emerge, but in this case it lay below, stretched across and blocking the birth canal. How would the baby come out? Bed-ridden for 4 months, including a few weeks in hospital, chunks of the Placenta were dropping out of me. Mostly vegetarian, I was not keen on the liver look. Was Natasha hacking at the Placenta to get out?

My Gynaecologist advised me that this is a condition that occurs in approximately 20% of births, otherwise I could be tempted to say, this may have been a sign of things to come – even before she was born there was something different about Natasha. Normally the baby emerges first and then the Placenta but Natasha wanted to be different; and this became the story of her exciting, sad, unpredictable, manic and anxious roller-coaster ride of life.

Thirty-six weeks pregnant and having my hair permed (it WAS the 80s!) in practical readiness for the baby, my Prima-Donna Italian hairdresser was most unimpressed when I began to bleed all over his clean, white floor. A quick ride in the ambulance (the perming solution barely rinsed off) heralded two weeks in hospital in an attempt to stop the bleeding, so that the baby would have a chance to eat and grow for a little longer. My hair was a mess of incomplete curls. Not a good look. No visitors allowed!

After a Caesarean birth at 38 weeks, on the 15th of November, 1983, a chubby, round baby of average weight and height was born. She was beautiful, with a femininity and sweetness that made you want to touch her and hold her endlessly. That tiny nose, the angelic face, that soft bald pate.

A seemingly contented baby, she slept, fed, slept some more and fed again. Already at the hospital we noticed how much she loved the water. A bath would bring such relaxed delight. We also noticed that she could not bear to be restricted by the baby wrapping. The nurse would wrap her up snugly in the bunny-rug but she would fling her little arms out with great force in her bid to be free. She didn’t crave the security that tight wrapping brings to most babies. Our ‘free spirit’. No restriction would be tolerated by this little mite.

We brought her home after 10 days to the sight of our gorgeous Jacaranda tree in full bloom.

For 5 months Natasha ‘slept like a baby’, waking up every 4 hours for a feed, day and night.

Wet nappies did not seem to bother her. She would have been happy to stay in one for days, soaked in pee, if it wasn’t for the fact that her sensitive skin caused rashes. Disposable nappies were not an option. As was fashionable in the 80s, Natasha, like her older sister, was diagnosed with a Clicky Hip and had to wear double nappies for 3 months.

She seemed content and fed happily. After 4 months of breast feeding, she totally rejected the breast but would guzzle bottles of formula milk. She was only interested in ‘solid’ foods, refusing any mushy food. Heinz Custard -no thanks. Moulié-ed fish and nutritious vegetables - no way! No mush for Tash. Chicken drumsticks were ripped apart and devoured as if she were an animal, with no teeth yet in sight but strong pink gums. She adored foods which most babies would reject such as gherkins, hot English mustard, pickled herrings and calamari. She was like a caveman – tearing off chunks from the bone, throwing the leftovers around the room and then burping with great satisfaction. {Tash’s side note: Mum, I still do that}.

The food would be strewn all over the room, where she’d fling unwanted morsels. She was rarely seen without a gherkin or a chicken wing in her hand. You could not walk away for one second, as she would climb out of the chair and be off again in her search for a banana for the other hand.

As soon as she could move we were amazed by her manic behaviour. She crawled at about 5 months but in a strange fashion, crab like, shuffling on her bottom. Then started the battle to keep her safe.

The first sign of trouble - one morning she was gone! Not in her cot. Not in the room she shared with Michelle. She’s gone, she’s gone, her cot disassembled, with rungs all over the floor. This was a little baby who was not walking yet. Who did this? Little Flinstones’ Bam Bam of course. By the time we found her, she had blown through the house like a Cyclone.

She had managed to open child-proof locks, force open and break bottles of cleaning agent, rip books, unwind reams of her 3 year old sister’s tape cassettes of stories her grandma had recorded, break her sister’s toys. All this whilst shuffling on her bottom at breakneck speed.

Heights were a favourite. Our floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were a source of delight. Look at me, I’m swinging from the trees. She would climb up to the top like a chimpanzee and jump, squealing with glee. Amazingly, she was never hurt performing these acrobatic feats.

Where did she come from, this little wild monkey? Genetic? Maybe? There are people on my side of the family who suffer from mental illness, mania, depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, impulse control disorder, paranoia. My relative, although undiagnosed, has all the signs of ADHD, mania and obsessive behaviour. My uncle was apparently also a tree-swinger.

In the mornings we would go to get her up, but she had already escaped after breaking the rungs on her cot, ready to start a new day’s adventure. We soon gave up and acquired a single bed when she was ten months. There was no point in trying to contain her until we got up. She was going to get up anyway, turn on the TV, break some furniture and grab a snack.

Travelling in the car was a trial. She would immediately undo the ‘child-proof’ car seat restraints and move about the car.

It was so hard to keep up with her to prevent her from drinking poisons, from eating everything she found, from jumping into swimming pools with her nappy on, way before she could swim, from getting into trouble constantly. Michelle saved her life by stopping her from eating snail bait and drinking turps. Her grandparents would turn the bookcases around before she came to visit, so that she wouldn’t destroy the contents. Visiting people was nothing short of a nightmare. On a visit to Michelle’s Kindergarten teacher, Natasha broke the toilet by throwing a diving weight into it, and, as we were ushered out in shame, she sat in and broke the big letterbox. Needless to say, we were never invited again.

On another occasion, visiting a friend in hospital, sweet innocent Tash went to the toilet. Two minutes later a nurse arrived in panic, thinking there was an emergency, Tash came out with a big grin saying Mummy I push button

The only time she was safe and we were safe was when she was asleep or watching a movie. Ah, movies, another great love from a tender age, she would sit transfixed watching for hours. She was always mesmerised by anything visual. She would often be startled out of her trance by a call to come for dinner or a physical touch and would react like a frightened animal.

Already big for her age, Natasha was a late walker at 17 months and so heavy to carry. Luckily, she was happy to crawl everywhere. She had not slept a night through until she was almost two. We were exhausted parents. We decided to try ‘controlled crying’ and let her cry for several hours one night. It broke our hearts but we won, and she started sleeping through the night.

She hardly said a word until she was almost 3 years old. Then, overnight, she spoke in perfect sentences with beautiful diction. Toilet training took years and she would still forget sometimes when she was 8 years old.

On outings, she was uncontrollable, undoing the stroller restraints and disappearing in a second. ‘Looking for a lost girl’, ‘parents, come to collect a small lost girl’ was heard on many a shop’s p.a., at concerts and on the loud speaker at the Teddy Bear Picnic. Many an outing was spent looking for Natasha, who would usually be found in the toilets, often the men’s ones. She was fascinated by the pressing of flushing buttons on urinals and hand dryers. She would stop escalators in shopping centres by pressing some button she alone could find. In banks she would break away from my grasp, grab the deposit and withdrawal slips and shred them to confetti. On one occasion when I had to take her to work with me she unravelled the printer paper and tore it to shreds. I had to quit that job.

Despite this erratic behaviour, her imagination, creativity and colour sense were exceptional. She would see elephants in carved staircases, baby bonnets in a window’s billowing curtains, animal shapes in clouds. Long before she mastered the basics of normal childhood vocabulary, she could name all the colours, including Magenta, Cyan and Turquoise. She could match any colour she had seen to a paint chart. By the age of five, she could produce amazing graphic cards and experimented with different fonts on our first Personal Computer. She had a ‘sixth sense’ with electronic equipment and was able to crack codes and secret passwords. How would anyone know that only pressing ‘FRUIT’ and ‘START’ would restart a microwave oven that was blocked by a ‘safety lock mode’? - Natasha did. (So much for child-safety devices!). What would we do at every Daylight Saving change without that talent? In our house all the clocks were reset in minutes.

What was going on in that very busy mind, behind those mysterious green eyes, freckles and messy tumbling curls? and what was it that led to the terrible depressions, followed by bouts of mania, followed by depression, followed by mania, panic attacks, uncontrollable urges, up and down and up and down, down and down, again and again. Summer mania, shopping sprees, winter depression, 6 months in bed, crazy, talking, ranting, raving, again and again?

This is my story of raising my beautiful daughter, Natasha, whom I love so much, who is my heart and soul, my best friend, a Bipolar Disorder sufferer, a unique, talented and amazing individual who has experienced so much pain but has overcome so much. She is now hopefully on the road to recovery, having jumped off the