Pubdate: Fri, 23 Sep 2005
Source: Billings Gazette, The (MT)
Copyright: 2005 The Billings Gazette
Contact:  http://www.billingsgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/515
Author: Allison Batdorff, Gazette Wyoming Bureau

FOR BIPOLAR WOMAN, HELP IS HARD TO COME BY

Editor's note: Carrie and her family, who have lived in the Bighorn
Basin for nearly 30 years, wanted to speak candidly about her illness,
but did not want to deal with the social repercussions in small-town
Wyoming. Her name has been changed to protect their privacy.

CODY - Carrie's emotions were like mismatched puzzle pieces - they
didn't fit the world around her.

She laughed in the wrong places. "Normal" responses eluded her. By the
time she was 12, Carrie and her mother knew she was different from
other kids. But when the diagnosis came back "rapid-cycling bipolar,"
Carrie bucked.

"They were basically calling me crazy," Carrie said. "So I decided
that I would rather be known as a drug addict or an alcoholic than
mentally ill," Carrie said. "I started drinking and doing drugs."

Carrie's life has been a roller coaster of soaring highs and plunging
lows. Now 25, she has two children, works as a beautician and loves
art, writing and rock collecting. She has been in rehab four times.
Only recently has she accepted her dual diagnosis as bipolar and a
substance abuser. An episode in March drove the point home.

"I was on a Robo-high (combining Robitussin and marijuana), and the
television started talking to me. I thought I was Lucifer and my
family was driving off to heaven and I wanted to go with them," Carrie
said. She shaved her head, called a friend and said she had killed her
family. She hadn't, but the cops came to check.

"By that time, I was ready to listen," Carrie said. She agreed to a
voluntary commitment in the Wyoming State Hospital in Evanston. But
she never got there, said Carrie's mother, and what happened next
inspired her to activism.

"The state hospital always is full," Carrie's mother said. "So they
kept her waiting in Cody. I knew in my heart that if they were doing
this to mine, that they were doing this to people all over the state."

Carrie sat in the hospital under 24-hour guard for a week. Dr.
Christopher Loewther called the governor to complain. Then state
hospital officials said they would release Carrie.

"The state hospital said, 'She's not homicidal, she's not suicidal, so
we're going to release her,' " Carrie's mother said. "My daughter
clearly needed help and they were trying to slap a Band-Aid on a cancer."

Carrie eventually got a place at the Wyoming Behavioral Institute in
Casper. Then she was discharged and was back in the "nowhere zone" of
Cody, her mother said.

"It's a zone where there are no available psychiatrists," Carrie's mom
said. "There's no follow-up and no help."

Carrie relapsed into drinking and returned to the emergency room.
Debra Dunn, Park County Mental Health's adult services manager, agreed
to take her as a special case, and Carrie was placed in the single
respite bed at Hope House.

"I don't know what I would have done without Deb," Carrie
said.

Carrie's mother is involved in trying to get more care to those with
mental illness in the region.

"We can't go on this way. Something's got to change," she
said.

She also tries to keep her beautiful, creative daughter out of
distress. She cares for Carrie's little daughter; the other lives with
her father out of state.

"Most of the population doesn't have a clue," Carrie's mother said.
"They want mental illness to be simple, but it isn't. I didn't
understand it either, for a long time. In some ways, it's easier to
admit to brain cancer. But as a mother, you can never give up. Never."

For her part, Carrie wants "a decent life without rehab and
hospitals," she said. She wants to keep her daughters out of the
system. She prays that they won't be bipolar, although she knows they
have a greater chance. Carrie wants to make people beautiful and feel
good about themselves.

"I like being a beautician because you hear other people's stories.
Things are happy and rosy, and for that eight-hour shift I feel like a
different person. Me, but a happier version.

"The last time I had an episode, I thought the war was over, that it
was pillow fights and that the world was beautiful. When I'm depressed
I want to be in prison or dead. It took a long time to realize that
none of that was real. Now I'm trying to get back to reality.

"I'm starting to get used to it," she said.

Carrie has been on a waiting list to get into the Wyoming Substance
Abuse and Recovery Center in Sheridan. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake