Sixty inches of snow fell in my old hometown in Western New York today. Sixty inches! There was a magnificent, terrifying wall of snow (above) coming off Lake Erie, coming down on the towns south of Buffalo and the city itself didn’t get even one flake today! Amazing! The sublime grandeur of nature! Yes snow is sublime, especially a blizzard that drops sixty inches of it!

Normally, in less extreme weather, when it has snowed up to a foot, I think of snow as clean, pure, virginal, and quiet. The whole world seems quiet and peaceful. Hushed and magical. After every first snowstorm of the year, I would go for a long walk. Listening to the silence, looking at the pristine, white, untouched beauty of the landscape. Of course I would take pictures. I absolutely love snow. I love it when the snow flakes are silently falling, as if they are in no hurry, as if they know exactly where they have to be, and they know they will get there. There is such peace in falling snow. Just quiet, falling snowflakes, just floating, almost weightlessly to the ground. No noise, no tumult, they bring peace of mind with them. It may be the optical version of listening to ocean waves. Those too impart peace of mind.

If I was there now, I would still go for my walk, even in the sixty inches, and be amazed at the beautiful, white stillness. Perhaps I would glimpse some deer, with their graceful gait and their doe eyes, out in the snow, looking for food. The trees would also be covered in snow, making everything look like a magical fairyland!

I hope all my family and friends are warm and safe in this crazy, extreme, unseasonal blizzard. Buffalo and its suburbs are so extremely good at snow removal, that I have implicit faith that the roads will be plowed soon, the driveways cleaned and everyone will be safe. The State University of New York at Buffalo hardly ever closes. The same is the case with the Buffalo Niagara Airport. They are prepared for snow and lots of it, although sixty inches is pushing it a bit!

My heart is restless here in Kentucky. I wish I was home.

Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes, is amazing! When you are looking at it, there is nothing but water meeting the sky at the horizon. It really is quite something to behold. It even has waves, albeit small, normally, coming in to shore. I’ve even collected beach glass, wood and of course shells. Love this beautiful, fresh water, truly Great Lake!

Love this place, always made me feel serene, I volunteered there for a long time and working with plants, cleaning them up, that was a very Zen thing to do. I think I will start volunteering at the Botanical Gardens in Louisville. What a wonderful idea!

The world goes on. I look out my window.

People walk by, busy with their lives. I look out my window.

The colors on the trees blaze. Children get off school buses and run home. I look out my window.

The caravan of life goes on, makes sojourns in malls, souks, bazaars. I look out my window.

The sun shines its warmth, but I know it’s cold outside, so I stay sequestered in my room and look out my window.

This awful disease called bipolar disorder, this disease that can make people take their own lives, that can make living life hell, why does it stay in our gene pool? Why hasn’t evolution routed out this disease so that it simply doesn’t exist anymore?

Well there are theories about why. And one of them is that relatives of the proband (the person with disease, in this case bipolar d/o) are very productive, very intelligent, very artistic, are the CEO’s, the Prime Ministers, the Presidents of companies, countries, of the world.

What this means is that the genes that may cause bipolar d/o in large numbers, in smaller numbers will not cause the disease, but will enable someone to be extremely productive and successful.

Lets say that there are genes X, Y, and Z. They have alleles (forms of genes) x1, x2, y1, y2, z1, z2. Now a person will get bipolar disorder only if they have x1, y1, and z1 and they are homozygous for these alleles, which means both copies of the chromosome that houses these genes have x1, y1, and z1 alleles.  So individuals homozygous for x1, y1, z1 have bipolar disorder. However their relatives who have for example, x1, y2, z2 will not have bipolar disorder, but may well be very intelligent, driven and hard working. Therefore, any other combination of these alleles except x1, y1, z1, will confer advantages to an individual.

Therefore, evolution “lets” this awful disease remain in the gene pool because the same genes confer advantages to the non diseased, related individual. So we bipolar people are the sacrifice that evolution makes so that these genes can remain in our gene pool, so that relatives of bipolar people who are not ill, can get the benefit of these genes that allow them to be hardworking, driven, intelligent CEO’s, leaders, movers and shakers of society and the world.

the same thing happens in Sickle Cell anemia. This involves one of the hemoglobin genes. If you inherit two recessive copies, you have sickle cell anemia (SCA). If you inherit one recessive copy and one dominant copy, you not only don’t have SCA, you are protected from getting malaria, as the malarial parasite cannot grow well in blood cells that have hemoglobin from the recessive gene. So in this case, two recessive genes give you the disease, while one gives you protection from a bad disease such as malaria.

Quite similar to what’s been hypothesized about bipolar disorder. That perhaps recessive alleles of a certain type mean you get bipolar d/o, while either dominant or other combinations of the same genes/ alleles confer advantages.

So, sorry if you have bipolar d/o. Evolutionarily you may have been sacrificed for the greater good! And that’s the way it is…

Isn’t it amazing when you are feeling bad (which I am not at all, by the way,) how, as soon as you call your doctor, as soon as you talk to him or her, how you instantaneously start feeling better! That happens to me every time! I am feeling depressed or anxious, or my mind is working overtime, refusing to stop. I call my doctor, we come up with a plan, and I feel better. The word Psychiatrist is made up of psych, which means the mind, and iatr or iater, which means healer, so healer of the mind. I think just the idea of a healer heals us. Just the idea that help is possible and near helps us feel better.

That brings to mind the placebo effect. How many people are healed with just sugar pills. Nothing in them but sugar. What the mind can do! Amazing! I always think we should harness the power of the placebo effect so we don’t have to put up with bad side effects that often come with psychiatric drugs.

Someone should study it. Probably not going to happen, there’s no money in sugar pills.

Just some thoughts.

I wrote a whole post just now and all of a sudden my iPad went black and I lost all of it. Well maybe that’s an omen for not writing about this subject, but since I don’t believe in omens, I’m starting all over again.

It’s about somebody else’s post that I read. It was easily one of the most horrific things I have ever read about in my life. This person also has bipolar disorder and they were writing about their family. What I read about, abuse, alcoholism, extreme violence, was so horrific that I was literally left speechless and I couldn’t even post a comment.

When I started this blog, it was to bring attention to mental illness. I was basically saying that if a person like me could have mental illness, then anyone could. And yes, anyone can. The purpose was to remove the stigma from mental illness. The purpose was to come out of hiding and talk about this illness. The purpose was for people to stop suffering in silence and hiding the fact that they have mental illness. If I break my rib (which I did once) I get get well cards and flowers and gifts. Do I when I get sick with either a depressive or manic phase? No I don’t. Not a complaint, just an observation. I know there can be horrific occurrences in families where mental illness is prevalent, I mean just look at movies that Hollywood produces. In reality, mentally ill people perpetrate much, much less violence than the “normal” population. But that’s not the point. The point is that this post form a blog written by a bipolar person was so incredibly disturbing that I literally feel traumatized by it. I apologize abjectly if I made anyone feel awful after they read any of my posts!

I mean, on the one hand, it was so violent and heinous that it is making me rethink my decision to have started my blog. On the other hand, there was so much strength and, amazingly enough, love and grace in it, that it seems to vindicate blogs about mental illness, even if they are extremely disturbing.

I don’t know. I feel upset and confused. I am not a dark person. I am a light, go and get em, never give up, the glass is always half full, dancing, flower loving, Zumba dancing, laughing, joking kind of person, normally, with a little hint of Lucille Ball thrown in. This abject darkness is a bit too much for me to handle. Isn’t the road to hell paved with good intentions, and I had so many good intentions when I started this blog.

I think for a while I will not be reading anything that looks the least bit depressing and for a while I will write only about the science of mental illness. That’s nice and happy, right?

It is heartbreaking to see poor, filthy, bedraggled homeless people, walking down the street, talking to themselves. Where I live now is an urban setting. In my suburban neighborhood in Buffalo, NY, I didn’t encounter any homeless people. Here, in my new neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky, I see them daily. And it is very sad. I wonder, where do they sleep, where do they shower, wash their faces, brush their teeth? As far as sleeping, I see tents in the park and as far as showering, washing up, I think the answer is nowhere. Really sad. I’ve heard it said and seen it written that war veterans, because of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or other psychiatric problems, become homeless. That is absolutely a heinous crime for our country’s government to allow this to happen. First these young men are sent to fight on our behalf, then when they come home, sick and unable to live their lives, there is no adequate care available for them and they end up on the streets! For shame U.S.A! The VA healthcare system is, simply put, inadequate, where some veterans have to wait 30 or more days to get any care. Young veterans are committing suicide, 22 veterans a day (!!!) because of severe brain injuries and PTSD.

Both of these issues, the homeless and the veterans, are issues of mental health. Our veterans deserve better, our mentally ill citizens deserve better. These are not throw away people, they are valuable people who need help and in a country, a first world, an advanced country such as the U.S.A, this should be readily available. How to do this? How to accomplish this? How to give these poor sick people the help they need?