Doonesbury’s War – washingtonpost.com
AT 55, JANE PAULEY IS STILL BEAUTIFUL, and she still projects frank vulnerability, or vulnerable frankness, or whatever is that subtle combination of qualities that made her America’s preeminent morning-show host in the 1980s. We’re meeting for breakfast because there is something Trudeau wouldn’t really talk about, and Pauley will.
In 2001, Pauley nearly lost her mind. After receiving steroids to control a case of the hives, she began doing oddly intense things. How intense? She bought a house one day, for no good reason, on impulse, from an ad on the Web. Misdiagnosed with depression, she was hospitalized under an assumed name, to protect her privacy. Eventually, she was found to have a bipolar disorder — triggered but not caused by the steroids — for which she is still undergoing treatment. Pauley chronicled her struggle in a 2004 memoir, Skywriting .
Trudeau was largely absent from Skywriting , and he had been guarded with me about the effect of Pauley’s illness on him and the family. He volunteered only two things: “I was told by a doctor that 40 percent of marriages just don’t survive it, so from the beginning I knew we were up against something really significant”; and, “The disease subverts your basic survival instinct in the sense that the people who you need to help you survive are the same people you are attacking.”
So that’s what I ask Pauley about.
“Yes,” she says, dryly, “there is a free-floating anger that needs a target and will find one.”
For a year or so, Pauley says, before her symptoms were under control, Trudeau and the family lived with her irrational rages. The twins were hunting for colleges, Trudeau was pressed by deadline after deadline, and Mom was a fulminating piece of work — demanding, histrionic, impossible. “It was just incredible torment for them,” Pauley says. “Garry was keeping the house together. It has to have been the most painful part of his life.”
Pauley has recovered with the help of lithium, a drug she says she will be on for the rest of her life. Things are mostly fine, she says, except for some side effects, such as a persistent tremor to the hands. She looks murderously at her coffee cup, which the waiter has overfilled, almost to the brim.
“For example, I can’t risk trying to pick that up.”
Wow. So of course, this is the part of the Trudeau article that resonates most strongly with me. I hope perhaps one day, Trudeau will be able to talk about bipolar disorder, maybe in his strip, and let people know how much it means to someone with bipolar for people to stick with them throughout this illness.
Of everything I’ve had to deal with in having bipolar, losing friends was the worst, hardest, still most painful part. The people I needed to stick by me didn’t – and the pain from that will never go away.
I am so, so thankful to those who stayed, like my wonderful husband, and the good friends who didn’t just walk away. They will never know how much that means to me.
7 Responses
We love you. What else *could* we do. 🙂
Yes, you guys were (and still are) the best, and thank you so much!
I jsut wish I had Pauley’s money so I could go on a manic tear and buy my golden ranch already (just kidding, I think…).
I’m so glad your husband stuck with you.
I, much like you, (only not on TV) have been very successful and well respected in my profession for 30 years with a huge network in SF bay area! I have dressed those of you on TV. After 3 manic episodes in the past 6 years (from age 40 to 46) It is all gone . . . friends, colleagues, a great marriage of 16 years and business associates.
Devastating.
My husband left me 4 years ago and I miss my life with him everyday.
Feeling very isolated and more than anything want to create a happy successful life again filled with love, joy, productivity and friends.
Any words for the wise on recreating/reinventing a happy life at this stage in the game?
Regaining trust with oneself with this illness is hell, but I have got to believe it is attainable.
Sincerely,
Denise
I’m still attempting to be productive as a musician with this disorder from hell. My doctor is increasing my meds, increasing, increasing, increasing. I don’t want to go out, I don’t have any friends because somehow, and I don’t know how (I wish they would tell me – the truth would, but at least I would know) I pushed them away.
So I have no one for support except for a person at work who knows. We e-mail occasionally, but I don’t burden her too much because she has her own family problems. I have no family of my own because they are either dead or estranged. Otherwise, it’s my cats and myself and all of us for ourselves. Or rather me for all of us – my cats can’t work for a living, really. I only trust my cats and my spirituality.
I am also afraid to let people get too close.
I have to regain my trust in myself and my trust in my talent. I am in the wrong line of work and absolutely miserable. So I completely understand where all of you come from.
Having just gone through an episode of relationship turmoil, I am humbled by the destructive nature of my thinking when I get out of control. I don’t take my medication (antidepressant) as prescribed because of how it dulls my creativity, although, I am considering going back on my medication in a strict regime. Something that is compelling about my bipolar disorder is how I can easily convince myself that I don’t need medication when it is working, because I don’t feel or experience the symptoms. Now I know that doesn’t make sense, but nonetheless, this is the reason I become symptomatic. My heart goes out to all of us with this Godforsaken malady.
yup, just stay on the medication — it’s easy to get manic or depressed if you’re not keeping it in control! My wonder drug is lamictal, which has no apparent side effects that I can tell, I just feel great on it and it stops the “thought loops” that used to spin me up or down. It started as an anti-seizure drug, and I think part of bipolar is a neural disorder that doesn’t stop thought loops from triggering. There’s no very effective way to simply talk or think our way out of the cycles on our own.
I stayed on lithium for 23 years and today, because of the lithium, have only 30% of normal kidney function. Yes, the drug worked well for me, but it created a lot of other problems. Most recently, I had to have my parathyroid glands removed, again because of the effects of lithium. I stopped taking the drug three months ago, and I’m doing OK, no terrible manic episodes. One doctor told me that lithium is not meant to be taken over a lifetime. Another told me that some people take lithium over a lifetime and have no ill effects.