uMwizerwa wa Ngoboka

In the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about having chronic diseases. What it does to the body and to the mind. I went to see my psychiatrist on account of some symptoms that were resurfacing and it caught me off-guard thinking about it. The culmination of this is a dream I had tonight. I was in a camp like situation and lots of people I knew from different areas of my life were there. On the last day, a friend of mine was not doing well mentally and they asked me to be a sort of counselor for her. I refused because I knew it would be triggering for me, but the person kept insisting. When trying to explain why it was not good for me, how being there for the second time knowing how bad things had gotten since then was triggering enough. And I broke down. Whenever I tell people how I will be on medication until I die, they try to dismiss it. “God will cure you” is the popular one. However, I no longer feel connected to said God and actively distance myself from anything relating...

I first got treatment for a mental health related issue in Rwanda in September 2016, my last year of high school. I met with a psychiatrist but the treatment was more geared towards physical issues like blood flow to the brain. I got a fancy test where they plug stuff on your head and read electrical signals. The test said I was okay. This was what I later knew to be my first hypo mania episode that was preceded by a very long depressive episode. In the doctor's defense, he didn’t have most of the information that could lead to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the beginning of 2018 when I was at MIT. Freshman summer, 2018, my mental health was all over the place. It got especially worse at almost the end of summer. It was the beginning of what would be a long depressive episode. I was taken to ICYIZERE center. This was one of my worst experiences with mental health professionals. I was in a bad shape, but the person I talked with didn’t eve...

This one is from a while ago, so some details will be a bit here and there. The first time I was hospitalized for my mental illness, which is also the time I was diagnosed, I was at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The story of how I got there is in another blogpost. It was the 28th February 2018. I was sent to MGH for a wellness check. I rode with the MIT EMT. They did my labs and all my minerals and fluids were wack. I had spent almost two months without eating and drinking little water. Even though I got there around 10pm I wasn’t seen by a doctor until 2am.  That was because they were trying to give me fluids so that my levels would get close to normal. They also gave me food. A fruit bar and tuna sandwich.  When I met with the doctor, I broke into tears as one does. I told him the analogy of the tree falling in the forest but life/ death edition. We talked about lots of stuff. At the end of our discussion he told me I have bipolar disorder. I didn’t kn...

I always considered myself as someone who has not experienced trauma. Early this year I took a psychological evaluation test about trauma and scored a 11. It means that I experienced few to no symptoms of active trauma. Talking with my therapist today, I realized that I had experienced a fair share of trauma. My body remembers even though my mind doesn’t want to acknowledge it. I think the very first trauma I experienced was when I first had a severe depressive episode. I had limited to no knowledge of depression, however I experienced it so vividly. I remember sitting on the floor of my dorm’s hallway and wishing it would swallow me whole. Having my body respond to situations I did not know. Like how one day I couldn’t eat because I was so scared and my hands were trembling so I couldn’t hold a fork. For six months I experienced these symptoms, forgot what it means to be happy, or how it feels like. The second time I experienced trauma it wasn’t as intense. I wasn’t sad. I was h...

Today I did my last final for the fall semester. I finished my first semester back from medical leave, and all these little things are making me remember times past. I ate a flavor of ice cream, I don’t really remember the name. It’s after taste was just like these cookies I used to eat sophomore fall before I took the leave. It reminded me of a time when my diet consisted of cookies and milk and sometimes the occasional cereal. It reminded me of how I thought it was practical. How I didn’t know how to change this. I've been thinking about going to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Finally, having finished the semester and with free time on my hands I decided to concretise the idea. However, I couldn’t help but think of the first time I went there. I was with a friend I met at the hospital. He was then manic and very friendly and I was very depressed but willing to interact. So we decided to go to the MFA together around a month after we were discharged from the hospital. I th...

Last weekend, I celebrated a week since I was hospitalised for the third time. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I had to go to medical for a check-in. The check in turned into me being hauled to the hospital in an ambulance and the works. This is something for me because the year before, I barely passed a month without having an episode. Now, it has been a year since my last one. In all honesty I did have a number of close calls. When I was waiting for the results of my return application, I was showing signs of anxiety and depression. The suspense and anticipation were killing me. However it wasn’t very alarming, and my application was accepted on a Friday night. I cried of happiness. I expected to become manic after that, because of how hectic things were and how excited I was. I was never afraid of my mania, it makes me invincible and very confident. However, it always ends in a depressive episode and I am terrified by that one. Going back to MIT was hard. T...