"I'm crazy about life, and that's the problem - my nemesis and my gift."
Sandy Naiman, Chatelaine magazine, October 1999.
Sandy Naiman's mental illness has never stopped her.
Though her life has been turbulent at times, she has worked hard to become an accomplished
journalist, broadcaster, teacher, mental health advocate and
public speaker. Through her writing and speaking, she inspires many who struggle with the challenges of living with mental illnesses by telling her own story with humour and candor. In August 2000, she landed where no one, including her own family, ever dreamed she would: stable and happily married.
As a young girl, approaching adolescence, Sandy was exuberant,
excitable, dramatic, moody and larger-than-life, but her family
found her increasingly difficult to handle-histrionic. She was decidedly different and never conformed. After several
medical consultations, a psychiatrist diagnosed her with schizophrenia
when she was 12 years old. This was the beginning of a journey
that would include 20 hospitalizations—her first at age 14—and
five different diagnoses. It is quite common for people with mental illnesses to have at least four or five different diagnoses.
"From the beginning," she says, "I talked to my friends about my weekly visits to my psychiatrist. Why not? It was almost instinctive. I've always sensed that with knowledge comes understanding and compassion, although in fact this wasn't always true when I was younger. Some kids called me names, but as far as I was concerned, my psychiatrist was just a doctor I saw every week. It never occurred to me that there was anything particularly special about it. I come from a family of doctors, specialists, so what difference did it make if I went to a psychiatrist and my sister went to an allergist. They were all doctors helping us to feel better. It was years before I found out that I had a mental illness with a name."
Sandy was ultimately diagnosed with a rare form of bipolar disorder. She never gets clinically depressed, but at times, often triggered by lack of sleep, she becomes manic to the point of psychosis. It took her doctors 12 years to change her diagnosis from schizophrenia to manic depression, more commonly known now as bipolar
disorder. She was 25 years old and it was 1975, when the only accepted treatment for people with manic depression was Lithium Carbonate. Lithium, however, didn't control Sandy's manic episodes well and she had 11 serious manic episodes and hospitalizations in as many years.
Finally, at the age of 40, she was prescribed an other drug,
an anticonvulsant, Tegretol. Eventually was taken off the Lithium, known to be toxic and a rare but a potential cause of kidney disease, if not regularly monitored. Tegretol was the first drug treatment to successfully control her psychotic episodes and stabilize her moods. But, after 16 years on Lithium, she was diagnosed with "iatrogenic" or "treatment-caused" endstage kidney failure. After two years on dialysis, her youngest sister, Glorianne, donated a kidney, saving her life. Since she began taking Tegretol in 1988, Sandy has never had another major manic episode.
Sandy states, "I don't know how this happened. The doctor, who didn't monitor my Lithium should have been suied. Instead I just alerted the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, which was stupid. I just didn't want him doing this to anyone again and eventually he lost his position as head of a psyychiatric unit at a major teaching hospital here in Toronot because of my complaint."
So how did she survive her mental illness and flourish on the
job?
NEXT: What made Sandy's success possible
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