In 1999, my wife, Cecie, experienced her first major manic episode. She ended up in St. Vincent’s Stress Center, where she was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. She has been hospitalized a total of three times – all for mania. She rarely experiences the debilitating depression that many people with bipolar disorder struggle with. We have two children together, both of whom are pretty much adults at this point. Over the past decade or so, we’ve struggled to coexist with this disease. At times, it seems to be a cruel puppet master pulling our strings to act out some demented drama on the stage we call our home. Most times, we manage to keep this beast chained up, through a combination of medicine and therapy, but occasionally it escapes and turns our home inside out. In 2005, I had the good fortune to co-author Bipolar Disorder For Dummies with Dr. Candida Fink. In the process, I learned a great deal about bipolar disorder and strategies for treating it, preventing major mood episodes, and dealing with the fallout when preventive measures are ineffective. Through this blog, I hope to share what I’ve learned about bipolar while I continue to discover even more.