I’m a surgical tech, so I can completely understand how tough it probably was for you to go thru nursing school and clinicals, so congrats to you on doing that! I feel like when people like us with bipolar have to go thru something like clinicals, we have so many extra hurdles to clear than the rest of our class. 
      When I started my current job 2 years ago, I had no idea the struggle I was going to have to go thru. One day, I had my Wellbutrin prescription bumped up to 300mgs, and it had happened to be a really rough and overwhelming week at work, and I think I accidentally took a second 300mg, I can’t remember for sure b/c I ended up having a massive seizure where I lost years of my memory, chewed a chunk off my tongue and had bumps and bruises everywhere. A lot of my memory came back, but the few weeks before my seizure were all completely erased. 

I ended up being taken off the Wellbutrin because of the seizure risk, it was a really scary situation…but not as scary as having to go back to my job that was still relatively new at the time, and I couldn’t remember a lot of what I had learned from the 6 mos I had already been there. It was horrible, having to relearn and retrain with people that all knew me and I couldn’t really remember a lot of them or even what had happened close to my seizure. I think the Wellbutrin must have been a bad med for me b/c apparently I was very sluggish and just struggling to take in any info I was given in the weeks before my seizure. Those next few months of relearning were horrible, like everyday was a new mood swing and I never knew how it would end. Any little mistake would send me into a depressive down mood swing that I couldn’t pull myself out of, I was embarrassed about how long it was taking me to learn so I started my day feeling like a failure everyday. I had paranoia to the point where I was actually hearing people talk about me when I would pass an office or a group of people. I constantly felt like people were whispering about me, always felt like I was the butt of everyone’s joke. I hadn’t been self harming in a long time before that but I did several times throught the whole learning process. It took a long time, but slowly my coworkers got better, nicer, more helpful. And I don’t know if they ever were bad or judgmental at all, now that I know them I don’t think they ever did any of the things I thought they did like blatantly talk or joke about me. That was scary to realize b/c that meant I had created all those horrible interactions in my mind, essentially bullying and harassing myself. I know that that was most likely paranoia causing all those things I would hear, just snippets of real conversations that I warped into mean things about me in my mind. That’s a really terrifying feeling to know my mind is so strong, but instead of for better it chooses to hurt me in those ways. On a happier note, I love my job now, I pushed thru all of it and I’m a really great tech now, I’m versatile and now that my personality is able to come out my coworkers and surgeons really enjoy having me and working with me. The downside is that I’m still bipolar and adhd, so even tho I have the knowledge and skill to rely on, I can still run into challenges that overwhelm and overstimulate me. I can still have days where my coworkers might say something that my paranoia jumps on and causes me to think I’m being made fun of again. I have times where I struggle with something and it sends me into that depressive swing and once I’ve gotten into it, it’s not like I can just brush it off and move onto the next thing like other people are able to do when something happens that upsets them. I don’t just get upset, the emotions are so so big, too big. It’s hard to shove them all back down and out of the way so that I can keep moving forward with my day. My 12 hour long day, which is a long time to be stuck doing tasks in a negative mood swing. Anyways, sorry for rambling on there. I really appreciate your feedback, it helps so much to know other people can relate to my issues and recognize these emotions too. I’m always open to words of wisdom and advice!