Hi,

Have you ever seen a ballet? Or a dance with great choreography in it? The reason they’re so beautiful is that everyone knows the steps. And the steps are all synchronized. The dancers work together. They all do the footwork necessary to make the dance come off in harmony. And to the audience, they make it look so easy. That’s the beauty of it. But the audience doesn’t know how much time and practice actually went into it. They don’t know what it took to actually do the

footwork. That’s what I want to talk to you about today: Doing the footwork. See…I think that one of the reasons that many people who are trying to cope and deal with bipolar disorder don’t succeed is that they’re waiting for other people to do things for them that they could be doing for themselves.

Here’s an example: I’ve heard countless sad but true stories of people who didn’t take medication for their bipolar disorder and just kept getting worse and worse and going from episode to episode and hospitalization to hospitalization (and sometimes even jail) because

they said they just couldn’t get their medication, usually because they couldn’t afford it.

But let me tell you a couple instances of the opposite. True stories that involve Michele, who works for me, that happened to her and her mother, who also has bipolar disorder. Here’s the first case: Michele’s mom is on Seroquel, a very expensive bipolar medication. And she’s on Social Security, so she can’t afford the medication. Well, Michele helped her apply to Astra Zeneca, the drug manufacturer of Seroquel, who has a program called AZ and Me, that helps people who can’t afford their medication. Michele’s mom now gets her Seroquel for only

$25 per month.

Now Michele’s case: Michele is on Geodon, perhaps the most expensive bipolar medication on the market, so she definitely couldn’t afford it, and her insurance wouldn’t cover it. She applied to Pfizer (the drug manufacturer) who has a program called Connection to Care to help her get her Geodon. Now they send a 90-day supply at a time directly to her doctor for her and she doesn’t have to pay anything for her medication.

In both these cases, these women could have claimed that they just couldn’t afford their medication and not taken anything for their bipolar disorder. In which case they would have just gotten worse and worse, like I described before. But Michele did the footwork and contacted the drug manufacturers and found out about their Patient Assistant Programs and got the medications for both her and her mother, with little or no cost to themselves.

That’s what happens when you do the footwork. But you just can’t expect that it’ll happen for you. You have to do it yourself. Just like your loved one won’t get better by themselves either.

They have to do the footwork. You may be able to help them get their medication, like Michele did for her mom. But they still have to take it every day. And they have to do all the other things that lead to their stability, too. Like following their treatment plan. You can’t go to their appointments for them, for example. But if they do the footwork, they can get better.

Well, I have to go!

Your Friend,

Dave