jjb: yes. I have worked with several nurses with bipolar.

You just hang in there. You will be a big help for many people when you start working as anurse based on your background. I just posted a news article on stigna under user submited news. You may get something from that. I know we have plenty of military and former military on here. Hope it helps them. Good luck.

Is bipolar a imbalance in hormones or electrolites?  When do the symptoms usually start?   

I've had Bipolar Disorder, with a tendency to be more on the severe depressed end of Bipolar, and also ADD since childhood.  I've battled with this for years now, and I am a nurse, a Nurse Practitioner, and have a PhD.  I jokingly tell my patients that I have Add and a PhD, to encourage them to continue to struggle with their education, not to give up.   I also try to help them to gain some self-esteem so that they can face the mental health stigma head-on, and to face what the world throws at them.  But it is a struggle, especially when the depression hits.  But most people don't know what I go through.  My co-workers have often joked and called me "Bob Newhart" because I could be so calm and serious, to pay close attention with a straight face while people would tell me their delusions, or describe to me their hallucinations and I would remain so calm in psychiatric emergencies.  But they didn't know that I had been through some of the same psychiatric experiences, the same fear and paranoid feelings, the same severe depressions, despondency, feelings of terror or desire to commit suicide.  I could empathize with those feelings and help these patients work through those feelings because I had been there and I had survived.  My patients always loved me, and always want to see me again for therapy, follow me from office to office wherever I go, but they never know it is because I truly know how they feel, because I too have been there, I've gone through that.  But I also know not to get too close, not to personalize their experiences, not to take on their causes too personally.  I realize that health care personnel like us, psychiatrists and nurses are at high risk for suicide, because of the burden of the patients that we provide care for.  Our patients are highly stigmatized, and instead or receiving pariety in treatment for their illness, they are getting less treatment than ever in this day of the shrinking health care dollar.  So I do what I can do, and I have to let go what I cannot do, to avoid putting my own health and my own mental health at risk.  I realize that I can only do what I can do, by the grace of God, I am still here to do it at all.  It isn't easy, having suffered from mental illness, but it also helps to have been in those same shoes, to know what it is like, to know what that stigma feels like, so that I can better help my patients through their experiences. 

ROd: I have said it before and will say it again. It disgusts me with how nurses treat coworkers. I cannot understand why compassion and understanding cannot be extended to co workers. As far as another job, your options are many. You could teach in high school or Jr High health classes. You could go into sales. You could do a Ask a Nurse” call service at a large hospital.