How do you know? Question about depakote

How do you know if your medication is working or not? I was just coming to terms with what my diagnosis was changed to, and they just changed it back to bipolar a couple days ago. But now instead of Bipolar II I'm diagnosed with Bipolar I.
I'm now taking Epival (I think it's called Depakote in other places) twice a day. I was wondering today, how do you know if it's working or not? I mean, do I have to sit here and wait and see if I have another episode to see if it's working?

And for people who've been on this, how long does it take to start working, what dose does it work best for you, and what are the side effects you had? I tried looking up the side effects online but all I found were "Stop taking this medication and call your doctor if...." kind of things.

[ILADVOCATE]

Every form of bipolar is different and most importantly how they affect individual people. Its not just the Mood Tracker, its monitoring how you are doing on a daily basis. Some of this you can see for yourself. Some of it, depending on a person's self awareness only a psychiatrist can. But discussing it with your psychiatrist of course helps. As for Depakoate it can often work better on mania than it does than depression but each person responds differently to each medication. As for how long a person cycles between mania and depression and the periods in between of relative stability (called euthymia) that all depends. Any medication should provide some relative period of stability and its good to keep track of exactly how much it does and follow up with your psychiatrist so they can titrate the medication for the best working dose for you.