Deal with my depression

I am feeling overwhelmed and underfunded this Heliday season.
A great deal of my $ went to postage.

I will try to pull myself together…

got it ? Well I don’t know. Maybe.

Sick of chronic pain ?
Oh yeah.
And all the other vagaries of the chronic illnesses that add up.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1242-Science-News-Examiner~y2009m5d28-Bitterness-the-newest-mental-illness

So, is it ?
And do I have it ?

Hmm, more contemplation is needed…

oh my, well, it is good to know I have support, but perhaps I should have been clearer. Yesterday’s entry was a c&p from this blog:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/beyondblue/

Therese is very open and honest about what living with depression is like. Unlike her, I am not bi-polar… and my faith is entirely different. Still I find reading what she says quite validating. Sometimes I leave a comment on her blog, sometimes I email her privately. She is a very brave woman.

I am not so brave. Geesh, one year, a hard knock on the front door by the replacement UPS guy sent all of us scrambling for cover.
(We did have a time when some son was an addict and things tended to get Really crazy here, we were high end police users…) So thank you for not activating the Crisis Mental Health team (well, I don’t think we have one… but if we did, thank you for not..)

I am ok. I just appreciate her honesty and I find it validating.
Um. What else can I say ?
Thanks for the concern. No apologies required, except by me who really should have left the link… but the netbook and I were having issues and the damned online gamers in the neighborhood were sucking up bandwith.

I take 2 SNRI’s… they don’t seem to work too well, but that is another story for another day.

I’m fine. Seriously.

Well that was a grand fubar of a miscommunication…

Enjoy my orb/angel picture from 2 years ago. I was actually going for the plant which is some exotic thing from Brazil, tibouchina I think. The Orb was a total surprise, but I would expect magic in this yard…

For my Birthday, Mr. B got me recycled bricks from a house that his employers (a local municipality) were tearing down. Now, this here house was quite old, old enough to have been part of the Underground Railroad, and I had a hankering for some bricks.
So I figured that bricks with a social history like that would have some powerful magic in them. They now surround the back deck, stoop that we had specially built for low-bellies (doxies).. but which leaks… I am praying their good magic keeps the flooding of my basement away and that we don’t spend the next 4 days of NorthEaster’s trying to save our oil burner/hot water heater, etc.

It was the only thing I wanted, and was the perfect present for a woman experiencing Venus conjunct Saturn in her solar return chart.
Venus rules Libra, my sign.. Saturn, well it’s been likened to concrete or, bricks ! :)

Tiny Glimpse Inside a Neurotic Head
Tuesday October 13, 2009
Categories: Mental Health
This post is dedicated to my editor, Holly, who tells me to write from where I am, not where I want to be.

It seems as though whenever I do that-write from where I am-you guys appreciate the honesty because either you are being pulled to the big Black Hole of Depression yourself or maybe it helps to know that other people who work and raise kids and look normal are so very fragile if you take a closer look.

Here’s a glimpse inside my neurotic head yesterday.

7:00 a.m. Explained to my husband that for the last eight weeks I have off and on been fighting the death thoughts-that I want so badly to be on the other side-from the first moment I get up. Sometimes they continue throughout my day no matter what I do … during my runs, at work, and especially when I’m with the kids. He looks confused because he has only seen me cry a few times. I tell him that’s because I’m much better at acting than I was four years ago, when I had my mega-breakdown. In fact, I can smile and want to die at the same time. I can fool practically anyone into thinking that my brain is filled with normal thoughts … if the kids are done with their homework, if soccer practice is today, and if one or both wear their gym uniforms tomorrow … all the while I’m praying to God to take me. “Please, take me! I promise I’ll do a good job from heaven,” I say. “I will be like St. Therese and send everyone roses.” I further confess to my husband that I don’t want to burden him. He is already stressed out with the kids. The last thing I want to do is make his load heavier.

10:00 a.m. A half-hour reprieve from the death thoughts after running seven miles. This is by far the best time of my day, the hour after I exercise. And this is why I am addicted to my workouts. Sometimes I don’t think about death once because of the mood boost from getting my heart rate up. If only it could stay throughout the day.

1:00 p.m. I take the kids to a pumpkin patch. They pick out two humongous pumpkins and paint them and I’m thinking to myself, “This is a happy moment. Enjoy it.” But as soon as I try, I hear all the voices listing all the reasons why I am so pathetic. I attempt to untwist and adjust the cognitive distortions. I take on one distortion at time. I try to “examine the evidence.” I come up with reasons to prove the contrary. Then I try mindfulness. “This thought is not a fact. The thought doesn’t mean anything. It’s not permanent. Let it go. It is transient.” I take one moment at a time. “Don’t worry about anything but this moment,” I tell myself. But the nausea comes back when I start believing all the reasons why I am so pathetic, why I can’t take the kids to the pumpkin patch without thinking about death and wanting it to be over, why I can’t enjoy this bloody moment. I start yelling to God, “Get me out of this head! Take this head off of me like David does to Katherine’s Barbies! Get me a different one.” I tear up, almost crying.

But then I spot a fellow mom and know I have to pull it together. I can’t unravel. She is a cardiologist, she is successful, she is in shape, and she is taking the day off to be with her twin daughters. She is the picture of how I want to appear to people. She asks me how I am and I say “good, really good,” and she believes me. I almost believe me. But then I think about the pumpkin patch four years ago, when I boarded the tractor with my kids for a hayride and couldn’t stop thinking about the hay … if pieced together it would be strong enough … like rope.

I’m not there, I argue with myself. I’m not that bad again.

It only feels like it, I tell myself. I have made considerable progress since those days.

Or have I?

God, it all feels the same. I don’t think I feel a god damn difference in this moment.

I almost start to cry, but I am able to hold it back. Concentrate on your kids. Just concentrate. All you have to do is this moment right before. Concentrate on this moment.

And so I do. I concentrate on the moment before me.

this is not me talking, but I did want to share.
Now I must go eat Birthday Cake…

I will celebrate my 55th birthday, and 40 years of living with depression. I sure wish my physical health was better these days because this month has been a World class bringdowner.

Oddly I worry that my family thinks I am trying to manipulate them with my complaints. So, I don’t complain that much. Though I have had moments of late where it hurt to talk, and someone would call, and I would have to get off the phone, because it hurt to talk.

Anyhow.. I am not looking forward to the next year.
I will slog through it… dragging that cement block along with me.

Stay in the Day
Have Gratitude
Do Service
Act As If.

I have been doing them all. I still feel like carp.
But the dimension of chronic intractable pain is really a tough one. Emotional pain. I could probably deal with that. But the physical stuff, and having to interface with Medical Systems Are US…
Well that just makes me crazy.
Like, my inability to get female catheters. Jeesh.
45 minutes on the phone yesterday (and they were a hurting 45) and still no joy.

So I am trying to cope, but it’s very, very hard.
It’s not like I can Eat and stuff my feelings. Nope. I just have to learn to sit with all of them.
Some are rather nasty…

and I are studying depression this month….
I believe I fall into the Atypical Realm.

I wonder how much this costs ?

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/tlcg-gta092707.php

Cuz I sure do have lousy reactions to most anti-depressants.

But imagine bringing a print out of that to your Dr. ???

Though if my stomach problems don’t abate soon, or get properly diagnosed, I may take a Psycation on 4 North until somebody LISTENS to me about what is going on..

I am clearly a person who Probably should NOT be taking Macrobid or whatever carp they substitute for it….

http://www.drugs.com/pro/macrobid.html

Now the question is.
Do I call my Family Practitioner and say,
“Gee, as we know I am a Diabetic with peripheral neuropathy,
possibly MS—just waiting for that other sign (like say optic neuritis) , and well my bloods are always whack, as in I have no Vitamin D or something, and then there is the VERTIGO. ” coughs…. and well I can see at least 5 reasons why my Dr’s have never prescribed this drug for me.
But then, it occurs to me that…
they probably can’t get the labwork or the Cat Scan from HHS, because they are not Hospitalists there (meaning they do not attend there) ... and I would probably end up having to go into their office. No ! Not !
Rien. C’est n’est pas possible aujourdhi ! Comme ca ?
Parceque Je Dit. Rien !
Merde…

oh well that’s newish. I haven’t gone all bad French in a looooooong time.

And I must have the slowest alimentary canal in the World, as the highly anticipated and most appreciated Runs have yet to begin.
So what’s with that ?

Well I can surmise that what is with it is the REAL reason I went to the ER, stupid asp Dr. My Stomach or intestinal tract etc. Or perhaps my bladder of gall.

Pfft. Well this sucks.

Also, I am sad to report that there is a d8ad bunny on the road. The same place where I found the d*ad crow last year, who’s wing is still in my freezer. Just in case I don’t make it, and you are cleaning out my hoards… I have plans for that wing, when I am healthy.. and the rest of him was returned to the earth properly and with respect.
I do not have the stomach to deal with the bunny.
So, I am half sad, half French for the moment, and 97% angry at Dr. Do Little.

Whatever.. well for now this stays up.
Sighs..
The picture up top is our yard bunny in the Spring.. in the front yard, which was always a bad idea. Because of the rather major Road it is on. :( ..

(Mr. B doesn’t think the smooshed bunny is from our yard. Where the fark Else is it gonna be from ? This is pesticided/native habitat slash and burn, upwardly mobile, gentrifying suburbia… The new folks don’t do trees and wild things. That would make their picture perfect homes…all messy like ours.)

Again.. PFFT !

I slept through most of September, seriously, whether from depression or a reoccurring infection. I sincerely hope that the change in weather will improve my mood. Possibly I am a reverse SAD person ?
Especially since we sent the Verilux Happy Light out to Oregon..
http://www.verilux.com/home.asp

It well could have been that infection I spent the day attending to yesterday at the ER. I saw way too little of the Dr. assigned to me, and way too much of elderly patient #14’s gonads. Poor guy.

Anyhoo. I will be retiring this soon as , but will leave it up for the few folks who follow me. :) As in, I’m still here…and I started testing my blood sugar again even ! Go Me…

that this cognitive impairment thing I am going through has kicked up a notch. A big, big notch. I can no longer learn new things. Well unless I want to devote 99.9% of my life to doing it.
What makes it worse is how Horribly my self advocacy went when I attempted to get a Pass (literally) from a former school place. ADA requires College and or Master’s students, to ‘self-report’ and do their own advocacy. In a year, I have apparantly lost quite a bit of my legendary wit and intelligence. I am also plagued by horrendous fatigue and pain. Is it my medications ? I take 2 SNRI’s… but I take Adderal for the add of the brain injured. Is it my blood sugar. Or is it that other thing back, progressing, more rapidly than before. I am one of the not so lucky candidates for MS who didn’t start by going blind, and who doesn’t (or didn’t) have visible plaques on my brain. Whoopie.
This means, any hope of diagnosis requires an Advance in symptoms. So does stupidity, fatigue and oh, yes, my very close friend and constant companion vertigo constitute a New Symptom ?
Well I see my Family Practitioner on Monday. It is worth mentioning I suppose. I dread it, I back away from it, but denial is Not going to get me anywhere.

The only consolation is that a Diagnosis of MS would get me into that Horseback riding program ! Well that’s just so not a motivation.

Oh and lest we forget, that background noise drives me NUTS.
Shudders. If a TV or Radio does not have my full attention, be prepared to turn it off. This makes me terribly difficult to live with.

Anyhow, I am not even sure if this qualifies as something that goes in this category. But it is definately on top. Or more accurately, my inability to digest or understand something in a class I am taking, (Sanskrit terms to be exact) is disheartening. And this on top of my recent failure to Pass (like wtf ? would it have been SO frigging difficult for those who have Power to say, “yeah, the Woman has cognitive issues, she’s divulged them from the get go, WE changed the curriculum to beyond her ability… let’s just all feel good about ourselves and give her a P… Not require me to AUDIT. And these are folks who fancy themselves Pagan clergy ? I think not. It is a civil rights issue and I am pissed… ) oh well, see ? It just isn’t going away. That seed of how much stupider can Belle get ? Vs She is the Problem Let’s blame her, not Our Noncompliance Is the Problem, (when, in fact, it was criminal.) This is what has me so angry.
Well, enough for today. I could try to decode Some of these terms or I could just read while I still can.