Category Archives: Depression

Wedding Blues

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A few months ago, I announced my son’s upcoming wedding.  The date of his wedding changed several times, and finally he and his fiance decided on a date in March.  

Due to my anxiety disorder, the only way I could fly out to where the wedding was going to be was to be doped up on stronger anti-anxiety medications than I currently take.  Although I was looking forward to going to the wedding, I really did not want to have to be doped up for it.  I thought that would make it so I would not be able to enjoy the festivities as much as I wanted to.  I shared this with my mother, and we had decided to drive across country to the wedding so that I could go without being medicated and so that my Grandmother could also attend.  It was a trip that I was looking forward to for many reasons.

While he and I have had some difficulties over the last couple of years, I really love him and it was important to me to be able to share my son’s special day with him.  I thought he wanted me there as well. 

While I was in the hospital this last time, I got a text message from my son.  He was visiting his future in-laws for the Holidays.  It seems he and his fiance had decided to go ahead and get married on Christmas Eve.  The reasoning I got was so that members of her family, who could not afford to attend the wedding in March, would be able to see her get married.  I was very upset.  Once again, I felt that my son was cutting me out of a portion of his life, a portion that I thought he had wanted to share with me.  

I also wondered why it was so important to include her family in the wedding, but to leave his own family out of things.  I thought there could have been a way to include at least some of the family members from each of them.  


My son and his fiance also posted something on their face book pages about getting married on Christmas Eve.  I thought that meant they had no problem with people knowing what they were going to be doing.  I was wrong.

After my son told me about his plans to get married on Christmas Eve, I called my mother.  I gave her an update on how I was feeling and told her about what my son had said to me about getting married on Christmas Eve.  I also told her that I was hurt by that, because I had really been looking forward to seeing him get married.  

It seems after I talked to my mother, she texted my son and gave him her opinion about rushing into the marriage and how his family wanted to be there as well.  The next thing I know, I get a text message from my son that was full of obscenities and telling me that I should not have “run my mouth” to my mother.  I never would have thought that my son would talk to me the way he did in that text message.  He did apologize later, because my mother told him that he should not have spoken to me that way.

From there, things went further down hill.  He told his fiance that his family did not want him to be happy, and we did not want him part of the family.  I have no idea where he would have gotten that impression.  He has spent the last year and a half, cutting his family out of his life, and we have spent the last year and a half trying to be a part of his life.  As for not wanting him to be happy, we love him, of course we want him to be happy.  


He went ahead and got married.  I have to admit that it did make me sad when I found out that he had gone ahead with the marriage without any of his own family there.  It was his choice though, he is an adult now.  If he can live with his decision to exclude his family from his life, I have no choice but to live with it as well. 

The way he has spent so much of his energy cutting me out of his life over the last year and a half has changed our relationship and not for the better.  I love that boy.  For most of his life I put him ahead of everything and everyone.  My world revolved around his world.  I thought we had a close relationship.  Now I realize that I was probably wrong about him and I having close relationship, and that I really messed up by putting him ahead of everything else the way I did.  So now, instead of being devastated, like I have been in the past, about not having him in my life, I feel at peace.

I will never stop loving him, he is my son, but if he chooses to continue to exclude me from his life, like it appears he wants to do, then I am OK with it.  I am not going to let it get to me like I have before.  I am no longer willing to put up with his disrespect just to be able to talk to him.  


I will get over being sad about being excluded from his wedding.  I will grieve and move on.  I wish things could have been different, but there is nothing I can do about it.  My hope is that he and his new wife will be happy together. 

ummm Yeah….Do You Remember me?

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We live in a small town.  A very small town.  There are no banks, no grocery stores, no traffic lights, there are only a few antique shops.  To the immediate north and south of us there are bigger towns.  The one to the north of us is in a different county than we are, the one to the south of us is in our county and that is where we tend to do most of our shopping and get most of our medical care.   

The town to the south of us also happens to be where the hospital is that I was taken to after my suicide attempt in May, and where the crisis team had me go after they had come to my house.  It is not a very big hospital and between those two visits and other visits for different reasons, I had become very familiar with some of the staff at the hospital.  I had developed a “reputation”.


It is a reputation based on my crazy, screaming, violent behavior after I tried to kill myself in May.  Behavior that I still have absolutely no memory of.   It is also based on my angry pissed off behavior after I went there because of the crisis team.  


Now that I am on the right mix of medications, and I am further along in my recovery, when I think back to both of those times I was admitted into the hospital, I get rather embarrassed and ashamed of myself.  I really did not want to have to go back to that hospital and its emergency room ever again.  


Of course, as things usually go, the choice to go back to that hospital any time soon, was taken out of my hands.  The Saturday before Christmas I developed a nasty wheeze in my chest and had to go to the emergency department at the hospital.  I could just picture in my head what it was going to be like when I got there.  Some of the nurses would recognize me, some would stare, waiting for me to freak out.  The nurses who did not know who I was, soon would, as the facts about me and my craziness were passed around.  I could also see the doctor’s reaction to seeing that I was there again.  I had built up in my head a very terrifying experience, as well as a very embarrassing one.  


The reality was actually some what different.  I was taken back by the triage nurse almost immediately.  That is a common thing when you go to an emergency room with a breathing problem.  I had seen this particular nurse several times, so she was very familiar with my past visits.  I shared with her that I was rather nervous and afraid to be there because of what happened the last two times I had gone to the emergency room.  Her response to that was very sweet and quite surprising.  It put me at ease.


What she said to me that night was that the past was the past.  She said she did not make judgments about people or their reasons for being in the emergency room, and that she could tell that I was doing so much better than I had been doing before.  The final thing she said was that it was her job to take care of me for what I was there for that night and that I should not let what happened before prevent me from getting the help that I needed.



I ended up being admitted to the hospital.  Surprise! Surprise!  The doctor who was my treating physician while I was in the hospital, was the same doctor I had when I had tried to kill myself.  He was the doctor that dealt with me when I was being violent and had to be restrained.  He remembered me.  


It was at this point I realized I had two choices.  I could be a flake, and let my anxiety about being in this situation be in control, or I could use this as an opportunity to show the nurses and doctor that I am doing better and that at this time I am not acting like a crazy person.


I decided to go for the more positive of the two choices and show them that I was doing much better now.  I made sure that every morning when I woke up I gave myself a quick sponge bath and did other things to show that I cared about my appearance.  I talked with the nurses when they came by my room.  Asked questions, and looked up information about my treatment on the internet, staying engaged in my own treatment plan.  It was easier than I thought it would be.  


I ended up having to stay in the hospital several days longer than I thought I would have to.  The IV steroids that I had to have for my breathing, caused my blood sugar to be incredibly high.  At one point the doctor tried to take me off of the IV steroids and my breathing got bad again.  I was put back on the IV steroids and from that point on, my blood sugar had to be checked every four hours, night and day, and I had to have insulin injections every four hours.  My long lasting insulin dose was changed from 30 units to 72 units.  


Several times the doctor changed my other medications, took me off of one, and added a couple of new ones in the mix.  So I was having to keep up with the changes and keep up with why the doctor was making so many changes to my medications.  It seems my ability to keep up with all that the doctor was doing, and the questions I was asking, went a long way with the doctor.  He was able to see me for the intelligent person I am, instead of the raving, mad woman he had experienced before.  As a result I was allowed to go home Christmas Eve, with a very detailed set of instructions to follow. 

I learned a couple of things from this experience.  The first thing I learned is that for the most part, the staff in a hospital really want what is best for their patients, and truly believe in not holding past experiences with a patient against them.  The other thing I learned seems to be something that I have to keep learning over and over again.  That lesson is that very often my own anxieties make a situation worse in my head than the reality of it is.  One of these days, I hope, that lesson will stick with me and I will learn to not get so anxious about things.  

Just going…and going

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After the whole lack of the “big moment” trauma, me and my life kept on going, and going.  There was still huge amounts of stress for me to deal with, but for the most part I kept continuing to deal with it in an appropriate manner. 


After many months of hard work and worry, it became very evident to me and my husband that we could no longer keep our house.  About two weeks before Christmas, we got the notice that our house was going into foreclosure.  Wow!  How Horrible!  Except the reality was that it was not all that horrible. 


In the not so distant past, if I even thought about losing my house I would have just cried and cried.  I would have spiraled down in a deep dark pit of misery.  I would not have been able to function because I would have been overwhelmed by it all. 


So when we got the news, I surprised myself with my response.  Which was me saying “OK” and “How long do we have to move out?”  I was not upset.  I did not cry.  There were no deep dark pits of misery, and I was able to function. 


How could this be?  Where was my normal freak out?  This whole feeling of actually being able to cope with something was a new and weird feeling.  It was like I was another person.  Even my husband thought it was too good to be true.  He did not verbalize this, but I could see him watching me, checking to see if he could see any signs of a freak out.  Everything was so calm. 

We were all waiting.  Waiting for the freak out that never came.  Instead of freaking out about losing my house, I just kept going and going.  I was able to put the whole situation into perspective. We had a place to go. We would own where we were going to move to, and we would not even have a house payment there.   We would need to do some work on the new house, but it would be totally ours. 


So two weeks before Christmas, we moved into our new house and said goodbye to the old one. It was as simple as that.  Well, mostly simple.  Ok, I admit it, while I did not freak out, the whole move probably pushed most of my anxiety buttons all at once.  


I was physically unable to do the work that needed to be done, and there was no way my husband and daughter could do it all themselves.  So my mother-in-law volunteered to help us out.  What a nice and generous thing for her to do.  What a sure fired way to trigger my anxiety.  


One of my many anxieties is over people touching my stuff.  I am an adult, why should I get so anxious about something as silly as someone touching my stuff?  The only thing I can think of, is when I was a teenager even though I did not use drugs or drink alcohol, my mother used to search my room.  The thing was though, she did not search it when I was away from home, but she always did it in the middle of the night.  I would wake up and I would see her with a flashlight going through my closet, or my desk or dresser drawers.  It really was a weird and almost frightening experience to wake up and see that going on.  


I did OK the first day.  The second day did not go as smoothly for me.  However, I have reached a point in my depression recovery, where I know it is in my best interest to let people know when I am having difficulties.  I told my family and my mother-in-law that I was feeling overwhelmed by the whole moving process, by having people in my home, and having people touch my things.  I told them that I believed the whole process would go much quicker and more smoothly if I stayed at the new place organizing things and not witnessing people handling my things in the old house.  


They were all very understanding and supportive, especially my mother-in-law.  Even when they would bring a load of stuff to the new place and they would catch me napping. 


That is the pattern we developed during the move.  I would work in the new house organizing what I could, napping when the sleepiness caused by my medications got too much, and trying to be as much help as I could.  


By the end of the whole process, I had a new found respect for my mother-in-law.  I also realized that there was at least one person, outside of my immediate family, that I could trust with my most intimate things.  In a way, that realization was a huge relief.  It was as if I had found someone else to share some of my burden with and they did so gladly with no expectations of anything in return.  


Now we are settled into the new place, still organizing our things.  With a lot less stress because we are not constantly worrying over whether or not we can make the house payment this month.  I have a closer relationship with my mother-in-law.  I have discovered that I can deal with one of my worst fears and not freak out.  I have been looking, but I really cannot find anything horrible about losing my house.  So I just keep on going and going.


Just going…..

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In the weeks that I blew off blogging, me and my life just kept going. Life was stressful for many reasons but I made it through experiencing less stress than I normally would have. I am sure that this is due in part to my medications, my counseling and where my head is at now.


One of my stresses actually came from the effexor I take for my depression. There seems to be a side effect to it that is not really talked about much. It caused me to miss the “big moment” more than once while doing the deed with my husband. I have to admit I really enjoy that part of my married life, so the thought of missing out on the “big moment” for years was a depressing thought. To make matters even more stressful, I tend to get a bit embarrassed when I have to talk about that particular subject, but I knew for the problem to be fixed I would have to talk to my male psychologist about it. For the life of me I could not figure out a way to say what I needed to say with out really saying it. The best I could come up with in my head was “Doctor, I am not having any orgasms because of the effexor.” Somehow the thought of being that blunt about it scared the stuffing out of me.


I called a female friend of mine for courage. She said I just needed to go right into the doctor’s office, the next time I had an appointment, and tell him exactly what the problem was. She assured me that he had probably heard that kind of thing more than once and would know just what to do. She did bolster my courage, but I was still tongue tied at the thought of actually saying it out loud.


A few days after I talked to my friend, it was time for me to go in and see both my psychiatrist and my counselor. I saw the counselor first. We had our usual session, things got talked about, and I avoided talking about the one issue that was in the forefront of my mind. Finally, when our session was about over I got enough courage to bring up the dreaded topic. I told the counselor that I had something that was very difficult for me to talk about, but that I absolutely needed to. She said “Ok”, and had a very strange look on her face. Almost like she was afraid at what I might say considering how serious I sounded. Then I just blurted it out “The effexor is making it so I cannot have an orgasm and I do not know how to tell the doctor that I cannot live that way for years because I enjoy it too much.” She laughed. Apparently, she was expecting me to bring something totally awful up and when I blurted out what I did she was shocked that it was something as simple as that. Her laughing actually caused me to relax and I was able to see a great deal of humor in how I handled the whole situation. The counselor assured me that this was an easy to fix problem, and that if I wanted her to, she would actually tell the doctor for me since the whole topic was embarrassing for me. I decided then that if I could tell her, then I certainly could talk to the psychiatrist about it.


After I left the counselor’s office, I walked over to the psychiatrist’s office. I was able to very calmly and without too much discomfort, explain to him the issues I was having with the effexor. He was great about it. He did not dwell on it, just let me know that if we added a low dose of wellbutrin to the mix it should take care of the problem. However, this fix lead to another problem. My husband would want to know why the doctor added another medication to my depression medications. That meant I would have to tell him that the medicine was to help me experience the “big moment” again, and then I would have to confess the fact that I had been faking things for weeks.


I thought and thought and could not come up with anything that would spare me any embarrassment with my husband. So I figured that I would just tell him, the way I did the counselor and the psychiatrist and be done with it. After much, hemming and hawing I got around to telling my husband about the medication and why I needed to take it and confessed my faking ways. I am so glad he is an understanding man.


All that stress over something so silly. It amazes me the amount of things I can turn into huge problems when the reality is, for the most part, that the problems are really just little bumps in my road and are easier to deal with then I think they will be.


At least this whole experience has made it so I get less embarrassed when I have to talk about this particular topic. Good thing too! The very next week I had an appointment with my medical doctor and one of his questions was to ask me how my sex life was, considering all the medications I am on. If he had asked that before I had dealt with the issue, I probably would have fallen out of my chair. As it was, I was able to look at him with a smile on my face and tell him it was just fine.

I Miss The Mom…

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quotes put here with permission from Anna Mashburn

“I miss the mom I used to have. I miss the mom who would do anything and everything.  I miss the mom who would spend time with me. I miss the mom that I could talk to.  I miss my fun and loving mom.” 


Sadness, hurt, abandonment, tears, and pain are some of the words I think of every time I read that quote.  I feel so sorry for the child who is expressing those feelings.  I feel such utter sadness because the child who wrote those words is my daughter.  



Maybe the best term to use for what depression has done to my family is collateral damage.  My husband and daughter are the innocent and injured by-standers in my war against depression and an anxiety disorder.  The wife and mother they had suffered an internal explosion, could barely function, and they were left to pick up the pieces and to hold the family together.

For too long my daughter felt like she had to “babysit” me when my husband was not home.  There were days when she had to remind me to take a shower or eat.  She felt this constant need to make me feel better, and she developed a habit of telling me she loved me at least twenty times a day as well as constantly asking me if I was happy. In essence she lost her mother.  I may have been in her life physically (sometimes), but I was certainly not there emotionally or mentally.   


Physically I was not with her as much as I would have been before the depression consumed me.  I could not leave the house most of the time, when she wanted to go do something.  That meant my husband and her would often have to go on outings without me.  Or because I could barely function, I would spend a lot of time in bed, so she was left to take care of herself.  


Having any type of meaningful conversation with me had to be very frustrating for her.  Most of the time I did not pay attention to what she may have been trying to talk to me about and if I did, most of the time I  would forget what she had said within about two minutes.


“I feel like you have pushed me away.  I feel like you don’t really mean I Love You.”


I just want to cry when I see those words.  I cannot blame her for thinking that though.  In my checked out, depressed state I did push people away, including her and my husband.  The thought processes going on in my head at the time rationalized me pushing them away. I told myself that by pushing them away, I was getting them used to taking care of themselves so that when I decided the time was right for me to end my life, it would make it easier for me to go through with it.

After seeing those words I went out and bought me and my daughter something special. I felt that it would reassure her that I do love her, even if I “checked out” again and could not express it properly.  I got us heart necklaces, the larger heart says “Mother”, the smaller heart says “Daughter”. 
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 I have also spent a great deal of time talking to her, reassuring her that I love her, and apologizing to her.  My hope is that once again she will feel as if I love her and not feel so sad and abandoned anymore.  I do not want her to  feel she has to be so grown up at her young age because she thinks she has to take care of me.

I have learned that my depression recovery is a family affair.  It is obvious what harm the major depression and anxiety disorder has caused me. What is less obvious is the harm and sadness that it has  caused to my family. Even now some days it is very difficult for me to focus on anything or anyone except for myself.  Just getting myself through the day is a huge task.  However, on the days when I can, I will make an effort to reassure my family that I still love and care about them.  Things will never be the way they were before the depression. I will never be the way I was before the depression.  It was not healthy.  I do, however, have a hope that when we all get on the other side of things, that we will be a stronger, healthier family because of what we all are struggling through now.

Long Time No Blog

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I apologize for taking a few days off from the blog without an explanation why.  Things have been interesting, discouraging, and thought provoking over the last few days.

My original purpose for starting this blog was to give me an outlet for my emotions, mostly so I would not express them inappropriately. That purpose sort of evolved more into using the blog as an outlet for me and putting myself out there for  other people to see and know that they are not alone in their depression.   

The blog has been helping me.  I like being able to have a place to put my thoughts and feelings.  I have enjoyed the feedback I have been getting from people in my email.  Working on this blog has become a very enjoyable thing for me to do everyday.  

However, recently I was told that by blogging about myself it showed how selfish and self-absorbed I am and that putting myself out there with my thoughts, feelings and struggles I am really just whining about things.  This really made me feel quite bad.

I needed to take a few days and reassess my motives and ambitions with regards to the blog.  What I have decided is that if something made me feel good, and gave me more self-confidence and was a positive outlet for me then it is something that I should continue to do.  

In fact, even though my husband does not  write in my blog, he likes to see what I have written and offer suggestions.  There is also what my daughter gets out of her picture of the day section.  She and my husband are both now on constant look out for the perfect picture of the day.  In a way, my blog has become a family affair.  

Maybe the person who gave me the negative feedback was having a bad day and that is what they felt after they read my blog, or it could be their honest every day feeling about these types of blogs.  The positive thing that came out of their negative comments is that it forced me to re-evaluate my motives for the blog.  There is nothing wrong with taking a good look at yourself to keep yourself on track.


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Communication 

I am learning that just like in any part of life, when a person is in the  process of recovering from depression, communication is so very important.  

My natural instinct is to keep my  honest and real feelings to myself and put on a “mask” of fake feelings and not properly communicate my wants or needs.  Most of the time, if I feel like I have to express something personal, I will only hit the surface, just enough to satisfy another person.


On the flip-side, I expect people to communicate fully with me, even when I do not do it in return.  That is not very nice of me to do.  


A few days ago, my husband and I got irritated with each other over a lack of communication.  I thought he was not communicating properly with me and he thought I was not communicating properly with him.  The thing we were NOT communicating about was a stupid grocery list.  I wanted more input from him, and he wanted more input from me, so that both of what we wanted would be represented on the grocery list.  Like most small things people argue about, it turned into a bigger thing than it should have. 


The reason it spiraled down into an argument is that both of us were too busy worrying about what the other wanted to properly communicate  our own wants.  For some reason, both of us perceived that in that situation if we had communicated what we wanted, it would have been selfish.  The reality of what happened is that he got irritated and I got irritated and the list never got done.



Later on that evening, he and I talked.  I expressed to him that it felt like he wanted me to read his mind and figure out what he wanted and he expressed feeling something similar.  We both felt frustrated.   We both realized that if we had spoken up and communicated our wants then the whole mess would have been avoided.  Not to mention, we both connected  a few dots and realized that there have been other occasions where frustrations and irritations could have been avoided if we had spoken up.  


On a more personal level, I see that by putting a “mask”on and hiding what I truly want, need or feel, I am setting up a situation that is bound for failure.  People cannot read my mind to know how I am doing on any given day.  That leads them to worry about what my emotional mind set is for the day.  If I communicated my feelings more, good or bad, then it would cause them less worry because they would not be trying to guess about what is going on in my head.  If things were bad, then they could share the burden or help with solutions, if they were going good then we could feel good together.  Also, the reality of wearing a “mask” to hide my feelings is very tiring work.


I also realized that many of my own personal stress, and aggravation comes from not communicating with other people. I end up doing something I really do not want to do (but never communicated that fact), then stressing because I feel like I am stuck doing something I never wanted to do in the first place.  Worrying because of feeling like I am not doing an adequate job, since I do not want to be doing it in the first place.  Which often leads to me feeling so anxious that I cannot leave the house, which leads to more guilt, worry and stress, and then more anxiousness.  

To take care of myself, to “be all I can be”,  I need to expend some serious mental effort and communicate properly. Keeping things inside is no longer acceptable.  Keeping things inside will eventually lead to me ending up in the hospital again.





Double D's

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In the fall of 2007, when I was 37, I was given a new medication by my family physician.  It was to help with my blood pressure.  This particular medication should not be used by someone with a history of asthma because it can trigger an asthma attack.  I had no history of asthma so my family physician felt that it would be OK for me to take.


A few days after I started taking it, I started feeling bad.  I had a bad cough and a wheeze in my chest.  I went and had it checked out and was told it was bronchitis.  I was given steroids and antibiotics.  I felt better the next day.  The day after that, I felt really bad and the wheeze I had this time was a little bit worse than last time.  Again the doctor said it was bronchitis, gave me stronger steroids, and told me to take it easy.  Once again, I felt better the next day, the day after though, not so much.  I felt like I could hardly breathe and the wheeze I had this time was horrible.  I went to see my doctor and she told me that she was ordering me to go into the hospital for IV steroids and to watch me because she was afraid I would get so bad that I would need to be put on a breathing machine.  That was the first time I had ever been in the hospital overnight, except for when I had the kids.  At that point I was diagnosed with adult onset asthma. 


I think it was at that time the depression started.  I was sick all the time because the pulmonologist and I could not get the asthma under control.  I spent a solid year on steroids because of the asthma.  It just wore me out and made it so I was more vulnerable to other illnesses and set my mind up for the depression to take hold.  I physically felt really bad all the time.  I slept most of every day away, because I was so tired.



Because I live so far from my pulmonologist’s office, he insisted I create an emergency plan for when I had an asthma attack. I was to use my nebulizer three times in a row, about ten minutes apart each time.  If after the third treatment my breathing was not drastically better, I was to head to the nearest emergency room.  In May of 2008, I had an asthma attack that did not respond to the emergency plan. 


I went to our local emergency room.  Whenever I have to go the emergency room because of an asthma attack, I am immediately taken back to see a doctor. So I did not have to wait long.  The triage nurse did her thing and pointed out that my blood pressure was insanely high.  I blew it off, not a bit concerned because of having used my nebulizer three times in a row, I figured my blood pressure would be higher than normal.  After the doctor saw what my blood pressure was, he decided to do some blood work to make sure I did not have congestive heart failure.


When the blood work came back, it showed that I did not have congestive heat failure but there was something that was not good.  My blood sugar was 420.   I had diabetes. 


The doctor came very close to admitting me to the hospital.  Instead, because I happened to have an old glucose meter of my father’s, he lets me go home with a prescription for glucoflage. Two days later I saw the endocronologist for the first time.  


He confirmed that I had diabetes and with using a special test, he was able to determine that I had probably had it for months.  However, all the steroids I had been taking had hidden that fact.  For months all I could do was sleep.  We thought that it was from the asthma not being controlled.  What I found out was that high blood sugars will cause you to be sleepy all the time and to feel as bad I was feeling. 


I had to learn so much that day.  I had to learn how to give myself insulin injections, to figure out how much I needed of one kind based on a math formula, and how to fill up syringes with insulin.  I ended up with two different types of insulin and having to give myself four injections in my stomach every single day.  I also had to learn how to use a glucose meter and stick myself at least four times a day to get blood samples. 


The doctor did tell me that within a week my blood sugars would be down and I would start to feel better.  For the most part he was correct.  I felt good mentally because I felt like knowing what had been causing me to feel so rotten for the last few months was a good thing.  That I could move forward from there.  


That attitude did not last for very long.  A few weeks after I was diagnosed with Diabetes, I was back to where I was before I found out about the Diabetes. I was tired, sleepy, and not feeling good.  I was also very angry and sad all of the time.   It made me really darn angry that I had been diagnosed with two major illnesses in less than a year. I was angry and sad about how drastically my life had changed.  I hated all the needles I had to now deal with four times a day.  I started to become increasingly anxious.  I also worried about the burden I had become to my family.  I  believe that at this time the depression really started to control my thinking, and my life and just continued to get worse from there.  


The Double D’s.  Diabetes and Depression.  These two things have affected my life and my family’s lives more than anything else I have been diagnosed with.  


I have already had a pretty nasty diabetic complication. The nerve in the stomach that tells the stomach to contract to digest food no longer works in me due to the diabetes.  There is a lot of pain and vomiting that goes along with that.  My family must pay attention to me, to make sure I am not having a bad reaction due to my insulin.  I cannot go barefoot anymore, something I have always enjoyed.  If I were to step on something and hurt a foot, there could be complications with it healing.  From several sources I have discovered that diabetes can contribute to depression.  


The Double D’s.  Those two things have caused me to come closer to dying than even the asthma has.  Blood sugar dropping too low, more than one suicide attempt.  


As I was learning how to give myself the proper dosage of insulin, more than once my blood sugar dropped dangerously low.  That caused me to spend a week in ICU.  There was my suicide attempt in May that resulted in another week in ICU, and at another time, an attempt resulted in ICU and a psychiatric hospital.  


The Double D’s.  Two very frustrating il
lnesses, both of which really has no “cure”. The most I can hope for is that medications will help me maintain some balance with both illnesses and maybe with one I  might experience a “remission” but the disease will never really go away.  


The Double D’s.  Now that I am getting help for the depression, I can recognize that neither diagnosis is the end of the world for me.  I can see how at some future date that they might allow me to be a good support person for someone in similar circumstances.  I just need to get to a better mind set about both things.   For the present, I am still learning how to take care of myself again.  I do not think I would be able to properly support someone else yet.  


Hmmmm, Will I Get Dressed Today?

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Have you ever had to struggle, I mean really struggle in deciding whether or not you could manage to get the motivation to get dressed on a daily basis?  Or take a shower? Have you ever decided that it took too much effort to talk to your family….on a daily basis?  Have you ever been so overwhelmed by no motivation, anxiety, and worry that your memory seemed to be failing you and you really and truly could not function?  I can answer yes to all of those questions.


Before counseling and before medication, every single one of my days was a struggle.  As my depression progressed, the struggle become more and more difficult.  The last six to nine months before I started receiving treatment were the worst.  


I quit sleeping.  The lack of sleep combined with a fog of depression, made me feel horribly tired all the time.  I would try and take naps and the most I could do was to lay under the covers and just think.  Most of the time, I could not manage a shower before four or five in the afternoon.  When I did finally take my shower, I did not shave my legs.  I know that does not seem like huge deal, but it was.  People who know me, know that I shave every day.  Even when I would go  camping I would shave. So for me to be a hairy legged freak was highly out of character for me.  After my shower, I would put on a clean set of pajamas, so unless I absolutely had to go somewhere, I wore pajamas all the time.The only reason I would even take a shower was because I felt like if I could at least do that before my husband got home, he would not realize how bad things were. Ha!  I really thought that too.  My husband is not a fool, he knew something was way wrong, he just could not put his finger on it.  

My days always seemed to pass quickly, but I never really did anything.  I ached everywhere.  I had headaches all the time.  My stomach was a mess. After I started treatment, I did some research and those physical symptoms are typical for someone who has major depression.

I could not concentrate on anything.  Not reading, cross stitch, crochet, or even the television.  My mind was always racing with thoughts, so many thoughts that there were times when I could not create a sentence.

I felt like I was a shell of a human being who really was just operating on a kind of automatic pilot.  Toward the end, the automatic pilot I was running on seemed to develop sort of short in the electrical system and was no longer running properly.   


Waking up in the hospital, after my suicide attempt, was the first time in at least two years that I was not in pain.  Of course once all the medication they had given me wore off, I was aching all over once again.  


Even now,  I am amazed at the amount of physical symptoms a mental illness can cause.


Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

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I had an appointment with my counselor yesterday.  It lasted longer than usual, because she was running late, so she had my session run over to make up for the time.  She was running late because she had to see a lot o people.  It always tends to be a little busier on Tuesdays and Thursdays but today was much busier than normal. 


Tuesdays and Thursdays are intake days at the counseling center I go to.  Basically that means that whoever may have tried to hurt themselves or some one else or has a substance abuse problem and has encountered staff members at the local hospital, or sheriff’s department, or encountered anyone who is considered a mandatory reporter is ordered  to be seen at that practice at least once.  Because my counselor feels that to some extent I am still high risk, she likes to see me at least once a week.  Often she does not have anything available so I am given appointments on intake days.


Because she was running late, I had to sit longer than usual in the waiting room. It was a little difficult for me to sit there, with all the people I became very anxious.  I adopted my usual body language, arms crossed and no smile to discourage anyone from trying to talk to me.  I began to look around to see who all was in the waiting room with me. There was a group on the far side of the waiting room, where people wait when they are there to see the doctor.  Everyone in that group seemed to know each other and were having a very animated conversation.  On my side of the waiting room there was a lady who was around my age.  She was talking to one of the interns. She looked like she felt awful.  I could not help but over hear some of what she was saying to the intern.  I realized that she had very similar issues to me.  Even her body language was similar to mine. 


There was something about her that stuck with me, because after my appointment I was still thinking about her.  Finally, I realized what it was about her that had stuck with me.  She reminded me of how I was at the end of May, when I first started going there.  From how awful she looked, to her body language and how she was describing her anxiety and depression symptoms to the intern.  It truly was like looking in a mirror.  For the first time, I was able to see what I looked and acted like when things were at their very worst.


My family was caring and gentle enough to not tell me the truth about how bad I looked.  However, the nurse that I see at the counseling center, told me that when I saw him for the first time I looked awful and he was very worried about me.  I can see why now. The woman looked like she was walking on a very fine edge and was quickly becoming unbalanced.  She looked sad, worried and tired, very very tired.


I have been frustrated at times by the extra checking up on me that people, especially my husband, have been doing.  At times I have felt like I was being treated like a little kid.  However, after having had the opportunity to look into a mirror and see what I was like, I understand now why people have felt compelled to do those things.  They did not do them to intentionally make me feel as if I were a little child, but they did them out of love and concern because they could truly see on the outside what I had been like on the inside for a long time.


I am sure there have been other women in there who probably looked the way this woman did, but everything happens when it happens and how it happens for a reason.  Most likely the reason I did not see this in anyone else before is because I was not ready.  It certainly is a very heavy feeling to see yourself the way I saw myself yesterday.


I guess when I looked in a real mirror, I had blinders on.  I could see the bags under my eyes, and that I looked pale, but not really see what I actually looked like.  It is more than just what I saw in her face.  Her body too just had that sad, worried and tired look.  She walked like every inch of her was sore.  I am sure everyone has seen those commercials where the main line is “depression hurts”. I  have to tell you it does.  It seemed like I had an ever present ache in my whole body.  It never dawned on me that it would be visible to other people.


I am still trying to figure out what all I can take away from this experience.  At the very least, I think it gives me more of an understanding about why my husband is still very concerned about me.  I guess there are times when I am not having a good mental health day, that I probably look similar to that.  I think he knows when I am not having a good mental health day just by looking at my body and how I carry myself.  That explains to me why some days he seems very clingy.  Maybe what I need to take away from this, is that just like I am asking everyone to be patient with me, that I need to be patient with everyone else as well.

Attack Of The Blank Mind

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I have to admit that today it has been a struggle to come up with something to blog about.  I have managed to catch a cold that has settled into my chest.  Besides having major depression, diabetes, and an anxiety disorder, I also have adult onset asthma, so I always get a little concerned when a cold settles into my chest.  I just feel pretty crappy today.  I also have not been sleeping very well, so I have been dozing on and off during the day. 

Right before I was diagnosed with depression and an anxiety disorder, I was hardly ever sleeping.  I had the typical early waking that many people with depression experience.  This lack of sleep is a bit different.  I am just not sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time when I do sleep, and I got at least three nights during the week without getting any sleep at all.  I am starting to think that it is the Effexor causing it.  That can be one of the side effects.  When I mentioned my lack of sleep to my psychiatrist he told me to take extra of my anti-anxiety medication, vistaril, since it is nonaddictive and makes you sleepy.  It is not having the desired results.  I do not want to stop taking the Effexor, since it seems to be working for the depression.  The next time I see my psychiatrist, I will tell him that I am still not sleeping and get him to prescribe something to help me sleep.  He said he would if the extra vistaril did not work. 

Part of me really enjoys being the only one awake at night, part of me does wish I could sleep a little more.  Before I started getting help with my depression most of my time at night was spent crying for hours, researching how to kill myself, and trying to decide if that night was the night to go through with it.  Now, I spend it enjoying the quiet alone time, watching what I want on TV, spending time with my dogs, reading, and just generally enjoying myself.  Hey!  I just now realized that I have not had any suicidal or self destructive thoughts in several weeks.  That is wonderful! I  had not even been aware that I had not had those thoughts until I started recalling how I used to spend my  nights.

That is exactly how my counselor said it would happen too.  She said I would just quit having those thoughts, and would not really notice until sometime later.  Even when  I was taking the other medications and they seemed to be working, I still had almost daily suicidal thoughts, I was just not as obsessed with them as I had been before treatment.  I feel like I have reached a huge milestone in my recovery.  No suicidal thoughts for about three weeks.  I never really believed that there would come a time when I would go so long without wanting to kill myself.

My dogs are my constant night time companions.  Well, they sort of are.  They tend to fall asleep too.  Buster is my boxer, and Minnie is my chihuahua/shitzu mix.  Minnie is younger and smaller but she is the dog that is in charge.  This is what the dogs are doing now, while I am still awake and blogging.