Monthly Archives: October 2009

Random Thoughts – October 9th, 2009

Posted on by
Reply

I have had what I think are some interesting thoughts in the last couple of days.  I hope I can put them down here in a manner that can be understood.

The other day, my brother tweeted about some stress he experienced one morning.  The way he described how the stress was affecting him, was just like how it affects me when I am feeling anxious or close to a panic attack.  There are some things I want to ask him about.  I know why I am such an anxious, nervous person.  It is how I have lived most of my life because of feeling that way so much of the time I was growing up.  If he gives me permission, after I talk to him I will let ya’ll know what the questions were and his answers to them.

I am happy to see things still continuing to improve between my daughter and I.  Not that we do not have some days where some old behaviors come out, but at least we are trying to treat each other with respect.

I have come to a more satisfied place in my mind, than I have been in for a long time.  Not happy, definitely not sad, but satisfied.  I have learned to be ok with having this illness of major depression, and learned to be ok with having an anxiety disorder.  My frame of mind has improved greatly in the last few weeks, and I have been able to take stock of things a little bit better.  I fully expect things to improve over the months and years.  However, I have come to the conclusion that I will not be (and I do not want to be) the person I was before the depression affected my life so much, nor will I be the person I have been over the last few years during the depression.  The person I was before was always doing and going and being.  Doing for others, going all over the place hauling kids, and I was always being a person that I really was not meant to be.  My husband had been putting all this pressure on me to be the person I was before.  I was finally able to get him to understand that the person from before the depression will never be coming back and why.  It took him a few days, but he seems to understand it better now and seems ok with it.

My asthma is better than it has been in years, maybe it will stay that way through the winter.  I think I have finally gotten a grip on dealing with the Diabetes and all the things I have to do because of it.  I believe getting the depression and anxiety under control has helped with that.  In many ways, since I started getting treatment for the depression and anxiety, things have been so much better in many different areas of my life.

For the first time in my life, I am not stressing about trying to win my mother’s approval.  I will never have it.  I have also started slowly letting go of my resentment about her lack of contact with me since I was released from the psychiatric hospital.  It has been over a month now and she has not called, or tried to see me.  Just that one unexpected ride to my counselor.

My husband and I talked and we decided that we would not be spending the holidays with either family, for the most part.  Farrol’s mother is a widow, so he said he would like to go over there for a bit when the rest of his family is not around.  As for my family, we are going to see if my brother and sister-in-law want to get together around the holidays and hang out.  We both feel really good about this decision.

I am still not sleeping.  My psychiatrist increased my anti anxiety medication, by a significant amount.  It makes you sleepy so he said he thought this might help.  He is also having me take two in the day time even if I do not have extra anxiety, again to help me get some sleep.  He and I both think that my lack of sleep is a cycle and that if I can get to sleep a few nights in a row, it would probably break the cycle.  If this does not work, then we are going to try something else.  The psychiatrist did not want to do that starting off since I already have so much medication to take.

Anna 's Picture Of The Day

Posted on by
Reply

I am trying to do more with Anna, to make up for things I have missed over the last few years.  She is extremely interested in photography.   Almost every day she goes out side and takes lots of pictures.  She and I talked and we decided I would give her one page in my blog to post a picture of the day.  I see it as a type of therapy for both of us.  So I would like to announce the opening of Anna’s Picture Of The Day.

After days of rain, Anna found a beautiful mushroom that she took a picture of.

Photobucket

Beginnings – Part II

Posted on by
Reply

In many ways the frequent moves were  wonderful experiences that most children do not get. In other ways each and every move and adapting to new people, new locations, and new situations was filled with so much stress and uncertainty that I felt miserable.  I do believe my mother and father did the best they knew how in trying to keep each move from causing as little instability as possible.  Most of the time we moved when school was out for the summer.  However, the draw back to that is most of the time my father had to head to the new place we were living weeks or months before we could join him.  Sometimes we did not have a house to live in when we got there.  There were times when we spent weeks and weeks in a hotel while we waited for my parents to find us a place to live.  I can remember always feeling a bit of anxiousness because things often seemed so uncertain when we moved.

I cannot be sure, but I would think that uncertainty probably caused my mother a great deal of stress as well.  It seemed that the more stress she was experiencing, the more difficult she was to be around.  She would anger more easily, say cruel things more often, and if her stress was very bad, there would be some physical abuse as well.

Since I knew that we would be moving soon, I never really made friends.  There were kids I did things with, and played with but even from a young age, I never made a friend that I would miss when we moved again.  I learned the art of self isolation at a very young age.  Any time I had to walk into a class room as the new kid, it was so hard.  I never knew if the kids in the class were going to like me, or what the teacher would be like, if I was going to know as much as the other kids did, and would I be able to find a way to fit in.  I felt this constant internal pressure.  Pressure to fit in (once again) in a new place, pressure to do well in school, a huge pressure from my parents (mostly from my mother) to adapt well to my new surroundings, and a constant pressure to not upset my mother.

Despite the fact that I spent the majority of my early childhood in “fight or flight” mode, I did manage to adapt (most of the time) each time we moved.  This is how I learned the very valuable tool of hiding what you were really feeling, and make it look like everything was OK, even when on the inside you knew it was not.  From the time I turned nine and on it became harder and harder as each year passed to adapt to my surroundings and to fake that everything was OK.

I cannot point to one thing that led to my spiraling down emotionally.  Instead I think it was a combination of some pretty drastic and stressful events that, as a child, I did not have the skills to express.  Instead what I did is intensify my self isolating behavior, no longer bothered to  try and get along with my peers, and stopped trying to adapt to my surroundings and situation. I spent more and more of my time and energy in a “fight or flight” mode. 

Around about the time I turned nine, we moved to Spain.  This was a difficult move for me even before the actual move took place.  When we found out that we were moving to Spain, we were living in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  I remember when we first  got to Mississippi, I had asked my father if we were going to stay there “forever”, and he had told me that we would.  So when the news came that we were moving and where we were moving to, in many ways I was devastated.  My brother and I were sent to stay with my grandparents for at least a month, while my parents went through all of our belongings and decided what would go into storage here in the States and what they would have shipped (by boat) to Spain.  If I remember correctly, the company my father was working for would pay the shipping costs up to a certain weight, and so the whole family was limited on what could be sent to Spain.

By this point in my childhood, I was nervous all the time.  I was constantly worried, stressed and anxious about what would upset my mother and those feelings were carried over to almost any situation I encountered.  The uncertainties in my life also caused me to be very anxious most of the time.  Sometimes those feelings would make themselves known to other people in the most unexpected ways.

Once my parents got things sorted out with our belongings it was time for me and my brother to get some vaccinations or have some blood drawn.  Either way it was something that involved needles. I do not recall being all that upset in the past about needles, but I think because of the stress of all that was going on, I become over anxious, extra worried, and even more stressed out than usual.  About the time the nurse was going to stick me with the needle, I screamed.  My brother must have been experiencing some of the same feelings I had been and my scream was a little more than his poor, little kid nerves could take.  The next thing we all knew, he was running down the hall, to get away from my mother and the nurses.  They were chasing him as fast as they could go.  However, even at a young age my brother was a very fast runner.  He probably would have made a clean get away but the elevator door was not open on our floor. 

That is a funny tale about my brother, but when I look at it from my perspective now, I can see that he too, might have been experiencing a great deal of stress at an early age.  In fact if the researchers and their studies are correct, that means starting at an early time in our childhoods, our brain chemistry was being permanently altered. 

Once we arrived in Spain we spent several months in a hotel, because it took a while for our furniture to get there.  My brother and I had the run of the hotel.  The staff let us get away with entirely too much, but some of my best childhood memories are from when we stayed in that hotel.

We lived in the Basque area of Spain.  There was terrorism there, there were civil police standing on street corners with machine guns.  It was very different from life in the States, but up until something happened to me, I enjoyed living there a great deal.

To be continued….

Beginnings – Part III will come out tomorrow.

Treasure

Posted on by
Reply

Because I have such a hard time keeping a positive attitude, I wanted to set a section of my blog aside where everyday I can point out something that is positive about a person, a thing, or situation.  This exercise is forcing me to be more of a glass is half full kind of person, and helping me maintain a positive attitude.

 Learning to not take everything in life so seriously has been a treasure.  I have learned that there is more humor, and things to laugh about when I do not take everything so seriously all the time.

Setting up boundaries with people has been very empowering.  That process has given me more self confidence than I used to have.

Accepting myself for who I am, and not pressuring myself to be what other people want me to be.

Random Thoughts – October 6th, 2009

Posted on by
Reply

Learning how to cope with stress has always been a huge struggle for me.  The benefit of taking the effexor and having the extra anti-anxiety medication is that they seem to dull those feelings of stress.  The draw back of taking the effexor and having the extra anti-anxiety medication is that they seem to dull those feelings of stress.  Ha! Ha! Ha!  While it is good to some extent that those feelings of stress are dulled, because they have taken away that constant feeling of stress and worry that I always seemed to have.  However, I still need to learn how to cope with stress better.  At some point, I am going to encounter a situation that is extremely stressful, much more so than the medications alone can handle.

What kind of things do ya’ll do to cope with stressful situations?  I figure there are enough of you who read this blog now, that there has to be some good coping techniques that ya’ll have that you would not mind sharing with me.

Beginnings – Part I

Posted on by
Reply

As you read this story, I ask that you keep in mind that it is not meant to be a “poor me” story, but instead it is me being completely truthful for the first in my life about all the things that contributed to my depression.  There will be some talk about physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse.  Unless I feel that it is beneficial to the story and to people’s understanding, for the most part I will not be discussing in detail the actual acts of abuse that took place.  There are enough blogs, books, movies and TV shows where people can go and get the details of an abuse act that I feel that it is not necessary for me to include them here.  

My doctor, counselor, friends and family have all wanted to know “when did the depression start?”  With friends and family it is easy to say that it started three years ago when I was diagnosed with Adult Onset Asthma.  My doctor and counselor know that it is not the whole truth.  The whole truth is that I have suffered from depression on and off probably most of my life.  It is only that in the last three years that it became debilitating. 

There is a link between childhood trauma/stressors and people who develop major depression.   In fact, in the research I have done, I have discovered that many experts agree that in most cases of significant adult depression, that some form of abuse was experienced in childhood.  That could be physical abuse, sexual abuse, or emotional abuse. Early traumatic experiences, that repeatedly trigger the body’s “fight or flight” stress response can lead to permanent changes in brain chemistry.  Combine these brain chemistry changes to a genetic predisposition for depression and it is almost guaranteed that the person will end up experiencing major depression at least once in their lifetime.

Based on things I remember and my experiences now, I believe strongly that my mother suffers from her own mental health issue.  I am certainly not a professional health care worker, but there are certain things I recognize in her behavior (past and present) that are similar to my own when my depression is out of control. I do know that my grandfather suffered severe anxieties when he was alive.  Things that happened to him during World War II made them worse, but my personal belief is that the anxieties were probably there before the war.  My grandmother has anxiety issues as well.  My father has a tendency to avoid, at all costs, certain issues, because I believe for whatever reason he can deal with them better by avoiding them.  Thinking about all that leads me to the conclusion that I most definitely was genetically pre-disposed to developing depression.

My childhood was stressful.  I know that compared to many other children’s lives it was not the worst childhood I could have had, but it was stressful. I do not remember the place of my birth or the financial circumstances of my family at the time, but I have been told that we were very poor at the time.  My mother was only 19 when I was born.  I am sure combined with being a young mother in a place that was not close to her own family, and not being in the best financial situation, she was under her own mountain of stress.  I believe that these circumstances set things up from the beginning of my life for my mother and I to have a difficult and at times abusive relationship.

I base that belief on a very short conversation I had with my mother about 13 years ago. My mother had been diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma.  She had to undergo the usually course of treatment, and she obviously did not feel well and I am sure was afraid she would not survive her cancer or even the treatments.  I think that she felt that she needed to “clean the slate” between us and offer some sort of apology and explanation for things that happened when I was growing up.  She shared that her pregnancy with me was not planned and when I was born, she and my father were living in a project (I think) and that they had almost no money.  That due to the stress of having a child that had not been planned for and being broke as well as a few other things, she never developed the bond with me that she had with my brother.  Furthermore, that is why she treated my brother better than she did me.  I think in her way she was trying to do something good, but instead it resulted in me being very angry.  For so many years, I had thought my brother was treated differently, slightly better than I was, but when I became an adult I decided that was just stupid childhood jealousy, and then to find out I was right all along brought up all sorts of old feelings and sadness.

Like many people who have suffered from some form of abuse, I have tried to “forget” the incidents as much as possible.  In some cases I was successful, in some not so much.  The first memory I have of the emotional abuse that I dealt with when I was a child is when we were living in Alabama.  I want to say I was four or five years old.  We had a play area, I think I back porch or something and there were toys strewn everywhere.  I believe that I did not want to pick up all those toys, you know how kids that age are.  I remember my mother getting very upset and calling me some very ugly names and if my memory is correct, she threw toys at me until I cleaned up.

Things like that happened often.  I remember feeling very stressed at a very young age.  I never knew what would set my mother off and exactly how she would react when she did go off.  That stress stayed with me all the time.  I never truly felt happy because of that constant feeling of stress.

I tried so hard when I was a kid to do things to make my mother happy.  I knew that if she was happy the chances of her getting angry with me and saying cruel things to me would be lessened.  I often felt that my overtures of affection were rebuffed and that she truly did not want me around her.  I have continued to feel that rejection from her into my adult years.

I know it seems that my mother is taking the brunt of the blame for the things that happened in my childhood.  I hold my father equally, if not more so, responsible for the things that happened.  He was almost never home.  He worked so much and it seemed that most of the time when I was growing up I only saw him on the weekends, and sometimes not even on every weekend.  I believe that when he was home he put blinders on to what was going on in the house when he was not there so that he did not have to deal with the messiness of it all.    If only he had ever truly taken the time to talk to her about the things that were going on, and not just one time, but as many times as needed to be done, I think he could have saved me from a lot of pain as a child and as an adult. I know the situation had to be stressful for my mother.  I wonder if she ever felt like she was a single parent since she was the one left to do all the parenting most of the time.

There were other family members, extended family, that were aware that things were not quite right in my childhood home.  I do not think they realized the extent of it until my family finally settled down in Georgia for several years after moving every year or two for most of my early childhood.  I was unaware that anyone outside of my home had a clue to what was going on until, as an adult, I visited my Aunt and her mother.  That is when they revealed to me that they had noticed when I was growing up that my mother was very hard on me and that even if I had done nothing wrong and my brother had done it, that I would get the blame for it.  They also told me that during the times they would watch me and my brother, if my parents had gone out of town or something, that they would not tell my mother if had I not behaved exactly like I was sup
posed to, because they knew that the fall out I would experience would be awful.   One thing I have always wondered since they told me that, is if they thought things were amiss in my home, why they never told anyone about what they saw going on and what they knew was going on?

There was one family member in my life who I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt loved me for exactly who I was.  Around that person I could be who I wanted to be, and I felt happy.  That was my grandfather.  My grandfather was not perfect by any means.  He was a bigot, he was an alcoholic, he was a grouch, he could be very mean, but he was always good to me, so I could overlook those not good things about him.  There is a story, that when I was a baby, he and my grandmother came to visit us when we lived in Kentucky.  I am told that I just wanted to be around my grandfather constantly.  When it came time for my grandparents to head back to their home in Georgia, I did not want to have my grandfather stop holding me.  I am told that when he was handing me back to my parents, I was crying like crazy and I grabbed onto his shirt pocket and would not let go.  In fact, even though I was a baby, I almost ripped the pocket off of his shirt.  From what my grandmother says, that is what created the bond between me and my grandfather.  He is the only person I can remember who ever stood up to my mother about how she was treating me.

In addition to the stress of the abuse that was going on in my house, there was the instability of our family life.  For most of my early to mid childhood we moved every year or two.  We never really had roots anywhere.  That instability led to its own type of stress, and in its own way probably contributed to some of the things I endured.

To be continued…..

Beginnings-Part II will come out tomorrow.

Treasure

Posted on by
Reply

Because I have such a hard time keeping a positive attitude, I wanted to set a section of my blog aside where everyday I can point out something that is positive about a person, a thing, or situation.  This exercise is forcing me to be more of a glass is half full kind of person, and helping me maintain a positive attitude.

Still not much sleep, but I was able to take a short nap today.  That is a good thing.  I feel much better, still tired but I can think more clearly than I had been earlier in the day.  Other than being very tired, today was a pleasant day. Nothing really went on, it was just a nice quiet day.  By quiet, I also mean my mind.  No racing thoughts, no worries, not really any stress either.  A quiet day.    A good day.

Random Thoughts – October 5 2009

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, because I was so tired, was not as good of a mental health day as I have been having.  I realized after I did a couple of things that I was heading down the road to having a really bad mental health day.  The good thing is, I was aware of what I was doing, and in the past I would not have been.  I was able to take the mental steps I needed to take to get things back onto the right track again.  The surprising thing was that it did not take as much effort as I thought it was going to take.  That tells me that the things I have been doing to improve my mental health have been working.  I have been trying to implement habits that help me keep a positive attitude, even when things around me are not going well.  One of the most important things I have been doing is that I am following the age old saying of, “If you cannot say anything nice, do not say anything at all”  That does not mean that I cannot talk about things that are not good, but what it means is that I will not add anymore negativity to it than is already there.  I have also asked my husband and my daughter to do the same thing when they are around me.  I am creating an atmosphere of positivity.  It is really helping.  I find I am less worried, and less stressed, and am able to combat my depression much more effectively.  It also has been helpful in keeping me from focusing only on the negative parts of a situation.

Poor Farrol, he got home from work at a decent time today, the first time in weeks.  I know he was hoping to spend time with me, but almost as soon as he got home I went and took a nap.  I least he got to look at me while I was sleeping and hear me snore.  Then he was a sweet heart and went and got Chick Fillet sandwiches for supper.  Yay! No cooking for me.

Scariest Time In My Life – Part XI

Posted on by
Reply

I want to apologize for not having this out yesterday.  Up until last night I had not slept in two days and I was feeling out of sorts and could not concentrate yesterday as well as I needed to, to work on the blog.  Most likely, it is the anti-depressant that is causing me not to sleep.  However, since it is really helping with the depression I am not willing to stop taking it.  I see my psychologist at the end of the week and he and I had discussed the sleep issue last time I saw him, so I am thinking he will prescribe me something that will help me sleep.  It is also taking me a bit longer than usual to get the blog done today.  I keep dozing off as I am typing and I keep losing my train of thought. 

This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

The nurse that took the time to talk to me that morning brought up several things that have actually helped me.  One thing she brought up is that the adult onset asthma, the diabetes and the diabetic complications  would be enough to make anyone depressed.  She also said that in some ways my depression was a sort of mourning for my loss of health.  Up until the time that all those illness started, I had been a basically healthy person.  The illnesses have had a huge impact on my life.  During all of that my son left home in an unexpected manner and I was mourning that relationship.  Years of being on steroids and other medications changed my body and I was mourning the loss of the body image that I had before.  There are also the hormonal changes of a woman my age, as it prepares to enter menopause in a few more years.  She told me there was nothing wrong with mourning all of those things, but combined also with brain chemistry changes and hormonal changes, I developed major depression.  She suggested a small ceremony of sorts where I put those things I am morning on pieces of paper and burn them, as a way of bringing closure.  Especially, for the things like the relationship with my son that has no closure.

She wrote down an exercise for me to do as a way to deal with the changes and loss.  Some examples of the of what was in that exercise were:  I used to be a/an _____________, Now I have time to ____________.
I miss most ___________________.  I look forward to_________________.  and  little essay for me to write based on this topic:  During this healing/grieving time, my brain chemistry dried up.  As it is being replenished…..

Between what she had I talked about and the exercise she gave me to do, it allowed me to put what has been going on with me into proper perspective.  It also gave me a valuable to tool to use when I encountered other difficulties. 

Once again a breakfast of powdered eggs came and went and with the weekend being over it was time for us to head to the day time unit.  I knew I was supposed to see the psychiatrist today and that my husband and sister-in-law were also supposed to meet with him.  I also knew that if things went well, there was a chance I could be sent home.

This time it appeared the nurses were going to be able to keep things organized and running smoothly and keep us all in a group so that there was not so much boredom.  I was even given a group schedule, with the topics being discussed in each group so I could pick and choose which room I wanted to be in.

The first group I picked for that day was something to do with Healthy Personal Habits.  Silly me thought it would have to do with personal habits to help combat mental illnesses or drug/alcohol addictions.  Instead, it was about healthy hygiene habits.  Oh like what do you do when you feel like you have to have a bowel movement.  No, I am not kidding, that was actually discussed.  Of course with the mix of characters in a small room, it was not long before someone made someone else mad, and there was a fight.  Because of the amount of people in the room and the table and chairs taking up so much of the space, it was very difficult to get out of the way.  I did manage to and I went out to the common area and sat on the floor by the nurse’s station and that is where I stayed.  While I was there a nurse let me know that my husband and sister-in-law had arrived and that he was going to go find the doctor so that he could talk with them.

Eventually, the doctor came and spoke with me.  He wanted to know how I was doing.  I told him that I was afraid to be there anymore, “that in my world, people do not go around hitting each other”, and “No, I did not have any suicidal thoughts.”  He took me out to where my family was.  It was so good to see them!  He told all of us he thought I could go home, and that I would be sent home with a five day supply of the medication I had been taking in the hospital.  That was pretty much all he said while I was with them.  He did say it would be several hours before I could leave by the time all my paper work was done and all my things were gathered.  He suggested that they get some lunch while they were waiting.  Julie and my husband said they would wait to get lunch until I was out, so I could eat with them.

After that I was taken back to the day time unit and the nurses were told to start getting my things ready for discharge.  I also let the nurses know that my husband and sister-in-law would still be in the area so when things were ready, if they would call them, they could be back to the hospital in five minutes.  I stayed by the nurse’s station while all my discharge paperwork and orders were being completed.  The male nurse who was on duty that day, took it upon himself to make sure that things were rushed through.  I was then taken back over to my regular unit where I could gather my personal belongings.

Dorthy had not been allowed to go over to the day time unit and she was in the regular unit watching TV.  Since she had enjoyed coloring with me so much, I ended up giving her my coloring books and crayons.  Once I had gotten my things together, we headed back to the daytime unit and the male nurse called my husband and sister-in-law.  I was almost FREE!!!

The male nurse walked me out of the unit to the fenced in outside area and there we waited for my family.  Once they got there, my husband asked me “How it felt to be free?”  I let him know I was not free until I was on the other side of the gate.  The nurse walked us to the gate, let us out and I declared that “I was free”.

One of the things I had missed in the hospital was coke.  Most of the time I drink diet coke or coke zero, but in the hospital we were not allowed any soda of any kind, and absolutely nothing with caffeine in it.  Julie and Farrol had an ice cold coke waiting for me in the car!  I have never had a coke that tasted so good!

As we were driving to the Olive Garden for my freedom lunch, I began to learn a little bit about what had transpired between my parents and my husband with regards to my hospitalization and some of the conversation that took place between the psychiatrist and them.  What I learned made me a little bit angry and a little bit sad, but was not really surprising.

After the first time I tried to commit suicide and I was not hospitalized, I was a huge mess.  My psychiatrist had talked with me a couple of times about hospitalizing me, but he did not want that as his first course of action.  My mother had taken me several times to my appointments with him.  I had spoken with her about how I did not want my daughter with me when we went because the doctor was assessing me each visit to determine if he felt that I needed to be hospitalized.  From what I understand, when my mother learned that I had finally been h
ospitalized, she stated that “this is what she (meaning me) wanted” and I had to live with the consequences. I think there must have been some other things that went on between her and my husband and my grandmother but no one is telling me everything.  I think they are trying to spare me some hurt.  From what I can gather it seemed she implied that my husband (and me when I got out of the hospital) might not be able to focus on our daughter like we should and kept pushing my husband over and over and over again to have my daughter go to her for several weeks.  This frustrated my husband to no end, as he felt that my mother should be focusing more on me (her daughter) than she should be focusing on her granddaughter who was well taken care of.    My husband mentioned to me that on one visit to my grandmother’s house he overheard a little bit of a phone exchange between my grandmother and mother.  My grandmother who hates conflict and harsh words and voices, was talking to my mother with a raised voice, it was something about me and me being in the hospital and obviously my grandmother was upset with what my mother had been saying.

I also learned that my mother had been prepared to come to the hospital on my discharge date and talk to the doctor about me staying in the hospital rather than going home.  So as a result, no one told her when the discharge date was.  My brother text messaged my father after I was out and let them know I was out of the hospital. 

Remember the medical doctor who was convinced that 30 units of Lantus was too much for me and that I was probably lying so I could kill myself with an over dose of my long lasting insulin?  I am thinking that he still did not believe that is what my medical doctor had prescribed me.  The psychiatrist brought it up to my husband and sister-in-law before he brought me to them.  My sister-in-law happens to have a doctorate pharmacology.  She was able to explain to the psychiatrist that considering the fact that I was on a sliding scale for my humalog (fast acting insulin) that 30 units was an appropriate amount of lantus for me to take.  Gotta love those smart, well educated and loving sister-in-laws. 

After that conversation, we all concentrated on the delicious bread sticks, soup and salad that we had gotten from the Olive Garden, me in particular.  I pigged out more than the other two.

This is the end of the journey of my experiences of state run psychiatric hospital care.  It is certainly not the end of my stories.  I do try and end my stories with valuable things I have learned from the experience and from the story-telling itself.

I learned that I never want to go back to a hospital like that again.  I think there are more than just people like me who do not belong there, I think there others who do not have the support I do, that are stuck there for far longer than I was.  I learned that for the most part the staff in places like that are good and mean well and want to make a difference in their patient’s lives, but because of low budgets and too little staff they are not able to effect as much change as they want to.  They end up being babysitters and body guards more than anything else.  My experience at the medical hospital before I was transferred to the psychiatric hospital, showed me that there are medical professionals who still do not have a clue and possibly the desire to treat patients with a mental illness with any type of dignity or respect.  Finally, I learned that my husband, brother and sister-in-law are strong people who love me a great deal.  They are doing so much to help me get through this period of mental unhealthiness.  In some ways, I feel like my mental illness has allowed us to become closer.

Back to Part X

Treasure

Posted on by
Reply

Because I have such a hard time keeping a positive attitude, I wanted to set a section of my blog aside where everyday I can point out something that is positive about a person, a thing, or situation.  This exercise is forcing me to be more of a glass is half full kind of person, and helping me maintain a positive attitude.

Until I developed major depression, I had no clue as to how debilitating depression can be.  I never realized that depression treatment could be so difficult and so much of it trial and error.  I had no concept or understanding of what depression was really like.  I did not understand that the illness major depression was more than just a state of mind or having a bad attitude.  Oh, how I wonder and despair at the thought that before my own mental illness, I judged people who were suffering from depression harshly.

Now that I have had my own experiences with major depression and an anxiety disorder, I can truly say I have been there, done that and have the straight jacket to prove it.  I can change my own reactions to people who suffer from mental illnesses, whether it is depression or schizophrenia.  Through my own experiences and willingness to to talk about them publicly I know that I can educate other people to not judge people with mental illnesses harshly.  I believe I can bring an understanding to others, that depression is not about someone having a poor attitude, but instead is an illness that is no different than if they had diabetes.  My hope is that when I come out on the other side of things and I am in better control of things that I can use what I have learned and maybe offer support to someone with  major depression, especially if they have no support system of their own in place.  Not everyone is as fortunate as me and has a good support system.