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Wordless Wednesday... Feelings?

Yes, I do need a number of medications to keep the depression away. There is a chemical inbalance in my brain. But since I've had a hysterectomy (3 weeks post-op as of yesterday) people suddenly have decided that I will be able to cut my dosages and eventually get off the anti-depressants all together.

Fantastic - I'd love to not have to take all the tablets I take on a daily basis, but come on people! How is having my uterus removed going to affect my serotonin levels significantly enough to reduce my meds? Am I missing something? And why is it so important for everyone to know that I have reduced a dose or come off a medication???

I *need* these meds - I wish I didn't, but the proof is in the numerous times my psychiatrist has attempted to lower my doses from what I'm on atm. It simply doesn't work and I end up on a higher dose than before I started to reduce!!! My medication is my business & my shrink's business. It is *not* everyone else's business. If he says I can try reducing, no problem - I'm in! But until my *shrink* says to go ahead, everyone else can just f*** off!!!

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Wordless Wednesday... Sad

Lost

I feel blah. Lost. Withdrawn. I don't feel like talking to anyone, but that's not a realistic "want". It actually really bugs my husband and he gets quite annoyed with me when I withdraw and don't talk to him. Sure, I speak to him, but I don't really *talk* to him. I don't know why; I'm just so caught up in my own thoughts that I don't realise I'm not talking to anyone; not *really* talking. But I also don't really know what the thoughts are that are consuming me and are making me this way.

All I know is that I don't want to be around people.

Two weeks until my hysterectomy. I'm now off all my endometriosis/PCOS meds. Maybe somwe combination of those is a factor. Who knows? I sure as hell don't... I do know, however, that being of my gynae meds is not fun. The endo/PCO is coming back and it's hurting. Real, physical pain. I'm throwing various cocktails of period pain meds and pain killers at it without much success. My little TENS machine I use for my ankle pain has turned out to be brilliant for my cramps and lower back pain though! So that's also comforting in that it will probably be handy during my recovery.

In the mean time, I'll try to be talkative and "Grin and bear it."



to be continued...

Wordless Wednesday... Too many pills

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to be continued...

I forgot about PMS...

I'm miserable, I'm grumpy, I'm pissed off... Yep - it's PMS and I had forgotten how bad I got PMS. If you haven't guessed, I've stopped taking the pill because my surgery is only 4 weeks away. I'm in a mood, so all I'm going to post is...

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"Primary Progressive Aphasia"

PPA is a form of dementia. My mother-in-law has just been diagnosed with it. I'm not sure how I feel. We have never really gotten along - for the first 3 or so years of my marriage she didn't even speak to me... And then when she did speak to me I kind of wished she'd go back to not talking to me!

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't suprised. She has been "losing it" for about 2 years or so - very obviously over the past few months. Hubby and I thought she had Alzheimer's - so it is good in a way that it is not Alzheimer's, but it is a form of dementia so that's not good no matter how you look at it. It is just an awful disease, not so much for the patient once they are no longer having lucid moments, but for the family who is left around them and being forgotten by them.

My initial reaction to the confirmed diagnosis was "Damn - there goes my babysitter!" Which I guess is rather horrid of me, but I just can't bring myself to like my mother-in-law. She is one of those people that just isn't likeable... She has this way of making you feel stupid no matter what you do or say.

My sister-in-law is a real mess over the whole thing - regretting all the time she & her family haven't spent with her mum. Hubby has no regrets but is still pretty worked up over it all. Father-in-law has gone into limbo, and to make things worse he is really sick too - he is bleeding internally from his intestines somewhere that they haven't been able to locate and he has lost the blood circulation in one of his legs. He is a heavy smoker and drinker, and isn't willing to stop or cut down, so the medicos aren't that interested in giving him another theatre spot to investigate and operate. Personally, I don't blame them.

So, the family is all a bit of a mess and I am just blah. Whatever. I honestly don't give a shit - as long as hubby is OK, and the girls aren't in danger, I'm not fussed. I don't have time to be bothered by in-laws problems, particularly when I don't even like them. I have to concentrate on my heath & fitness, weightloss, pain management etc. leading up to my hysterectomy - I'll be a couch potato for 6+ weeks after it, so I need to be in the best shape I can be, both physically and mentally, by Sept 12.

Bad news there - if I stop taking the pill 4 weeks before surgery (Aug 15) it will reduce the risks of blood clots or something, so obviously I'll stop the pill. Bad news? I'll probably have one more period before it's all chopped out... and going by the few periods I've had in my life, it ain't gonna be pretty! Rather ugly and extremely painful... Not something I'm looking forward to. Fingers crossed that the slight chance my IUD still has enough progesterone in it to keep me from bleeding will be the case.


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The Reality Hits

The reality of my hysterectomy came thundering down today when I received the hospital paperwork. There it all was in black and white.

"You have been booked in for a Total Laparoscopic Hysterectomy, removal of tubes and right ovary, treatment of endometriosis, Cystoscopy."

No more surrealism - it's most definitely real. Still a weird feeling but my brain seems to be coming around to the facts of the matter. All my child-bearing bits are being cut out in just over 5 weeks leaving only my left ovary all on its lonesome to handle all my hormonal-needs until I hit menopause (and that is a completely different chapter that I will cross when I get to it in about 20+ years...)

I guess the psychological impact that my gynaecologist had warned me about and my psychiatrist further added to - both of which I dismissed out of hand - is actually having an impact on me. So strange since I don't want any more kids and don't feel like having my uterus and associated bits removed will in anyway diminish my femininity. Guess I am subconciously grieving for what I have not yet lost.

It is sort of comparable to my first miscarriage. I had 3 miscarriages before having Abigail, and another 2 miscarriages before having Leah. Total: 7 pregnancies but only 2 live births. My first miscarriage, however, was the worst. The combination of my first pregnancy (after almost 6 years of trying) and things going so well, that when the routine ultrasound at 18 weeks showed no heartbeat we were shattered.

I point-blank refused to let anyone except my fertility specialist touch me, and he wasn't available until Monday, so Hubby and I had to endure a weekend from hell knowing I was carrying a dead fetus... Come Monday I thought I had come to terms with things best I could, but when I woke up from the D&C I just lost it completely - the grief I felt was completely overwhelming. And to top it off, Hubby wasn't there because he was coping in his own way, and that included being as far away from hospital as possible.

If my feelings of depression, blah, lonliness etc. at the moment are a response to my hysterectomy, then I wonder what I will face after it is actually done... But all of this doesn't mean that I don't want it to go ahead.


to be continued...

A Word About My Profile Pic

I thought I'd just quickly explain why I chose a refection in a shattered mirror to be my profile pic. Essentially, I chose it because that's how I feel. Depression has completely and utterly shattered me; broken me down; broken me into little pieces. Forever damaged my life, relationships, the way I look at things... I feel like the doctors have simply picked up the pieces and put them back together. Hence the shattered mirror. I might be all in one piece and doing OK most of the time, but there will always be the scars. There will always be the cracks. I will never be the same "me" again.


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Wordless Wednesday : Tears for Life

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Finally getting what I want... BUT

I have long suffered from endometriosis and PCOS - both of which added undue stress & anxiety to my depression for many reasons, such as being told at the age of 17 that I could never have children. Who at 17 contemplates that they can't have kids? Of course you can, can't you? Anyway, ever since the endometriosis et al kicked in, shortly after my periods started, I have been begging my doctors for a hysterectomy. I just wanted it all chopped out because the pain was unbearable. You think childbirth was painful? That's absolutely nothing on endo & PCO...

But the story was always the same - you're too young, you might want children, you might want more children (as I managed 2 beautiful daughters) etc. etc. However, my last visit to my gynaecologist resulted in him actually recommending a hysterectomy as the best course of action. He recommended it. Finally, after all these years, I was getting what I had been begging for. And he's taking my tubes and right ovary as well while he's at it. I should have been ecstatic... I should be ecstatic.

I wasn't. It was all suddenly too real. Surreal actually. My big wish is about to come true, and it just seems so surreal. My gyno is fine with it. Hubby is fine with it. My shrink is drafting a letter to the anethetist telling him what's what with my meds so they don't get all stuffed around during the op and post-op. I'm booked in. I am on the theatre list for Monday 12 September.

But it is too surreal. I just don't get my reaction! I feel a bit like a deer caught in the headlights... It's just too weird.

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It REALLY annoys me when...

... a friend, who refuses to admit to his own problems with depression, comes over for lunch and ends up pschoanalysing ME.

[rant mode on]

It is infuriating and I'm still so annoyed and cross with him!!! I understand totally that he is doing it out of friendship and all that, but it really gets to me because he is struggling so badly with depression and anxiety himself, and he is unwilling to or incapable of admitting to it and refuses to get himself some help.

I should give some background... This is a friend of many, many years and a very close friend of hubby & mine. After the break-up with his fiance (this was to be marriage #3) - who then got cervical cancer and blamed him for giving it to her - he had a mini breakdown. We were there every step of the way helping out however we could. Now, helping is very different to telling & lecturing...

Fast forward a bit, and he started seeing his GP who prescribed him Xanax and Zoloft (I swear GPs should NEVER EVER prescribe anti-depressants - but that's a whole other post...) and he started seeing a psychologist. This seemed to help for a while, and then started to help not so much. Hubby & I began to wonder how "sane" the so-called psychologist was and how strictly our friend was taking his meds...

Fast forwad to the present, our friend just got fired from his job (one he had only been in for 5 months) and is now spiraling downhill fast, but won't admit it - instead he is intent on "saving" me and "helping" me and basically every time we talk he is telling me what I need and what I should do about my depression. All the while he is not even looking for a job, hence making his depression worse, has stopped taking his meds, seriously bad idea, and isolating himself.

Me, on the other hand, am having the odd bad day (as my last couple of post will attest to) but all in all am doing pretty well, am working and studying, am socialising, am taking my meds strictly as prescribed etc. etc. The last thing I need is a depressive-in-denial lecturing me about depression!!!

[rant mode off]

Thanks for letting me vent!

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A picture tells a 1000 words...

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Today sucks.

I am really struggling today. I feel so blah... just miserable and down. And I don't know why. That is the most infuriating thing - not knowing what is wrong.

A few quotes from Elizabeth Wurtzel's book, Prozac Nation, will help me explain how I feel...

"I start to feel like I can't maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong."

"I have this palpable, absolute sense that I'm cracking up, that there's really no good reason why, and that - even worse - there's nothing I can do about it."

"And the scariest part is that if you ask anyone in the throes of depression how he got there, to pin down the turning point, he'll never know. 'Gradually and then suddenly'."

"I'd explain that nothing at all was wrong, that it was just a matter of everything."

And it is so frustrating that people around me, even knowing and having been alongside me, still don't understand what all of this really feels like. The only person that understood was my grandmother, who passed away 3 years ago. She was bipolar and that was what ultimately resulted in her death.

As Elizabeth Wurtzel says..

"...plenty of people prefer to think that until you are actually flying out of a window, you don't have a problem."

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Reality Check

I'll just interrupt myself at this point and fast forward to the present. I am mostly stable on a cocktail of medication including: Xanax, Zoloft, Seroquel & Abilify. I have been on this cocktail since my hospitalisation just over 2 years ago (more on that later).

My opinion on the drugs vs no drugs debate is that if you need them, take them. Don't be a hero and try and cope when you could benefit from a little medical intervention. If you can cope without medication(s) then fantastic - but there are some of us that have to face the fact that we are going to have to take these medications for the rest of our lives.

My depression is a chemical imbalance. I have been lucky and not had any life experiences that have caused my deression. It's just there because my seratonin levels (and whatever else) are screwed up. I know there are limits to how much I can reduce my meds to, if at all.

I am, after a long, long time, resigned to the fact that I will have to take some amount of medication for the rest of my life. I hate it. I really hate that fact, but I have no choice. That's the way it is. Life sucks, but it would suck a whole lot more if I stopped taking my meds.

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Where to begin?

This is actually a very difficult question. And please excuse the rambling that follows...

Looking back I can clearly see (with the help of the diaries I kept) that I was obviously depressed and extremely anxious from about Year 8, and it had serious implications on my day-to-day life by Year 11. I needed some sort of intervention back then, and DEFINITELY by 1st year university, judging by what I wrote and, even scarier, the flipant comments I made and attributed to "But that's just me, I guess."

From my diary during my 1st year of uni...

"...I know how to cope with everything but I simply don't have the energy to do so... I just don't want to be a part of life... The problem is that I can't explain that to anyone - they just don't understand... they continually tell me to 'be brave' and 'don't let things bother you so much' and adopt the attitude that 'nothing really matters that much.' Well, I can't... You can't just brush off this feeling, and you can't not cry and it is extremely hard to stop [crying] once you have started."

And a bit later in that year, the first hint of suicidal thoughts...

"I can feel myself slipping into another negative cycle, and that is the last thing I want. I'm not sure if I can cope with this, but what choice do I have? I'm fighting SO hard to stay positive and my 'old self' - but I'm really not sure if I can stay up there... Sometimes I seriously wonder if it is all worth it. Everything is just going to keep going wrong. What next?"

I still so clearly remember lying for hours upon hours on my bed staring up at the ceiling because moving was just too much effort, and I couldn't see the point in moving anyway. Just lying for hours trying desperately to think of a way to kill myself, but not coming up with a way I would actually have the guts to carry out. Throughout these entries are typical "anxiety dreams" as well, as well as definite paranoid tendancies.

Taken from a letter I wrote to someone, but never sent, trying to explain how I felt...

"I do try as hard as I possibly can to stop the depression, but you cannot imagine how difficult that is and how much focused energy it requires. When I get depressed I have no choice but to sit it out... With depression come feelings of isolation and insecurity... I become scared of everything, and the simplest task brings tears and becomes almost impossible to do. And if I don't straighten myself out soon I'm going to lose it."

Looking back, I either (a) hid things very well or (b) am extremely suprised some one around me didn't cart me off to the doctor or hospital. A few other health issues hit me that year as well, adding to the load that I couldn't cope with, and so adding to the depth of my depression.

Then there was the guilt... As the daughter of a Jewish mother and Catholic father, I have guilt running out of my ears! lol! So, guilt played a big part...

"There is absolutely nothing in my life to warrant getting depressed, so utterly depresseed, over..."

"And the worst part is I can't justify it - it would be easier to cope if I had a reason for it..."

As Elizabeth Wurtzel says in her fabulous, insightful book, Prozac Nation, that is so close to my autobiography it is scary & comforting...

"...I really don't feel like I have a right to feel so miserable."

to be continued...