Depression
sucks.
There
was a time when people didn’t talk about relatives who suffered
from depression. Those doing the suffering were expected to also not
talk about it. Nobody wanted to hear you were sad. If you had kidney
stones or a broken leg, friends wanted to hear all the sordid details
(or at least they said they did) so that they could commiserate, wish
you well and internally think, “At least I’m not having that
problem!”
But
there were no known fixes for depression, or many other mental
problems, so no one wanted to hear about them. What good would it do
to wish you well when everybody knew there was no way to fix the
problem?
There
are a number of treatments for depression these days, usually
chemical. And it’s good that there’s several treatment options,
because some of them won’t work well with your body chemistry, some
will have terrible side effects, AND after you’ve found one that
works, your body will eventually become used to it, and it will cease
to work.
Okay,
I’ve been on 4 different anti-depressants in the last 6-9 months.
It took me time to realize my ‘old’ pill wasn’t working any
more, and more time to make my doctor realize I was serious about
needing a new anti-depressant. Then 3 weeks on a new medication
(You’re supposed to give each medication 6 weeks to see how well
it’s going to work.) that had me sleeping 14 hours a day and groggy
the rest of the time, then on a half dose of another medicine, got it
upped to a full dose, and now I’ve been on yet another medicine for
1 week.
During
that time period, I’ve gotten so used to the major symptoms of
depression that they almost seem ‘normal’. I am depressed; I give
mostly the same answers to the questions that are intended to see if
I’m depressed; I score the same or possibly worse, depending on the
day.
I’ve
gotten used to the major symptoms. Now I’m starting to notice the
little things I don’t remember noticing before:
I
can only focus on 1 thing at a time. If somebody interrupts me to ask
a question, I can’t shift gears to answer them. I just sit there,
engine running (I’m ready to do something) and gears grinding (my
thoughts are still on what I was doing, but it no longer makes sense
to me, and eventually, I will start wondering why I was interrupted
and what did they want me to do?)
Flowers
for Algernon.
I don’t remember the author’s name. And it’s mainstream
fiction; I had to read it in some English literature class, probably
in high school. But the last of the story describes the mood that
sometimes overwhelms me these days; I can remember that I used to
have a brain. One that worked good.
I’d
look for the light at the end of the tunnel, but I’m not in a
tunnel. I’m in a pit. There is no light shining down into it. Yet.
And I’m getting pretty impatient to climb out of it. I hope I’m
not running out of medicines to try.
