Friday, May 25, 2018

A Never Ending Pit


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.

Saturday, May 5, 2018

Hiatus

Dear Friends,
Please forgive me. About a month ago, a friend came to me with a request. He had lost the gloves for his Darth Vader costume and needed to replace them. He had the pattern and the leather, so... how hard could it be? Once I figured out the pattern, how to adjust it to fit his hand, and how to keep my (hand) stitches even and straight, it turned out not to be too difficult, just a huge time suck. After 3 days of devoting hours to a fresh start incorporating all the things I'd figured out, I am about half way done with his right glove. But nothing else is getting done in my house. So I need 2-3 days to finish this glove, another week to do the left glove, and then a few days to get a new post ready. So... look for my next post around 23May. Let's hope my hands have stopped cramping by then.

Thanks for understanding.
Trudy