Depressing News

I don’t spend a lot of time on facebook or twitter anymore. I find it too depressing. Every day or two, it seems like a friend has lost a family member or a pet to death. Two other friends are facing a medical diagnosis that means a long haul to get the illness taken care of.

It was bad enough when it happened to my friends. It’s even worse when it happens to my own family. John has been ill since mid-November of 2022. We are waiting impatiently for the date when he can get his first operation, which we hope will make it possible for him to get more surgeries done, and he can finally work his way towards health.

And now I find myself stumbling over my own health issues. Some of you may know I had surgery on Mar 1. What I didn’t know until today was that they found ‘scar tissue’ when they did that surgery, and so they biopsied it. I was told today that the biopsy came back negative for cancer. Big sigh of relief. But that scar tissue, located where it is, could cause problems in the future, so I’m being referred to another doctor to figure out what can be done with it.

Yesterday, I saw yet another doctor, and she noticed something was abnormally thick for my age. (Normal would be 4 cm, while mine is 6 cm.) She doesn’t think it’s cancer, but she wants to biopsy it ‘to be sure’.

Needless to say, sometimes I find it difficult to focus on what I’m doing. But I keep trying to farble my way through.

To get back to what I was saying at the beginning of this; I don’t need any more depression or anxiety in my life right now. I’m on a full load of anti-depressants and my anti-anxiety meds have recently been upped, too. I’m sorry if you are going through a hard time, for whatever reason, and I don’t comment on your post. Chances are rather slim that I see it, because FB only sends your post to 7% of your friends. I wish everyone good health and a relatively good life. Just like I’m trying to do for myself.

Update: On the day I wrote this blog, I was unaccountably tired, very achy, and just plain cranky. I feel that crankiness came through, and I’m sorry about that. My circumstances are not anybody’s fault; they are just the hand I’ve been dealt by fate. Some days are better than others, and I will check in on social media when I can.

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.

To Do or Not To Do?

Yeah, I know I’m late getting this posted. Again. But only by a week. Or maybe two.

I find myself of 2 minds about continuing this blog.

     A.   Do I declare a hiatus at least until the new year (2017), and remove it from my to do list (and stress level) until that time? I am experiencing a lot of stress, caught in the tedium of trying to get moved, but – at this point - with nothing more I can do to get moved.

a.    It’s not that I have a lot to do, it’s that my choices of what to do are so limited. All my hobbies, like leatherwork and needlework, are in storage.

                                                i.    Without that relaxing time with a hobby, doing fairly repetitious stuff that doesn’t take much brain power, my subconscious doesn’t roam through various possibilities for my Work In Progress, so I don’t make any progress with my writing. Even a short blog once a week is difficult to accomplish.

b.    Also, with Hubby retired - and we immediately started preparing to move – we haven’t really adjusted to having all this time together. I wind up doing whatever he wants to do, and things on my To Do list get pushed aside.

     B.   Or do I tell myself to grow a pair, and keep doing my blog, hoping to work my way back to once a week? I am supposed to be writing regularly, if not every day.

a.    I don’t want to keep complaining about not being moved yet, so I’d have to do some research, find things to talk about.

                                               i.    Research would be more productive than games. (Somehow, playing games does not let my subconscious roam free.)

                                             ii.    There’s plenty of things to research, like discoveries made about Pluto or Ceres, or even the actual diet eaten by Paleo man.

b.    When the house does sell, I expect we’ll take a couple days to tie up things here in Omaha, put the rest of our stuff in storage and then head for Florida, which will take 2-3 days. That might make it tough to get a blog posted that week.

                                               i.    I could write a ‘spare’ blog ahead of time. Then I could upload it and schedule it to post at the right time.

                                             ii.    Repeat for the week that we come back, get our stuff out of storage and take it down to Florida.

Hmm. When I started writing this, I was strongly leaning towards a hiatus. Now I’m leaning toward ‘growing a pair’. J And that tells me that I’ve enjoyed writing this post, that I miss writing, which is much more interesting than ‘the usual’ games have become.

I also just finished an editing job, which took lots of my ‘spare’ time. The subject of the book, however, made me depressed, so it’s a relief to have it done.

I’ll try for #B. The next time I feel like doing a tough Sudoku, or order my Tribez to get to work, I’ll open one of my incomplete manuscripts instead. Or see what’s new about Ceres. Cross your fingers that I’ll post something next Wednesday.

Life Gets In The Way

My apologies to everyone who may be a reader of this blog. However, every so often, for most of us, Life Gets In The Way, and that has definitely happened this winter. (And it isn't even winter yet!)

On top of holidays, cleaning my office and constructing a new website, several assignments landed on my desk at the same time; one manuscript to proofread and 2 to edit. And just to make things 'interesting', Winter Depression moved in with my Chronic Depression.

It became obvious - even with my brain drowning in depression chemistry - that something had to give, and I'm afraid Trudy’s Universe is one thing I'm putting on the back burner for a while. Check back for more of my musings around Feb 3, 2016. By then, these edit jobs will be done, the holidays over, the website mostly done, and I should be able to find my office. Best of all, all the things I’ve started to do to augment my antidepressant meds will have me back on an even keel.

In the meantime, entertain yourself with a good book. I could make suggestions, if you want, but... I’m probably biased.

I will be back. I hope you’ll rejoin me then.