Monday, March 1, 2010
the begining of the week
I wish I had something witty, political or relevant to say today but I really don't. It's Monday, and I was off for four and a half days so I am back in the work clothes and dealing with humanity. My anxiety is not too bad today, yet I am not quite sure I am up for a walk to the cafeteria. It's so much easier to hide out in my cubicle, but eventually I will get hungry and have to find food somewhere. Dealing with this panic disorder/anxiety is the toughest thing I have ever had to deal with because I never know when it is going to hit me. Wednesday was really bad. A co-worker was in my cubicle and I had to ask her to leave because my anxiety was so bad-that was embarrasing. I am told that this anxiety is a result of unresolved issues that I have with Len. Perhaps, probably. None the less it is there, and I have to deal with it. I found a shrink in Lansdale who specializes in anxiety disorders. I am hoping he helps. Till then, I sit and hope the panic does not hit.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Not becoming your depression
As anyone who has read my blog knows, I suffer from depression. I take my medications religiously rarely if ever missing a dose, yet there are days like today when I wake up and I know that nothing in the day will be right. It's not a matter of things not going my way, but I know enough about my mind by now to know when it has shut down and a personal visit from Bruce Springsteen himself could not cheer me up.
Today I am thinking about Len, my partner of twenty years who died two years ago March 17, a date that happens to be my birthday and I am just filled with sadness. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for my current partner Mike and the life I lead but sometimes I just miss Len. You had to know him to know what I am talking about. While so far from perfect he had a laugh that could fill a room and despite the age difference and despite his physical problems I just thought he would live forever.
Today I am thinking about my own maladies-I had pneumonia in December and my body is playing tricks on me. I quit smoking and gained ten pounds and my jeans dont fit and I dont have the money this week to go out and get new jeans (in a larger size), I go to the gym and my body that I was once so proud of does not look the same and it is taking a long time for the muscle fibers to come back and in the meantime I feel like a lopsided mess.
Staying home on sick leave messed with my mind and I am fighting depression, I am fighting agoraphobia, I am fighting social anxiety disorder. Tomorrow I have to go back to work and I am worried about having a panic attack at work. On a brighter note I do have an appointment with a behaviorial psychologist tomorrow who claims he can cure me of my panic attacks.
I am tired. I am tired of the fight. That does not mean I wont continue to fight but the one two punch of pneumonia and depression really knocked me on my ass and I am struggling to get up. Depression is not always about feeling sad, sometimes it is about feeling overwhelmed. The sadness I can deal with, what I can't deal with is being behind in my bills because the thought of sitting down and facing them is more than I can handle.
I don't want my depression to define who I am. I went to the gym four days in a row this week, I went to the movies and I almost went to the circus today. It's not easy life right now but I wont give up.
Today I am thinking about Len, my partner of twenty years who died two years ago March 17, a date that happens to be my birthday and I am just filled with sadness. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for my current partner Mike and the life I lead but sometimes I just miss Len. You had to know him to know what I am talking about. While so far from perfect he had a laugh that could fill a room and despite the age difference and despite his physical problems I just thought he would live forever.
Today I am thinking about my own maladies-I had pneumonia in December and my body is playing tricks on me. I quit smoking and gained ten pounds and my jeans dont fit and I dont have the money this week to go out and get new jeans (in a larger size), I go to the gym and my body that I was once so proud of does not look the same and it is taking a long time for the muscle fibers to come back and in the meantime I feel like a lopsided mess.
Staying home on sick leave messed with my mind and I am fighting depression, I am fighting agoraphobia, I am fighting social anxiety disorder. Tomorrow I have to go back to work and I am worried about having a panic attack at work. On a brighter note I do have an appointment with a behaviorial psychologist tomorrow who claims he can cure me of my panic attacks.
I am tired. I am tired of the fight. That does not mean I wont continue to fight but the one two punch of pneumonia and depression really knocked me on my ass and I am struggling to get up. Depression is not always about feeling sad, sometimes it is about feeling overwhelmed. The sadness I can deal with, what I can't deal with is being behind in my bills because the thought of sitting down and facing them is more than I can handle.
I don't want my depression to define who I am. I went to the gym four days in a row this week, I went to the movies and I almost went to the circus today. It's not easy life right now but I wont give up.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Depression
Depression
Everyone gets the blues now and then. That unshakeable feeling that things just kind of suck and you wish you were anyone than who you are. But for most people those feelings of worthlessness or listlessness subside after a day or so and they return back to their lives, unaware of what was making them feel so down just a few days ago, but, if the numbers from the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) are to be believed, an estimated 57 million Americans suffer from depression. I, along several of my friends and family, am among that staggering 57 million.
When you mention depression to most people, the everyday blues come to mind. People don’t understand how depression can manifest itself and cripple an individual. Looking back, I can trace my first bouts with depression to my early 20’s; I was in the Navy on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and I was down to one pair of socks. The problem was that I did not know where the ship’s store was, and asking someone for directions just became an overwhelming task-something that seemed like way more than I could handle, so for about two months, until we pulled back into port, I wore the same pair of socks every day-washing them and hanging them out to dry each night before I went to bed. The key word in that story is overwhelming. When my depression is acting up (as it has been the last month or so) everyday tasks seem overwhelming, something as simple as cleaning my room can seem like something I can’t conquer, so the dirty laundry piles up and the rugs go un-vacuumed.
Somewhere along the line, my depression branched out and instead of just feeling down or overwhelmed I developed and anxiety disorder. I have been diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder with possible elements of post traumatic stress syndrome. What this means in everyday terms, is that without the proper medication (and I have tried many) I can’t function. When I am around people, be they friend or strangers, I get extremely nervous, my heart beats fast and I have panic attacks. If I am able to talk to the person at all, the internal dialogue going on in my head is usually “Please stop talking to me so that I can get out of this conversation and into my safety zone” It’s a terrible way to live because I never know when or where it is going to strike me and sometimes I can be in a situation and everything is fine and then later I am in the same situation and full blown panic attack.
My latest emotional “tick” is agoraphobia. For those of you unaware of that term it is the fear of leaving your house or what you deem to be your safety zone. Agoraphobia is something I only recently experienced and luckily I found a medication that took away the symptoms pretty quickly, but a recent illness has left me recuperating at home for a number of weeks and my depression is worse than ever. For me, this means my panic attacks and agoraphobia are back. Luckily for me I have an understanding spouse and more importantly a good doctor and today I was on the phone with him for 45 minutes (for which I will undoubtedly be charged) and we discussed fun things like the sub conscious and the role it plays in our lives and more importantly we discussed and changed my medicine regimen.
I picked up my new meds today and in a few days the new meds will kick in and I will be functioning again, but I have friends and family members that are not that lucky. I know extremely intelligent, well educated people who are unable to work because of their depression. I imagine the worst part of not being able to work is the comments and judgments made against them. “Why they should just pull themselves up by their boot straps and get to work” when the truth of the matter is they cant work.
Two years ago I lost a dear friend to suicide. Life just got to be too much for him. A lot of people thought my friend was just selfish. I never thought that. I knew my friend very well and selfish was something he never was, but he was depressed and life just became overwhelming for him.
Today I sit here on this cold snowy February Saturday writing about depression. I do it for myself because before I got sick, one of the things I enjoyed doing was writing and blogging. I got a lot of positive feedback on my blogs (though no newspaper wanted to publish them) but after I got sick the depression got so bad that I just couldn’t write.
for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking aboutI feel more alive today because I talked to my doctor and we came up with a plan and I feel as though there is hope, I am not doomed to spend eternity like this. So for any of you reading this who never experienced chronic depression, consider yourself lucky and for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking about
Everyone gets the blues now and then. That unshakeable feeling that things just kind of suck and you wish you were anyone than who you are. But for most people those feelings of worthlessness or listlessness subside after a day or so and they return back to their lives, unaware of what was making them feel so down just a few days ago, but, if the numbers from the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) are to be believed, an estimated 57 million Americans suffer from depression. I, along several of my friends and family, am among that staggering 57 million.
When you mention depression to most people, the everyday blues come to mind. People don’t understand how depression can manifest itself and cripple an individual. Looking back, I can trace my first bouts with depression to my early 20’s; I was in the Navy on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and I was down to one pair of socks. The problem was that I did not know where the ship’s store was, and asking someone for directions just became an overwhelming task-something that seemed like way more than I could handle, so for about two months, until we pulled back into port, I wore the same pair of socks every day-washing them and hanging them out to dry each night before I went to bed. The key word in that story is overwhelming. When my depression is acting up (as it has been the last month or so) everyday tasks seem overwhelming, something as simple as cleaning my room can seem like something I can’t conquer, so the dirty laundry piles up and the rugs go un-vacuumed.
Somewhere along the line, my depression branched out and instead of just feeling down or overwhelmed I developed and anxiety disorder. I have been diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder with possible elements of post traumatic stress syndrome. What this means in everyday terms, is that without the proper medication (and I have tried many) I can’t function. When I am around people, be they friend or strangers, I get extremely nervous, my heart beats fast and I have panic attacks. If I am able to talk to the person at all, the internal dialogue going on in my head is usually “Please stop talking to me so that I can get out of this conversation and into my safety zone” It’s a terrible way to live because I never know when or where it is going to strike me and sometimes I can be in a situation and everything is fine and then later I am in the same situation and full blown panic attack.
My latest emotional “tick” is agoraphobia. For those of you unaware of that term it is the fear of leaving your house or what you deem to be your safety zone. Agoraphobia is something I only recently experienced and luckily I found a medication that took away the symptoms pretty quickly, but a recent illness has left me recuperating at home for a number of weeks and my depression is worse than ever. For me, this means my panic attacks and agoraphobia are back. Luckily for me I have an understanding spouse and more importantly a good doctor and today I was on the phone with him for 45 minutes (for which I will undoubtedly be charged) and we discussed fun things like the sub conscious and the role it plays in our lives and more importantly we discussed and changed my medicine regimen.
I picked up my new meds today and in a few days the new meds will kick in and I will be functioning again, but I have friends and family members that are not that lucky. I know extremely intelligent, well educated people who are unable to work because of their depression. I imagine the worst part of not being able to work is the comments and judgments made against them. “Why they should just pull themselves up by their boot straps and get to work” when the truth of the matter is they cant work.
Two years ago I lost a dear friend to suicide. Life just got to be too much for him. A lot of people thought my friend was just selfish. I never thought that. I knew my friend very well and selfish was something he never was, but he was depressed and life just became overwhelming for him.
Today I sit here on this cold snowy February Saturday writing about depression. I do it for myself because before I got sick, one of the things I enjoyed doing was writing and blogging. I got a lot of positive feedback on my blogs (though no newspaper wanted to publish them) but after I got sick the depression got so bad that I just couldn’t write.
for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking aboutI feel more alive today because I talked to my doctor and we came up with a plan and I feel as though there is hope, I am not doomed to spend eternity like this. So for any of you reading this who never experienced chronic depression, consider yourself lucky and for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking about
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Before I was sick
Believe it or not, there was a time when I was not sick or at least recuperating from being sick and during that period I was writing articles left and right. It seemed as thought I had an opinion on everything (except health care, I still don’t understand either the liberal or the conservatives view). But as I sit here at one o’clock in the afternoon, in my pajamas (I did at least manage to get a shower) I realized that I have not written anything in a long time and at the very least writing will help pass the time.
I am very lucky, my illness was short-lived, totally curable, and it just has a long recuperating stage. It’s not like you get pneumonia, get out of the hospital, sit around for a week and everything is fine. No, you get out of the hospital and it is a week before you can take a shower without using oxygen, its two weeks before you can run something to the dumpster and not need oxygen and we wont even go into the whole diarrhea that comes with the antibiotics.
And again, I am lucky, as inconvenient as my pneumonia is and has been and will continue to be, it will pass. A year from now I doubt I will even remember I was sick and my illness will just manifest itself in a shortness of breath now and again. But right now I am fighting to not become my illness and to look at the bright side and see the glass half full etc, but what if I were suffering from something more severe and life threatening? Then what?
I will be the first to admit I am a whiner. I whine because I don’t feel good, I whine because I am bored, but what about people like Farah Fawcett and Patrick Swazyzee or my mother or a friend’s mother in law who faced cancer and fought until the end? My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1974 and bravely fought it for ten years before succumbing to it in 1984. Unlike myself, who feels entitled to a sick day if the wind is blowing the wrong way my mother was a very brave woman who would get chemo treatment in the morning, go and work at her brothers carwash in the afternoon, then go home, get sick then make dinner.
I don’t know how people like my mother, Farah, Patrick Swayzee etc, do it. How do they not become their illness? I got brave today, I went out and got the mail. A simple walk down a few flights of stairs, a walk across the parking lot and I was on the couch for an hour taking a nap. Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting myself down. I am not a hypochondriac nor am I looking for attention (which is a good thing because stranded out here in Hooterville with three cats and a spouse that does not get home until 7 means there is not an abundance of attention to go around) I am just heeling at my own rate. I’d love nothing more than to speed the process up but pneumonia is just one of those things that takes a long time to recover from.
So I spend my days trying to push myself, but it is not easy. I am afraid to push myself, I am afraid that a trip to the mail box will result in a coughing jag, I am petrified to get behind the wheel of a car and right now I have NO business behind the wheel of a car, but I do know I need to push myself. Yesterday I had a full day with Ronca, today was a minor day just getting the mail who knows what tomorrow will bring.
I write this with no other intent then to pass the time and get myself back into the writing mode. Before I got sick I had an opinion on everything, now, well its just all about me and I want to get out of that mentality.
So there you have it, my thoughts today January 19, 2010. 28 days left till I go back to work
I am very lucky, my illness was short-lived, totally curable, and it just has a long recuperating stage. It’s not like you get pneumonia, get out of the hospital, sit around for a week and everything is fine. No, you get out of the hospital and it is a week before you can take a shower without using oxygen, its two weeks before you can run something to the dumpster and not need oxygen and we wont even go into the whole diarrhea that comes with the antibiotics.
And again, I am lucky, as inconvenient as my pneumonia is and has been and will continue to be, it will pass. A year from now I doubt I will even remember I was sick and my illness will just manifest itself in a shortness of breath now and again. But right now I am fighting to not become my illness and to look at the bright side and see the glass half full etc, but what if I were suffering from something more severe and life threatening? Then what?
I will be the first to admit I am a whiner. I whine because I don’t feel good, I whine because I am bored, but what about people like Farah Fawcett and Patrick Swazyzee or my mother or a friend’s mother in law who faced cancer and fought until the end? My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1974 and bravely fought it for ten years before succumbing to it in 1984. Unlike myself, who feels entitled to a sick day if the wind is blowing the wrong way my mother was a very brave woman who would get chemo treatment in the morning, go and work at her brothers carwash in the afternoon, then go home, get sick then make dinner.
I don’t know how people like my mother, Farah, Patrick Swayzee etc, do it. How do they not become their illness? I got brave today, I went out and got the mail. A simple walk down a few flights of stairs, a walk across the parking lot and I was on the couch for an hour taking a nap. Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting myself down. I am not a hypochondriac nor am I looking for attention (which is a good thing because stranded out here in Hooterville with three cats and a spouse that does not get home until 7 means there is not an abundance of attention to go around) I am just heeling at my own rate. I’d love nothing more than to speed the process up but pneumonia is just one of those things that takes a long time to recover from.
So I spend my days trying to push myself, but it is not easy. I am afraid to push myself, I am afraid that a trip to the mail box will result in a coughing jag, I am petrified to get behind the wheel of a car and right now I have NO business behind the wheel of a car, but I do know I need to push myself. Yesterday I had a full day with Ronca, today was a minor day just getting the mail who knows what tomorrow will bring.
I write this with no other intent then to pass the time and get myself back into the writing mode. Before I got sick I had an opinion on everything, now, well its just all about me and I want to get out of that mentality.
So there you have it, my thoughts today January 19, 2010. 28 days left till I go back to work
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