My Life. Medication Optional.

You can't talk about depression. No one really wants to know how you are feeling when they ask and to tell them how gut-wrenchingly horrific you feel just isolates you more. People flee that. No one knows how to help or the cut them selves off from you, with pit, of course. It's not just the pain, the thoughts, the hopelessness, it's the goddamn loneliness.

And the best part is, when you start to think about it, to remember how long it's been since you felt like this, you realize you've felt this traumatic pain since you were fifteen. So if I've been feeling this badly off and on, in cycles, for fifteen years, when will it stop? Yeah, never is the answer I got too.

Update time! I've been quiet for awhile, in many ways because my depression has hit me pretty hard lately. With chronic depression, it's so hard to tell if it's just a rut you are going through or if it's time to change medicines or up the current medication. Once I finally got into a place where I could see how badly I was feeling, I decided on a two-fold approach.

First, I upped my meds. Since I started taking SAM-e, a supplement, I can be more flexable with my dose without having to make a doctor appointment. My doctor originally prescribed 800mg of SAM-e, but I started on 600mg, which was fine. Now that it's not, I'm up to 800. The max is 1800mg total, but if I think I need to go past 1000mg, I'm going to the doctor to make a switch.

The other thing that I did was make a few small changes to stop feeling like I am in a rut all the time. They are little, and probably silly, but they seem to be making me feel a little nicer. What I did was paint my nails and start wearing mascara and earring in the mornings. It's not a huge change. My reasoning is that taking a little extra time to look nicer might lead to feeling nicer. I admit, I kind of like looking in the mirror and being surprised by my darker eyes.

I'm giving it two weeks and if I'm not noticeably better by then (better enough that the husband notices as well) then I'm calling the doctor. A new doctor, in fact, but that's for another post...

There were a few effects of my birth defect.  I have extra skin on my neck (a webbed neck) and I was super self-conscious about it for a long time.  I even looked into surgery for it, but the cosmetic surgeon said that they could do very little for a lot of money.  So I'm pretty much over it.  It's me and it's not gonna change.  I also have edema in my feet (swelling) and weird toenails.  Oh, and I got sick a lot as a kid because my lymph nodes didn't work the way they were supposed to (see the Lymphatic part of the diagnosis), but having my adenoids out really helped.  

In high school I was told I had a chemical imbalance that was causing my depression.  I cycled through different meds until college, where I was given another diagnosis of Generalized Anxiety Disorder and I met my new friend Cymbalta.  I've been on the Cymbalta for 5 years now and it is awesome.  It just puts me to a point where I can manage the emotions I am having, rather than being overwhelmed by them. Nothing else ever did that for me.  I occasionally take Xanax for extreme anxiety, but it's pretty rare anymore.  

In November of 2009 I went to my doctor (technically a PA) Shannon (Hi!) for lethargy and no sex drive.  She ran some thyroid tests and discovered that my body makes very little testosterone, which is the basis of the sex drive.  After many, many more tests and much of my blood in little tubes, it turns out my body doesn't like my thyroid and wants to eat it.  My body = dumb.  So Shannon gave me some hormone cream in December (I'm now 60) and the actual Dr. (Dr. A) had me start some magnesium powder supplements.  Apparently most people have a magnesium deficiency and it can be the reason for extra stress and low energy levels.  Normally I would be super-skeptical, but my doctor is a big believer in quantifiable data and western medicine, so if he says he takes a supplement, I'm inclined to believe it may have value.   

And now, we're waiting to see what happens.  (As of Jan. 3, 2010, zip.)

Bored yet?