More Title Testing

Ha! This actually worked. A small, much needed victory for today

Random Thoughts

In no particular order, with no definable relation to each other.

• I am not a crazy. I am a person of reasonable intelligence whose biochemistry is just more than a little off. I know about neurotransmitters and synapses and the synaptic cleft and the amines that are purported to influence depression. I know tryptophan is an essential amino acid and that 'essential' means that the body cannot manufacture it and that this particular amino acid is a precursor to serotonin, which is one of those neurotransmitters said to influence depression.
  
  I taught myself about computers; what processors are, what they do, how they interact with the motherboard, what the motherboard is and how it coordinates interactions between different components. I taught myself VBScript and wrote numerous scripts to automate tasks that previously would have taken hours. So I am NOT CRAZY.
  

• There has got to be a way to de-stigmatize the more obvious behaviors of and more radical treatments surrounding depression. Make it parallel to physical illnesses of similar magnitude. People know what to do when they hear, ?She's in the hospital for cancer.? They do not for ?She's in the hospital for ECT.? The former is more likely to be announced for prayer at church or emailed around at work to gather efforts for flowers, visits or meals. The latter isn't mentioned at church...except for in whispers...and I've been advised to, under no circumstances, divulge any information about either the nature of my illness or the type of treatments without getting signed papers from doctors and consulting with an EAP therapist specializing in these matters.
  
  Which basically rubs the ingrained idea that I should be ashamed about this further into my head.
  

• Does a support group exist for spouses or partners of individuals suffering from depression? If so, I need to find one for my husband, and yesterday.
  

• One of the many infuriating things about this is the inability to prep your significant other about major upcoming changes in your emotional landscape. I'm not talking chart level detail here, but a general sense of what to expect. A 'head's-up' call in case of sudden mood fluctuations would help, but what if you forget...or just don't think to? Or if you're going with the flow and know that deviating from that subconscious navigator, even for a cell phone call, even if you have the number on speed dial, would throw everything off and you on to the slippery slope down.
  

• Seriously consider moving to a place with substantially more sun. More sun and no snow at all, period.
  

This Is A Test. I Repeat: This Is A Test

Had this been a real post, you would be reading depression related, hopefully witty content with bits of wry sarcasm and inappropriately timed black humor. As it is, I am just trying to get title tags in BlogsInHand working so, once again, this is just a test.

1.22.05 7:27: State of the Mental Address

This is going to be a quick ass post because I just took my 54, 54, 18, 20 combo (Concerta, Concerta, smaller Concerta, Ritalin) and if this is any indication, I've got about fourty minutes to an hour tops before I start hitting the skids again and in that time I've got to finish up this home acid peel, take a shower, get dressed, dig out my car from 12 inches of snow and be on my way to work. It's like some lunatic game show only not so happy and without the giant prizes.

Haven't found any practitioners of EMDR, SAD light therapy yet...mostly because I'm still waiting to hear back from my therapist and shrink whom I haven't...for some bizarre reason...been able to reach. Have tentatively added a zinc tablet to my cocktail of multi-vitamin and fish-oil capsules and am really, really, really making an effort to smarten up my diet which frankly sucks. That is actually harder than it seems because when I'm depressed, doing anything is a huge chore and searching out and finding healthy non-preservative food falls under anything. There's also way too much choice in a place like Whole Foods (where one usually goes to purchase healthy non-preservative laden food) and when you factor that in with trying to find the best deal so you don't spend all of your money, and a seriously anal-retentive personality (I'm raising my hand here...you just can't see it) and it's just a losing battle before you even start.

Time's up for now, but...for something completley random...my husband found this which looks very, very, very interesting and diverting.

What The...????

Well, I've gone from the solution-oriented state that I was in when I
wrote this post to taking forever to get out the door out of a dread
of the cold and the snow and the work ahead of me, to a sort of mixed
state of grim humor, near crying, despair and patches of enthusiasm
here and there.

I have a firm enough protectiveness towards myself that I'm okay with
going home sick if I have to, but I don't want to return calls to my
shrink's billing department. I think that if I turn on some music
with a vigorous beat I'll be okay and I'm so cold that I'm feeling
mild despair over ever getting warm. I also feel tears at the back of
my eyes and my hip, back and knees are aching.

I'm really in the middle of hating this throwing darts at a dartboard
method of treating whatever the hell is wrong with me. I know that
there's no other way really, but I'm beginning to believe what (I
think) Nitchze said about if there are numerous cures for an illness
you can be sure that illness is incurable. Since I'm not up to
searching for the exact quote, someone else can correct me.

Two Roads Diverged In A Wood, And I

Time to take the less travelled by.

After yesterday and the day before's crying breakdown, and the completely random periods of blinding rage, wincing and tender, enthusiasm and purpose and relentless despair between, I've had it. I'm not ditching the drugs....I'm a little too leery of getting rid of the pharmological scaffolding however rickety it is...but I have just got to try alternative methods of treatment because I am feeling worn, my mental state or status or whatever your frame of mind is called is feeling frayed and worn and I need it to not get holes. I need it, in fact to weave back together or get stronger...whatever.

I'm still deep in to Solomon's book The Noonday Demon, (neat website, I'll have to go back and investigate more), and there is an entire section on Alternative Treatments that I've bookmarked extensively with toilet paper of all things. I'm going to go after the ones that jumped out at me, EMDR, light therapy used for SAD and craniosacral massage therapy being among the few. I'm probably going to have to go through my primary therapist or GP for referrals...my insurance is not alternative medicine friendly at all, but I have just got to do something.

As Robert Frost would sort of say, and kudos to him for the post title, I hope it makes all the difference.

Tangential Off Topic: I cannot pimp Solomon's book enough if I mentioned it in every single post I make from now until the end of the following year. It's dense and meaty and has a lot of good, useful information and a lot of helpful, first person stories that remind you that you are not alone in this hell, and a ton of mentions of treatments that I certainly never heard of. Its a maze, but a good maze...you can head down one chapter and make a couple turns into another different aspect of depression and you don't feel lost but as though you keep stumbling across more little treasures of things that may just be the thing to help you crawl out of the pit. If you don't have it, go get it. If you're leery about shelling out the dough, download the first chapter for free (right click on that link and do the "Save As" thing), read it, and then go shell out the dough. Borrow it at the library, whatever. Just get this book.

Some Thoughts, In No Particular Order

• This cold is brutal and relentless. Logically, I know that it is not
  personal, but because of my state of mind and the constant demands of
  my job it feels as though it is. I do not know if I can take another
  winter here.

• If only I could just stop for a while...have nothing to do but lie in
  bed with the dog, or read at Starbucks or think or sleep for as long
  as I needed to...and not have to worry about the apartment getting
  clean or earning an income from work. And if it could be for an
  indefinite amount of time; so that I wasn't dreading the end of the
  respite, or feeling the impending drudgery of taking everything back
  up again, putting it on my shoulders and trudging onwards.

• What are we doing to this poor dog? He's apparently sensitive by
  nature and the time in the pound definitely didn't help. Now he's in
  a household with a volatile depressive whose moods are definitely not
  stable and privy to whatever marital discord blows in. I fear that he
  would have been better off with a different couple or family, that
  secretly he wishes he were. I wish there were a way I could know for
  sure that he did or didn't think that way.

• I don't know how I am going to make it through this day. I'm trying
  to pull myself together out of nothing and it is not working. Maybe
  in an hour I will be completely different and this will seem just a
  bunch of maudlin navel gazings but right now I feel at the end of my
  rope; I'm scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel and I am
  coming up with zilcho.

• Energetic music is helping. Snoop Dogg, Wu-Tang Clan, Dr. Dre,
  Eminem...the off rhythms are giving my brain something to cognate
  about. So it is helping. Not much, but some.

Flayed

I may have mentioned this before, but my short term memory isn't what it never was so if this starts to sound familiar you can check out and come back on the next installment.

I'm finding out that one of the hard things about depression is that when the drugs and the therapy, and the numerous little tricks you do during the day to keep your mind level start working and the depression starts to lift, your emotional state picks right back up where it left off. And it never seems to coincide nicely with whatever is going on, life-wise, right at this moment.

An Example:

I work. With computers. At a truly grueling, demanding, ball-busting, thankless job. It's not the work that's so bad; I actually love the work. It's the fact that the work usually only gets noticed when there's something goes wrong. Or that your average user or manager or CEO doesn't understand how complicated a system is, and therefore asks for or promises to, a system or to someone a completion date that goes beyond unreasonable and into fantasy.

Right. So, back to the emotional state picking up.

I could be a little frustrated with the sheer volumes of work on my plate, but the fact that my emotional state is picking back up where I was in high school and completely overwhelmed with homework and keeping the family running smoothly, that little frustrated turns into complete basket-case type overwhelmed and I find myself sobbing uncontrollably over the prospect of going back to work after walking the dog and cleaning up whatever mess he has happened to create while I was away.

Or I might be a little angry at the fact that Joe User has sent me an email AND cc-ed my boss AND his boss...an email in which he uses the most condescending, patronizing tone and expounds at length on exactly how I should do my job...but my emotional state is picking back up where I watched some overpriviledged kid make an offhand off-color racist joke to his friend and I so wanted to reach over the table and throttle him but couldn't because the teacher was talking about word problems up in front. So a little angry becomes incineratingly furious.

I'm not knocking tears or righteous anger here, I'm just having problems with them and my work world crashing into each other. It would be great if I could somehow take leave for a few hours when stuff like this happens, but I'd have a tough time explaining it to my supervisor. If you can think of a way to convey "had to leave before I stuck a letter opener in his ear" with a professional spin that would also net me a couple of hours in a warm room with a blanket and a cup of tea, by all means email me.

1.17.05 10:26 A.M. - State Of The Mental Address

This is one of those mornings that, in spite of doing all of the
recommended things...Schoolhouse Rock instead of angsty Frou Frou in
the car CD player, adding a green slipcover to the couch (green being
one of the calming, soothing colors according to a magazine article I
read)...I still cannot shake the feeling that just behind or to one
side of my existence there is a deep black hole that I am going to
fall into.

It is a bright, sunny day outside. It's about 17 below with the wind
chill, but the sun is shining and the sky is blue without a cloud in
sight. But I swear I can see the grotesque, distorted faces of
monsters pressing against whatever fabric that is keeping them in
their black abyss.

Insanity

I've figured out why I constantly feel as though I'm on the edge of
losing my sanity. Instead of being locked in an psych ward with 24-7
psychiatric drug monitoring, I'm working in an understaffed,
overloaded department at backbreaking projects with few resources and
punishing deadlines.

And trying to pass for normal at the same time. Which means that a
minimum of 45% of my energy and brainpower goes towards covering my
craving for indefinite oblivion while the reserves are eaten up by
figuring out how to achieve the impossible out of string, paperclips
and spit. As the impossible grows, the mental stockpiles shrink until
I find myself in a situation similar to this afternoon: driving in
deadlocked traffic in crappy weather to pound a server back into
working with tears involuntarily pouring down my face.

Completely unable to stop them.

Needless to say, my shrinker will definitely be hearing from me this weekend.

Insanity, But Not Really

Edit: Removed crazy support notation from completly unrelated issue from post. Post was duplicate of one that was already in existence...due to bad third party handheld email client so basically, no post. Have a nice day.

Addendum: Sea Change

This thread, from a forum solely about Boston Terriers, is how I can tell that I have stepped off the cliff of normal and am plunging fast. Under any other circumstance, this would be absolutely hilarious. Right now, however, I look into those eyes and see bottomless grief, inconsolable sadness, complete wounded-ness over having to refrain from eating the treat placed upon one's head. Also the wounding shame of being photographed in such a compromising position.

I only wish I were exaggerating, but the fact that I'm going to get up from the computer so that I can avoid looking at this picture from here on out (I'm leaving it up so that my husband can laugh at it, at least) is pretty firm evidence that I'm not.

Sea Change, Among Other Things

Had another appointment with my head shrinker Thursday...during which he asked questions, took notes and fiddled with my Concerta doses. Three is proving to be too much; I find myself to be just a little too furious when crazy events happen at work...which is always...a little too brittle mentally. Two is too little, so the happy medium for now is to gradually add 18s to the 54s one at a time (Concerta comes in 18, 36 and 54mg parcels) plus a half tablet of 20mg Ritalin to cover the lag time it takes for the Concerta to kick in.

So how is this all working? Well...this is the first day of the 54, 54, 18, 10 combo and while the morning and mid-late afternoon was actually filled with something resembling enthusiasm, around five or six or something I came across the makeshift cage for our singularly unique hedgehog Calvin who passed away last year in the most excruciatingly drawn out way possible. And that led to the couch, where I cried for a bit, then the bathroom where I came across an O article on loneliness and connecting which led to the realization of how utterly baffling it is for me to know how to initiate the most rudimentary of connections, let alone an entire friendship...which led to this post and Prairie Home Companion which I just reached over and dialed down because Garrison was talking about a lady who had the nerve to have a filthy bathroom. Which reminded my of my filthy bathroom and the lack of time I have to clean it.

In short, I think I'm going to have to bump up the 18s. I'll give it a day or two and account for the grief factor over Calvin, but I'm betting on the additional 18.


EDIT: I was looking for the elegy I posted when Calvin died. I couldn't find it, but came across this one about our saga with Stewart (also a hedgehog). The way I feel now after skimming it, I kinda wish I hadn't.

On Anger

I'm a practising Christian. Which means that I do my level best to walk my talk...i.e. I don't commit adultery, murder anyone or steal from stores or little old ladies. It also means that I do my level best to behave towards others the way I read about Jesus behaving...having compassion on those who want to kick my ass, helping out the homeless people on the street with a few dollars without asking if they're going to buy alcohol or drugs, doing random acts of niceness for complete strangers...you get the idea. Christianity, or actually God, has gotten a bad rap lately what with all of the disasters and complete idiots fronting as being one of the true believers...but i've seen enough to keep at it for a while longer.

One of the reasons is this: anger is not a sin. It says it right there in the Bible...in fact I think that Jesus himself does the saying. This is a gross, probably completely inaccurate paraphrase and I don't even have a book, chapter and verse, but the quote goes something like this:

In your anger, do not sin

It doesn't say NOT to get angry....just don't go mowing down a busy sidewalk with an AK-47 while in your blinding rage. As I am a person who, at this phase in my life, finds myself frequently infuriated...probably having something to do with the fact that I recently started driving, this is a relief.

However, I'm finding it hard to figure out what to do with that anger that wouldn't constitute "sin". When my temples are pounding and my blood is boiling over in the blood vessels just underneath my skin, and the red tinged haze blooms in front of my eyes, my first instinct is to throw the nearest sharp object at the catalyst of my rage. All that stuff...blood boiling, red haze, pounding temples...is energy and it has to go somewhere. And as I mentioned before somewhere in this site, depression is sometimes referred to as anger turned inwards, so the last thing I want to do is sit with this volatile substance until it seeps into my innards stews them into a dark, dank soup.

I'm not including any solutions here because honestly, I ain't got them. Venting to friends would be the first thing that comes to mind, but what if you don't have any. Depression...especially the major and lasting kind...is not the type of thing to win friends and influence people unless you're paying them for their hour of time. Screaming or pounding a pillow is another, but doing either of these in the workplace is just not a way to maintain gainful employment. Plus...when's the last time you saw a pillow in your workplace? Thought so.

If I come up with anything, believe you me I'll share it here....but right now I got zilcho. Desperately looking, but zilcho.

Addendum To A Future Post

Because the post this is addending (?) is still on my handheld, in a nifty little program called WebIS Mail...a sort of beefed up Inbox for the Pocket PC. I also have Blogs In Hand, but that has some issues with subject tags and I wanted to not have to go back and re-edit.

At the time of that future post, I was insanely anxious. Also stressed. And not a little depressed. Now I'm not. Such is the nature of medication regulation. I'd like to think that my current pharmeceutical of choice is working, but it's probably due to the fact that a) it's Saturday and b) I'm not working nor do I c) have group to go to.

Also d) I'm trying yet another means to level out my moods slash stress...that being music therapy. I'm not busting out the ScentSounds...or whatever that horrid contraption is called...I'm putting together songs that, for whatever reason, sort of yank at my ears a little...tunes that have odd little twists in the melody, or are punctuated on the off beat. Hard to explain, easier to throw out a few examples:

Oh, and sorry, but these are iTunes URLs...I don't think they'll resolve in anything but an iTunes wrapper.

Drop It Like It's Hot, by Snoop Dogg
serious props, by the way, for putting tounge clicks front and center as a major part of the song.

Gravel Pit, by Wu-Tang Clan

My Name Is, by Eminem
bonus because the numerous asides in the song are funny as hell

Yep, all of the e.g's are raps...but for some reason the more lyrical of the songs that are odd enough to distract me from my funk are the ones that make it worse. Case in point:

Yes, Anastasia, by Tori Amos

Let Go, by Frou Frou

Stupid, by Sarah McLachlan.

Beautiful, emotional, melodious songs...but depressing as hell. I save them for when I can handle them, or when I'm so out of it that I just don't care.

But since I'm off to nap now, it's Frou Frou...cause as much as I love me some Wu-Tang, I can't doze off to them.

It's The Little Things

I swear on my production servers....which for me as a systems admin for a bunch of very finicky computers is a very, very, VERY big deal...the only reason why I skim the celebrity gossip pages on MSN or MSNBC is to clear my head; I utilize the colorful pictures and even more so language as a sort of sorbet for my brain. Given that a good part of my day is spent picking over the most obscure OS bugs, or fighting with VBScript over a task I desperately need to automate, a brain cleanser is a much needed thing.

That's why it bothers me to infinite end that this little matter actually got a gasp out of me. These are celebrities, for crap's sake...I don't know them, nor would I want to. But for some inexplicable reason I find myself dissappointed, in a motherly "too bad, they looked like such a nice couple" sort of way.

And I'm pretty sure it's not the meds wearing off either...it's only early afternoon and Roscoe's poor-me look isn't stabbing my heart the way it does when the mind has hit the skids.

Slinking off to read something virtuously intellectual...

Mermaids Singing

It's been a rough start for this relationship with Concerta. I've learned that taking it any time after 10 am means surface sleep only, and taking just one any earlier then ten doesn't do much of anything. I'm warily taking two the minute I get out of bed...that was today and so far so bland. I'm functional with a few poignant patches here and there but no electricity yet. Also no bottoming out yet, and if I have to forgo creative sparking for now to avoid plunging past rock bottom I will do so gladly

So I was cleaning house around the bookcases the other day and came across something that smoothed over the roughness a little. It was a small box, containing a smaller box labeled "A Box of Thoughts on Joy". I remember my husband giving this to me last Christmas or so, and I remember thinking it was heavy on the cheesy, sunshine-up-the-butt factor, but I opened it in spite of all that and one of thoughts jumped out and lodged in my head

"There is a dawn in me."
-Henry David Thoreau

I started this post 48 hours ago, and even though the bottom did fall out that evening of the 2 Concerta day, and it's snowing cats and rats and elephants outside, that thought is still glowing in my head like a small stubborn ember.

Straws

At 6:40 am this morning I drove across town to pick up my latest attempt to kick this depression for good. Which should give you an idea about my current level of desperation.

I'm in the valley of a peak right now, or else I'd actually be optimistic about this latest experiment. Based on the theory that the double-bead delivery method of Adderall is being shot all to hell by my eccentric metabolism (or that my liver goes through amphetamines like a kid through Halloween candy)**, my shrinker has prescribed Concerta, which is basically Adderall by way of Ritalin with a nifty little delivery system.

"CONCERTA? uses osmotic pressure to deliver methylphenidate HCl at a controlled rate. The system, which resembles a conventional tablet in appearance, comprises an osmotically active trilayer core surrounded by a semipermeable membrane with an immediate-release drug overcoat. The trilayer core is composed of two drug layers containing the drug and excipients, and a push layer containing osmotically active components.

So, what does this fancy-schmancy, new-falutin' contraption do?

"There is a precision-laser drilled orifice on the drug-layer end of the tablet. In an aqueous environment, such as the gastrointestinal tract, the drug overcoat dissolves within one hour, providing an initial dose of methylphenidate. Water permeates through the membrane into the tablet core. As the osmotically active polymer excipients expand, methylphenidate is released through the orifice. The membrane controls the rate at which water enters the tablet core, which in turn controls drug delivery."

Cool, hunh? I thought so. Anyway, I took my first "barrell-shaped" tablet about a half hour ago...we'll see what happens. If I'm in a good mood in spite of the current chick-angst music they've got going here at Starbucks, we may just have a winner.

**I have my own alternate theory about the Adderall non-effecacy...something that ties my insatiable curiosity and hunger to know the why of everything in with the low level of either a) feel good neurotransmitters or b) receptors for said neurotransmitters. However, I'm sure that somewhere, a neuroscientist is either all over this posit or is reading this and sadly shaking his head.

I Have Heard the Mermaids Singing, Each to Each...

There is a feeling, a sense of gravitas mixed with dark colors and an ache and regret, that wells up when I hear, read or see certain things. Like this story from This American Life.

Or this song, by Tori Amos.

Or this poem, the partial inspiration for this blog

It's a sudden sense that I am an adult getting older, or the realization that this ongoing battle with depression has taken a chunk out of me, or the feeling my awareness has made an unexpected shift in a different direction. And its all mixed up with bittersweet and weird pangs for intangibles and things I know not what. I'd use the paradigm word here but the meaning has been thoroughly sucked out of it.

Maybe it's poignancy. Or simple melancholy. Whatever it is, it usually heralds the depression to come. Here's the thing though: I don't necessarily want to lose the capability of experiencing that...whatever the feeling is called. I just want to have it separate from the feeling of despair that follows soon after. I have a faint idea that this fugue, or whatever the heck this emotion is, is an important, normal thing to feel...that I should be experiencing it at different points in my life and maybe missed it numerous times before because of the depression.

Or I'm completely wrong and it's just a sad song, poem, book...and I've got a bad case of PMS. Or I'm just overly sensitive. I don't know...and that's just part and parcel of the frustration.

Signing off...