Lightening Online

Am I going to get a HEAP of spam with a heading like that? Or do they target randomly? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

I have to admit that I used to be ANTI anti-depressant drugs. I thought there HAD to be a better way. Not that I really thought badly of those who took them. I just thought that *I* shouldn’t need them. So perhaps subconsciously I kind of was thinking badly of those who took them. I’m sorry.

When my GP suggested that I give a certain anti-depressant a try, I burst into tears. Which probably wasn’t all that surprising given I’d been in tears most of the duration of my visit.

He was wonderful and explained the physical side of depression. That it was no different to taking medication for diabetes or a kidney problem.

“Will I have to be on them forever?” I sobbed.

Apparently not. Most cases of Post Natal Depression are rectified with a period of time on the drugs that helps to reset the body.

Of course, there is a possibility that I’ve shorted out a function in my brain and if that turns out to be the case then yes, I would need to be on the medication for life. But of course, that’s a small possibility and if it indeed does turn out to be the case then it’s no different to a diabetic that’s on medication for life. Or something to that effect.

I left the office with a prescription for a very low dose of Efexor XR (one type of anti-depressant) that I had NO intention of ever filling.

I phoned DH and he suggested I get it filled and we’d talk more about what to do when I got home. So, I filled it. But I still had no intention of taking it.

Once home I rang a friend. I felt it was too soon to give in and resort to medication. She pointed out that I’d been struggling with this problem for two and a half years so it was hardly a “first resort”.

I started taking the medication. I got worse. That’s normal. Apparently. The body reacts to the drug by reducing it’s production of Serotonin. Great. But it does adjust and things start to improve.

They took a while. But eventually they started to improve. But in the back of my mind resides this doubt as to whether the medication has caused the improvement or whether it has been a natural result of resting more. Taking things easy. Not going out.

We still don’t know if they’re helping. I’m not as well as I feel I should be. My GP has left. I see a visiting Psychiatrist at a town about 2 hours away. He can only fit me in once every 2 months.

Apparently not everyone’s situation can be helped by the use of medication.

Apparently some patients are resistant to certain types of medication.

How do we tell? Trial and error. The only way to find out if the Efexor is helping or not is to come off it and see.

Great.

One thing I discovered about Efexor in my research was that it’s not an easy drug to come off of. Of course, I was already taking it when I discovered this.

So. I need to choose between accepting the kind of “half life” I feel I have now. I’m doing more than I was able to do when I first had the breakdown but a lot, lot less than what I would consider as “normal” for me.

OR. I take another 3 months out of my life. Another 3 months where I may not be capable of mothering my children. At all.

One month to wean off the Efexor and cope with the side effects of that. One month trial to make sure it’s fully out of my system and to see what I’m like without it. One month to gradually wean onto another type of anti-depressant (if necessary) with no guarantees that it will be any better.

I don’t want to take a medication if it’s not really helping. I like the idea of trialling some other methods of helping with the depression. Less “synthetic” ways of dealing with depression like diet, exercise and vitamins.

But I’m scared. Scared of what it will be like to wean off this drug. Scared of missing more time with my children. Just plain scared full stop.

To make matters more “scary”, this article happened to land in my inbox as I was around half way through writing this post. I honestly don’t know who to put my trust in.

All I want is to be well. Is that really too much to ask? Wellness is something we can tend to take for granted until we no longer have it.

For 4 years now I haven’t really felt myself. How many more years of my life is going to be taken from me by this “disease”?

Do I sacrifice another 3 months with the hope that the end result will be a better long term solution for me?

So, there you have it. Not all anti-depressants are anti-depressing. In fact, right now, I’m finding them ALL rather depressing.

I had a rough day yesterday. I was more than a little bit disappointed about that after having such a lovely day on Friday as we celebrated Singstar Princesses birthday. Perhaps I should not have been as surprised as I was and yet I find that the bad days still take me unawares. Thankfully they are coming less often than they used to, but they are still quite horrible when they happen.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I had no understanding of the medical condition “depression” at all. I was surprised when my doctor first told me that it is as physical as diabetes or kidney failure.

Now I understand the condition a lot better. It is caused by a physical lack in the body. Diabetes is a condition that comes about when the pancreas no longer produces enough insulin. Depression comes about when the body fails to produce enough serotonin.

My dad has diabetes. He doesn’t need to inject insulin. He has a tablet that apparently “squeezes” the pancreas and that helps to regulate his blood sugar levels. Some people have depression at a level where they can do external activities to boost the serotonin levels enough to enable them to function well. Just like my dad doesn’t require an injection, they are able to function without medical intervention when it comes to their serotonin levels. For others, no amount of “squeezing” will give them what their body needs.

Just before I actually had my nervous breakdown, I remember trying to describe to my husband what I felt like. We knew I had a problem (granted, we didn’t understand the physical side of it) and we were working hard to try and “boost” my serotonin levels. I felt like a rainwater tank that had gone completely dry. Into the top we were adding teaspoons of water while down the bottom the tap was fully open. Water was draining out of the tank faster than we could possibly refill it, even with 2 of us on the job.

It makes more sense to us now that we have trained professionals in our lives that are able to explain to us what happened. While my body wasn’t making much serotonin, I continued to try and function “normally” and so drained my supply tank (the back up reserves) until it really did go dry. At that point my body had no choice but to start shutting down. I lost a lot of brain function which in turn made functioning at all rather limited.

Where am I going with this post? One of the things I promised myself when I started this blog was that I would be as real as possible to my readers. I try not to be too negative because there is enough of that in this world. At the same time, I don’t want to create a false picture of the “perfect wife and mother” by only posting the good stuff.

Yesterday was a really rough day for me. On bad days I get a lot of physical pain. I never imagined the level of pain a person could feel just from being low on one tiny little chemical. The body is really an amazing and complex thing. When we expect someone with depression to simply “snap out of it”, we really are showing our ignorance as to how complex the body truly is.

My children, who had shone so beautifully in their behaviour on Friday, were rambunctious and really rather annoying. I didn’t cope well with them at all. It hurt me that I wasn’t able to cope with them. It hurt me that I wasn’t up to somehow guiding them in a positive way into better behaviour. It hurt me that my only choice was to closet myself away in a room and ask them not to bother me.

Depression hurts. There is no doubt about that. I remember a friend of mine (who is also a sufferer) making the point one day “do people think we WANT to feel this bad? If we COULD snap out of it we WOULD.” No one wants to feel that way. I understand her point. I recognise now that I am a VERY driven person. My GP told me that I HAD to be a very driven person to have continued to function for 2 and a half years with Post Natal Depression. To have driven myself to the point where I had absolutely NOTHING left in my reserve tank. I didn’t believe him at first but upon reflection, I can see his point. If there is anyone who would have snapped out of this condition if there was any possible way, I think I would be that person.

I apologise if this is kind of a rambling post. I find it hard to say what I want to say in some kind of coherent way. Some of you will be sitting there nodding, yes, yes and YES. You’ve been there before and understand what I’m talking about. Those of you who are fellow sufferers I send you huge (((HUGS))) cos it is a rough road. We do need to keep fighting. At the same time, we need to be kind to ourselves and understand that we are worth looking after.

For those who have never suffered, I hope my attempt to be honest helps to lift the lid on depression and give people a tiny insight into what it can be like for those who do suffer.

I’m not sure what the future holds for me. Whether I will one day recover to the point where bad days are pretty much nonexistent. Or whether this is something I will be living with for the rest of my life. It’s a condition that seems to be rather complex and affect different people in different ways. Even those who are studying it constantly still fail to understand it fully.

This much I do know. Having suffered from it myself, I want to spread the word as far and wide as I can as to what it is like for sufferers. So you can expect that I’m going to talk about it every so often.

If you’re a sufferer of depression and have written a blog post about it somewhere, I’d love for you to let me know so that I can link to it. Let’s work together to help build a better awareness and understanding of this condition.