by Band Back Together | Sep 28, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Coping With Depression, Depression, Loneliness, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health, Stress |
Depression often lies to us, tricking us into going off our much-needed medications.
This is her story:
I wanted to see how I could be without the Prozac. So did my therapist. I had been on it for about 7 years – the same 20 mg dosage the whole time. My therapist openly disapproved of the medication. So I self-weaned off. I felt great for the first few weeks. Then the depression set in. It was mild at first. Just moodiness and more yelling. Then it would lift and life would be great. The cycles went like that for a while. Then there was The Week From Hell.
I ignored my husband completely. I did the bare-bones necessities to get through the day. I did not want to see friends or family. I didn’t want to do anything. I cried all the time, about nothing. I was never like this before. I wanted to eat salmon (which I am severally allergic to) so my throat would close and I would die. Nothing brought me joy. Nothing.
I didn’t talk about this with anyone. When I mentioned suicide to my therapist, he didn’t even blink or comment. This threw me into a greater depression. You know you are doomed when even your therapist doesn’t care.
My husband cried and said he wanted me to talk to him. I told him it didn’t help to talk. I needed medication. So I made an appointment with a psychiatrist (my previous Prozac came from my OB/GYN as medication to handle PMS). It took weeks to get in.
Even though I had been battling depression for years, this was the first time I ever saw a psychiatrist. She was very nice and knowledgeable. She went through all the background questions. When she asked about family history, I laughed and asked how much time we had. She nodded in understanding.
Her diagnosis was that I had mild depression that could go into a severe depressive state if I didn’t medicate myself. She said that since the Prozac did work for me without any side effects that she was putting me back on it, going from 10 mg up to 30 mg gradually.
Today I am at the 20 mg dosage. I feel pretty good. However, my darkest swings are 1-2 weeks before my period, which is still a while away. I am worried that the Prozac won’t be enough anymore. The psychiatrist said there are other similar medications I could take if Prozac didn’t do the job.
I am also worried that I am putting my trust too much into a pill. Why can’t I just be happy? I look at the people around me who smile and laugh and have it all, and want to be like them. But I am just not a happy person. Never have been, and probably never will be.
So I say, Hello Prozac my old friend…. I’ve come to take you again.
by Band Back Together | Sep 28, 2010 | Poverty, Economic Struggles and Hardship |
I’ve been tottering on the edge of the deep abyss for a long time now. Too long… back before I married again and back when I was a complete person. For that millisecond of time before I messed it all up again. Before I lost the best job I ever had. Before my second husband became such a problem for me – such a hurdle that I just couldn’t overcome. Before my daughter had surgery. Before I started relying on my parents to give me money to pay the bills.
But today it’s a little lighter. And it was a lighter day yesterday too. The only thing I can attribute it to is laughter. And finding blogs that make me laugh and make me want to be a part of this online world of people who I might actually be able to relate to and who might actually understand what I’ve been going through.
I’m still struggling with financial stuffs. I’m still taking money from my parents every month. I’m still taking my medications and still underemployed and terrified that the future looks just like today or worse. But because I laughed so hard I cried. And then I laughed with my daughter and we danced together and laughed some more. And because I had a lighter day yesterday and again today, I think I might have found a little bit of hope lurking out there. I think I might have found that iota of strength I needed to find to keep trying tomorrow.
And that feels good enough for today.
by Band Back Together | Sep 28, 2010 | Child Loss, Coping With Losing A Child, HELLP Syndrome, Livng Through A Miscarriage, Loss, Miscarriage, Stillbirth |
Even now, nine years after the fact, I struggle about where to post this. I’ve been told so many times that I had a miscarriage, that Maggie wasn’t even a viable baby.
She was my baby. She was my daughter. I held her in my arms, and I gave her a name.
I have a daughter.
Some people I know are surprised to hear this, since I only talk about my sons, Big and Little G. I don’t talk a lot about the fact that there were pregnancies #4 and 5.
I’m going to pull a lot of this from a story I posted at the Preeclampsia Foundation back in 2002. The women in the forums there saved my sanity, and I love them for it.
About 17 weeks into my second pregnancy (my first ended with a miscarriage at 14 weeks), I experienced a day where I threw up all day long. I hadn’t had morning sickness at all, so I was a little concerned, but Car (my husband) and I assumed I had a 24-hour bug. The next day I didn’t throw up, but I simply didn’t feel well. I had a general feeling of unwellness from then on, but nothing specific.
At about 17.5 weeks, the pain started. At first I assumed the pain, which was located just below my sternum, was heartburn. I’d never had heartburn, but I couldn’t imagine what else the stabbing pain could be, and everyone knows that pregnant women get terrible heartburn. The pain got progressively worse until I could no longer work. I asked a few people if this was really what heartburn was like, and they assured me that pregnancy heartburn could be really bad. I took the maximum amount of antacids allowed, but nothing helped.
I had my usual appointment with my perinatologist on a Wednesday, and I mentioned the pain. He suggested Pepcid AC. My urine showed only a trace of protein, so there was no cause for concern, despite the fact that I had to have a friend drive me to my appointment because the pain was so intense.
That evening, as I curled up in a ball on the couch and sobbed, Car decided I needed to go to the emergency room. I refused, positive the ER personnel would laugh at the pregnant woman who couldn’t handle simple heartburn. We finally struck a compromise–I would page my local OB and if she thought I needed to go to the ER, I would. When my doctor returned the page, I was crying too hard to speak with her, so my husband filled her in. She also thought it was most likely heartburn, but said if the pain was bad enough that I couldn’t talk on the phone, the ER wouldn’t be a bad idea.
The first thing the doctor at the ER did was give me something he called a “GI Cocktail.” It’s a lovely little drink that numbs your entire digestive tract down to your stomach, and will apparently subdue even the worst heartburn. It made my tongue and throat numb, but did nothing for the pain. The doctor said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but it’s not heartburn.” They gave me a shot of Demerol for the pain and ran several tests (blood work, ultrasound, CT scan). After about 4 hours in the ER, all they could come up with was, “We can’t find anything wrong except for some elevated liver enzymes. We think it’s probably your gallbladder. Call your doctor in the morning.” They discharged me and sent me home.
The next day I called my doctor and told her I had elevated liver enzymes and the ER doctor thought I had something wrong with my gallbladder. My wonderful doctor, whom I credit with saving my life, said, “That doesn’t sound right. Let me makes some calls and call you back.” Within 30 minutes, she called me back and told me to go to the hospital for further testing.
From that point on, things become a blur. I was admitted to the hospital on Thursday and put on a morphine drip for pain. My liver enzymes skyrocketed, my platelets dropped. We were told that the best-case scenario was hepatitis. My red blood cells started to self-destruct and my kidneys began to shut down. My brother flew out from Minnesota in case he had to say goodbye. Every possible liver disease was tested for and ruled out between Thursday and Saturday, when the doctors finally settled on the final diagnosis–HELLP Syndrome. They told us that to save my life we would need to terminate the pregnancy. I begged them to prolong the pregnancy long enough to save my child. The doctor told me, “I don’t think you understand. It’s not an either/or situation. If we don’t end the pregnancy, both you AND your baby will die.”
I was 19 weeks pregnant.
On Saturday night a doctor started the process of manual dilation (which is every bit as painful as it sounds), and on Sunday I delivered a perfectly formed little girl, Margaret Marie. Maggie weighed 3.88 ounces and never took a breath on this earth. I held her in my arms, counted her fingers and toes, and decided she looked like my husband, who was weeping by my side.
About six months after Maggie was born, we decided to try again. I miscarried at six weeks. I told myself , “At least it happened early,” but I was still devastated.
Three months after that, I had my first drink.
by Band Back Together | Sep 27, 2010 | Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Coping With Cancer, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss |
I think my title sums up how I feel. My heart has been aching for the past year for a person that has been there since I was two, for twenty-eight years of my life, and now she was gone. She was my cousin. She was there before my sister. I don’t remember life before her.
I feel guilty that I didn’t take the time to get to know my cousin. Sure, I did the family obligations, the birthdays, holidays, and weddings. But it wasn’t until I was at her funeral that I realized how much I had missed out on. I felt awful because she used to drive me crazy. I found her very annoying at times. While everyone talked about the saint she was, I felt so guilty about I used to feel about her.
Denean was different, she always was. She was an old soul before she was in high school. I think she knew even then. In 1998 we got the call, my mom, best friend and I, while we were working at my mom’s practice: Denean had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. It’s treatable, she will beat it.
But, still I think to myself, it’s cancer and she’s only 17. Through treatment and chemo and losing her hair she remained positive. It was as if she was God’s own army, it was amazing.
Remission with follow-ups came next for five years and then there was a lump.
Breast Cancer. Denean had a biopsy and yes, at the age of twenty-three she was diagnosed with breast cancer. A double masectomy and a hysterectomy followed, plus lots of chemo and radiation. Then remission again. She had won, we had won! It was a good day.
Then two days before her brother’s wedding, another lump. This one was bruised and ugly. Breast cancer again. With no breasts. It had spread. Lymph nodes, bones, tissue. Her mother, my aunt and a nurse, asked a doctor how long we would have with her. 5 years, he told her, 5 years at best.
My cousin was twenty-five at the time. She wouldn’t live to see thirty.
But we were all selfish. We expected her to win, to beat it. She always did.
Looking back, we missed it. She knew she was dying and she planned for it. My only regret in life is that I didn’t plan for it, too. My best friend told me to spend time with her while I could and I didn’t. I did once I realized what was happening, but I regret that I didn’t before. Three weeks before she died, I rushed home with my two-month old baby to be by my cousin’s side. Until the day that I die, I will be grateful that I had that one week with her. I got to make jokes with her about her ICU nurses, see her sarcastic sense of humor one last time.
I will carry that week with me always.
Denean left the hospital September 17, 2009 and three weeks later she died on Sunday, October 4th, 2009; her father’s birthday. Her funeral was standing room only. The women and the real men wore pink to honor her.
Denean was that person that you read about in People Magazine. She fought cancer three times, she put herself through school and she taught to special needs kids–it was her passion. But her most important job of all was that she lead so many people to Christ. She helped start a prayer group in her high school that started out with 10-20 people. Today, it is well over 200 people.
To say it is an honor to have known her for her entire life would be an understatement. I feel blessed by the hand of God to be related to Denean.
Thank you for this forum. It feels amazing to talk about her.
Denean, if by the Grace of God you are reading this, I love you and I miss and I will forever feel blessed to have the honor of being your cousin. I think about you every day and will miss you until the day I die.
by Band Back Together | Sep 24, 2010 | Anger, Anxiety, Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Compassion, Coping With Cancer, Family, Fear, Feelings, Forgiveness, Guilt, Hope, Love, Stress, Trauma |
The first night after my breast cancer chemo treatment was awful. Nugget sobbed hysterically in my arms, giving way to heavy sighs between her defeated attempts for true comfort until she finally fell asleep. I cried, and cried, and cried. Between the tears i apologized over and over to my sweet baby girl for being sick.
Last night was thankfully less painful. She fell asleep with my mother and only had to be quietly lulled back down once. Thank god for small miracles.
As for me, I felt pretty nauseated yesterday and today, and the meds to combat that make me tired. Today, I really started to feel exhausted. We went out for some quick errands this morning, but I’ve since spent the remainder of the day in bed.
