theNest

I was warned that getting a puppy is similar to having a new baby. The verdict is in and it is WAY easier to get a puppy, as tiresome as it may be. However, I am getting flashbacks to when I was a new mom with the feedings, letting him out to wee-wee, and with the crate training. Not that I crate-trained my kids, but the puppy is rather dependent on me. I think he almost has potty training down with #1 but going #2 needs a little work. It is hard to hear him whine and cry as I train him but at least it doesn’t induce lactation “let-down.”

The flashbacks take me to a dark place almost 6 years ago, when I had an infant that was very dependent on me, a severe case of PPD, and a needy 2-and-a-half year old. It has always been hard for me to accept when others are dependent on me because I doubt my capabilities. With good reason. I think it is because I have bottomed out with depression so many times and during those times, I can’t take care of myself let alone needy small people. Enter Garth, who did more than his share of the child-rearing during the early years when I had to work hard to pull myself together with cognitive therapy and a lot of meds. It is no wonder that the puppy responsibilities fall heavily on me as he has told me he has “been there, done that.”

The anxiety I have felt in the last few days has really challenged me to think back and hopefully heal from those dark times a little more. It is so bad that when a friend has a baby, I have a tendency to disappear for a few weeks because I can’t handle thinking that she may have the same pain as I had with having a new baby. Sad. And selfish, but I don’t like to be reminded of my dark place. It does help when I see a new mom coping well – and most moms do. I didn’t. Most people think of a sweet little baby as sugar and spice and all I can think is morbid thoughts of suicide, almost leaving my family, and crying continually for almost a year. Not what I anticipated as when I was a dreamy 18 year-old, thinking romantic and very unrealistic thoughts of my future. God has a good sense of humor. As painful as it was, it did bring me closer to Him…almost too close. There were days I prayed He would take me “home” and away from the pain but now I am glad He didn’t.

I feel bad that I think so terribly of my first few years as a mother, but depression will do that to you. I don’t want to sugar-coat it or somehow deny what it was. If I could have made it any better I would have but I don’t feel that I was given a choice in the matter. Depression and anxiety do not give you a choice. My good friend Renee always reminds me, “it is what it is.” What I do hope is that somehow I can pull away from the anxiety of having someone (a puppy in this case) so dependent on me.

I’m almost done singing…I can feel it. For the last week or so, a cloud has been over my head and it is starting to go away. I’ve been lethargic, listless, and I’ve been sleeping away that terrible feeling that I will never amount to anything because I have depression. Of course it is temporary, and in the way back of my head I know this for sure, but I feel good for no one and nothing while it is there. I don’t know why I act so surprised when depression hits. I get all upset as if the meds should make me immune to it, which they don’t. They help prevent episodes to some degree and lessen the blow when (not “if”) they hit. Another hard part is that nothing really brings it on. I could be on cloud 9 with my life situation and think it is the end of the world.

It doesn’t help that I put enormous amounts of pressure on myself when I am low. I go through so many questions as if this is the first time it were happening to me, which it isn’t. In fact, I’ve lost count. “What if it is my current life situation that is making me depressed?” It isn’t, it’s a chemical imbalance. “What can I do to change my life situation?” This is important: NOTHING. Make NO big life decisions during this time. “I feel like I wouldn’t be able to function if it were only me and the kids” Well, it isn’t so thank God that you have Garth and go take a nap! “What if my meds don’t work anymore” Valid, but wait a few more days to call the Psychiatrist.

The waiting is hard because I never know how long the sadness will last. Sometimes it is a few days of blah and other times it is a week of sobbing. This time it was a week of blah with some crying. I slept most of the time in-between dropping the kids off at school and picking them up. I did some work, but it wasn’t my normal “hard-working” self – it took twice as long to get half as far. Darn.

Okay, so she’s back and happy trails to sadness…for now.

Today is a kind of anniversary. I was a junior at Westmont College and my boyfriend of over a year and I had mutually parted the day before. We had discussed marriage but I began to have such physical and emotional difficulties I became catatonic toward our relationship. I was in such pain I could not care for him the way I wanted to. He had an idea of the pain but I kept a lot of it from him. He also had doubts (understandably) so we parted amicably.

The day before the break-up, I had moved off campus to share a room that my friend Andrea rented from a professor and his family. (Sadly, that house – along with 13 other Westmont faculty homes – burned in the 2008 Santa Barbara Tea Fire). Moving off campus took me out of the community microscope and it was much easier to hide my pain. I was a shell of myself at 105 lbs. and I hadn’t slept in 3 months. I did what I could to keep my grades up but it was all crumbling. I talked to my parents daily about dropping out of school or committing suicide because I didn’t what was wrong with me and couldn’t fix it. I had been going downhill for months and no one had answers. I was so drained.

I remember walking up the street from the house and sitting on a curb, rocking back and forth. I was sobbing and unable to understand my broken body and mind. I prayed constantly for answers and healing and felt God was deaf. A Sociology professor drove by and just looked at me curiously as if he wanted to somehow help. After I had composed myself, I headed back to the house and called my parents. I usually talked to my mom but she wasn’t home. I feel that God used my dad, who was weary from the last few months of my sobbing phone calls. He said to hang up and call the campus physician and that if he had to drive to Westmont and physically take me, he would.

I called the health center and sobbed the whole time. The health center knew me well as I had so many physical ailments from whatever this was. The receptionist told me to come in immediately. When I went in, the doctor asked if we could try an SSRI anti-depressant that would help me deal with things until we could figure out what was wrong with my body. I went and had the prescription filled for Zoloft and went home to try it. I took it in the afternoon and felt the relaxing effects immediately. It was as if my body was starved for it. I went to sleep for the first time in so long and when I woke the next morning, I was actually hungry! I smiled for the first time in months as I ate a bowl of cereal without wanting to vomit.

As I continued to take Zoloft, I gained a little weight and I stopped crying daily. I didn’t worry about unnecessary things and I got a spark for life again. The physical ailments disappeared too. I was also seeing a counselor who helped me heal and move on with life. Everything had changed. All my plans and perspectives for the future had to be drastically altered – but all for the better. It was all part of the plan.

Don’t you love it when your mind wants to do one thing and your body is like, “It’s not going to happen, Jeeves?” Obviously, I am being facetious here because no one would choose the misery of a mental illness or any other life-altering disease. For example, you know you need to get out of bed and start the day but you are too terrified (for no apparent reason) to budge from the fetal position. Garth and many other people have no idea what this feels like but I can only faintly describe it as being scared for your very life. The heart is racing, sweating, adrenaline pumping, and overwhelming fear and panic consume the body – the body truly believes it is in imminent danger…for no rational reason.

Before I was diagnosed, I had some well-meaning but ignorant people of faith tell me that my heart was in the wrong place and that was why I was suffering so much. I was also told that I was sinning with all my worrying. Really? Thanks but no thanks for those bits of unsolicited and ill-advised statements of faith – as well intended as they were. And by the way, I was way past worrying – anxiety and panic are a whole other category. You see, with worry it is implied that there is a choice and I clearly was not choosing to be terrified of moving from the fetal position. Not to bag on people of faith (as I have faith too) but I only take advice when it comes from Psychiatrists and others who have walked a mile in my shoes. After the dust settled I was able to see God’s perfect love and provision through the situation and the people involved – even those who offered the unsolicited advice. They are the reason why I am so open about my mental illness as I want to help them better understand God through mental suffering.

What really was going on was not a matter of sin and was something out of my reach…the will of my body over and apart from the will of my mind. One doesn’t choose diabetes, asthma, cancer, depression, etc. Nor is it punishment inflicted by God. It is just something that happens because our bodies are not made perfect. Name one person that did not require medical attention at some point in his/her lifetime – I sure can’t. I needed medical help for my anxiety and God provided the blessing of physicians and medications. Once I had the medications, my body “cooperated” a little more with my mind. But, boy does it mess with your head for a little while because there was broken trust between your body and mind. You rely on your body to tell your mind when it is in pain. It gets a little confusing when you have to play the guessing game before getting a clear diagnosis. It takes time to get things back in the groove and for the mind and body to work together for the good of the whole. Somewhere in that messy process, I gained a profound awareness and renewed respect for the mind and body dichotomy.

The psychiatrist office I go to here in Murrieta is among the best care I have received since I was diagnosed with anxiety/severe depression. It has the most basic necessity any great psych office should have: a friendly receptionist who makes you feel normal no matter what. She is an angel and I have witnessed her kindness when diffusing several difficult situations. Keep in mind that the people who go to psychs are there for a reason albeit ADD, depression, OCD, anxiety, bi-polar, etc. I have been in some waiting rooms where the receptionists had a certain arrogance and I have to say that they are ticking off the wrong people. It is risky and just dumb to be mean to psych patients. I mean, who is to say who is medicated and who is not. And, more importantly, no one knows what one is capable of when not on medication. Not too smart. I am embarrassed to admit it but I have verbally unleashed on a rude receptionist. At the time I deemed it an appropriate reaction but after I was re-medicated, I was able to see how irrational I was. Oops.

As I wait to be seen by the Dr. I often look around the room and smile at other patients and they smile back as if there is an understanding of hey, you’re mental too? The ones that don’t smile back are usually first-timers without a diagnosis and have plenty of fear. I pray for those ones. The first few years of having a mental illness is the toughest. Then, once you get adjusted on a cocktail of meds and feel better about yourself, you can own it. My psych considers me a success story because I have “graduated” to only having to go see him every 4-6 months. I have been consistently balanced for about 5 years now.

Of course, the only reason I go to psych office is to get refills. Which means that at times I have waited until I was all out of meds before heading to the doctor. Once I waited for 45 minutes with about 8 other patients. I was okay for a little while because I was mentally diagnosing all of them without trying to stare too hard. Then the receptionist told all of us waiting that we would need to reschedule because an intervention was in progress that required all the available doctors in the office. Wow. There were 8 very unhappy campers in the office. I was in a panic because I hadn’t taken my happy pills in 2 days and people suffer when I don’t take my meds. I pleaded and finally got a Dr. to sign off on my cocktail before leaving the office.

Occasionally, just before leaving the doctor will hand me a goodie bag. The last time, it had samples of Lexapro and one would have thought I had won the lottery. I did – just not in the conventional way. That goodie bag was worth about $65 of brand-name pharmaceutical goodness! It doesn’t happen every time. In fact, every time I go to the psych something new and different happens so I’ll keep you posted.

More Psycho-babble, but an important part of mental illness. It is called “psychosomatic illness” (symptoms are caused by mental processes of the sufferer rather than immediate physiological causes) and it is a genuine illness. That’s how this whole thing started…or did the anxiety and depression come first? Chicken and egg dilemma. The body can be so whack.

Hard to believe that ALL of the following went away with an anti-depressant medication, but the proof is in the pudding. When this whole party began, I went to the Westmont campus doctor for loss of sleep and Melatonin was advised for an herbal sleep remedy. Then, I went back because my tummy was upset and he prescribed Bentyl. Then, Bentyl caused the acid in my stomach to go out of control and Prilosec was prescribed. The doctor was worried about my blood pressure and pulse because both were through the roof. Then I was losing weight like crazy because I couldn’t eat. I would try to eat and after 2-3 bites I would feel like throwing up. I tried to eat 2-3 bites as often as I could but I had NO appetite. I was going to the doctor every other day now with a new physical ailment: Weakness, trembles, lethargy, headaches, restlessness, inability to concentrate, sweating, and muscle tension. I was also regularly sick because my immune system was low. One day, I felt a golf-ball sized lump in my abdomen and went back to the poor doctor. He was genuinely concerned for that one and sent me to a gastroenterologist. I had an ultrasound and it was determined that the lump was the back of my spine. I had lost so much weight that you could feel right through me. Yikes!

I was called a hypochondriac (people that think that they are constantly experiencing medical illness, whether real or imagined) but it didn’t deter me. A few more visits to the doctor and he said that I was experiencing so much anxiety over my physical ailments that he wanted me to try Zoloft. I was hesitant – as I will explain in a later post – but when I took it, I slept and woke up feeling hungry. A few restful days later my head began to clear and all of the physical symptoms were gone. Like that. Of course, I had to work through a few side-effects but they were nothing compared to the peace I felt on meds. If any of these symptoms describe you…get help. Life is so much better when you don’t have to focus constantly on yourself and your body to survive. A family doctor can prescribe meds but if you want real precision, go to a Psychiatrist (they are MDs and are covered by ins.). Just my two cents based on personal experience.