And Then There's This....

I went to see my neurologist yesterday, and we talked about the fact that my headaches are *not* actually getting better.  I had kept stubbornly insisting that they would.  After all, I am out of my former negative work environment now, and all the bad stuff there is out of my life now.  Why wouldn’t things be getting better?

He started asking me some questions, and I knew where he was headed with it - depression.  I immediately bridled at the idea, but then he told me that whatever has screwed up my brain to make me prone to migraines also means I am prone to depression. His phrase was that the two conditions frequently “walk hand-in-hand.” He is putting me on a very low dose of an antidepressant to help with the migraines since the same chemical mechanisms are involved.

I left his office, and I felt like an utter failure.  Everybody I know is on antidepressants, I think.  Hell, just the teachers are probably keeping the American pharmaceutical industry afloat.  Two other doctors have talked to me about going on them, especially after my surgery and when my stress levels were so high my blood pressure was spiking to dangerous levels.  I have resisted.  I kept feeling like, you know, my life isn’t so bad.  I have a family that loves me.  I have a home and pets and friends.  How can I be depressed?  What right do I have to it?  (Which makes no flipping sense, I know, but that's how I felt.)  I need to just pull myself together is all. If I just refocused myself or change this external factor or add this new routine, I was going to be fine.  

But it really hasn’t been, and I am increasingly thinking that maybe I'm not.

I was sick about it all day, mad and looking for some way out of what I saw as a personal failing.  But I kept thinking about it.  I thought about the questions he had asked me.  Was I withdrawing from people?  Had I lost interest in things I used to enjoy?  Was I tired all the time?  Was my sleep irregular?

Yes.  Yes, yes, and yes.

I looked up a list of symptoms online.  I was really doing it more to prove to myself that this is *not* depression more than any other thing at this point, that while I might have a few of the signs that there were certainly others much more serious that would show I was not dealing with this. This is just life.  This is just teaching life.  This is just life after 40.  Whatever.  Yeah.  That didn’t work at all.  Flipping internet.

Am I frequently irritable?  Yes.  Apathetic?  You bet. Mood swings?  Like a damn carnival ride. Panic attacks or anxiety?  Checkity-check-check-check.  On and on.

And it’s been this way for about three years now that I can objectively measure.  Maybe longer.  

That’s when it hit me like a hammer.  Is this what’s wrong?  Has this been why I never seem to get anything done now, why every weekend I am just on the couch reading or sleeping?  I haven’t applied for an out-of-country summer program in a couple of years.  Thinking about the effort involved makes me too tired to fool with it.  I make plans to clean the house, to make sourdough, to start a stained glass project, to do anything but sit with a book, and by the end of the day, I find that I simply haven’t, but despite all that nothing, I’m just as tired.

I don’t write anymore.  I don’t keep up with my friends.  I don’t craft anymore.  I don’t workout anymore.  I don’t practice the piano anymore.  Everywhere except at school, which oddly seems to be less affected by this, I just sort of….am.

Yesterday, I was angry about it.  Just one more stupid thing wrong with my stupid body, just one more way nature has found to mess me over. When I woke up this morning, though, I felt a little differently.  If this *is* the problem (and remember he is giving me a low, low dose of the medicine to help with the migraines), is there then hope?  Can I get back to a place where I don’t have to feel so bad all the time?  Can I get back to a place where I do things again?

I guess we will just have to see.