Good grief. Has it really been since October since I blogged?
Actually, that is not too surprising. I think those of you who know me are aware that October and November were two of the darkest months I have ever suffered through while battling depression. Most of 2012 was like that, actually. I didn't much feel like writing. Heck, I didn't much feel like getting out of bed. Then sometime around the end of November, I started climbing out of the abyss. It wasn't really through anything I did, although I was pushed (forced really) into getting help and I started talking to a new therapist in December and started seeing a new psychiatrist in January. More though, it was that things just eased around the end of November. It never feels like things will ease when I'm in the midst of it. It is hard to describe to someone who has never been through it the complete loss of hope and the utter dominance of despair.
I used to think, as many people do, what a selfish act suicide is. Now I understand. I even defend people who do it, people who can't defend themselves anymore because they have passed on. May no one misunderstand me and think I mean that suicide is a valid answer. I don't believe it is. But I've been there several times now and each time it has seemed to me as the only answer to the pain and I understand now the bleakness, the desperation that would drive someone to do it. I can say with complete honesty that if I did not have the support system I have tethering me to life even when I most want to escape it, I don't think that I would be here.
This last time, my Aunt Joanne - one of those "aunts" who is a lifelong family friend rather than an actual blood relative - read between the lines of my Facebook posts and started an intervention from all the way in Roanoke. Between she, my mom, and my sister, I was pushed into getting help that I didn't really want to get at the time because it seemed pointless, and I was so tired. The tiredness that comes with depression is an entity into itself. So thank you, Aunt Joanne, Mom and Kelly for not letting me give up.
I am working with a new psychiatrist. She says she doesn't want to label me "Bipolar" or "Bipolar II" or what have you, but that I do definitely have a mood disorder. She is focused on finding a different mood stabilizer, because she thinks that will be more key than the antidepressant. I could tell she was surprised, although she was very professional about it, that the psychiatrist with whom I used to work had only tried me on two mood stabilizers in the 7 years since he reached the "Bipolar II" diagnosis. His focus was much more on the antidepressant.
So, my new doctor is slowing getting a new mood stabilizer into my system and slowly weaning me off the old one. I cannot tell you how excited I am because I have had a very significant weight gain since going on Seroquel and my doctor thinks it is absolutely correlated with the medication. Seroquel can not only directly impact a weight gain, but also can cause symptoms of false hunger so you feel hungry much more frequently than you should. If this isn't bad enough for someone who already struggles with her weight, Seroquel also causes fatigue, so working on the weight issue is even more difficult because I am so freaking tired all of the time. I seriously can sleep 11-12 hours a night and still feel like I need more. So I am very, very excited to be getting this stuff out of my system over the next month or two and hopefully regaining some energy and being able to refocus on losing some weight because I am not healthy at all right now.
On another bright note, I am finally enjoying my cochlear implant again and I have not even been wearing my hearing aid these last few days. Not wearing my hearing aid is huge. Huge! I still have a looong way to go, but I am wanting to work on it instead of wanting to yank it out and grind it up in the garbage disposal.
So that's it for now. Thanks for reading my blog!
