down the rabbit hole

down the rabbit hole

i don’t really want to write. why’s that? it a story about how getting a few ducks in row, and how just few incidences can send me scurrying down the rabbit hole. it’s a story i have to tell because i need to get it out of me. kept inside of me, it’ll just fester and get even more ugly. even though i will feel shame telling the story, at least it will be out. i also hope that someone else will read it and benefit from it.

those of you who read my last post, know that my wife has 1x1x2 mass near her knee. think of about 1/3 of a length a regular size plump hot dog. she got the results of the mri less than three days ago. it had scary words like suspicious and liposarcoma, sarcoma meaning cancer.

mri can only look for typical patterns. just because a pattern matches doesn’t mean it “matches”. For instance, i could give you one of 100 cards with shades of green. just because i gave you one of the cards, doesn’t make it a certainty that I gave you the true green. they all look green, but there’s only one true green.

just because Mary’s mass looks like a liposarcoma doesn’t mean it is. if may be green, but not the true green. it still is very possible that even though it looks like a liposarcoma doesn’t make it liposarcoma. mri are still too imprecise.

the next day, we took as a day of distraction. we went for a sunrise hike on a local trail, went to a movies in the afternoon and took advantage of coupon our real estate friend gave us and went to dinner. We had a pretty good day, having a good and fun time at each undertaking.

then, came the next day. i came face to face with my nemesises fear, doubt, uncertainty, sadness, disappointment, just to name a few. yesterday, they kicked my ass. that started a tailspin.

the tail spin continued in a weird way.

i was passing on some math riddles to a friend with a degree in mathematics. I passed the on for fun and entertainment. my friend felt lest than because they couldn’t figure out the riddles. I didn’t like that what I did troubled my friend. i quicker felt less that myself, feeling responsible for my friends struggle. all too quicker, i called myself a “loser”. it seemed like a huge leap but pointed to inherent instability.

and who would of thought things would get worse…

taking my nightly med, i stared down the openings of a vial to one of my meds. knowing the fatal dose, i made note that there wasn’t enough there.

nothing like that for a wake up call. not, but a week ago, things weren’t perfect but nowhere near unbearable. last night i contemplated my life.

that’s a precipitous fall in a very short time, in just a day, really. It also served as a wakeup called. It was face these feelings, no matter how scary or face the alternative of them controlling me.

I spent a lot of time conversing with friends, and getting real with myself. i gave name too the scary feelings. i talked about them. i talk about my precipitous fall. i talked about where I didn’t want to be. that day sucked but far less that the previous day’s suck.

sure, i still feel fear, doubt, uncertainty, sadness, disappointment, and the anguish of waiting. now, i choose to look them in the eye and not run from them. thankfully and for reasons not completely understandable to me, that process robs them of their power.

please remember my relearned lesson that i’ve had to relearn over and over again: running for emotions makes no sense. escaping from them is an i possibility. stop, and look those scary emotions in their eyes. they are likely to flinch before you do.

a turn-hard to the right

in our last episode…i talked about the best i’ve felt in year sthanks to methylfolate. one thing i didn’t mention was a fear that i had that it might stop working. shortly after a move to the positive direction. guess what? my worst fears have been realized, a turn-hard right.

a turn

this a quick rundown on last week’s post. the basics are people who have the mthfr, like me, don’t process enough folic acid. folic acid partly breaks down into methylfolate which is a building block for many neurotransmitters. these neurotransmitters help the cells in the brain communicate. there is pretty good scientific evidence that a shortage of neurotransmitters partly contributes to depression. click here to see by last post and explore this more in depth.

a mthfr

a few years back, i had a genetic test done. one thing it showed i had the mthfr mutation. that’s not completely surprising since about one in three people have that mutation. if you add some appropriate vowels and consonants in appropriate places, you’ll see what i think of this mutation.

there otta be a law

there otta be a law… that antidepressants can not to be able to cause depressive symptoms. ineffective, okay; depressive, not so much.

let’s see, now we need to come up with a fair and equatable penalty. I got it! make the ceo of the company take a depression inducing drug for a matter of five years. then, they’d know what it feels like, as they can’t get out of bed for yet another day. that would teach them a lesson.

birthday blues

the sunday support group I attend ends on an up note where everyone gets the opportunity to find something good going on in their life. i said tomorrow was my birthday. I said that with utmost sincerity since i really felt joy about celebrating my birthday. this would be the first one in three years that i hadn’t found myself in a living hell. I went to bed with those same feelings.

new required coursework

i replied to shrew’s posts on the dishing out of shame.

it dawned on me, the quickest way to eliminate shame; make it a requirement that everyone take two quarters of mental disorder. they would have to take living with a mental disorder 101, and 102, if they still didn’t get it, they could successively take living with a mental disorder 201. if still didn’t work, they could move on to the. upper division courses, living with a mental disorder 301 and 401. if they haven’t got it my then, they are a lost cause and probably committed.

the synopsis would include, but not limited to:

• staying in bed and getting out just in time for significant other to come home, doing virtually nothing
• tiredness
• moodiness
• sleepless nights
• isolation (the intensity of this would increase as one progressed through the coursework, eventually excluding your family, best of friends and significant others)
• weekly trips to therapist
• monthly trips to the psychiatrist
• monthly trips to the pharmacist to pick up new drugs because
  the last script didn’t work
• heaps of self-doubt
• heaps of feeling like something is wrong with oneself
• despair (the lack of hope would increase as the coursework continued)
  thoughts of taking one’s own live
• potentially trying to take one’s own life (definitely, upper division course work)
• thoughts that the one’s own value is less than the dump of crap one did this morning
• at best, weekly showers
• making poor decisions about what’s best for oneself (intensity would increase with coursework)
• a chemical imbalance in the brain
• a serving of unresolved anger (this would become more prominent as coursework continued)
• the pressures from the outside world that says, “get over it.”
• the pressures from inside of oneself that maybe we’re (the royal we, mind you) are making this all up
• heaps of judgement and disapproval. (this would increase as coursework continued)
• hearing voices when nobody is around
• having those voices tell one to do irrational things ( upper division coursework )
• seeing things that aren’t there
• paranoia (increasing as continuing through the coursework)
• thoughts that everyone is working against oneself
• thoughts of “no one gets it.”
• a weeklong trip to the local psych ward (upper division coursework)

if you “got it”, you could take a test to show your knowledge in that particular area and potentially move to the next class. then again, maybe one would have to take the class again, in order to simulate the idea of cycles.

maybe that would be enough that ignorant people and society as a whole would pull their f*cking heads out of their ass and stop it with all this stigma-y (there i go again, making up words) bulls*hit.

bupropion follow-up

this a follow-up with my recent and seeming problems with bupropion.

med change? no. it sure feels like it.

since I started taking bupropion, i’ve always taken a multiple of 150 mg tablets. here’s a quick rundown.

• started at 150 mg
• moved to 300 mg
• tried 600 mg- side effects that I don’t recall
• back to 300 mg
• tried 450 mg– good results but i couldn’t stand the constant headaches and ear ringing.
• back to 300 mg.

that’s our problem-we’re big brained

i read and article in the daily mail recently and new research shows a strong correlation between depression and big brains. pretty interesting if you ask me.