Reclusive, depressed, or sick?

Nope, just SAD. I finally figured it out and ordered a light therapy lamp. I had one when I lived in New England and I know it will help. I wrote most of this post before I figured it out, though 🙂 Symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) include everything I’ve been feeling for the last 6 weeks …

Since coming home from the hospital, I’ve spent a lot of time alone in the apartment. Well, alone with the cats and the TV. I’m not really interested in hanging around people and being social. My friends here are lovely and I enjoy their company – but not now. Since the retina tear, I’ve also been basically sitting around because I’m not supposed to do anything strenuous and to avoid having my head down. The quiet time alone feels like vacation.

I’m not sitting around moping or feeling sorry for myself. I dose off in the chair frequently and am really tired all the time even though I’m getting lots of good sleep at night. But I have that deep chest cough and facial pain, which usually means a sinus infection. I’ve had both for weeks. Am I depressed? Maybe. Actually, I know I am and I’m already on an anti-depressant which has helped enormously.

My shoulders hurt just being attached to my body. After propelling myself around on mostly carpeted hallways, my arms are tired and the shoulders hurt more, and my legs are often throbbing from being down for hours instead of elevated in my lift chair. But mostly it’s the idea of having to get myself back home after being out for something like working on the community puzzle in the library or going to Bingo or exercise class that tires me out before I even go.

I don’t feel lazy staying at home. It’s really just taking care of myself. I can sometimes find someone who can help me push my way home again – but so many people use walkers or scooters and can’t actually do much to help. So it’s up to me. I’m more than ready for the power chair.

And that chair will let me get outside in the sunshine much more easily than I can do now. I can’t wait.

I fell apart today

I hear a lot of people telling me that I’m strong and so focused and so determined. Maybe. But it comes at a high cost. Today I fell apart in therapy, grateful that for some reason it was the only day ever that my therapist and I were the only ones in the rehab room.

I’ve been pretty seriously depressed for months, and in denial of the toll it was taking on me to be strong and focused and determined. I didn’t feel that I had a choice. No one is here to do things for or with me, things like self-care and home-tending and figuring out how to get from Point A to Point B. Oh, I had help from home health and out patient therapy, and I hired someone to help me early on with showers and laundry, etc. But when roadblocks popped up, I found I could do more than I thought I could do. And it’s important to me to be as independent as possible for as long and for as much as I can do.

But the reality is that I’m in a wheelchair with feet that don’t work right. My right ankle hasn’t improved in ten months and may never get better. I can walk 300 feet or so but that’s not all that much – though it’s certainly better than Day One when I was unable to stand up. Yes, there’s been improvement. But it still sucks.

When I’m depressed, I eat, and over the past 10 months have managed to regain all the weight that I worked so hard to lose to get me qualified to have spine surgery. At first I wasn’t sure if my physical discomfort was just because I was in a chair and not moving as much as I had before. That’s certainly part of it. But I’m eating too much of the wrong things. I know how to do this. I’ve done it over and over and over in the past. Let’s face it – I’m not feeling joy in a whole lot of things right now, and food brings comfort even when it causes discomfort.

And I’m lonely and terribly isolated. I love my apartment and have NO regrets about moving here, but I’im one of the younger residents and I really miss being with people my own age. I had some friends over last week for a lunch and visit, and I loved seeing them so much that it really drove home that those visits were few and far between in the last months.

At my request, my doctor put me on an anti-depressant about a month ago and I’ve asked the therapy people for recommendations of people I could talk to about the huge life changes I’m dealing with. Of course, getting to them won’t be easy but not much is these days.

I know, whine whine whine, poor me, you can do it. Yes, I can. I can deal with all of this. But not today. Today I want to cuddle a kitty and eat cookies and cry a little. I’m allowed. Because tomorrow I have to get up and keep going.

Report from today’s doctor visit

I saw my primary care doctor today for the first time since mid-December to discuss bilateral upper arm/shoulder pain. As expected, I couldn’t get on the scale since there was nothing to hold on to, but that wasn’t a problem. Blood pressure was excellent (112/60) with slightly elevated temp. She concurred with my self-diagnosis of biceps tendonitis from overuse. Pain started after I got my new AFO’s which I put on every day with lots more walking, which puts extra pressure on the arms using the walker. I’m already taking a strong anti-inflammatory for arthritis which she wants me to continue, adding Flexoril to help relax the muscles, and she put through orders for additional therapy for the shoulders.

My earache is because of fluid on the ear but it’s not infected. It’s bad allergy season for me right now, which isn’t helping since I’m allergic to all the flowering things. I’m to make sure I take Flonase every day which I’ve been doing but not very regularly. The cough will also benefit from Flonase and a return to the hated Netipot.

I’ve also been prescribed Cymbalta as an anti-depressant, which I think is needed. This has been a very long eight months and I’ve had a harder and harder time staying positive and motivated. The medicine will help me get to a better place after I give it time to get in the system. I’m starting with the “old person” dose but it can titrate up if needed.

We also discussed a conversation I need to have with therapy about walking on my own in the apartment with a walker. I wasn’t allowed to do this before, but at some point, I need to be able to do it, so what needs to happen to make that possible? Feeding the cats and cleaning up their litterbox (and cat vomit) are best done from a chair to minimize fall risk, but walking to the kitchen or out to the porch shouldn’t be hard to do. I haven’t been close to falling and have been more worried about just being tired and needing to sit down. This shouldn’t be a problem in the apartment, unlike the hallway that has no chairs. Something for me to bring up with PT tomorrow.

Today was hard

I ate 8 cookies today. I’ve hardly seen 8 cookies in 8 months, but today they just kept going into my mouth as I ate in a fog. I know cookies are not the best choice but I ate them anyway. Now I feel sick to my stomach and so very sad that I sabotaged myself this way.

I’ve been faithfully following Noom since January 1, and lost 55 lbs, though those last 4 have been bouncing on and off. But I don’t want them to bounce back, I want them to stay gone and move below that. So I started thinking about what else was going on with me.

I hurt. My back feels like someone is stabbing me with a hot poker in the middle of my butt due to severe spinal stenosis. Basically, nasty arthritis has closed in on the spinal column and restricted the space so the pressure causes pain. Plus there is a weirdo horn-like bone spur growth that isn’t helping. I’ve been dealing with this for months and am actually scheduled for two neurotomies in the next 2 weeks, one for each side, which will give me some serious relief. But for now, driving two miles down the road to the grocery store hurts.

My right knee has also been giving me trouble for almost 2 months. I had knee replacements 7 years ago and they’ve been good as gold, but now I’m feeling those stabbing pains on both sides of the front of the knee. I’m limping and walking hurts, but then, doing nothing hurts too. I’ve been trying to get in as many steps as I can but the idea of hopping on a treadmill makes me cringe.

This strange coronavirus time is wearing on me. I’m tired of just going to work and coming home, doing little else to avoid being around people who aren’t wearing masks. Many of the rewards I had set up for myself at the beginning of Noom dont’ work now – I would kill for a full body massage and have a gift certificate for one on the fridge – but I don’t think it’s safe to go. I used to enjoy eating out, especially ethnic food, but cooking for one doesn’t make that interesting. I want to GO somewhere and DO something. I want to get in the car and drive (which hurts at 2 miles so just go figure how a longer trip would work) to see something different.

I want a vacation from work but can’t figure out what I would do with the time if I had it. I’m sick of salads and have discovered wonderful Evol frozen dinners that are comfort food but have too many calories for me to be enjoying as often as I’m fitting them in. I’m tired of reading little articles, though I still plow through daily weighing, food logging, and drinking water.

But I’m really scared that I can’t do this. I have a great history of losing big amounts of weight when I concentrate and then it seems that if I blink, the success disappears and I’m back where I started. I can’t do that this time. I won’t do that.

I need a hug.

Overwhelmed, Depressed, Sad and Angry

The second presidential debate is on tonight but I don’t know yet if I will watch it.  I just don’t know how much more of this garbage I can take – the economy is tanking, my retirement money is flushing down the tubes, prices are up, homes are being foreclosed, jobs are unstable, stress levels are through the roof – and the presidential campaign is getting nasty, with 4 weeks to go.

I WANT THEM TO TALK ABOUT THE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTER.

Not about people they each knew 20 years ago.  Not about being a POW.  Not name-calling and mud-slinging, defaming and undercutting each other. They all care about this country or they wouldn’t have put themselves through the wringer of public scrutiny.

Obama and McCain have plans to take us forward out of this mess, directions and goals for the next four years.  They are radically different in some ways, similar in others.  They have different styles, different priorities, different styles.  But the more time they spend throwing mud at each other, the more they cover themselves with it.

We need better than that.  We need integrity and to be treated with respect. People are hurting, people are scared.  Desperate people who deserve to be told what each candidate would really do, how they are different from the other one and from the idiot government we have now.  If you’re so good that we should vote for you, then you should be able to sell yourself without trashing the other person.

After all, when this is all over, I expect to see the government people work together to actually FIX things.  It will take lots of people in all areas and levels of government to pull us out of this morass.  The more you are angry and defaming the other side, the harder it will be to do that.

AND THIS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY.

It hurts my head and my heart to watch the news now.  And that reminds me of just after 9/11, when we all were both obsessed and traumatized by getting too much information.  We needed more more more even though what we heard was repetition of the same analysis and commentary.  But I had a very hard time pulling away from it then, and from the Katrina coverage, and now from this.  I want to know but I don’t want to be continually bombarded by failed banks, stock market failures, angry politicians, and Sarah Palin.  I want her off my radar except when portrayed by Tina Fey on SNL.

Make it stop.  My head hurts.  It’s going to be a long few years; don’t make it worse now.