Alikat,
You're the CareGiver and what you need is for someone to take care of you right now. having been a major alcohol abuser for donkey's years I know from memory( what's left of it..)that only one thing really matters to an addict. SELF self self. I couldn't take care of my wife when I was an addict. I didn't take care of my wife, my son or my sister or my friends (I lost most of my friends but now have opened some channels with some of them again - those who are the most forgiving anyway...) and I can take care of them now that I've been sober for 10 years ( stopped boozing in 93 and went to AA, stopped abusing my chronic pain meds in 1998).
What I'm saying here is that your husband needs to get into the AA programme because he can't alter his life and his attitude to you until he is aware that he's out of control when he's drinking. He'll fall and pick himself up but he must keep going back to AA until he "gets" it. As I know, it's almost like being alone to live with an alcoholic/addict. That's too much for even you, The CareGiver, to put up with. God knows how much of your present lapses into depression are to do with HIS addiction. Does he go to AA now that he's had 6 months of dual counselling with you???
For every CareGiver there's a "Baby" out there who is quite willing to let you give your ALL. If you drive your engine at 120 mph all day and night then you have to expect your "piston rings" to melt into the cylinders. Take your lead foot off the accelerator, Alikat. Time for you to concentrate on a huge self-maintenance programme.
And let us know how you're going to alter this set of circumstances you're in now. You're making me anxious wanting to know when you're going to lift the weight from your shoulders; you're always too young to submit to a Granny Stoop...
Rosie,
When you go to court for the divorce will you settle for shared custody or insist on you being the sole custodian? If he's already making threats about huffing and puffing and blowing your house down then you might want to document all this violent stuff and get yourself a Legal Aid lawyer to make a clear case for you being the sole custody parent and only giving him visitation rights, supervised or alone?? If he is scaring you then why not think about getting a Restraining Order. He can't just bully his way around you with impunity. Get his weirdness on record!
Suzy,
Haven't heard from you for a while. Are you okay?
What I was trying to say is that it's not good for me to fall apart whenever I see something sad in public, even knowing that the situation is only a mild aberration in an otherwise very human life; it's not criminal to lose one's temper in the supermarket or to be drunk and freezing on the sidewalk. Okay, so I'm hypersensitive when I'm prone to depression and these little sights and sounds had a tendency to bowl me over. Thanks to SSRIs I can be more "mature" about my reactions to everyday street miseries - ones that should have "no consequence" in my mood really. Prozac has just taught me self-defence techniques that I didn't have before I started using it.
Gabs,
I looked up Mirtazapine and it's a tetracyclic anti-dep. It's a bit like Effexor since it has SSRI and NERI but, somewhat paradoxically, it has a sedative effect also. The article I read gives a mild warning about the extra-sedative effect it has when combined with opiates. The lowest dose is 7.5mg. The highest is 45mg. There is instance of weight gain, but I didn't read anything about nightmares... why don't you call the chemist at the hospital and ask him/her to please tell you about the drug; I know that you might get short shrift by trying to get a clear description from your consultant over the phone. Why didn't he/she tell you about the drug when he/she prescribed it for you??
Your son cares deeply for his Mum and her illness but his advice to drop the meds is a bit too radical. I know he and his sister want you to "go back" to being the way you were and that taking away the chemicals "must be the answer". The thing is you're dealing with a tough illness and the fact that it's not 'simple', like Mono or whatever, makes your son and daughter (husband?) non-plussed. "Mommy was Mommy just a while ago and now she's completely different and we don't like it!" Of course not. They don't get it. They must learn about MDD.
By the by, is this happening to you before or after menopause?? Tall order if it's all happening at once. How about seeing a female MD?? More sympathy. Mister Consultant (the ones I knew in England/Ireland) might not be the best, most sympathetic ear for such a complex set of deficits.
Hang in.
OXO
Suzy,
I think that Ava has her finger on the real meaning of 'broken'. But it doesn't really apply to chemical imbalance which we all suffer from. What it does say is that the experience of falling into MD/BP or MDD 'breaks' the mould of the old Self and forces us to look at alternative thinking and habit-making in order to make a 'new' more workable Self.
I know that once I found myself the first few times scuttling around in the black hole, slack-jawed with fear, I began to understand that I had to look into myself, at my core-beliefs, my habitual thinking patterns and, somehow, 'design' a more honest Patrick. Yes, it has taken years and I don't really believe that the renewal process ever ends. It's the journey not the destination.
Taking meds regularly and adjusting them under supervision as you ( and I)do gives us the 'space' to re-think this newer Self. What do you think? I know your glib psych said "broken" in the sense of less viable than a non-broken you but what he's missing is the point that a newer, different you, coping with the altered state, is quite possibly a more mature and wiser entity than the un-broken you.
Saying "broken" in the sense of seized engine of a car and now "useless" is utter nonsense. I would rather be a 'thinking' depressive, a 'working' depressive than a mindless sheep in a field with nothing to do but scoff grass all day...
I'm not trying to make light of BP, Suzy, I know how horrifying it is for the sufferer. I'm saying that you see more deeply into human nature with this experience and that is a compensation.
Sorry if this sounds half-assed but I'm struggling to understand what it is to be beyond MDD and suffer from BP.
Gabs,
Did you get the Lofrepramine from another Md? Why can't you phone him/her and see if he'll advise you to go back on them. Maybe I missed something in your posts but why haven't you been taking your morphine?? What is the point of 4 days worth of the Mirtaz? Are you supposed to call in for more now that you're not an inpatient?? To whom if not to the geezer who prescribed them originally?? They're covered under the National Health aren't they?
It may all look like crap right now but you'll come out of it into a new day. Never mind the going out for now, Gabs, just dry your eyes and sit on the floor and breathe in slowly (count of 4) and hold it. Now breathe out equally slowly (count of 5). Repeat until calmer. Do that over and over with slow, deliberate counts in your head. Feel the oxygen going in and the CO2 going out. Empty your lungs of the toxins and feel them leaving you. Feel the oxygen going in and through to the blood and into your muscles. If you get dizzy, lie down for a minute on the floor until it passes and sit up and do it all over again. Squueze those lungs and inflate those lungs. One after the other. Again and again until you feel the calm coming into your brain.
I think this episode you're having will end when you're back on meds you trust and when you're taking your chronic pain meds. Call your MD. Or email him. Or his secretary. Don't take anything you're not totally confident in...ask your doctor.
I'm a believer in chamomile tea and thick soups. Try not to brood over the stuff your 'scared' son was saying yesterday. Kids love you but he's working his own agenda also. He may be mixing up his 'help' motives??
Your life hasn't 'ended up' at all. This is not permanent, Gabs, there's help in meds and live groups and this site. Don't go quiet. Keep talking in here
oxo
Gabs,
Josie says that the IM should be open to either system - IBM or Apple and all you have to do is make sure that you Pop-Up Blocker is switched off for the DC site. Make it a Trusted Site if you have such a possibility in your Security Programme. I have no idea about Mac. never used one...
All that 'shocks' and shortness of breath sounds to me (not a doctor!) like yer basic withdrawal symptoms from morphine. Slap a patch on and keep breathing.
oxo
MAT,
Nice to hear from you again. You had us worried there... You know it took me a month for the Prozac to kick in for the first time. During those days I was convinced that this new wonder drug (1989) was another BS story perpetrated by the pharmaceutical magnates. And then, pow, I was on the ferry from Ostend to Dover or wherever when I was assailed by a couple of nitwits calling me a "Bl...in' Yank" which normally would have got my goat and sent me into a tailspin about the degeneration of the human species into idiocy (I'm Irish with a mixed Irish Canadian accent but more Irish than anything; I guess it was because I was smoking Pall Mall cigarettes, they stink to the anglo nose but ...who knows) and I just sat there and ...it rolled off me like water off a duck's back!! The Prozac had kicked in!
Hi Kera7,
Nice to have you on the site here. You joined in dec. 2006! maybe all the toing and froing from your place to your boyfriend's place is trying to tell you something? Nobody really interesting out there because your mind isn't really in it, just your body and then, not much going on back at the boyfriend's place either (otherwise why wouldn't you stay? Gotta go. will talk some more tomorrow
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