I had no idea. No truly. NO idea.

I was doing a little research today, on a couple of my medicines, and I stumbled upon references to a depression questionnaire that medical professionals use to grade the severity of clinical depression. I don’t mean the down-in-the-dumps blues. I mean the bigtime stuff. The stuff that warrants, no necessitates, medical intervention in order to shake.

Yeah that kind of depression.

I say I stumbled onto a questionnaire… actually I found several different ones. Just for kicks, I decided to screen myself. Grade myself, if you will.

Mind you, this is after being on 2 different anti-depressants for about 3wks. Meds that, in all honesty, I was taking only because my doc told me to. NOT because I thought I needed them, but simply because I wanted to be a good patient and do what I was told. I looked up the usage of these two and found that when used in combination at the right dosage they were helping fibromyalgia patients with pain. That coupled with the fact that the doc had prescribed one of them to help me get to sleep… not for depression… made me feel so much better about taking them, if you know what I mean.

Anyway. I almost maxed out every single screening and questionnaire there was. No kidding. Severe depression was the result on every single one.

Do WHAT?!

Were they wrong? Did I somehow mess up and answer something wonky and skew the results? Are they flawed? What in the world?!?!

Nope.

Thing is, despite the fact that I have felt -emotionally and mentally- better in the last 2-3 wks than I have in I-don’t-know-how-long, apparently I truly AM still “severely clinically depressed”.

Talk about an eye-opener. I honestly, truly had NO idea that I was not ‘normal’. Ok, scratch that. I’ve known for years and years I’m not ‘normal’. What I mean is I had no idea that the way I feel about myself and the way I live day-to-day emotionally/mentally speaking was depression of any kind, let alone “severe depression”. That’s what I mean.

Turns out, I’ve been living with severe depression for a little over 20 years… probably 23 or 24. I’m not quite 30. You do the math.

So basically? I don’t have a clue how the majority of folks have been feeling/living. I don’t have a clue what is normal. I’m not “getting back to normal” so much as I am just plain ol’ “getting normal”.

Now, you might think “well gosh! Didn’t her mom think something was amiss when she was depressed at 7 or 8, or even by her teens? SURELY her doctor at least would’ve noticed something was up…”

Yeah, not so much. For a start, I didn’t see doctors much growing up. Major illness or something requiring a cast or stitches warranted a dr visit and well… none of those happened very often. Then there’s my mom.

See, my mom and I are a lot alike. A lot. It’s more likely than not that SHE would also come up depressed on a screening. I won’t say with 100% certainty because she might take offense to that, but knowing what I know of her… if she answered honestly… yeah it’s likely.

And here’s the kicker… Mom doesn’t “feel depressed” or see herself as depressed either. Know why? Cause she is “normal for her”. That is, she feels no different now than she ever has.

Catch that?

Yup. It’s a strange world we’ve been living in, though it does not seem the least bit strange to us. This, (that we know as “just life”), being the strange world is what is strange. Just the idea that the way I feel could actually be different, be BETTER is strange.

Matthew being depressed doesn’t come as a surprise per se, and I’m not even kicking myself in the rear too much for not catching it and doing something about it sooner. THAT is, in and of itself, a new experience for me. I’ve recognized that I really couldn’t have realized he truly needed medical treatment any sooner because I didn’t know better, and so I’m not beating myself up with guilt over not doing anything sooner. That’s simply amazing to me.

Always, ALWAYS, before even if I knew rationally that there was no way I could have been “at fault” or “guilty” about something with the kids (like not getting medicine sooner, for instance), I would still -despite totally and fully realizing it was not rational- feel tremendous guilt. I’m talking bone-crushing guilt. The kind of guilt that leaves you chewing yourself out in your mind for days, sometimes weeks, on end.

I feel like a brand new babe, learning feelings and experiencing things for the very first time. I’ve never seen life like this before. That probably sounds cliche, but think about it for a minute. Your earliest clear memory, I mean really clear memory, probably isn’t much further back than your sixth or seventh year. I remember a few snapshot-like moments from the time I was 3-5, but the memories don’t really become clear, fully defined, complete with emotions, until I was closer to 7.

Second grade. I remember fleeting moments of first grade, but not enough to hold onto and evaluate in terms of emotions and thought-processes at the time. That doesn’t come till second grade.

It was second grade that I talked about killing myself and of wishing I was dead. It was second grade when Mom took me to a counselor to make sure I didn’t really mean it. The counselor assured her I was just “throwing a fit” and offered the suggestion of encouraging the tantrums when I had them. The ol’ “reverse pyschology” ploy at work… if Mom wanted me to throw a really good fit, then I wouldn’t want to anymore and so the tantrums would stop.

They did… mostly. My behavior just morphed. I have been told that at times I appeared to be possessed because of the “pure hate” pouring out of my eyes. Mom did not know then, what I did not know with Matthew… that depression in children often manifests as anger, frustration, aggression, etc.

She also did not know (nor did I with Matthew) that depression in children can also cause the child to “be a loner”. I did not play with many other children. One or two at a time, at most, and frequently I played alone. Well, mostly I read, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, I can remember feeling and thinking in second grade pretty much the same as I do now. Or maybe I should say, have up till now. It’s like… I’m almost thirty, but I feel the same as I did at 17 or 18. I’m sure most people are that way. They don’t feel thirty, they just feel like themselves… they way they have for years and years, since high school is generally what people say. I can take that back further. To second grade.

Oh sure, as a kid I felt younger in that I was well aware I wasn’t an adult. I mean it’s not like I felt or thought in a mature manner as a 7 year old, not at all. What I mean is I have felt the same emotionally in terms of feelings overall since at least second grade. I’ve felt the same way about myself since at least second grade. I’ve felt the same way about other people since at least second grade. I don’t remember feeling any other way. I can remember how I felt and how I thought in second grade and it was no different than the way I answered those questionnaires and screening tests earlier today.

That’s what I mean.

So when I say I’m learning feelings and experiencing things for the very first time… I mean it. At least for the first time in my memorable history anyway.

The good news? The meds are definitely working. I know because if you’ll recall I said way up there that I “almost” maxed out the screenings. “Almost” being the operative word, here. Being honest I can say that a few weeks ago (or at any point in the last 20+ years) I would have maxed out the screenings. A few points lower today and I would’ve pegged out for “moderate depression”. So while I’m still falling in the “severe” range, it’s headed towards “moderate”.

It’s going to take some getting used to, for sure. I think I’m kinda scared of it, in a way. I’m hesitant to “let myself” feel different, if you will. Almost like… I’m afraid it might all be a dream. It’s like I’m being offered a butter rum lollipop…  and I’ve gotten a tiny taste, but I’m afraid to close my mouth around it lest the lollipop will be jerked back out of my reach, knocking teeth loose, leaving me battered, bleeding, and aching for that delicious buttery sweetness.

This is so weird. But then, weird is normal. Weird is what I know. It runs in the family.

I’m just sayin’.  =)

Posted: September 25th, 2008 under Miracles, just life, mildly "article-ish", the changing me.
Comments: none

I got a phone call from a longtime friend of mine on Monday. The first thing she said was, “Marie, we were in a tornado.” (I went by Marie in high school, so that’s what she is used to calling me.) Of course the first thing *I* said was “Oh no! Are you all ok?” After she assured me that her mom, all 4 kids, and herself were ok, so proceeded to tell me a story about God working miracles. I want to share.First a little background. My friend is a single, working mom to 4 kids. Her mom lives with her to help watch the little ones while she works…nights. She works as an aide in a nursing home while she’s waiting for the nursing school session to start in Sept, at which point she will be going to school to get her R.N. The town they live in is small, so the nursing home is not fully staffed overnight.

Sunday night she, one other aide, and an R.N. were on duty. Just about the time every one else left for the day, the sky turned dark and things went still. While some of the others at the home thought the stillness meant the predicted rainstorm was going to pass around them, my friend knew otherwise. She sprang into action, telling people there was a tornado coming. They started hustling getting the patients moved (most still in their beds, and many on oxygen) into the hallways.

Very early on, the R.N. was hit by glass and could no longer help, leaving the two aides to get the whole population to safety. My friend said she took one wing and the other aide took the other. She grabbed a pair of sunglasses and duct-taped them on. She grabbed a mask and put it on over her nose and mouth. Then she rushed around switching oxygen feeds to portable units, moving beds into the hallway and trying to direct the mobile patients into the halls.

There were a few in the lobby of the home, and the pressure and wind was such that my friend feared people getting blown or sucked away, so she sat down in front of the GLASS front door and braced herself to keep it from blowing open while the residents moved into the hall. When they were all out of the lobby, she too ran for the hall.

As soon as she got in the corridor, she says, the glass doors and windows all blew in. She said she could see huge pieces of glass flying into the corridor from either direction and knew she would be hit.

Just before the glass got to her, though… it turned to powder! I’ll say that again… it smashed up into glass DUST. So instead of being hit with giant shards of plate glass, she was hit with far, FAR less disastrous glass powder.

She was thanking the Lord, and praising God for being with her and helping her to know what to do and helping her to get it done and in protecting everyone.

The Lord held back the glass door blowing in until she was no longer sitting right in front of it. Because God gave her the sense to put on sunglasses and duct-tape them to her head, her eyes were protected from the bulk of the glass. Because He gave her the sense to put on a mask, she did not breathe any of the glass powder into her lungs. She was able to get all the residents safely into the hall, covered with blankets to protect them from glass before the glass started flying. None of the residents were injured at all, and all were later transported safely to nursing homes in neighboring towns. The R.N., while hurt, is ok.

When the storm was passed and my friend went outside to start the evacuation of the residents, she saw the home’s generator as well as a big tree limb on her car. The car was not dented, or even scratched.

She did have a lot of glass in her hair that she was still trying to wash out, and she had some glass slivers in her feet from glass getting in her shoes and then walking on it all night. She said her face felt kinda burned…like if she’d been in a sandstorm.

The biggest injury she sustained was some debri (glass?) in her eyes. Not a lot, she said, and one of the EMTs had given her some drops to put in them until she could see a doctor later in the week when the town got electricity back. She said her vision was a little blurry because of it, but she was oh so thankful for the Lord’s protective, guiding hand!

That call was such a blessing to me. Might sound funny, but if you could have heard the absolute EXCITEMENT in her voice when she was talking about how she KNEW God had been with her, helping her… About how she KNEW it was God that powdered all that glass, and that had helped her prepare for it with the glasses and mask. =) It was so cool to hear her so excited about that. I loved it!

I’ve been thanking the Lord for helping her, as well, of course! I love my daisytrippin’ friend, and hate the thought of anything bad happening to her. She’s had more than enough of that in the last 10 years as it is!

I ask for your prayers for her. For her eyes to heal,  and that the school (it was damaged pretty badly) will be able to have session so she can get her RN.

Posted: June 19th, 2008 under God's Guiding Hand, Miracles, Prayer Requests, faith.
Comments: none