April 15, 2004

• Who am I trying to kid?

  I’m venting here, just to let you know.  No alarm is called for;
  no commisseration (“poor baby” bullshit) is appropriate.  SuSu
  just smacked into the wall, but that’s happened before.  It
  doesn’t hurt the wall.

  I’m down today, depressed.  That may well be “only” brain
  chemistry.  Those are the ABCs I’ve been learning and passing
  along lately:  it’s All Brain Chemistry.  But I feel it all
  over: body, mind and spirit.  I am DOWN.

  As I said, intellectually I know it may be nothing more than brain
  chemistry.  I’m bipolar Type 2, the kind where the lows can be
  extreme but we’re “hypomanic,” never dangerously, wildly manic as some
  of my dear friends get sometimes.  (   Yeah, you know who
  you are.)  With the chronic fatigue part of this damned disease,
  ME/CFIDS, it wasn’t until
  recently that anyone considered me bipolar.  The depression
  diagnosis was made when I was a preteen, but chronic fatigue can mask
  mania, making it look like normal activity, a remission of the
  depression.  That it is, from my point of view.  I enjoy
  being manic.  Don’t you?

  To me, it doesn’t feel like brain chemistry.  Mania feels like
  energy and enthusiasm.  Depression feels like hell.  I don’t
  question the mania, wondering where the hell it came from.  I do
  think about why I feel miserably depressed and there are usually things
  to explain it, even if they are specious rationales after the
  fact.  Until I started questioning my questioning today, telling
  myself I don’t really need a reason to be depressed because depression
  is my diagnosis, I felt I knew where it was coming from: failure.

  I flopped, fell short, did not live up to my expectations.  I have
  been making that drive down the valley two or three times a week since
  Greyfox moved back into town.  Before that, I rode along with him
  driving, which is even more stressful.  I was committed to go
  again today, to take him to the meeting tonight since his throw-out
  bearing is getting worse and this weekend is the soonest that Mike the
  mechanic can get to it.  When he phoned me last night I begged off.

  My chief complaint for days and daze has been shortness of
  breath.  I take the Singulair and guaifenesin every night, and use
  the albuterol inhaler when I can’t breathe in the daytime.  If I’m
  not vigilant I overuse the inhaler.  It’s not supposed to be more
  often than every four hours, but sometimes the shortness of breath is
  more often than that.  When I am desperate for breath, I take
  ephedrine and guaifenesin combined.  They are small pills and I
  break each one in half, taking no more than 12 1/2 mg of ephedrine, no
  more than twice a day.  This is OTC stuff and some people take
  them two or more at a time but I know my body, and half a one twice a
  day is all I can safely take.  It’s risky business, given the
  state of my kidneys and heart.

  That med routine detailed in the foregoing paragraph is for the days I
  spend at leisure at home.  When I’m going to town or up on the
  roof or out to do physical work, I fortify myself first with half a tab
  of ephedrine and guai.  I have only had to do that (this year)
  since the willow trees started blooming this spring.  It’s an
  annual thing.  Pussywillow pollen is one of the banes of my
  existence, and when the poplars called cottonwood locally start to
  bloom and shed pollen (soon), it will get worse.  Many of my
  allergies have changed over the years, some going away and other new
  ones developing, but tree pollen allergy has been with me since
  childhood.  Medicating for it has been the cause of a lot of
  trouble for me.  Docs prescribed Coricidin for me decades ago, and
  that was the origin of my asthma.  Until the Coricidin changed my
  brain chemistry, the pollen made me sneeze; afterward it makes me
  wheeze, gasp, and go faint.

  There is nothing new about any of this.  These allergic reactions
  to airborne pollen, mold spores and other pollutants have made spring
  and fall and windy weather and volcanic eruptions and trips into cities
  dangerous and uncomfortable for me most of my life.  Somehow,
  though, in between allergy seasons I somehow forget all that.  I
  begin to function at a more nearly normal level and start to expect it
  of myself.  Then when I fall flat on my face I get disappointed
  with myself.  It’s stupid, but I’m trying not to get disappointed
  with myself over my stupidity.  There’s no profit in that, on top
  of everything else.  I’m a sickie and I know it.  I guess
  there is some survival value in my ability to forget it each time a
  remission comes and I get to act normal for a while.  But dammit
  it is hard each time my body’s limitations jump up and bite me in the
  butt.  I guess I need the reminders so I don’t just keep going and
  run myself into the ground.  And maybe I need these tears to wash
  the pollen out of my eyes.

  I cultivate a positive attitude.  Sometimes the seeds germinate
  and sometimes what I get is crop failure.  Today I’m
  depressed.  But I’m staying home, not going to that meeting
  tonight to vent.  I’ll vent here and save the rest for the Double
  Trouble meeting on Sunday.  I’ll call my sponsee at the rehab
  ranch after I post this and try to explain why I won’t be there today
  to help her with her step work.  Then it’s back to Couch Potato
  Heaven for me, and some pointless diversion to take my mind off my body
  for a while.  Thanks for listening.
  

  • 3:36 pm
  • 8 Comments