Depression

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self – to the mediating intellect – as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme modes.
William Styron, Darkness Visible

I start to get the feeling that something is really wrong. Like all the drugs put together...can no longer combat whatever it is that was wrong with me in the first place. I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.

I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had. I am a sick, sick girl.

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation


I’m starting to slide into a cycle of depression again. I started taking anti-depressants once more, but I don’t know how much they help, really. I’m getting that pull-the-covers-over-my-head feeling again and I hate that. I hate how it makes me feel. I hate feeling on the verge of tears all the time. I hate feeling like the inside of my head is a boiling cauldron of rage. Feeling like this makes me want to scoop out my brains. When I’m like this, I can totally understand why some people commit suicide.

It's nearly impossible to explain depression to someone who's never experienced it. My husband has very little patience with me when I get like this, which makes me feel even worse. I feel guilty for feeling so sad. I feel guilty for being so angry all the time. I feel guilty because I know, when I'm like this, I'm making him very unhappy. I just wish I could explain it so that he'd understand, but I don't know if that's possible. He's never been depressed a day in his life and he can't understand why I can't just snap out of it. I can't explain that I don't want to feel this way, but I can't help it, I can't control it. He thinks I can, that I'm just being self-indulgent and whiny. It's very frustrating.

I’ve tried counselling, but I don’t have a THING to be depressed about. I don’t have any major issues, I wasn’t abused as a child, I’m not an alcoholic or the child of one, I don’t have any real crises. So why the fuck do I feel this way? Why can’t I feel better? Why do I always feel like I’m on the outside, looking in at all the normal, well-adjusted people? It fucking sucks.

I feel like I’ve spent my life running away from this feeling. I went to college, but dropped out. I moved back home, I moved back to western Massachusetts, I moved back home, I got married to someone I shouldn’t have married, I moved to Georgia, I got divorced, I went to college again, I moved, I changed jobs, moved again, changed jobs again…. It seems like I get into a really bad place where everything is really bleak and then I think, well, if I only did X, things would be better. And they are for a while, because I have something to take my mind off things. But inevitably, it all spirals downward again and I’m left feeling like I do today – like this sadness inside me has a physical weight. I can feel it pressing down on me, wanting to crush me, wanting to take over my brain and my life and I’m this close to letting that happen.

Sickies

The husband has a cold. Fan-freakin’-tastic. He was staggering around the house this morning, being all he-man, tough guy, I’m coughing up a lung, but by God, I’m going to work. I said, "Stay home." But no. He goes to work, an hour + late. I get a phone call an hour and a half later – “I’m going home.” Good call. If ANYONE can tell me why men are so fucking stubborn, I will gladly buy them a drink/candy bar of their choice. Maybe even both. I’m feeling generous. Ninety-five percent of the time, he’s a great guy. The other five percent of the time, he’s a dumbass.

Of course, the baby (the cutest baby in the world, by the way, just look at her)
is now coughing and has a temperature. And my eyes are burning and my ears hurt and I’m trying to ignore that weird upper lip thing that I always get just before a full-blown cold. I’m of two minds as to whether or not I should go to work, if I do get sick. If I stay home, I’ll keep the baby with me, and that’s not really staying home, that’s chasing around a one-year old while you feel like complete and utter shit. If I go to work, I’ll be miserable, but I’ll get paid. We shall see what tomorrow brings.

If Olivia gets this, her blood sugars will be all over the place. Of course, they are already. I need to tweak her basal rates, but I'm hesitant to do that tonight. She's just come back from four days with her father and since he thinks that Dunkin Munchkins and Lunchables are perfectly healthy fare, she's been running consistantly high. Fun. I need to stop being a putz and just download the freaking pump and meter software onto the PC. I kept putting it off because we were going to reformat, but we've been saying that for a year now and it has yet to happen. Oh, and if anyone out there has any influence with the pump/software people, tell them to make the next release Mac compatible. Tengubeddymudge.


I’m a little pissed. I changed my template and all my links went up in a puff of smoke. Those things are a pain in the arse to put into the code. I know, it’s only copy and paste, but it’s time consuming and boring. God forbid I should be bored.



Oh, and for my birthday, I’m getting myself this:






Isn’t it cool? Guess what it is.

100

My grandmother turned 100 years old on Saturday. She's in a great nursing home and we had a really nice party for her up there. My aunt and cousins flew in from Madrid, her neices came from Montreal and Virginia and one of her nephews came from Ohio for the party. It was pretty cool to see so many relatives. I have a pretty small family, but we still managed to rustle up about 30 people. The music lady at the nursing home even got my grandmother to sing along to You Are My Sunshine and My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean. It was pretty cool. I took some great pictures and now that I finally, FINALLY have my Mac back up and running, I'll try to post one or two.

I don't think I want to live to be 100, though. Not if I'm in the state my grandmother's in anyway. She can't really see or hear, she can't walk, she can't taste much and she can't remember anyone or much of anything. It's sad to see because she was always so alive and interested in so many things. Plus, I feel horribly guilty because I don't got visit her that often. It depresses me. I know - such a lame excuse. I'm a terrible person sometimes.

Sleepovers And A Totally Irrational Rant About Golf

Olivia is going to sleep over at a friend's house tonight. The last time she slept at someone's house, it wasn't a great success. She was supposed to call me at 11 p.m. with her bg reading and didn't. Tonight she will be instructed that she has to call me - this is her last chance. No phone call, no more sleep overs until spring.

I'm a little nervous about it. The family seems very nice and really eager to learn (this is the family that didn't invite O to the b-day party a few weeks back - big misunderstanding, the mother and I have since talked about it). I'm trying to figure out how much information to send without overwhelming them. I think the bare minimum, with every phone number I can think of. Glucagon, too, although that does tend to scare the crap out of some people. We've never had to use it (knock on wood, go outside, turn around three times and spit towards the East) and I stress that any time I hand that big red box to someone. Hopefully they won't freak.

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I'm going to see Harry Potter tomorrow and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it. I may be sitting ehre at my desk, typing on the computer, but inside, I'm jumping up and down and shrieking with glee. Glee, glee, glee!
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And now golf.

I hate golf. I think it is a stupid sport and no amount of debate/argument/persuasion/derision will ever get me to think otherwise. I've tried to play it and I suck. Suck like a Dyson vaccuum cleaner. Suck like Ross Perot's giant sucking sound. Suck like the pull of a black hole. Suck. My darling husband, though, thinks it's the best game going. He gets orgasmic over it. It's disgusting. He's going to play on Sunday, hopefully for the last time this season.

What bugs me the most is that it takes So. Freaking. Long. to play. Six, seven hours. It's fucking ridiculous. He's going to drive to Quincy, which is a good hour and half from our ouse, play golf (spit) for six hours, and then drive home another hour and a half. I'm not very good at math, but near as I can figure, he's going to be gone for NINE hours. On Sunday, one of only two days off a week that either of us gets, which means I'm left holding the baby. Literally.

Fanfuckingtastic.

No delivery

Olivia told me at 5:30 last night that she had a no delivery alarm. Ok, fine. She should have had a low reservoir alarm, but she failed to notice this. When I checked the pump's alarm history, it said a low reservoir alarm sounded at 6:30 A.M. The no delivery alarm had been going off since 3:30.

I hate to get pissed at her about her D stuff, but she's 11. She needs to take a little bit of ownership of this disease. If the pump alarms, she needs to tell me so that I can fix it. She has the pump set to vibrate so that it won't disturb class, but she's not paying attention to it when it goes off.

I need to figure out a way to fix this. I don't have time to check her pump several times a day to make sure there are no alarms being neglected. How do I pound it into her head that she has to start paying a little more attention? I'm perfectly willing to change sites, reservoirs, tubing, keep the log book up to date, track trends, figure out new basal rates, count carbs, measure food, whatever she needs me to do. But I don't wear the pump. I don't feel the pump vibrating. I need her to TELL me when it's alarming, I need her to not ignore it.

I know a lot of this is precisely because she's 11 and a flibbertigibbet who wants to chat with her friends and watch tv and play outside and I'm thinking, maybe this pump is making her too normal-seeming. Maybe, instead of being a constant reminder that she has D, it's making it too easy for her to forget that she does, to ignore it, to take it for granted that the pump will take care of itself. Maybe I need to talk to the endo about doing the untethered regimen - although the last time I brought it up, I was roundly poo-pooed by the CDE.

Last night, she was 459 with trace ketones and feeling really shitty. This is going to sound terrible, but maybe that will make her pay attention a little more. I don't want her feeling sick, I just want her to be a little more aware.

And to add insult to injury, she wanted to try a leg site. Not half an hour later, she went to the bathroom and yanked the site out when she pulled down her pants. Ripped out site + high bg = one very miserable girl.

By 11 last night, she was down to 183 and was 70 when she woke up this morning.


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In other news, the guy (Dr. Ferber) who came up with the Cry It Out method of getting your baby to sleep has said that he may be wrong after all. Thanks a lot, asshole. I felt incredible amounts of guilt the few times I left Isobel to cry. I'd stand outside her bedroom door in floods while she sat in her crib, sobbing her little eyes out. Turns out, hey, guess what? You should do what feels best for you. Jerkface.

Random Thursday

I was supposed to write about diabetes yesterday, but I didn't. I didn't because I'm tired. I'm tired of thinking about it, I'm tired of logging, of checking, of changing pump sites, of counting carbs. It's very selfish of me. I have no excuses or reasons, it's just there, a big lump of selfish. I feel like the World's Worst Mother when I get like this.

Random stuff.

I was at Faces, in Northampton, over the weekend and I bought a keychain that plays the final out of the 2004 World Series. Joe Castiglione saying "...and the Boston Red Sox are World Champions, for the first time in 86 years, the Boston Red Sox have won the World Championship, can you believe it?" And it's like it happened last night. I get chills, I get this stupid, shit-eating grin on my face and I think "How many days til pitchers and catchers report?"

My ex is being a dick again. I'm not going to get into it here, but he is a thorn in my side. I need to put his name in the freezer.

I had to get a new stove because mine died. It was probably older than I am, but it realy frosts my butt to have to buy an appliance in a rush. I wanted a nice stove, a cool stove, but no, I got a boring, white Hotpoint thing. Four burners and an oven. What I really wanted was one of these babies:



What I got was this yawnfest:



I tell myself that if I had stove A, I'd be able to cook like Julia Child. Hey, a girl can dream, right? Besides, I have a bad case of kitchen lust. Mine looks like a set for That 70s Show. Baby shit yellow and brown. Looooooovely.

They just opened an IKEA near me. I cannot wait to pay that place a visit. It's a good thing I don't have credit cards.

D-blog day

I'm supposed to be posting about diabetes today, but then I went and read Kerri's blog (http://sixuntilme.blogspot.com/). It's amazing and hard to think of anything to say after reading something so incredible.

Have they gone mad??!

No more Theo. Unbelievably, the guy who had the biggest hand in orchestrating the Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series has been allowed to walk away from Boston. Larry Lucchino decided that he couldn't let Theo manage the players (hello? His title was General Manager. Let him manage), that he had to get involved too. Theo said no, called their bluff and walked away.

So let's get this straight. Next year, we'll probably lose Kevin Millar, which is not a great loss on the field, but a big loss in the clubhouse. We'll probably lose Johnny Damon, a fan favourite and a good, not great, center-fielder with an outstanding bat. He wants more money and a longer contract that the Sox will want to give him, considering his age and injuries this season. We'll lose Bill Mueller, who is arguably one of the best third basemen in the game today. Manny Ramirez wants to be traded - but when doesn't Manny want to be traded? They've lost Josh Byrnes, who's gone to GM Arizona, the first- and third-base coaches are gone, not that I was sorry to see the back side of Dale Sveum. He was a terrible third base coach. They've lost trainers and physical therapists...next we'll hear that they've fired the groundskeeper. And they let Theo Epstein walk away. They need their heads examined. John Henry needs to fire Larry Lucchino, but that will never happen.

I don't know what on earth they're doing over there in the Fens, but I wish they'd knock it off. They're killing me.

Oh wait. This is the Red Sox. This is just business as usual. *sigh*