The Drugs Do Work

“I only write when I’m feeling depressed.” It’s been 4 months since my last post. Obviously the drugs are working. However, right now, I’m having a post-holidays back to work and an I hate London moment. Just spent a week with good friends in Spain and France – I’d forgotten how pleasant people can be until then. Coming back to London was like a smack in the face – no more pleasant and warm people, terrible weather, shit work and a relapse of the cough and wheeze that I’ve had for months. Really makes me feel that I’m allergic to this city. Unfortunately drugs aren’t going to control it.

Tables Turned

“I don’t want to be here.”

“I don’t want to be here, either,” Thabo responded.

The mood was low the day after we arrived back in London and it hasn’t quite lifted since. (Like being injected with a dose of ‘depression.’) These few days I’ve been experiencing a growing anxiety and fear that I’m about to go on a downward spiral again. I know that I’m probably just going through the normal experience of post-holiday blues. It doesn’t help that it’s cold and grey. But how do I know that it’s not my medications failing me? As a result, I’ve done the very bad and frowned-upon patient thing. I’ve self-medicated by increasing my dose of citalopram. I’ll see how it pans out and luckily for me, I have a few GP friends and a pyschiatrist friend with whom I’m meeting up in a week. And I’ll do the very annoying request for personal advice “because you’re a doctor”. Interesting to have the tables turned.

Or having the shoe on the other foot.

28 Days Later

28 days later and I feel human again. My motivation is back and I’m able to carry on with normal activities of daily living. I have been grocery shopping without fear and am back on track with cooking from scratch with real ingredients. I haven’t wished for my own demise for over 3 weeks and at work I’m generally cheerful. I’ve started laughing again. What a welcome thing to be to do! And my favourite; I’ve gone back to actively procrastinating. I can choose to procrasinate. It’s not just a never-ending dark tunnel in which I walk now.

My legs drown in sweat every night but that’s the only down side of being on my Happy Pills.

Sometimes this feeling of “I’m alive” sits like a bubble in my chest ready to burst into uncontrollable laughter. I don’t have the sensation of elation but I’m really looking forward to when it eventually comes.

Feeling Better But Sweaty

Last week was day 7. Whether it was a placebo effect or the medication starting to kick in, I don’t know. But I do know, I feel a little lighter. For the first time in months, I didn’t tear up walking to and from work. I no longer wish I was dead. I feel like, although things aren’t great now, I have things to look forward to in the future.

Saturday, I almost felt normal. I didn’t get the shits. I didn’t feel like killing people who bumped into me on Oxford street. And I managed to stay this way the entire day and night. Even Thabo noticed a difference, saying that I seemed positive and much livelier.

I had a set back yesterday getting upset over a tiny issue. It cumulated in me feeling the same inescapable universal woe. “I wish I had a different life.” I hate the life I have and there’s no escape from it.

Other than that, I’m hopeful that things are starting to look up for me. I have the strange side-effect of waking up drenched in sweat, like I’ve gone to bed in wet clothes, but it only happens with my legs.

Belated Christmas Present

I finally received the Christmas present I wished for. Now, day 2 of citalopram. No major effects yet except insomnia, anxiety about anxiety being a side-effect, feeling spaced out and a pervasive sense of dread and apprehension (always apprehensive about things I might need to do – I can’t even enjoy quiet moments because I’m in a constant state of dread about what might- and it’s for non-issues. I can’t go to the corner store without feeling anxious or preparing myself mentally). Actually, that was all there before the medication.

I know it takes 2-4 weeks for effect. I’d like to know what happens after that. A slow rise of me becoming me again? What if before-now-me isn’t all that she was cracked up to be? Right now I see me as a failure as a person who had been given every opportunity in life – good home, education, friends, partner – and I’ve dumped all over it.

I want to throw my career out the door because I’m so afraid that my cover will be blown, that I don’t know my way around. Still. My self-confidence is zero, I’m always second guessing myself, and I can’t commit to what I think I know is right. I had a shit day at work because I wasn’t sure of myself and couldn’t give anyone a straight answer. I wanted to run and hide. I say to myself that I don’t care about having this career. I don’t know if I say this to make me feel better, or if I’d be better off without it.

I don’t know if I have certain thoughts because I’m depressed or if the essential me really believes them. Thabo tells me, “You’re wonderful. Everyone sees that except for you.” I don’t like me very much.

You’re Depressed

And so it drags on. Attended my counselling session which allowed me to blubber and voice, for an hour, how I’ve been feeling. She was very nice, picked up on verbal and non-verbal cues, paraphrased well and empathized.

She concluded with, “I think you’re depressed. You should give anti-depressants some serious consideration.” Well, no fucking shit!

“Have you spoken to Dr Mahmoud about it?” How many other ways can I tell him? The first thing I said to him was, “I’d like to talk to you about starting anti-depressants.” He must want me to make my first suicide attempt before committing to a diagnosis. I feel even more helpless because he hadn’t made any follow-up so I’m stuck in purgatory until the New Year. How can getting a prescription be such a protracted difficult process? How I hate him.

Coming Down

Drank myself silly and danced the night away to bad music. I recall dancing with the he-must-be-gay-but-seems-to-be-trying-to-get-it-on-with-all-the-girls waiter. One of the nurses drove us back to our neighbourhood and I thanked her by vomiting over her car, just the outside, but it’s still vomit that needs to be cleaned up. And like a tired old story, I had to be walked home, then passed out in the lounge room leaving Thabo to put me to bed.

I was so acutely aware of my intention to drink excessively. All night I felt prickly and socially awkward- unhappiness trying to push its way through. I woke up this morning still drunk. As the alcohol wore off, feeling down in the dumps came on. It felt worse than any other drug-induced come down I’ve had. The same shit ten times worse along with guilt, shame and hopelessness on top of the hangover.

I couldn’t go to a friend’s birthday bash tonight because I was so fearful of breaking down in public, in front of others and humiliating myself more. Or humiliating Thabo. He made sure that I knew that he was sticking by me through all of this. He sent me this message on his way out:

“You are the most beautiful person in the world. We will get better. I will make sure of it.”

I’m in a bit of trouble. I hope my counselling session goes okay. I’m scared of it turning out the way it did with the GP. He was my last hope and it felt like he destroyed it.

No, I Don’t Need My Cervix Or Medication

I had the most painful Pap smear ever this morning. Besides trying to create a whole new vagina for me, the nurse scraped at my cervix with such vigour that I think she may have removed it completely.

I also saw the GP. Not MY GP but some assistant GP, “Dr Mahmoud”. As I attempted to (words through a clenched jaw holding back tears) provide reasons why I felt depressed, why I thought I was depressed and why I wanted to be on anti-depressants, he informed me that feeling depressed is a normal reaction to bad things that happen in life and he is reluctant to give me the diagnosis because it means labelling me as having depression. I am to see a counsellor next week for professional assessment. Maybe medicine works differently in England; I thought a GP was in the perfect position to make an assessment. He asked me what started it.

I don’t think he really listened. I could hear myself repeating the same things over and over again and I know he understands English because he was more than keen to inform me of his previous training, interests, and his own difficulties with registration and bureaucracy when he first moved to the UK 20 years ago.

Why can’t he understand that I didn’t decide on a whim that I am depressed and that I suddenly want medical intervention? Doesn’t he realize that I’ve thought about the whole stigma of depression before? Does he not realize that I wouldn’t be here unless I really needed to be? Normal reaction?! That I want to be dead or wish mortal harm upon everyone who crosses me, everyday for months on end? I actually have insight and understanding, something which my medical experience has prepared me for. Why do I feel like this is a debate on whether or not I am depressed or just feeling low? Why must I make up an argument to convince him?

The whole consultation could have gone one of two ways. And it went the way I dreaded and the way which made up one of reasons I’d held off on seeing someone for such a long time. I’ve asked for help and now I feel so much worse.

‘Tis The Season To Be Jolly

I have to fight back tears everyday when I walk to and from work.

I find myself swearing a lot about patients and their demands; the more trivial the more I swear. People have noticed but I have yet to be reprimanded. Work used to be an escape from the outside bleakness. Now it consumes me also.

My thoughts are blunted, my concentration is diminished and my memory poor. Sometimes, I feel like I’m slipping out of reality. I don’t hear voices or see things; I don’t have delusions of grandeur or persecution; I’m not psychotic.

I don’t drink to mute my pain but when I go out with colleagues or friends, I’m cheerful and fun and I drink too much because it feels good. For one brief moment the heaviness lifts and I forget how shit I am feeling.

The coming Christmas social events terrify me. I don’t feel confident in my ability to uphold my current fascade and “just be me”. It hasn’t always worked in recent times. What if I say something hateful? What if I cry?

Everyday, I mechanically go through the motions of living. But I’m starting to falter and find it more and more difficult to uphold my duties and perform tasks.

I’m scared to look people in the eyes because they might see the truth that I am really dead inside.

I told two friends and they held my hand and told me that they loved me.

‘Tis the season to be jolly. I hope Santa comes early to bring me the best Christmas present ever. Gift wrapped by my GP.

Happy Again

I’m sick with a cold, unwell in the head (unless normal people fall asleep dreaming they’ll sleep forever and always awake feeling disappointed) and we’re stealing broadband until our own gets installed. The weight and heaviness just doesn’t shift and I am feeling so fatigued, and all the time.

Much like this congestion and runny nose that hasn’t budged even a tiny bit with, “Sudafed.” British Sudafed’s “active” ingredient is phenylephrine, a less effective alternative to what I’m used to when taking Sudafed from elsewhere. Give me pseudoephedrine, PLEASE. I want to be able to breath through my nose again. I want stop the nasal drip. I want to be able to sleep through the night.

But more than anything, I want to feel like I want to live. I want to feel alive. I want to stop wishing for a different life because I feel so trapped and helpless to do anything about the current one in which I find myself. I want to remember what it feels like to be happy again.