Mental & Emotional Health

So, what am I gonna do?  Well, I have been selected to participate in EASports 30 Day Challenge that was put together by Bog Green and Allison Sweeney from The Biggest Loser.  No, I won’t be on the show but there is a grand prize and the inaugural group was carried to Santa Barbara to meet the stars in person. 

I don’t know if I will start for sure in June but that it he plan.  My doctor says that even if I have to have surgery at the first of May, I’ll be ready for rehab by the time the June 15 group starts.  And, EASports liked the notion that I would be mostly working my upper body while rehabbing my foot.

So, that’s what I’m going to do about it…and you?

Ok, I know that sounds like a silly question, but the fact of the matter is, people who suffer from mental illness in all shapes and forms are still carry around this big bucket of stigma on their shoulders..or around their waste, or on their butt for that matter.  Regardless, it has to stop.  It has to stop now too.

So, with that, I’m going to lead you in the direction of an article on Medical News Today which has an article entitled, “On 100th Anniversary, Mental Health America Declares “It’s Time for Mental Health”.

I think the reality of it is I don’t actually do as much here on this site in the area of Mental Health as I should.  I focus quite a bit on emotional health.  So, taking a look at mental health is a good idea for a a point of focus for a little while. 

Mental Health America started as the negative impact of war started to appear with families of soldiers returning from war and how those men and women were living with trauma.  I’m married to a war vet, I don’t care what anyone tells you, the trauma is there.  It is real.  I wasn’t married to him then so I personally don’t feel the personal pain, but I know he does.  He doesn’t talk about it much, but when he does, it’s painfully obvious that he was traumatized.

If you want to read the article or if you just want to check out Mental Health America’s site, feel free to do so, then I’d love to hear your personal stories and comments.

No one likes to hear the words "mental health" when they visit the doctor.  We all like to think that we are fine just like we are.  I spoke to a friend this weekend who indicated that her son used the same therapist/psychiatrist that I use.  She finished it off with "but don’t tell him, he will have a fit".  See, it’s folks like him who haven’t come to grips with the fact that chemical imbalances are normal.  Diabetes, thyroid hormone just to name a few are diseases that people would never put off treating, yet when you say the worlds "mental health", you lose a lot of people.

Some people are so afraid of hearing the words "depression" and "anti-depressants that they just simply don’t talk about their problems at all.  There in lies the problems.  You know, if you won’t admit you need help by even talking in confidence with a friend, then you are most likely not even willing to admit that a chemical imbalance exists.

I spend a big part of nearly everyday reading blogs of women who are either pregnant or just gave birth and their hormones are raging.  Another group of women that I chat with and read their blogs are women who find themselves at home with kids, working for home (weather it is job that has a signature and paycheck or if it is the job of 100% raising children, it’s work, don’t demean that, please) and their hormones are causing mood fluctuations and they have to find a way to cope.  

Some women, like me, realize that my body isn’t perfect.  I truly believe that God gave man the ability to learn so that doctors would exist to help patients like me.  So, give them an opportunity to do that, help you.  If you need help. you are doing no one any favors by ignoring it.  Go now, go look deep into yourself and decide if you think you are ignoring a very critical part of your health…your mental health.

Today when I went to my monthly appointment for counseling and doctor visit, I made the request to change my medication from cymbalta to something more cost effective.  The doctor worded it as cost prohibitive but whatever, it cost too doggone much. 

So, he asked what other drugs we had tried and since the file was thicker than most phone books, we started a discussion based on my memory.  I told him that I had taken paxil when I was pregnant with my children and as far as I could remember it worked alright when I was pregnant but not so well afterwards.  And, I mentioned that I took prozac for many years on end. 

So, he asked if I had a preference and since my memory serves me that one of the side effects of prozac is lack of appetite, I decided to go that route.  I know that sounds crazy but prozac really did help me for twelve years or more and I know the paxil didn’t do as well when I wasn’t pregnant.

So, prozac it is.  It will cost me much less ($5.17 a month versus $60 a month for cymbalta) than the cymbalta but the true test will be my mood, my cranky, aggravating disposition. 

I am a sleeper.  I’ve always been a sleeper.  I make jokes with people about it because it is quite spectacular to see just how much I can sleep. I once had a roommate that wouldn’t leave me alone about joining her and her friends for movies and pizza or just drinking beer and watching ball games.  I never could make her understand, I enjoyed sleeping.  I finally telling her that I wasn’t really sleeping, I was meditating.  I swear, for me, it was just as healing as meditation.

I’ve made jokes over the years about how the life in my dreams is better than the one in reality so why not sleep when I get a chance.  People simply dismissed it as depression and medicated me.  As you may or may not know, most anti-depressants may have a sleepy effect.  So, that wasn’t always a great idea.

For some one who could sleep as much as I could, I had problems going to sleep and then, I’d wake all during the night.  It was ridiculous.  For many years I took over the counter sleep aids, then I graduated to prescription medications.  The problem remained.  I’ve tried a variety of the popular sleep medications on the market, prescription and non-prescription.  The anxiety I have though was much stronger than the any sleep aid out there. 

Ambien made me hallucinate.  And, I tried it several times over a five year span and I would always return to the same hallucination.  It really was nutty.  So, doctors would keep playing with sleep inducing drugs.  But, as I’ve told you several times, I found a doctor who specializes in chronic pain as well as mood disorders, emotional disorders, etc.  He really has been great for me.

He is the person who convinced me to go to the Sleep Clinic.  I do indeed have sleep apena.  And, I don’t take a sleep-aid to go to sleep, I take a very strong dose of a drug used to treat bi-polar disease.  I am not bi-polar, but I do have such a high strung personality that it takes a drug that strong to settle me into sleep.  The first night at the sleep clinic, even with the drug I normally take, I never entered the deepest zone of sleep.  The technicians were in awe.  He jokingly said that I also managed to run about 10 miles.

I returned to the clinic with doctors orders for a sleep apnea machine.  That night I entered the deepest zone of sleep approximately 45 minutes before time for me to get up.  However, I wasn’t waking 15 or 16 times an hour from sleep apnea and I managed to run a much shorter distance.  Success?

By most folks standards that would probably not be success.  I mean, I still have to take a drug that is made to treat a completely different illness in order to go to sleep, I have to sleep with the aid of a CP machine and I take a medication to curb the restless leg syndrome.  But, in my world, the fact that I make into a deep sleep every night means I rest more than I ever have before.  The legs remain still and it doesn’t take me hours upon hours to go to sleep.  (I remember having insomnia as early as age 8).

So, if any of this sounds familiar to you, please find yourself a good doctor, and a sleep clinic and get yourself taken care of.  I still love to take a nap.  I can be wide awake and plowing through my day and if someone suggest we quieten down and nap, I’m all over it.  I simply love to sleep.

The best I can tell, I was born to be a sleeper and my job is to dream.  As of late, I’ve been dreaming pretty doggone big too.  So, it can’t be all bad now can it?

This weekend was the most unproductive weekend I’ve experienced in ages.  We have done nothing that even remotely resembles work, other than what I’ve done tonight after say, 7pm.   That’s pretty good, wouldn’t you say?

Now, our grass is way to high for my comfort, laundry is piling out into the kitchen, garbage needs gathering for morning pick-up and the dishes haven’t been washed in so long we bought paper cups today.  But, we felt good…really really good.

My had take-out Friday night, I ran some errands yesterday morning (with my mom so it was relaxing), took naps in the afternoon, went to the county fair last night, slept til 11 AM this morning, had lunch at the local mom and pop place, napped til 5 and then played with the boys and they headed off to bed while me and the hubs have worked a little and watched TV alot.

So, what was so great about that you say?  Well, for over a year we spent all of our waking hours working on daycare things.  We closed it in July and it has taken us this long to come off of that rush.  We’ve just kicked back and enjoyed it.

They call that healing…..in my mind, it was much physical healing with all the sleep I did, but the emotional healing of not fretting over time and money and grocery store lines - that was awesome.  And, mentally, the anguish of money and money and how to prepare for the week ahead. 

So, yea it wasn’t Sexual Healing but so far, every other kind of healing I can think of has happened right here in my little ol’ house.

I have mono.  I’ve had it for what seems like an eternity.  I was diagnosed in late July.  At that time my doctor informed me that "you probably won’t feel really good again to after Halloween".  At which time, I collapsed into a sobbing heap on the floor and asked for healing.  I’m not kidding.  At that point, I was so deathly sick that I couldn’t imagine being that way for 3 more months.  My spleen was so swollen that I was having a great deal of pain under my ribs.  It wasn’t pretty.

I was told not to exercise or do anything strenuous.  Never mind that the weekend before that I had packed up our entire daycare and put it in storage over a weekend span with about 8 hours sleep.  Pulling, tugging at heavy equipment, cleaning and doing what I thought was necessary.  So much for "nothing strenuous".  Anyway, the end of that week brought me back into the doctor’s office with terrible kidney pain.  I passed a kidney stone about a week before that and now my kidney’s were just plain not acting.  The response of a too large spleen?  Maybe, maybe not. 

I spent the weekend in the hospital.  I come home and spent my 3rd or 4th, who was counting, week in bed.  All day, all night - in bed…tired, emotional and weeping a lot.  Oh and the pain, the pain under my ribs from the spleen.  That was pitiful.

Moving past the week in bed, I had two weeks where I felt pretty normal.  Things were just happily moving right along when BAM, I went down again.  I was back in bed for 4 days thinking I was dying.  How in the heck could that be?  We were getting ready for a vacation the next week and I couldn’t stand the thoughts of being sick while at the beach.

That was two and a half week ago.  And, yesterday, yesterday I went down again.  I was trying my best to hold my head up while sitting in the recliner trying to work.  My son had free reign of the house until about 11 when I forced him to take a nap with me.  We slept til 2′ish and then got up and retrieved my oldest son from school. 

Today, we did school drop off, canceled my marriage counseling appointment because there simply was no way I could get there.  Honestly, if I had been showered and half way decent, I might could have made the drive or found someone to go with me to drive and watch my three year old.  But, the very thought of showering, blow drying this head of hair, getting dressed and the driving 30 miles to the appointment, staying there an hour and 30 minutes drive time home - well it was just too daunting.  So, I canceled.

Emotionally I’m not in as big of a funk as I was when I was first diagnosed.  Well, for the most part I am doing fairly well emotionally.  But, the mental fatigue that hits you with mono is unbelievable.  When I was diagnosed I was told that I had probably been sick for about 6 weeks.  That’s when I put all the vague mental pictures together.  The places where I couldn’t keep up with what day it was, who was suppose to be working at what time at the daycare and when to do payroll. 

That fog lifted after the first bout, the second bout I did ask my mom nearly every day and sometimes 2 or 3 times a day what day of the week it was.  I didn’t try to work so obviously the fog wasn’t so bad.  Or at least I interpreted it to be not so bad anyway.  This time, emotionally I’m fine and mentally I’m better than I was the other 2 episodes, but I do find that time just slips away from me and I have no idea what I’ve accomplished.  No, I do know, I haven’t accomplished much.

So, it is looking more and more like the doc was right it may very well be after Halloween before I start feeling better on a regular basis.  And, if that is the case, look for me to be a little sporadic with my posting.  I isn’t intentional, it just happens as a side effect of mono.

Share this post :

This is totally an anonymous example.  I can’t and won’t reveal any sources.  I’m just curious if anyone out there that is reading has seen such habits, felt such insecurities and has any idea how to go about helping someone in this situation.

Ok, we are talking about an 18 year old kid.  I’m going to call him Joey but obviously that is not his real name.  He lives with his mother who I am calling Carol, again, not her real name.  Joey’s father is not in the picture but there is an older brother but he too lives several states away.  Here’s the story.

Joey graduated from high school and wanted to go to college.  Because of his situation, not only did he not have help getting help getting into college, preparing paperwork for grants and loans, he didn’t have transportation to get to and from college either.  This kid leaves where there is no public transportation. 

As a side note, I’ve seen many situations like this and if the proper channels are doing their job, the kid ends up in college, with monetary help and someone who lives close by that doesn’t mind giving the kid a ride.  That simply didn’t happen in this case. 

Now, the kid is disappointed about not going to college.  That much is known for sure.  The kid is also binging and purging.  He is taking laxatives when he can and everyone around him is watching this from behind the scenes wondering who and when someone should intervene. 

Carol contacted a doctor who specialized in these behaviors but was told that he would prefer Joey see a doctor that specialized in teenagers because he felt that Joey’s situation was more out of control than he was comfortable dealing with. He also mentioned to the mother than many times when a young boy this age had issues with binging and purging, he was also struggling with his identity.  Indeed the child did say he thought he might be homosexual and was spending time with a man 20 years older than him that was a known homosexual.

Carol made the appointment with the doctors which just happened to be in a town an hour and half a way, Joey cut his wrists.  He was carried to the emergency room where the doctor sent him to the only hospital that would take him sense he was a medicaid (All-Kids actually) patient.

Joey was only kept for 3 days and the doctors declared that nothing was wrong with him.  He was sent home. 

Fast forward a few weeks and he was acting odd again.  His mother wasn’t home for a few days but when she returned, he had been serious beaten up.  Joey wouldn’t tell his mother anything but indicated that the man he had been with that was much older was the one responsible. 

Carol called the man, he had proof that he wasn’t even in town that weekend.  So Carol set about trying to figure out who was responsible.  Joey continued to blame the older man and then put a guilt trip on Carol for believing someone besides him.

Mom tightened the ropes on the child’s freedom by not allowing him to drive her car and such.  He worked with his uncle some doing hard labor work and seemed to be getting along much better.  No one seem to catch him binging and purging and he wasn’t allowed any freedom to roam so the situation seemed to be somewhat in better control.

I just got notice that Joey once again slit his wrists and had to have 5 stitches on inside and 9 staples on the outside.  He is now in a  hospital in a different place and has been for the last 24 + hours. 

My question is this:  Why are doctor’s ignoring what Carol is telling them about Joey?  Why aren’t they taking action?  Can’t they see he is having problems?  Did he have to take this drastic measure in order to kept help?

I am interested to see if anyone has any suggestions.

Share this post :

So, you know way more about me than a lot of people I know in real life.  But, as one would guess, you are probably wondering if I am just a clown that has had many mental and emotional issues and I’m going to try to urge you to go get medicated.  That is simply not the case.  I do believe that medication has its place and we will explore that more in depth later, but for now, I’m just going to give you a few credentials.

My personal thoughts on  my own mental and emotional health are that without the interventions of modern medication and later some therapy, I would not have been able to accomplish much.  So, with that, I’m sure you are wondering just what it is that I’ve done that makes me think I can write a blog here and help anyone.

For starters, did you read the two part introduction.  That alone should tell you that I’ve been the mental and emotional health genre for half of my life.  I was 19 when my father died and that depressive cycle began.  I will be 40 in a couple of weeks.  But, if you read those, you know, I suffered well before the age of 19, it was just then it became apparent to everyone because they could see the issues on the outside.

So, what did I do with myself?  I did what my father always dreamed of, I graduated with a Bachelors degree.  That was in 1991, in physical education.  I used that to teach physical education two and a half years.  My dad tried to tell me not to be a teacher.  I don’t think he knew that I was simply not going to be good at it, (which I wasn’t), he just wanted me to choose a career that wasn’t so difficult to endure (and it is very difficult). 

Either way, I graduated.  I also had a minor in chemistry so I was able to teach Earth and Life Science on year and again, it was awful and I wasn’t very good at it.   Later I taught Pre-K and…again, it was a horrible experience and I wasn’t very good at it in the first place. 

I let my certificate expire and thus was unable to teach after 2001.  In 2005, I decided I should try teaching again, I was older, my temperament was different and maybe…just maybe…

That’s when I realized my certificate had expired.  So, that meant I had to return to school.  So, why  not get my Masters in something that I could use outside the school system or inside if I chose.  I taught Biology while I was in school and just as before, I hated it and I was not good at it either. 

I got my Masters in Counseling last winter while I was busy running my own daycare.  It came in handy and even though it is not my nature to brag, I was able to pick employees strong points as far as what age they would be best working with.  At first they would balk on me, but later, people came to realize that I had a little education and I was good at reading people.

Personalities come easy for me it seems.  I can talk to someone for a short time and tell you way more about them than most of them know themselves.  No, I’m not psychic, I learned a little when I pursued that last degree and it is paying off for me now.

I knew my husband had ADD (attention deficit disorder).  It was very apparent to me.  He had suffered his entire life but didn’t grow up in a home with educated parents who knew what to look for.  I got him an appointment, they did the intake, they gave him a couple of written tests and then the doctor spent about 45 minutes with him.  Diagnosis?  ADD.  I knew it, I’d lived with him too long not to know it.  I knew the symptoms and with my husband, they were terribly obvious.

In recent months I came to realize that my husband was depressed.  Again, he didn’t see what I saw.  I had the education (and I don’t mean that in a smart-alec way, I mean, I read the books, I listened to my professors and I learned so much from them) and I knew that he was depressed.  I encouraged him to tell our psychiatrist that treats his ADD.  He didn’t.  I mentioned it at one of my visits but only briefly and only in the manner in which it was affecting our marriage.  I asked my husband the next month if he would please tell the doctor how he felt.  He said yes, but he didn’t do it.  The next month he suggested I come with him.  I did but the doctor talked to him alone.  My husband managed to pull off the ol’ "it’s just the stress of this one project at work and when it is over, I’ll be fine.).

Not only was I mad at this point, I was ready to do something drastic.  His behavior was affecting our marriage and especially affected his parenting skills.  So, at my next appointment with the doc, I asked if we could come together.  He said if it was ok with my husband, then of course it was ok with him.  We went together.  They gave him a depression test. 

I don’t know much about the depression test because I didn’t see it so I don’t know which test they gave him. However, after the doctor looked at it, he said, "you definitely appear to be depressed, a score of anything above 8 on this test would mean you might benefit from medication and therapy and you (meaning my husband) scored a 24"

Ok, see, I’ve been around the block.  I’ve had the emotional problems, I’ve had the mental fatigue, I’ve dealt with the problems and I’ve been trained to recognize them. 

So, with that, I give you my credentials.  Do you trust me yet?

Share this post :

I have OCD and it was apparent before the age of 8. How do I know this? Because the nurse for my psychiatrist did my intake. Half way through the intake, he stops and says, "Do you still count things?" I was totally baffled as to how he would know this. I had not been around this man since I was at least 8. My OCD manifested itself in counting way back then. So, why didn’t anyone see this 31 years ago?

I suffer from anxiety. I didn’t do this too bad until I reached college. I was the teacher’s kid. I got special treatment. People knew I was a "good kid" who made "good grades" because my father was well-known in the teaching community. Thus, I was given many a privilege just by my name alone. When I entered college, reality slapped me cold in the face. I had no clue that the world was so cruel. And, anxieties set in that to this day I haven’t over-come. Medication helps. Medication helps a lot. Medication helps A WHOLE LOT. Get me. I simply don’t back down on these issues. I’m passionate. Period.

I suffer from depression. I suspect my family situation lent itself to my depressive behavior, I didn’t have a very happy childhood. I suspect genetics lends itself everyday to my depressive behaviors. My mom is depressed and has been most of my life. My father was more of a manic person. Happy as a lark one day, a terribly unhappy sap the next. I am a clone of my father. It isn’t bi-polar, it is simply, depression. My maternal grandfather, my paternal grandmother and grandfather all suffer/suffered from depression. All of my mother’s siblings and one of my father’s siblings suffer/suffered from depression. People, it is in my genes. Just like cancer. Just like diabetes. Just like thyroid disorders. I could go on forever.

My father died when I was 19. I entered a state of depression that would have likely took down most folks. I say that because I’m telling you, my childhood was rough. Let’s just leave it at that. If someone out there wants to challenge me on this, a private email will do, I can settle it. No, I was not homeless or abandoned. It was a plethora of minor offenses that led to depression with me.

Anyway, my father died when I was 19. I’ve already mentioned that my father was important to me. I lived with my father from age 13 to 19. He and my mother divorced when I was 4. He taught me everything I know. I can’t think of anything I learned between the ages of 4 and 13 that was good. I see you rolling your eyes. Just listen.

Two years after his death and I was failing at a major university. My father’s one and only goal was to see that I got my Bachelor’s Degree in something. I chose teaching. He didn’t approve necessarily. I got my degree and I couldn’t care less about it. I still don’t except for the fact that it led to a Masters that I just got last year. So, even still, I give my father credit for that.

So, two years and I’m failing at the very of event of living. I sought help. I got it. I didn’t however get a good doctor. The one I got said, "I believe you are depressed, wrote me a prescription for Prozac and waived her magic wand." It was years later before I hunted a doctor that knew something about my problem. Family doctors simply weren’t getting it. They were writing and re-writing a script that a neurologist years before had started because she had no explanation for my body’s behavior…except depression.

This would get real long if I went into "my body’s behavior" so just trust me again on this one.

When I was 34 I met my present husband. Having tried out three others that didn’t fit me, I found a man who is 100% meant to be my husband. The depression started to fade. I continued my medication. I got pregnant and decided that it was best that I not take the anti-depressants. My doctor convinced me otherwise. I am quoting Kristen over at Motherhood Uncensored here but basically this is exactly what my OB said to me:

But the truth of the matter is, if we don’t take care of ourselves, then we won’t be around to take care of our kids.

Yes, I purposefully sought out a female OB. She got it. She understood. She put me on a different medication. Which family doctors continued to write without asking any questions after we moved a state away when I was 38 weeks pregnant.

We moved home and I found a psychiatrist who KNOWS HIS STUFF. It took a while. He didn’t automatically find the write medications and the right doses immediately. I would say it took close to 7 or 8 months. No, really it did. Now, I exist on a small dose of 2 different medications. One specifically to treat depression; one specifically for anxiety. And they work. Both are long term drugs. Neither are of the "let me go get a pill for before I go crazy" variety. I have those. I rarely need them. I rarely need them because………..I TAKE MY MEDICATION THAT WORKS ON THE IMBALANCE. Simple.

People who don’t know…simply don’t know. I don’t mean to sound like I’m preaching, I’m simply trying to help you understand. Notice I didn’t say I was trying to MAKE you understand, I can’t make you. I simply want you to try.

I will hang on tight to the following statement and I’ll tell you again that it is a direct quote from Kristen AND an OB in Gainesville Florida…..

But the truth of the matter is, if we don’t take care of ourselves, then we won’t be around to take care of our kids.

How does that old saying go…….walk a mile in my shoes

I was reading about a 37-year-old Ukrainian man named Leonid Stadnyk, who at 8 feet 5 inches tall is the word’s tallest man. His unusual height came about from an over stimulated pituitary gland that was the result of an operation on his brain when he was 14.

He lives in a house in a small village with his widowed mother. Since he doesn’t like the spotlight, he has mostly kept to himself but it’s hard not to be noticed when you’re that tall.

After refusing several times to be measured by the Guinness world book of records, he finally succumbed. Although he enjoys solitary activities like gardening, he is appreciative of the support since it has helped make his life, home and family more comfortable.

Leonid has received the world’s biggest bicycle and Ukraine’s president has given him a special oversized car. He was also given a computer so has developed many supportive online friendships.

Previously he went through some hard times since he had to quit his former job at a cattle farm as a veterinarian after getting frostbite from walking to work in his socks. He couldn’t afford shoes for his huge feet. Another health problem for Leonid is knee pain and he sometimes needs crutches to help support his 440 lb frame.

Garden Therapy

“I do not smoke, do not drink. Every penny I can save I spend on buying seeds and seedlings. The garden is a place for me. Height doesn’t matter there,�? said Leonid (Too Tall to Be Happy)

There is no judgment in the garden. Gardening is good therapy and I find it peaceful and empowering at the same time.

I only got into it in the last couple of years and at first grew a few flowers in the front. Then I dug up a strip in our small back yard and planted some herbs and vegetables. Some of them fizzled out but some thrived. Thankfully my mother and a few of my friends were around to advise me and each year is more successful.

It doesn’t matter what you look like or what you know or where you’re from in the garden because we can all make things grow.

• For more information on Leonid see the video “World’s Tallest Man Has Trouble Fitting In” and Wikipedia’s page on Leonid Stadnyk.

• See Portable Garden and Horticultural Therapy for garden therapy resources.