Late January 2007 Monte Report

In October 2005 I had the pleasure of enduring a kidney stone. If you're unfamiliar with kidney stones, then you may be unaware that they cause unimaginable pain. I've encountered women who say there's no comparison between childbirth and kidney stones -- the latter hurts more. My kidney stone kicked in early on a Sunday morning. I thought it was food poisoning at first, then I thought it was my appendix. Soon, I was convinced that there was an vicious alien creature inside me that was preparing to hatch and eat its way out of my abdomen. The most remarkable thing -- and the point of this tale -- is that at every moment I reassured myself that at least I was at the very limit of how much pain a human can experience. That is: it can't get any worse. Funny thing about kidney stones though -- it continued to get worse. Every moment was worse than the last, much to my amazement and dismay. How I managed to drive myself to the Emergency Room without fainting I will never know.

My depression seems to be following a similar course. Though it is drawing itself out over a period measured in days & weeks rather than minutes & seconds, each day is worse than the previous, and I'm finding that it's all that I can do to get myself showered and off to work each day. On days where I don't HAVE to get out of bed, I generally don't. When I get home from work, I go straight to bed. When I'm at work, I struggle to hide my mood, and strive to be a productive employee. But it's getting harder every day.

As I mentioned in my last post, my doctor increased the dose of my Abilify. Maybe I just need to give it more time to "kick in." I also asked him about other treatments I'd heard of -- ECT, Vagus Nerve Stimulation, and "rechallenging" my depression with my Parnate (going off the Parnate for a while and then reintroducing it, a strategy that for some reason tends to be successful with this particular medication). None of these strategies seemed to him to be promising avenues to pursue for one reason or another (though he did mention an experimental treatment method at Stanford involving high doses of magnetism applied to the brain -- something I intend to investigate).

For now, though, I'm counting down the days until my trip to Hawaii. I leave just three weeks from today, but getting from here to there sounds like it's going to be hellish.

Finally, in my quest to always include a graphic of some sort, I present you with a drawing of a strange South American critter called a "Montito del Monte" (I kid you not). With apologies to the unknown artist for using his/her work without recognition . . .

Mid-January Monte Report

As my Blog celebrates its first birthday, I'm celebrating the fact that I've been feeling slightly better over the past few days. It may just be an anomaly, so my celebration is a cautious one. And when I say "slightly," I do mean "slightly" - it's almost imperceptible. My doctor increased the dose of my Abilify last week, and maybe that's already having an impact. On Sunday I spent much of the day babysitting an adorable baby, and that surely helped my spirits, as did spending time with said baby's parents both before and after. And on Monday I managed to do the dishes for the first time in a month - and that's always a good omen.

So, we'll see. Though I'm still spending an inordinate amount of time in bed, hopefully things will continue to at least trend in the right direction.

Early January 2007 Monte Report

Okay, so things seem to be tending towards "worse" rather than "better." My anxiety at work is getting worse, controlled to some extent by Xanax. But each day is harder than the last. And things aren't getting any better when I'm not at work. I've got a long list of things I "want" to do - books to read, projects to work on, people I'd like to see, that sort of thing. But instead I nearly always go straight to bed when I get home from work. Sometimes I sleep twelve hours, all the way through til it's time to get up for work again. Other nights - like tonight - I wake up at 1 or 2 in the morning and just toss and turn for hours, wishing I could get up and DO something.

I see my psychiatrist on Thursday, and I intend to make it clear that drastic action is needed. What that will entail, I don't know - but I'm ready to consider anything. ECT (Electro-convulsive Therapy) has been suggested to me by a couple of people. Going back to Menninger has been suggested. Vagus Nerve Stimulation - a cutting edge treatment involving the implantation of electrodes in the brain that deliver periodic small shocks - has been suggested. Quitting my job, going on to full-time disability, or just taking a long leave of absence are all on the table. Jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge even sounds appealing, even though no one has suggested that. Every option has its pros and cons, and I'm trying to weigh them all. ECT is well known to mess with one's memory, for example. Leaving the area is fraught with cons, not the least of which is leaving behind a loving group of coworker friends who care very deeply for me.

Five weeks from now I leave for Maui where I'll spend a week in one of my favorite places with two of my favorite people. Maybe that will help. But five weeks seems like an eternity to wait.

But, to be honest, not EVERYTHING is all doom and gloom. I spent New Year's Day birdwatching with my New Year's Day Birdwatching Friends, and I managed to enjoy myself. Since then I've also managed to force myself to get outside and do a little bit of solo birdwatching. The fact that it's time to start a new list of "year birds" provides some momentum to go find birds to add to my Year 2007 list (especially since my Year 2006 list was embarrassingly short). And my social life isn't entirely non-existent, despite my social anxieties. The worry, I suppose, is that things just aren't getting better, despite the passage of time. It's essentially been six months since I've had a good stretch of contentment, and my struggles are becoming so wearisome as to lead me to wonder if the time for some drastic intervention is here.