After reading most of the responses to my post, I must admit that I find it discouraging to find that so many people feel so little for their disabled neighbors.
To some I’d like to point out that it takes me a great effort to write to congress, often taking several days to compose and finish a single letter, then having to wait until I am ‘up’ again to read it and remove any garbage I dumped in. When starting to cycle down, I have found that my letter writing starts to become somewhat ‘loose’ and disorganized.
Then I have to wait to get up the ‘drive’ to format and print copies of the letter, addressing each to each senator and that takes days because often I get feeling so discouraged that I figure it is not worth the fight. Plus I use snail mail, having learned that E-mail is often ignored so buying the stamps to send out scores of letters drains my limited finances tremendously.
Not to mention that the damn printer cartridge of my printer costs $25 to replace and I don’t think I even get a ream of paper out of it.
To you, it might sound like peanuts, but to me that $25 is like $100.
When I cycle down into the bad, black zone of depression, it is hell incarnate. Everything stops. I sleep a lot but not well and loose interest in everything. I don’t bath, often don’t eat, don’t shave, don’t leave the house and keep the drapes tightly closed. I don’t answer my phone or messages on my machine. The feeling is one of abject despair, utter hopelessness, with a tremendous weariness sapping my strength and a cloud seems to form over my thoughts. Even my vision narrows down to something like a tunnel. Options evade me. If I spill something, it stays there because it is too much effort to clean it up.
The whole world seems to become gray with dark tinges even if there is bright sunshine outside. Nothing appeals to me except sleep and there comes a time when even that is not effective as an escape. Then I lay there, few thoughts in my head, that grayness seeming to penetrate my very being and it seems as if I have always been that way and always will be and that nothing I try to do to get better will ever work and suicidal thoughts start surfacing from the few thoughts I might have.
Days run together and I loose track of time. I’ll forget to take my medication until I start in withdrawal symptoms and then I’ll take it to feel better. I’ll start getting headaches, often feeling disconnected from reality, and trying to recall happier times is real difficult. I don’t want to talk to, be with or see anyone and will turn what few friends I have away if they try to see me.
Through it all comes the feeling of complete failure in everything I’ve done, then the fear that the depression will never end sets in and all I want to do is curl up in the darkness and be alone and not think and not feel and not care. If I do eat, nothing tastes good and I eat very little but, having a pretty good will and knowing what I am going through, I manage to pump down vitamins and water plus some sugar to keep from being too affected by no food.
Even that gets real hard to do sometimes. During these times, I often experience a mild but nagging pain behind my eyes, assorted aches and pains and feel only marginally better at late nights.
The onset takes several days, then I get to experience it for a day or two and start coming out of it which takes a couple of more days. Then, suddenly, I’m ‘normal’ again and able to function, though not as normal as I was when well. I can clean up, open the drapes and start doing some things again.
Occasionally I get manicy, where I get a surge of hope, tremendous energy, and start pounding away at the computer, suddenly mentally sharper than I had been in weeks. I can then work nearly around the clock, taking breaks to catnap, eat several meals, clean up my place, call friends and do many different things.
I love that feeling!
But it lasts only a day or two and can be gone in the blink of an eye. When it goes, I suddenly get dropped down into major depression, but not the black stuff, that lingers for a day or so and then I climb back up to what is ‘normal’ for me and start slogging my way through finishing what I started when ‘high.’
You have to experience it.
I have great admiration and respect for Winston Churchill, who fought WW2 while often in the grip of major depression and fully understand the massive willpower it must have taken for him to function.
Sentinel, Mary Harts Legs and others who have defended me, I much appreciate it. (Mary Hart – I’ll have to change my opinion of you.) Even Techchick – (TECHCHICK, Sentinel, not Technigirl. :)) She sent me a pleasant little letter.
To the rest of you selfish bastards who seem to figure that the 40 million of us who are disabled and poor should go fuck ourselves and have no right to humane or equal treatment nor any form of assistance because we are ‘whiners, cowards, dead beats and stealing your tax money’ all I can say is that what goes around, comes around.
Remember, I was once a well respected, well paid, hard working, independent member of productive society also. Decisions I made not only affected millions of dollars, but lives as well.
Now, I sometimes have problems coping with the shit on the SDMB.
By the way, I’ve mentioned my teeth in some posts and noted that Social Services is going to correct the damage their previous dentist did to them. One is abscessed again thanks to low grade work by the discount dentist I was sent to.
I have an appointment today. On Friday the abscess spread to the muscles and soft tissues in my lower jaw, forming large lumps. I had obtained an antibiotic for the tooth from Public Health, but the dosage I was put on was too low. I went to public health again on Friday to have the dosage increased. My agoraphobia was acting up something rough but I managed to get there and face the crowd and sign in. After sitting around and sweating for an hour, I was called back to registration, asked what I wanted and told them.
I was informed that all of the medical staff had gone to lunch!! Not only would I have to wait there another hour until they returned, but have to sit around for a longer time until they got to me. All that just to get a prescription increased.
I had to leave! I could no longer tolerate being around so many people!
I went to the local ER for the same reason. There were less people there. I signed in and sat for 30 minutes until the triage nurse checked me out and informed me that I might have to wait an hour or more to be seen! (Apparently most of the medical staff there had gone to lunch also.) Then I sat for another 30 minutes as the waiting room started to fill up and I started getting uncomfortable. The registration desk staff, which was to register me, all 3 of them, vanished. Apparently they went to lunch also. By then my agoraphobia was really making it hard for me to remain even though I went outside several times to have a smoke and be alone.
Understandably, real emergencies brought in were being processed through, but people who had arrived before me were still sitting wearily awaiting their turn, which would be delayed because most of the staff was out. (I used to work in ER, ages ago. We NEVER shut down for lunch. Often we ate in the nurses station in-between patients. Often we skipped lunch or did not eat until things went real quiet.)
I had to leave. I was starting to get jumpy, nervous, angry and knew that soon I would become belligerent and start shaking or sweating unless I got away from those people.
So, I went home. I increased the dosage of my antibiotics. I called the Public Health Center, talked to the medical staff and explained what I wanted. I was trying NOT to have to go into the crowd again. They said that they would ask the charge nurse, who would ask the doctor and then get back with me to determine if I needed to go in or if the doctor would call in an increased prescription for me.
They never did.
Frustrating to say th