The View did an hour long show on depression yesterday. While it was informative and covered all the bases, it would have been nice to have divided it up into two shows so that issues could have been more intricately detailed. I have suffered from depression since the summer of 2004. I have been through different medicines trying to find what works. Exercise does help a great deal, but there are days that going back to bed seem like a better choice. Rosie stressed yesterday to “MOVE”. She is right, but again it is not always the favored choice. She is also an advocate for a craft room. Some specialists agree with that. I have no idea in my house where I would make such a room. It is not possible under this roof. I would love to be able to have a space all my own to go and lock the door and fling paint and sculpt and glue and sparkle, but alas, it is not meant to be. They also talked about starting a journal. Write down your innermost thoughts, express yourself for good health. That is why I am doing this. I love it when I see that people have been reading my words and get really giddy when I see that someone has left a comment. It is therapeutic and I do recommend this tactic. Another option mentioned was going to a support group. Ok, here is where I am going to lay it on the line. I have been saying that support is a must for all things in our life and have revealed that I do not practice what I preach. What I am going to say next is not to have people feel sorry for me and I am not inflicting self-pity, it is just the cold hard truth. I can not attend a support group because I do not have anyone around me to help me out. My husband’s job keeps him from being home at a decent hour at night, babysitters are busy with sports and school and the closest relatives I have are an hour away. The friends that I have that live close, either work or have small children themselves. I’m stuck. And I hate it. I hate that I can not have a life of my own outside these walls of the house. I hate that I do not have that one person that I can turn to when I need someone the most; someone that will drop everything and come running to my aid. I hate that my husbands family all live within a few miles of each other and help one another out at the drop of a hat(they are 4 1/2 hours from us). I hate that the same thing rings true for my sister(she is 4 hours from me). Actually, I don’t hate those last two things as much as I am jealous of them. Hate is an awful word and does come with consequences. So, I despise or am disappointed that my parents do not offer their services more(they are 1 hour away). I wanted to go to a conference to see Dr. Temple Grandin a few weeks ago, but could not find anyone to come and stay with the kids while I was out of town for the day. Frustrating. I see and hear about things that I would like to do, but I usually just throw the materials away because I know deep down inside it will never happen. There are days that I feel as if I am a prisoner in my own home and the warden has gone missing. These feelings do not help depression, they just fan the flame. From Monday to Thursday, I have a total of 40 minutes when I am by myself. No kids or husband. The next time I am by myself is when I put them to bed at night and then my husband comes home after that. Some days I feel as if I am going to completely lose it and go crazy. This brings up another option from The View yesterday. Get on the phone and call someone who understands you and can listen to your pain. My problem with that is two-fold. One I talk about the same as I write – Lengthy!! None of my friends have that kind of time on their hands. Two, I can not stand complaining about myself. I feel ridiculous even writing this. One thing that I believe will become tradition is that over Thanksgiving weekend, my friend Sarah and I have met up at a local eatery in our hometown. She has come home for the holiday and I am just an hour away, so for the past two years we have had lunch and gabbed the afternoon away. It is so much fun catching up and reliving our youth. I look forward to this and hope it will continue. It gives me something to look forward to especially during the holiday season. I wish we lived closer year round, but again, not meant to be. So, even though I watched the show yesterday and applaud their efforts, I don’t feel like I got much out of it. Except for maybe one thing. Depression is a disease and not a curse. It doesn’t have to mean that you live with this stigma in shame and allow your family to isolate you because it is not a proper way to be. In fact, you have to forget what your family thinks – dismiss their prejudices if necessary – and try and conquer the inner demons that have been allowed to rule your life. One step at a time. One day at a time.
Bryce’s Journey II
To get you caught up, Bryce started in the Wee School in the fall of 2003. When he turned 3 he was to move onto the pre-school after the next break, in this case after Christmas break. This is a state standard due to age. I formally requested that since we had only been attending for 3 months if after the break we could return to the Wee School. I was not ready to put him on a bus and send him off to school when he was unable to communicate and I was at my wit’s end. The administration talked with his teacher and she agreed with me that it would be more beneficial for Bryce to stay with her until the end of the current school year and then the next fall start at the pre-school. Everyone in his class moved on in January, so for a few weeks Bryce had all the therapists and teacher to himself until new screeners arrived. It was great and he benefited from this one on one attention. His teacher and I were talking one day and she very timidly asked me if anyone had ever said that Bryce might be autistic. The floodgates opened and I said no, but I had been wondering myself. She went and got a form and said that I should take it home and fill out the parent portion and bring it back and she would do the teacher portion. The form was called the GARS test. It is a questionnaire that is used by developmental specialists to see if a child could possibly be autistic. If a child scores a particularway then seeing a specialist is in order. After all questions had been answered, his teacher scored it and he was showing autistic tendencies. Our next step was to have the school and his family doctor make a referral to the Children’s Hospital for an appointment with a pediatric developmental disability specialist. After receiving all of their paperwork, three months later we had an appointment. Chuck, Bryce and I went to see Dr. K in May of 2004. What a wonderful lady, very bright, chipper, related well to Bryce and us and was extremely down to earth and did not speak above us. After her evaluation of him, she started talking to us. I’ll never forget her words. She said he was smart but it was a hidden feature because he does not know how to communicate with the outside world. He did not look you in the eye when he was spoken to and he would just play by himself and seemed rather content with it. She finally told us that the autism spectrum is rather large and contains many different types of people. Bryce is autistic but on the low end, which is a good sign because he has a better chance – with the proper therapy – to succeed in life. I knew this all along but, again, to have a professional tell you this to your face was crippling. Somehow, hearing those words come out of Dr. K’s mouth made it real and I was not ready for “real”, I wanted to stay in”what might be”. We had to take Bryce for some blood work and an appointment was scheduled to come back to the hospital to have an EEG done to check for seizures. Fortunately, all tests came back negative and we learned that he is allergic to the sedative they used for the EEG. That whole process was a nightmare – we stayed at a Ronald McDonald house the night before because he was to have only a few hours of sleep and he fought with the nurses, had a bad reaction to the medicine and overall it was horrible.
After the results were seen by Dr. K, she then told us to make sure Bryce could attend a summer school and receive additional speech therapy at our local hospital. The Wee school did have a three week summer program and I did get Bryce evaluated at the hospital for speech. He started going to the hospital twice a week for 30 minutes to see his therapist, Beth. Another lovely person on this journey. She is great with children, truly genuine and wonderful at what she does. Bryce still sees Beth or her colleague every week. So, Bryce was enjoying all of his schooling and therapy and I could see glimmers of hope. But, what I didn’t notice right away was the toll it was taking on the rest of the family. I still had a 6 year old and a baby not quite 2 at home. I had to budget my time so that the others felt as if their needs were being met and didn’t feel slighted. I worried that Allison in particular felt as if Bryce were my favorite because of how much time I spent with him and I didn’t want Brady developing bad habits because of lack of time with me. I was working, still, and Chuck really was only home during lunch and after the kids were in bed and every other weekend . So his time with the kids was limited. I noticed that after the kids would finish supper each night, I would just sit at the table and cry. One night in July, I thought I was having a heart attack. I had alot of pain and had trouble catching my breath. I couldn’t get a hold of Chuck(he was in town at our local fair)so I called one of my friends. She rushed over and we called the squad. Once I was at the hospital and tests had been run, they ruled out that I had had a heart attack. They wanted to keep me over night for further evaluation and more tests so that is what I did. I had a stress test, and EKG and lots of blood work. The doctor came in later the next day and said that it appeared to be my gallbladder acting up and it really needed to come out in the near future. She asked me how I was doing and I began to cry. I told her about Bryce and crying at the dinner table and she said that we need to get you some help. A few minutes later a nurse came in with some pills and the doctor told me that it was very obvious that I was suffering from depression and that I should take this medication and see if we could get this under control(I will tackle this issue in another entry). She told me that I am not Wonder Mother and I need to ask for help and then allow people to help me. This became harder than it sounds. Childrens needs never go away and I found it hard to find the right people to ask for help. I just decided that as long as I was on the meds, I could do this. August came and Bryce was going to get on a school bus and go to pre-school by himself. Another new adventure with more hurdles to overcome. Good place to stop.
Again, though I must stress that a support system is a must. I keep preaching this but in reality I still do not have one. There are many days that I am doing this all by myself and it is very lonely. Good friends are either to busy or to far away and my family is either located in another state or just like to keep themselves sheltered from the truth.
