Hello my dear blog. It's been a very long time.
It's been so long I think I've felt especially nervous and unsure about what to come back with. I haven't felt much like blogging in so long, that it's felt that no topic is deserving of blogging.
Well that's just silly. There are plenty of things to blog about, to continue to blog about, when it comes to mental health. A topic that continually evolves, for the world, in our communities, and individually.
The last many weeks have been long. Many of them, many of the days, I've just felt, I don't know, like I'm underwater, in a fog, in a hole. I date my depressive episode here from around Christmas time, when I came off antidepressants completely to try a different bipolar medication (the one that maybe gave me that potentially deadly rash). There've been some ups for sure, plenty of functioning I guess, but a lot of depression, much a deep, dark depression, with a plethora of anxiety to top it all off. It's been really hard, and I think it was too much to share openly on the blog while it was happening. I say "was" because honestly, the last week has been slightly better. One of the difficult side effects of the depressive episode has been the fatigue. Complete, utter fatigue and lack of energy. It's been nearly impossible to stay up past 9pm most nights, or even simply beyond kids going to bed, and we figured out it could have been worsened by one of the leftover medications I'm still on. There are 2, neither of which are antidepressants. One is an anti-psychotic which had been paired with the antidepressants, but we kept me on it since we don't know if I'll be worsened by going off it. The other is an anti-seizure medication which has been shown to help with anxiety. So we weaned me off the anti-seizure med, and suddenly I have more energy. I still don't feel normal by any means, but once in awhile I stay up until 10 or 10:30pm now.
It was good timing to wean off that med since we just had a ski weekend in Crested Butte with family and friends. I certainly needed the extra energy even if it wasn't enough to ski full days, or stay up very late with our friends. The depression still crept in a couple points, as it just does these days, but we kept it at bay, at least until the drive home yesterday.
Here's my best family photo of the weekend. Our attempt at a selfie, minutes after the paid photographer offered to take a photo for us. I did not manage to take a whole lot of photos from the trip.
But yeah, I did the pigtail braid thing...
And this was the view from our condos... a ski in/ski out place. :)
So this Thursday I have my motor threshold appointment for the TMS treatment which starts next Monday, a week from today. This whole process has felt like such a long time coming, and really it kinda has been. But it's here. So motor threshold is interesting. That will be my first experience with the magnet, and they'll be positioning it on my head to find the location where they can twitch my right thumb. That will determine the precise location, some exact number of centimeters forward from that point or something, where they'll be delivering treatment.
Man, it feels surreal to be talking about this treatment as something that's actually going to happen to me. Like it still feels like I'm talking about someone else.
And this treatment has few risks, little to any discomfort, and likely positive outcomes, and yet, I'm awfully scared still. I guess I'm just scared it won't work. That nothing will change, that I won't start feeling better. And I'm still doing the cautious hopefulness thing here, trying not to get carried away, banking on something that may not do anything. But I am hoping. And I'm excited that it's almost here.
I will try to blog more often through treatment. I want to. I want to try and document it to some extent because it may be a somewhat unique perspective out there, but I'm also going to be continuing to take things a little easier. I've been letting go expectations for quite some time now, and it's been helping, but it's still challenging for me to do. I still beat myself up for not cooking dinner very often, for not feeling well enough to do a lot of normal things, for not feeling up to social stuff, for not being a better mom while I feel awful about myself. But everything has taken second place to the depression for awhile now, too long, and I'm looking forward to hopefully feeling a bit better finally.
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