there we'll go again wishing something bolder, trying to push and pull inside this moment, trying to mold this life within our hands

Saturday, 09/30/17, 2:59pm

Hey there, dear blog. Here we are, it's a Saturday- the weekend, and although I had a wonderful morning with a friend (with some exercise), I am feeling a bit of the usual tension/anxiety/only slight depression this time (so far at least). I'm not sure what it is; I am actually getting a decent amount of productivity in. Got the dishwasher unloaded, reloaded, and restarted, got a load of towels washed and now currently in the dryer, with the washer restarted with some clothes. I have a couple sorta minor issues going on... some, uh, physical issues this morning that required a call to the on-call doctor at my gastroenterology place (don't really want to get into those issues with all of you though, heh), but luckily the recommendation is simply to schedule a follow-up come Monday, I accidentally rolled my ankle during the walk this morning with my friend, so that kinda sucked and cut our walk shorter, and unfortunately the ankle is still a little bothersome. I had some anxiety last night and this morning, enough so that I ended up with some nightmares last night. And I have some things to work on before the end of tomorrow regarding all my plans for next week.

See, I have to tell you all something. I had a big appointment on Thursday, with my ECT doctor, Nasser came of course, and the big news is: I am allowed to go off the 24/7 supervision requirement (!!!!!!). To me, this is a HUGE deal. I have been on 24/7 since mid-June, so about 3.5 MONTHS. That is... well... kinda a lot. I still have to be on 24/7 for treatment days, of course, and really, we are going to ease out of this rather slowly. Because as excited as I am, we want to be sure we do this carefully. I am allowed to drive again, but they recommend the first 3-4 drives be with Nasser, and I'd say, potentially even more than that. I'm definitely of the opinion that I'm going to be taking it super slow when it comes to driving with the kids, so I figure I'll be getting a lot of solo drives in before I start driving them around. But I'm allowed to bike by myself again, I'm allowed to take the bus by myself. I've been pretty stoked about this for the last few days, haha. Yesterday, I took it fairly easy. I still went to hang out with my brother-in-law for a good portion of the day while he was working from home. I ended up doing a walk/run/walk from their house, entirely by myself, which I was pretty excited about. Here's me from that run, with some fall colors in the background, plus some pumpkins growing out of someone's yard that I saw on my cool-down walk back.

My brother-in-law brought me home a good hour and a half before the kids' bus, so I definitely had a big chunk of time at home by myself. That was so incredible, I was even excited that I could get a load of laundry in. I spent a decent portion of time on the couch, relaxing, and I gave BuddyCat some much needed attention.

So I ended up sharing my last blog post on facebook, along with a little explanation of how much better I'm doing. And then yesterday, I shared about going off 24/7. I don't feel like I've shared so much about my treatment and how I'm doing on facebook, at least in awhile, but it ended up making me feel pretty good. I have my issues with facebook, for sure, but it is a nice way to be able to share big news with a lot of people. And I think this week I really got a better sense, for myself, of how much better I am doing, so it was nice to share about that, and get a rather nice bit of response from people I know. I feel stupid sometimes about it, but it does make me feel a little better, to be honest. And I'm sure that's true for a lot of people, so probably not something to feel stupid about, but rather normal.

Yesterday, while I was at my brother-in-law's house (well, really sister and brother-in-law's house of course, but lately since I've been hanging out with just him there during the days using him as my 24/7 person, I've been referring to it as just his house) I ended up drafting up a bit of a schedule for next week. I don't know if I've mentioned in any other posts, but since Nasser had to go back to work, like a month and a half ago - ish (?), he's been writing up a very detailed schedule for the week to email out to all the involved 24/7 people. He would always email it out Sunday to make sure that everything worked for everyone. So now, I'm trying to come up with the schedule mostly on my own, taking on some of that independence I've been looking forward to. I'm still going to get plenty of help from Nasser to finalize everything, but I really need to do this since I still need to get plenty of people time during the week, I still need plenty of rides until I'm actually driving myself and until I feel comfortable driving the kids, and I still need 24/7 support on treatment days, like I said before. The other thing is, I think I need to have a reasonable schedule for the routine aspect of things. Like I probably need more of for the weekend, like I've said in the past. Unfortunately creating this schedule for next week, while being a good thing, did, possibly, cause some of the anxiety I've been feeling. Sigh.

Let's be done here for today, and I'll finish with some of the amazing pictures from the time I spent this morning with my friend. There was this crazy fog over Boulder that we had a great view of, and we both couldn't get enough pictures of it. :)

I think this next one is my favorite: with the lake + fog + foothills + some snow on the further peaks.

It's fall!!!!

...with some variety in colors!

We had brunch at this awesome restaurant that provides blankets for their outdoor seating!!

in my place, in my place were lines that I couldn't change, I was lost, oh yeah

Wednesday, 09/27/17, 10:36am, 1:01pm

Hey there.

As usual, of late, you know, like the last several weeks, haha, we shouldn't put any kind of "standard" on my life of the past many months or years or anything like that... but "as usual", the week, since Monday, has been going rather decently well. Unlike the weekend was. This seems to be my life as of late, shall we say the last month-ish? Because as a quick reminder, I suffer from treatment-resistant depression, and anxiety, at least for like the last 10 years or so, with an additional bout of it when I was a pre-teen.

If you haven't read my whole blog, which I'm sure most people haven't, you may not know my history. If you want a better understanding of how my depression manifested, or just a reminder, read here. As many of my readers know, we experienced a big loss last year: my brother-in-law Adam, who had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, died on May 13th on May 13th when hit by a train. I think my depression took a big turn for the worse after his death, and I couldn't seem to recover. You know, speaking of which, I was so lost in my own "worseness" and whatever, I didn't even acknowledge the 1-year anniversary of Adam's death in my blog. In the years before his death, I was medicated for depression and anxiety, I went regularly to therapy, tried to practice various coping techniques at home, and I think I often convinced myself that I was "good enough". I'm not sure that I ever really was, even before Adam's death, but when medications worked, at least a little, it often didn't seem worth it to switch to something else.

Last year, November 29, is when my psychiatrist first brought up "treatment-resistant depression"; this was before he was quite ready to diagnose me as such but when we were going to try one more antidepressant as a last-ditch effort. My post about that, actually, describes my various medication efforts decently well. I've been re-reading old posts more today, hence all the links, mainly because of my memory issues from ECT. If we recall, I've got this weird phenomenon going on called "state-dependent memory", so it's rather difficult for me to really remember how truly bad I was before ECT. I think going through some old blog posts, especially seeing ones I wrote when I was in a bad state, or like when in one of the posts I described how 5 of the last 7 days have been shitty days.

That's not how I'm doing currently. It's changed... significantly... since ECT. It's weird, from that first time I'd ever mentioned ECT, hoping I'd never have to read more about it, to my description of the first treatment, and to writing 5-star reviews of my ECT place on Google, things have changed, just a bit.

I am much, much better. Although the weekends have been tough, over and over again, and this Sunday Nasser and I discussed various treatment changes, we discussed it at length with my long-time, primary psychiatrist, the one I've been seeing for many, many years now. I'd say, for sure, that he knows me, he knows my history, very, very well. Nasser and I, both, trust his medical/psychiatric opinion. When we mentioned the idea of trying a new antidepressant, he was immediately, like, "oh no, I wouldn't want to chase perfection." Because he sees how much I have improved, and really, we have a pretty decent idea of what we need to work on. It's the weekends- whether it's the lack of routine, or ridiculous expectations I place onto to-dos, etc, I do believe it's something we can improve, without changing treatment. It's something we can improve with the help of all the troubleshooting we're doing, with the help of my therapist, with the help of my doctors, and family, and friends. It's not something that feels like the end of the world anyway, because in strong contrast to how I was doing before ECT, I can, and do, improve and recovery within in the same day of dipping down into that depression.

Well. I think that's just about as much as I can handle today with this post. Sorry, dear readers, I am feeling a call and need to relax. Haha. Before I do, I'm going to leave you with a picture from my run on Sunday, the one that really helped me recover, the one in the rain.

Oh, and some pictures of my kiddos doing chores the previous weekend... because despite what I say about weekends being tough, they haven't been all bad.

you've got to get yourself together, you've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it, don't say that later will be better

Sunday, 09/24/17, 5:23pm

I've been debating the last ten to fifteen minutes about whether or not I actually want to blog today. I guess I finally decided to try. But I can't guarantee anything mind-blowing or lengthy or whatever.

I felt really great when I blogged on Friday, really that whole day. I felt like, hey, I can handle this depression thing. And although I'm feeling slightly more capable now, five hours ago I felt like I was in the depths of some of the worst depression ever. But I'm going to take a deep breath and write about it, I'm going to dare greatly and share about stuff that is very difficult to share.

It's weird. Yesterday, for as Nasser called it, 2/3 of the day, I really was doing well, I was enjoying the day, I felt good. Then I got triggered somehow, I yelled at the kids quite a bit, I felt like Nasser scolded me about that, really I think he just asked me to stop yelling at them, but I felt like a complete failure: as a mother, as a person, in my existence. I've questioned my existence a lot this weekend, and that's been tough. Nasser has been supporting me, a ton, and really got me through the worst of it today, enough so that I actually feel like I made a decent recovery. A recovery, like I'd been talking about on Friday, that wouldn't have happened before ECT, remember electro-convulsive therapy, this crazy treatment I've been going through since mid-June. Today's state had me wondering if I need another round of acute phase of ECT, you know the time for a few weeks where I have to have treatment 3x a week. It sounds awful to have to go through that again, but that's how bad I felt earlier today. Then, this afternoon's "recovery" has me feeling like maybe that doesn't have to be the answer. (By the way, I think the biggest part of my recovery this afternoon was getting myself to get out for a run, in the rain. It wasn't a long run, but it was slightly longer than the last, also slightly faster, and felt a bit better, maybe partially because of the rain.) Nasser mentioned maybe we could look at other antidepressant options. I mentioned on Friday we have an appointment with the doctor; I had been referring to the ECT doctor, but we also have an appointment with my regular psychiatrist this week too. I even have an appointment with my therapist. Lots of good, important appointments. And, really, exercise was always super important to me, and maybe it still really is, probably it still is. And it's been awfully hard to get exercise in, especially the way I want it, with ECT. I mean, for quite a bit of the treatment, I had tons of fatigue, plus treatments rather often, so it was almost impossible to do anything. Now, it seems the 24/7 thing gets in the way of a lot of exercise. I need a buddy for everything, and granted, I've been doing walks a lot more often with the family I hang out with, with is so much better than nothing. But, I miss bike rides and runs, and the freedom to exercise however I want, whenever I want. The flexibility in the 24/7 is helping, and I know we are getting there, slowly.

Oh that neighborhood party I was talking about on Friday didn't happen this weekend. They moved it due to weather, which is good considering all the rain today. I have to say, I kinda enjoyed the bit of cold and rainy weather this weekend. It helped avoid the guilt and shame feelings of not spending tons of time outside, which wouldn't have helped my depression. I've really enjoyed wearing sweatshirts and comfy sweatpants. Plus, I think the colder weather plus rain rather helped my run today. I'm looking forward to lots of colder fall weather.

Alright, I don't know that I have much more to say. I shared about the ups and downs of my weekend. Hoping to keep chugging along alright. FYI, all you friends (and really anyone) out there who struggle with similar stuff, and hide it from almost everyone you know, or don't hide it, because everyone's struggle sucks, I hold you all in my hearts closely. Lots of love to you all, dear readers~

I'll trip, fall, pick myself up and walk unafraid, I'll be clumsy instead, hold me love me or leave me high.

Friday, 09/22/17, 11:26am, 1:49pm

Hah. I know I've started a blog post (or two) recently at the same time- 11:26am. The reason I remember the time so well is it's also my birthday- 11/26 or November 26th- haha. I guess I get similarly timed urges to write on different days, or something.

Happy first day of autumn, everyone. I'm glad we're technically out of summer now, even if the weather isn't perfectly following, you know, due to climate change and all.

It's been a little while since I've written, at least compared to how often I was writing, but there's a reason for it. For awhile I had some trouble filling my time during the days; reading has been awfully difficult most days, even though I bring like the same set of books around with me to everyone's houses when I go and hang out with different family during the days. But then this week, well last Saturday actually, when I was having some depressive feelings, I recovered a little by restarting a Netflix show that Nasser and I used to watch some time ago, one that I really didn't remember much. So it's kinda like I'm watching it for the first time again. But that's been a nice way to fill up a lot of my time, haha. And really, this is a good time to be doing this, considering I am still going through this rather intense treatment, right you guys? Does everyone remember I'm going through electro-convulsive therapy, or ECT as we refer to it a lot of the time? Although, we are seriously getting the treatments more spread out, which is an awesome, awesome accomplishment. I don't know if accomplishment is the right word, but it does feel that way a lot of the time. My last treatment was Monday, this week, and my next treatment isn't until Monday, Oct 2nd, so a full two weeks apart! Pretty nuts, pretty awesome, hopefully it goes well. I'm getting much closer to coming off the 24/7 thing, I think, I hope. We have an appointment with the doctor next week, and I do want to talk about that a bit with him, as well as some of the memory stuff, in particular, the "state dependent memory" thing. Now, I know I mentioned this phenomenon briefly in this post, but I couldn't find it elsewhere in the blog, so I might never have actually explained this. Maybe I did, and my quick search just couldn't find it, but just in case, I'm going to explain it again.

So. I've been finding that I have lots of gaps in my memory over the past, well, bunch of years, like at least since I was diagnosed with depression after RG's birth. What the doctor has explained to us, is that I'm being affected by "state dependent memory". State dependent memory is (by Wikipedia's definition) the "phenomenon through which memory retrieval is most efficient when an individual is in the same state of consciousness as they were when the memory was formed." So we hear about this when it comes to alcoholics or drug users the most, but this applies to things like depression, as well. So I formed a LOT of memories over the past many years in a state of depression, and now that I'm much, much less depressed than I was (which is, of course, a good thing), I have lost a lot of those memories. It's... confusing. The last year, since Adam's death, has probably been especially worse. His death seemed to trigger me a bit further than before, and there's a bunch of things from the past year that I just can't remember. It's overwhelming in some ways to just not even know what memories I'm missing to some extent. I had planned two friends' ski trips this ski season- one in January with kids and one in March without kids. Nasser has shown me pictures from both and talked me through the trips a bit to try and bring back some of the memories. The January one, while super fun, was just about completely missing from my memory prior to talking with him, most likely because there was an additional, super stressful aspect to that trip. Unfortunately the original house I'd booked for it was double-booked and our party ended up being the group that lost out, but of course the owner didn't tell me until the day we were supposed to be moving in to the house. I scrambled to find a replacement, which ended up having several issues, and I put all the blame and stress onto myself. All that depression and anxiety I was in for that weekend made it so that the "state" I was in while forming all those memories was a bit more severe than the normal stress I would have been under, and apparently the result was my mind lost ALL the memories from that weekend, like at first I didn't even remember the trip had happened. I still don't seem to recall any of a trip we took last fall to Tuscon, AZ for my brother-in-law's father's funeral, and we have tried talking about that one and looking at some pictures. It's kinda a scary phenomenon to have going on, and I'm hoping to get a better understanding of what to expect, what's considered "normal", how much we can bring back those memories through pictures and talking, etc, from the doctor next week.

I mentioned before that I'm having a hard time reading books, somewhat because of short-term memory issues still, but definitely some because of my cognitive side effects. Like my brain just has trouble processing stuff. And processing books seems a lot more difficult than processing a show. By the way, the show I'm watching is Once Upon A Time. It's quite fun.

Oh and the other thing I've been filling my time with more this week, is friend time. I saw something like four different friends this week, which has been a big increase from what it's been. Although I suppose the start of school has made a lot of people busier, etc. And we're still trying to figure out some routine and trying not to use any one group of people too, too often because I worry that people are just going to get sick of helping me or something, because that's how I think, even though I know I shouldn't. Anyway, seeing friends a bit more has been quite nice. As part of that, I've gotten a little swim in, twice this week, and it's been awhile, so it's been a nice change. I still haven't run since my one run (last week was it?), but maybe I'll get another in this weekend.

We have a lovely bbq planned in our neighborhood on Sunday, which I'm pretty excited about. It's always a nice event, and although it is supposed to be a bit cooler this weekend, I'm hoping the weather holds out enough for it. We've seen neighbors at the bus stops and around and such, but it's not like we talk to people all too often. So this should be nice.

So I know I mentioned how I'm "doing better" than I was, and it's weird. Because of my memory problems, I tend not to always believe that, especially when I do fall into a tougher state or whatever. This morning, with Nasser, I was a little bit triggered, but it wasn't, like, devastatingly triggered like I used to be, and I still recovered rather easily. Nasser can see the difference, rather easily, but I don't, oftentimes. He reminds me, though, which helps, a lot. He was reminding me this morning, how the recoveries I've made the past several times would never have happened before. This is all pretty new, really, since ECT. And that's huge. I can hardly remember the bit of triggering I had this morning, now. I feel good, after having met up with a friend, gone swimming, had plenty of coffee and talked to my brother-in-law a bit, watched my show, done some blogging. And hopefully, of course, this mood continues. But then again, I guess I am recovering much more easily than I used to. And that is really, really huge.

Alright, I am done for today, haha, partially because I want to watch another episode! Have a good weekend, all, and a good start to the fall season.

my actions make me beautiful and dignify the flesh. me. I am free. free.

Friday, 09/15/17, 11:26am, 1:26pm

Hey everyone. I'm taking some time today to watch and re-watch some Brené Brown videos. Do you remember me talking about Brené Brown some time ago? Here, here, and here, just to name a few. She is a research professor/author/public speaker who has done a lot of work with vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy. Her TED talks are worth a watch if you've never seen them: on vulnerability and on shame are the original two, but she's got a lot more stuff out there these days, and honestly I'm a bit behind on everything she's put out there. I still love the empathy cartoon she narrates... it's short, you can handle the less than 3 minutes to watch it...

When I wrote about how to support someone with a mental illness, back in May of this year, the big, big thing I talked about was empathy. Empathy doesn't just apply to supporting someone with a mental illness, or any illness; it applies EVERYWHERE in our lives. It applies to making a connection with anyone you meet, whether it's through work, or school, or in our neighborhoods. Whatever community you're in, empathy is useful. Anyway, watch the cartoon short if you haven't yet. I mean it. Seriously. Do it now.

I wanted to discuss in a little more depth about vulnerability. Brené talks about how "vulnerability – the willingness to be 'all in' even when you know it can mean failing and hurting – is brave." And this is based on her research.

I've felt decently good since reading Brené's book Daring Greatly about how vulnerable I really am by being so open about my depression and anxiety, about sharing some really shameful feeling things from my life, and deciding to ignore the stigma that's out there and sharing anyway. I'm certainly not as good at daring greatly as plenty of other people out there, but something recently made me feel good about it again. Last week, we had Back To School Night at our kiddos' elementary school. In fact it was the same day as an ECT treatment, which made it rather hard for me considering headache and fatigue and the desperate desire to just be in bed, but I really wanted to be there. Partially since we have a brand new school building as of this school year so I really wanted to see it a bit more, but also because every new school year there's new things to learn from the new teachers, etc, and whatever else. Well, the new PTO president for this school year was speaking, and I was there, thinking, "OMYGOSH, I totally know her, but I can't think of where I know her from, because of all these damn memory problems from ECT. Well SHIT." And at some point, in passing, she even acknowledged me and was like "hey Alisa, how are you?" So, when I had a chance to actually talk to her one on one, I immediately started with, "So I have to tell you something. I'm going through this big medical treatment right now, and one of the major side effects is short term memory loss. So I know I know you, but I can't think where from. I am so sorry." She, of course, was totally empathetic and immediately told me about how her kid so and so is the same grade as RG, etc, etc. I have to say it didn't even occur to me that saying all this to her was being vulnerable until Nasser labeled it as such, but really, being honest and open about ECT IS being vulnerable. It's not that easy all the time to do so, but I definitely find that being this way has more benefit than not being this way. I mean, I'm getting a rather large amount of support from family, and friends, and neighbors, and how would that be possible if I were super secretive about it? And being vulnerable isn't super easy. I mean, I don't get a response from anyone, most of the time. I write my blog and very rarely get likes, or +1's, or comments, or anything. And that definitely used to bother me, a lot. I feel like blogging in the last few weeks (as I've gotten myself doing more regularly for literally the past 3 weeks) has been different in that sense. I don't feel like I've cared about the response from my blog nearly as much as I used to, and I expect that the difference is because I'm nowhere near as depressed as I used to be. But I do know that it's easy to dip back into caring a lot about that stuff, and I'm trying to keep myself out of that.

There's this Brené Brown book that I started some time ago, but haven't gotten all that far into, and as it turns out, I'm pretty sure I have to simply re-start it because of the memory problems. Here it is:

Isn't that, um, perfect for what I was just talking about? I think this one is going to have a profound effect on me, but, with the treatment, it's been difficult to get myself to get into this book since it feels so self-helpy and all. But, I have to remind myself: this is Brené Brown, I'm going to love it. AND, it will probably help me A TON. Because usually when I'm feeling depressed, it's because I DON'T feel like I'm enough. It's a pretty shitty feeling.

Here was my "start my day off well" activity while at my sister and brother-in-law's house (since my bro-in-law works from home so he can be my 24/7 person pretty easily many days).

I know, I know, I've shared a picture of this mug before, but I still love it so much. And I have to recommend this book to everyone. It's wonderful, and this author uses amazing animal pictures to tell his stories. So great. So so great. I'll share one page from the book:

Heeheehee.

Not that I was having a blue day, really, at all, but that book and mug just put me in an even better mood, which I could always use, right?

I thought up a lot of things I want to do this weekend and put them as possibilities in my calendar. The intent here is to hopefully avoid some of the depression I've been having on weekends by creating some schedule or routine to the weekend, as that was one thought we had as to why this was happening. But I'm aware that if I don't do these, I may end up with more guilt, and therefore, more depression. That's why I'm trying to set the expectation up that all of these are possibilities. We'll see how well I follow that idea.

My next ECT treatment is on Monday, which makes it 12 days (woohoo!). Making progress, at least slowly. Unfortunately, and I didn't even realize this until this week, Monday is also a day off from school for my kids, BUT we are getting loads of help from lots of different family that day to make it all work. Although, really, even if I didn't have treatment on Monday, I'd still need help with my kids because the 24/7 thing makes it so I can't be in charge of my kids on my own anyway. So oh well.

I'm trying to be as brave and accepting of myself as I can be as I go into this weekend. Well, really I guess I'm trying to come up with as many ideas as I can to not be depressed, but maybe what I should be doing is coming up with ideas for if I DO get depressed. Hmmm. Like maybe put some activities on my calendar for "what to do if you're feeling shitty". FYI, I might just have to type that out here, because I am currently blogging and all, so it's kinda the natural thing to do, right?

For when I get depressed, down, or feel bad in any way:

• Take a deep breath, or 100
• Try a downward dog pose, or any other yoga pose (in the safety of my home or with people in a class, but only if I want to)
• Eat a piece of dark chocolate (because dark chocolate can stimulate neurogenesis you know)
• Do jumping jacks for 1 minute, then close eyes and breathe deeply for 10 seconds
• Hug Nasser, RG, and TK
• Lay in the hammock, with some ice cold water, and maybe a book
• Read The Blue Day Book
• Take a short nap, or a long nap, or just lay in bed for a half hour
• Take a sniff of lemon oil because "lemon oil is calming in nature and therefore helps in removing mental fatigue, exhaustion, dizziness, anxiety, nervousness and nervous tension. It has the ability to refresh the mind by creating a positive mindset and eliminating negative emotions." (that's from here)
• Watch a favorite movie, like "The Princess Bride" or one of "Lord of the Rings" or "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" or "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" or "Finding Nemo" or "Toy Story" or something else that I can't think of right now
• Watch a favorite TV show, like "Doctor Who" or "Friends" or "The Magic School Bus" or some nature-y show on Netflix or "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" or again, something else that I can't think of right now
• Do whatever the hell I want to do

I'll add to the list when I come up with more, but that's a decent start for now. Hopefully it helps if any of that depression comes up this weekend. Wish me luck, all.

if you try to refuse, will they judge your worth by the hour, time after time after time

Wednesday, 09/13/17, 11:32am, 12:46pm

Hello there. I'm doing a bit better again, I guess because it's not the weekend again. Sigh. Trying to figure out more as to why the weekends are so tough for me; I discussed it a bit with my therapist yesterday, who I hadn't met with in a little while. Last time I met with her, over a month ago, I decided to wait to re-schedule because of my memory problems. I was having appointments with her but not remembering what we had talked about in the previous appointments so it wasn't really helping much. I feel like I'm starting to get my memory back a little, having a little less short-term memory issues (although nowhere near gone). It's weird, I'm improved, but I still feel, like, way less brain capacity than I normally have. Like I talk with people and I'm just forgetting words left and right. It's tough and it makes me less interested in interacting with others. Sigh.

So recently I found this Ted Talk that somebody posted on Facebook, that I found so totally intriguing and, just, well, mind opening.

Here's the link if you'd prefer to read the transcript, as Nasser did when I told him about it. :)

It's about neurogenesis, which is the growth and development of nervous tissue, something that it turns out, we do into adulthood. She talks about some of the different things we can do to increase neurogenesis, with things like diet, exercise, sleep, sex, haha. She also talks about how things like depression are typically associated with decreased neurogenesis. Nasser and I were discussing last night how some of the effects of my ECT treatment are associated with increased neurogenesis, so I got all excited about that.

So really, truly, this electro-convulsive therapy I've been doing, since mid-June, is well, working... we think. Despite these tougher weekends I've been having, or whatever, even those are not even close to how bad I had been, before the treatment. And it feels like we're having a tough time transitioning between the acute phase (going 3x a week for treatment) and the maintenance phase (going once every 3-5 or 6 weeks). But I don't believe the doctor is really concerned about that, it's more just me. But then I have this habit of worrying about a lot of things, like, all the time. Which is partially the depression and anxiety and maybe partially my personality. So anyway, we are making progress still towards getting into true maintenance phase. And I think once we really are there, I'm going to feel like there's a true end in sight for the treatment. Just right now it doesn't feel like there is as much, just because I don't know how long this transition is going to take.

So, I think I mentioned last time about the new flexibility we are allowed to take with the 24/7 thing. So Nasser has now walked the boys to the bus stop in the mornings a few times without me, which has been nice, and this morning, I went for a short run on the path that's on the outskirts of our neighborhood. We had originally planned for me to do it on the circle path that's on the greenbelt behind our house, so Nasser could have just glanced out the window every so often to check on me, but the sprinklers were going this morning when I was getting ready to head out, so he suggested the path, which he can't see from the house, and I got all excited by the, like, super increased flexibility we were taking. Haha. Nasser told me that it's not like I've been wandering off since the treatment started, so he didn't think we had much to be worried about. And he's right. Although, when I started the run, I had a slight bit of confusion of not remembering quite where to pick up the pack, but it came back to me quickly, and I had no issues with the whole thing, other than not having ran in many months and it feeling super difficult and slow. Oh well, I DID IT. :)

I still have this treatment, at the 9 day mark, scheduled for this Friday as well as one scheduled for Monday, which is the 12 day mark. Timing-wise, I have no interest in doing the Friday one anyway since it's scheduled for 2pm. I always have to fast a full 8 hours before, so technically I could eat a breakfast, as long as I'm done by 6am, but usually I fast from the night before and just make that dinner my last meal. But with how well I'm feeling today and yesterday, I'm thinking I'm going to cancel that Friday appointment anyway and go for Monday's 9:30am treatment (SO much better timing in my opinion). Just, you know, feeling a tad worried about having the weekend again, but hoping I can keep upping my activity level since this run today because I know that it helps me a ton. It's hard, if I'm not doing as well this weekend, we won't want to be as flexible with the 24/7 thing because the flexibility determination is also dependent on how I'm doing. Ah well, we'll see. Just keep trying I guess.

Have I told you much about my sleeping CPAP usage in awhile? I had my 2-week follow up appointment with the sleep technician yesterday where we talked about it and looked at the data from the machine. She's very happy with how things seem to be going for me and with the data- I've been using it A LOT, like an average of 9 hours a night (with like a half hour of that being "getting used to it" time before bed when I'm just wearing it and reading on my phone or whatever), which is not like a lot of people when they start using a CPAP. Like apparently a lot of people don't use it as much as they're supposed to in the beginning because it really bothers them to sleep with it, and apparently a lot of people come in to that 2-week follow up looking super tired and sleep deprived because the CPAP is just interfering with their ability to sleep. It hasn't been that way for me. I've been sleeping rather well, I think, and don't necessarily feel more well rested yet than prior to using it, although Nasser thinks I've been more alert. The other thing from the data is my "events per hour" is super low- 0.7 on average, which is fantastic. So yeah, hopefully I just keep getting more and more well rested, which will more certainly keep helping the depression.

Oh so last night, I ended up going to this fun event in Boulder, along with my sister and a friend, hosted by Skirt Sports, this awesome women's athletic clothing company, in honor of their 13th birthday. They had it at their store, gave $20 to spend as a gift to every one of us, had a workout if you got there early enough (we skipped that part), dinner catered by Noodles and Company, drinks from Ska Brewing (which I, of course, did NOT partake in), some speakers, and a cake from Kim and Jake's Cakes. It was super fun, I ended up buying a skirt and top that were on sale which I'm super excited about, and I realized again how I could wear this company's clothing casually, even when I'm not working out. So they make workout/running skirts (with built-in shorties), which are not only amazingly functional, have awesome pockets, but they are also super cute. And I do already own several, but I think I had kinda freaked out recently, when I gained some weight. And I worried that they didn't fit me well anymore. Well I fixed that thought process this morning when I pulled a bunch out of the drawer, ran in one, picked one to wear for the day, and I've felt great in them again. I feel better in these than I do wearing regular capris and stuff that often just make me feel chubbier or whatever. Man, gaining weight sucks, but within these stupid societal expectations we have, it really really sucks. And you know what, when I'm going through this crazy big medical treatment that causes me to have seizures regularly, I think I'm really allowed to gain some weight. So get off my effing back, society.

Anyway, I think that's all I've got for today. I hope the rest of this week keeps going well and I hope I can keep some of it up this weekend. But I'll also try not to get down on myself this weekend if I am feeling down. That's an important bit too.

I used to think there is no future left at all

Sunday, 09/10/17, 11:57am, 4:44pm

Did you know that today is World Suicide Prevention Day? There's a decent chance you didn't. It's not as recognized as many other days throughout the year, thanks to mental illness being brushed to the side so often. And thanks to the overwhelming stigma when it comes to mental illness. But that page I linked to is very worth reading, especially if you've ever thought that you have no idea what to do to help someone who might be suicidal. Their theme this year, "Take a minute, change a life" is spot on in my opinion, as someone who has dealt with these feelings at multiple points in her life.

This weekend was... tough for me again. Even though I just had treatment last Wednesday. Although we did some looking through Daylio, the daily app I use to track my mood. It seems, that at least this summer, since I started using the app more regularly, I don't do as well on the weekends, for some reason. We're thinking it's probably most to do with the fact that we have less routine on the weekends, and I probably do better with more routine. So I could probably figure out a way to add more routine into the weekends; I was talking today with my sisters about adding more exercise into my life as well, but that could be an easy routine thing to add to the weekends. Maybe a yoga dvd or the exercise bike, if I'm still under 24/7 supervision requirement and can't leave the house. Although... Nasser found out on Friday from some of the ECT people that we could potentially start relaxing some of the 24/7 stuff. It's not much, but little things, like I could stay in the house by myself while Nasser takes the boys to the park, assuming he thinks I'm doing well enough in that current situation. I still can't drive of course, but this is still a big stuff forward. But the exercise stuff is definitely something I need to think about incorporating into my life more. I've been walking more, mostly with my mom, some with my brother-in-law, but I'm thinking I need to get more in, get closer to the level of activity I was at some time ago. I certainly haven't ran in a long time, there was no possibility of a triathlon this summer, and I'd definitely like to get back to that at some point again. Bike-riding, at some point, would be good, so maybe getting on the exercise bike more regularly right now would be good so that I'm more ready for the real thing when I do go off the 24/7 thing. I know that exercise helps me, a lot, so I just need to work on getting it more into my life again.

So what I haven't mentioned is what the next treatment gap is going to be. The last one was 9 days, and I had wondered about that and thought that we'd have to do less this time around. The doctor noted my bad days, but noted that I had an upswing again, still before treatment, and was pleased to see that. So we decided to schedule 2 possibilities again, but this time 9 days and 12 days, so we've got one scheduled for this coming Friday and one the following Monday. So I may end up skipping a week. But we'll see, of course. I had these not so great 2 days, but this week may be better again.

I hope.

I dunno that I really have anything else to talk about. Short post for today. I'll finish with a picture of Nasser and me on the merry-go-round on Friday night at the amusement park we were at- it was for a private work party for the company my sister, brother, and brother-in-law work at.