Posted by SLS on January 17, 2001, at 7:42:15
In reply to Re: My Greatest Fear, posted by quilter on January 17, 2001, at 0:07:38
Hi guys.
I would like to thank each and everone of you for your concern, support, and suggestions.For the moment, Risperdal is helping. It has only been a week or so that I have felt significantly improved. As was mentioned on the other board, I have a hard time being *cautiously* optimistic and have had to emotionally recover from the disappearances of quite a few transient antidepressant responses that lasted no longer than a few days. Even with these qualitatively small improvements, It has been so cruel for me to have had such teasingly fleeting tastes of real human life. I live in nothing short of an altered state of conscious, as do many of us.
I think the extent to which one can live any kind of life by accepting one's condition and learning to adjust somehow doesn't seem to be applicable to me. With the help of Lamictal and a tricyclic, I have been able to think and read a little. I have been able to participate on Psycho-Babble. I have had enough mental energy to turn on my computer and do something other than type random DOS commands (which I learned during a few days of a brief improvement) just to have enough stimulation to get out of bed. I spent the better part of the last two decades immobile on a couch staring at a wall for an entire day with the T.V. tuned to CNN. When my parents would arrive home from work and ask me "Did you here about so and so... What did CNN have to say about it?" I couldn't answer, not because I couldn't remember, but because I never knew. I had not focused my attention on the T.V. for the whole nine hours I sat in the room. It was not unusual for me not to be able to feed myself. And even when food was prepared for me, it was an effort to bring the fork to my mouth from the plate. I often stopped half way, frozen, waiting for another parcel of mental energy to complete the movement. When getting out of my parent's car, one that I was in driven in three to six times a week, I would have to search and learn the location of the door handle almost every time. The degree of dementia was unspeakable. These things did not occur episodically, they remained static, day after day, year after year. Staring into space.
I try hard not to exaggerate. For each one of us, our depression is the worst in the world simply because it is ours. We know nothing worse. It is our life that has been affected and our feelings that bring us pain. Perhaps my depression is no worse than anyone else's. I wouldn't know. I only know mine.
My condition does not lend itself to the kind of acceptance and adjustment that allows one to simply get on with their life despite the effort necessary. However, I have always been able to look and find the joys that extant as the beauty and order of our universe.
No.
This time, I think I would be devastated if Risperdal were to stop working.
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:3948
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010105/msgs/4013.html