Last Published April 18 2010

This blog has seen high and low times before...  more of the latter than the former, to be fair, but never have I left longer than a few weeks, maybe two months tops.  I posted on a different blog before this one, send update letters to my mailing list at least twice a year.  I think I've had some sort of digital update system for at least 5 or 6 years now.

My website is full of images from 5 or 6 years ago.  The new one sits half finished, full of almost realized ideas and necessary changes that have never seen the public forum.  This blog and 4 others like it sit, rotting, like a million other abandoned internet projects across the web.  I've always been a touch flighty, but 6 months between updates?  What happened?

Life happened.  I stopped updating when I met my wonderful partner last June.  I wrote a little about how amazing he was and how busy I was with him, but not much else.  I started a blog about our fuzzy family and rescue work - I still have half a dozen unfinished drafts saved to it.  I update my facebook regularly, but even that I ignored for most of July ...  And obsessively checked it all of August. Why?

Because I spent all of July in the hospital.

I've made no secret over the years that I suffer from crippling depression - I believe that secrecy only breeds more pain, in everyone.  Depression does not just affect the sufferer, but every single person they love.  Every person they interact with.  It effects our jobs, our pets, our loves, and even our damn diets!  So why pretend when we can accept and start working to rebuild?

But I was not in the hospital just for depression.  It got me in, certainly, and kept me there longer.  But I've been suffering from an unusual, unending chemical depression since my winter in BC and it did not suddenly appear overnight.  The man I love, my spouse and fiance, has never known me happy - I met him already deeply entrenched in my chemical nightmare.  And all the love in the world couldn't make it go away.

So yes, I needed help.  I have what's called Catatonic Depression, which means I shut down when things get really bad.  Every december or early january I generally close my door and refuse to move or see anyone for a week or so - when things get really bad, I shut down for more than days.  I stop eating.  Moving.  Caring.  Yves, wonderful man that he is, saw this and got me the help I needed to deal with my depression - medications and care that I would never have sought out myself.  He brought me to the hospital where they cured my chemical imbalance with pills and renewed my will to improve the emotional imbalance as well.

But that's not the whole story, nor even close.  You see, when they admitted me - when Yves sat with the doctors and told them the whole truth - they not only immediately admitted me, they told us we were lucky to have come in when we did, as from my symptoms I'd had less than three weeks to live.

I have autoimmune issues, and have since birth.  I was hospitalized for the first time at age 3.  I have flare ups which range in intensity but consistently grow longer and more severe each year.  These include everything from lung and throat infections to more complex issues ranging from "cold flashes" of Reynode's Syndrome where my body stops providing heat, to intense arthritic pain, to tachycardia and beyond.

As a child, I barely let it slow me down.  Constant colds and fevers were part of life, and it was not until jr high that I even realized it was unusual to be sick 20 days out of the month.  I quit track when the pain and asthma grew worse.  Eventually, I stopped singing and playing music in public as my joint pain increased and my voice changed from constant infections.  Still I faced each day with a smile - why dwell on things you can't change?  The pain has always been manageable except during an intense attack, which generally only lasted a few hours anyways.  I continued to train, to grow strong.  Even when new health problems arose in High School, I tried to greet each challenge with strength - I lost 50lbs in 3 months and laughed it off, glad I could finally fit a size 4 even if only temporarily.  I gave up fatty foods, wheat, and dairy.  I learned to cook my own meals and to modify my workout routine to suit my new limitations, even taking up boxing to help maintain my balance and core strength as they faded.  I learned to lip read as I lost my hearing.  I grew, adjusted, changed, and learned from each and every new obstacle.

Every time something new threw itself down before me, I did my best to work with it, knowing that someday -maybe not now- I would understand the plan behind them.  Wheat intolerance taught me the value of proper eating.  Sugar and dairy intolerances taught me the joys of moderation (sometimes).  Losing weight taught me the frustration of being weak and inspired me to work harder to maintain a healthy body despite the growing reasons to give up on physical health.

I almost died from a combination of ill health and depression...  Yet I had always faced my health concerns head on before my winter in BC.  What changed so much that I ended up lying on the floor for days on end when a few short years before I'd been working 4 jobs and struggling to keep my work week down to 90hrs so I could visit my loved ones in the hospital?  When did I become the one who needed visiting?

Pain is the main answer.  Chronic pain, like fear, is the mind killer.  It eats you alive from the inside out until you become a shell.  Yet after 3 months nearly pain free, I am off my medications and facing the full return of daily pain, of weekly flare ups and an ache that never quite goes away.  Why did I give up that pain management if chronic pain is so difficult to deal with?

Because I am more than my pain, more than my illness, and far more than my depression.  On medication I felt ok all the time... never good, never bad.  I lost the will to do anything at all, even without the catatonic depression.  4 months of bedrest recovering from my physical limitations and I found I was self-limiting.  I wasn't recovered, because I wasn't myself.  If I'm not creating or evolving what is the point of recovering?

So here I am, sore and exhausted and ill, battling the same depression demons I have fought since I was 8.  But -for the first time- my fiance is getting to know me, the real me.  And he still holds me when the pain gets bad, and he still loves me when I'm too ill to rise for days on end - because there is no cure for my disease, but there is a cure for depression: HOPE.

I suffered this summer, worse than I care to admit even to myself.  I spent a month nearly catatonic, another month under 24hr watch at the hospital, and nearly EIGHT WEEKS bed ridden when I returned home.  I've only been back on my feet for three weeks and I still have to limit myself to a maximum of 12 hours upright each day, maybe 5 working, yet I'm upright - nothing else matters, really.  I have a good man (who will literally carry me when I am too weak to continue), a beautiful home and a loving family (furry and human).  Our chinchilla/daughter is recovering from her own illness.  My Bella degu is self training to stay on my desk while I work, entertaining me for hours.

My hands hurt.  Typing this I have to take breaks, both from the arthritic ache and from the effort of holding my arms out so long.  I get winded making dinner, can't stand still long enough to do a load of dishes.  I have new scars all over my face and body, my facial mole has been replaced by a crater, and I'm so beyond broke after 2 years nearly unemployed that I can't actually remember what paying all my bills feels like.  But I'm still here.

Yet again, I've faced my demons and come back from the brink - survived.  As we learn details of my autoimmune condition, the chances of living past 50 drop every test.  Odds of pain increasing the rest of my life are staggering, and I become almost instantly immune (or allergic) to any medications.  But I'm also planning my April Fool's wedding.  I sleep beside a man I love, and get cuddles from my loving pets before bed.  I'm learning to love work again, learning to embrace all the obsessive habits I tried to give up when I moved in with my beau and rediscovering myself within them.

I will be the person who beats the odds, or I will die at 50 having lived a full life (or three).  Pain may be the mind killer, but love and hope are far more important than a mere mind.  Besides, I have pills for that now, too ;P

Don't flee.  Don't despair.  Don't want anything too much, either.  Life is balance, good AND bad.  Without it, we'd be lost in that grey neutrality that's worse than death.