Posted by Ilene on July 9, 2003, at 11:07:10
I've been gone for a *long* time (since mid-March) because I was clear across the country: My father got sick, then he died, and then I had to clear out the house and deal with all the legal & financial stuff.
I figured out I have "moderate to severe" GAD. I'm taking clonazepam (klonopin) but the dose that I can tolerate doesn't do much. At least I can knock myself out on those cross-country plane trips. I'm taking more neurontin, but it hasn't done anything either.
I can't believe how diagnosticaly inept my pdoc is. She actually had to look up the symptoms of atypical depression. Despite that, I trust her more than any other pdoc I've been to.
She's been telling me for months to see someone else, but I've never had the energy or the wherewithall to overcome my fear of having yet another disturbing medical experience. I think the MDs who accept my insurance are all to weird to get patients from anywhere else. Since I inherited some money from my dad, I can pay out of pocket for a while.
I'm hoping my pdoc and the "expert" she recommended can get together without my actual presence, esp. since I'm leaving for 7 weeks on the 17th. First they have to decide whether I have atypical depression or bipolar depression. A few weeks ago the pdoc said she wanted to start me on lithium. "Just a little," she said. No thanks, I want to keep my thyroid, I don't want to gain any more weight, I don't want any more skin problems, and I don't do blood tests any more.
I had a phlebotomist actually say to me, "Oh, do you feel that?" while she was probing my arm for a vein, and I was slumping farther and farther down the chair. She finally took it out of the back of my hand. Reminds of when my wonderful, sweet little cat was dying, and the vet took blood out of her little leg.
I felt worse when my cats died than when my mother died. The most hurtful and confusing thing is that nearly everyone else in the world thinks my mother was *wonderful.*
Another thing I discovered: "Hereditary insanity." I got some family documents related to Nazi persecution. My aunt (mother's sister) saw a psychiatrist for years, and her symptoms were almost exactly the same as mine. This was supposedly a consequence of fleeing Europe as a teenager.
One of her two sons is clearly psychiatrically ill. (I just hate the term "mentally ill" because I think the concept of the mind being separate from the body has harmed many people.) He probably has a personality disorder. Since he's extremely reclusive I don't see him very often.
My dad's CPA said to me I was "just like my mother" because I worried all the time. I had forgotten the number of tranquilizers my mother took to stave off her migraines. She was a miserable woman and we never got along.
It's so strange that my 17-yr-old daughter actually likes being with me (at least some of the time). I thought all teenagers hated their parents. She even let me yammer on about why Ophelia loses it. (Polonius is the villain of the play. If Hamlet had forked him right off then Horatio wouldn't have been the lasting one standing on a stage strewn with dead bodies.)
Hamlet must be every depressive's favorite play. Hard not to indentify w/ him even before he ruminates over "the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns."
"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!" How did Shakespeare know that?
I think I need to stop drinking coffee.
Ilene
poster:Ilene
thread:240285
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030708/msgs/240285.html