The Mograine

I started this blog to keep friends and family informed about my progress in battling my neverending migraine.  Of course, I went through treatment 7 months ago and still haven’t written the details of that, so we have one of my many, many failures already.  Don’t worry, I’ve spent a few weeks’ worth of hours berating myself for it.  I have a 6-degree black belt and several Olympic gold medals in the sport of Beating Oneself Up.

The really fun part is that migraines are not my only health issue, nor are they even in the top 3 anymore.  For those of you who don’t know me well or haven’t known me very long, I’ve been sick for a long time.  More than a decade.  More than a quarter of my life.  I won’t list it all here, but I will post my full health history on a separate page.  I warn you:  it’s long, boring, and TMI, but it will be there for those who are strangely fascinated.  For some reason, though, it doesn’t matter how long I’ve lived through this, I still have trouble accepting that this is my life.  But it is.  It’s who I am.  It has to be, because limitations won’t let me be anything else.

There is some good news.  The migraines are fewer, farther between, and less severe.  I wish I could tell you some magic treatment plan that made it happen, but really I just think other things came and crowded them out.  Even in the game of Whac-a-Mole that is my body, only so many moles will be up at once.

For those of you either too old or too young to be familiar with The Great Metaphor for my Life, let’s turn to our trusty Wikipedia:

Whac-A-Mole is an arcade redemption game. A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole and the machinery necessary to move it up and down. Once the game starts, the moles will begin to pop up from their holes at random. The object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player’s score. The more quickly this is done the higher the final score will be.

I gather the strength and tools to whack one health issue out of the way, just in time for the next one to pop up.  Sometimes the pace is glacial, sometimes it’s lightning-quick, but I am never not playing the game.  Though instead of a large mallet, I often feel I am playing with a Q-tip.

More good news:  the depression has started to lift.  It had begun lifting a bit before I wrote my last post, and it has been dissipating gradually since then.  This is not the result of any action or inaction on my part, it’s happening on its own.  Again, I just think it’s being crowded out.

If the player does not strike a mole within a certain time or with enough force, it will eventually sink back into its hole with no score. Although gameplay starts out slow enough for most people to hit all of the moles that rise, it gradually increases in speed, with each mole spending less time above the hole and with more moles outside of their holes at the same time.

I don’t know if the severe muscle and nerve pain has been here for a while but was masked by migraine pain, or if it really did start sometime in January.  It certainly wasn’t disabling until then.  Following a weekend of lying around doing nothing, I woke up one Monday morning in such severe pain I wondered if I had acquired some kind of virus or parasite.  I stumbled into work, then came home at the end of the day and was asleep by 5:30 pm.  Each day that week, I got a little better, until by Friday I felt almost normal.  The following Monday was a rerun of the one prior, and the week continued as the previous one had.

On the third agonizing Monday in a row, I called to get an appointment with the rheumatologist.  I see a nurse practitioner, and she is amazing.  No matter how bad I feel, I always feel better after I see her.  Last Wednesday, the 8th, she didn’t hesitate with a diagnosis:  fibromyalgia.  That trusted Wikipedia link sums it up for me; except for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, I have every symptom listed.

Don’t feel bad, a diagnosis is a good thing.  Doesn’t matter what it is, a diagnosis is always preferable to “we don’t really know, so it’s probably stress (read: my own fault), and there isn’t anything we can do.”  I started reading up on fibromyalgia 10 years ago, when we weren’t sure what was wrong then.  After reading more in the past week, I’m very glad to see that not only is it a recognized disease (it’s actually a syndrome), many double-blind studies have been conducted for various treatments, and three drugs have been approved by the FDA specific for fibro.

I’m not on any of those at this point.  I take a medication for pain (which is also prescribed for migraines, so I’m lucky I can kill two birds with one stone), a muscle relaxer at night, and I start physical therapy this evening.

After a designated time limit, the game ends, regardless of the skill of the player. The final score is based upon the number of moles that the player struck.

No one lives forever.  I might die at 40, it might be 90 or later.  So this game will end eventually, and as I approach the pearly gates I expect to see my all-time high score flashing above St. Peter’s head.  Maybe there will even be a giant stuffed animal waiting for me, like the prizes at carnivals almost impossible to win.  I better get something out of this.

In the meantime, I get up every morning, fall down a few times because my legs don’t work right, and stumble into work.  Sometimes I eat lunch at my desk, sometimes I have no appetite, and sometimes I get hungry but trying to figure out what to eat and whether I have the strength to leave the building just becomes too hard.  8.75 hours later, I go home to my dog and my cats and my comfortable couch and even more comfortable bed.  I can stay awake past 6:30 now (though making it to 8:30 is still a stretch).  And on some weekends, I even have the energy to do the dishes.

In all of this, I still have too much time on my hands for my brain to be idle.  That’s never a good thing.  It keeps me wondering, why am I still here?  What am I supposed to do with all of this?  I have no desire to leave this earth, but it’s pretty damned frustrating to be here and be completely incapable of contributing a single positive thing to anything or anyone.

This is it.  It’s all there is.  Marriage will not be possible for me – who can go out on dates when they are asleep by 6:30 every night (and who’d want to date someone in constant pain, anyway)?  Children?  Ha.  I can barely take care of my cats.  I am lucky, very fortunate, that I can hold down a job (and have an incredibly supportive boss and colleagues), but “keeping a job” does not a career make.

Of course, I’m a selfish ingrate, because things could be so much worse.  I’m not battling a disease that is trying to take my life.  My mother is wonderful and now only 20 minutes away from me.  My sister and I could not be closer if we were twins, and she and my amazing brother-in-law have given me nephews and a niece that are the light of my life.  I still have a couple friends who haven’t given up on me, despite my inability to do much of anything with them or be there for them if they need something.  I am so lucky in so very many ways, and it’s still not enough.

So what am I supposed to do?  I don’t believe in random, and I don’t believe in no reason for things.  Even if you believe there is no reason for this, I still have the need to do something with it.  I need a purpose for my life that is more than “make it through the day.”

The one thing I can always do is write.  I won’t say I’m good at it, but sometimes I’m not half bad.  Writing is like breathing for me, necessary and usually not done consciously.  I have hesitated for a while, because writing all of this whining self-indulgence has all of the appeal of a lump of hair.  But maybe doing so will get it out, and I can move on to other things.

At any rate, thanks for reading.

– “Alive,” Pearl Jam

I lost another friend to suicide today, the second one in nine months.  Neither was a terribly close friend.  They weren’t in my innermost circle.  I didn’t know either well enough to recognize signs of someone needing help, not that there are signs, not always.  But both men showed me great friendship at different times in my life.

Both men were public figures, at least at the state and local level.  Both had terrific careers.  Both had friends, family, loved ones.  Both men had children.

When a person dies by his or own hand, two types of questions often follow.  The first type wonders at what things were happening to make this person’s life so unbearable.  The other, the more painful for those left behind, asks what were the signs that were missed, what did someone fail to do that could have helped this person and helped prevent such a tragedy.  The answers to such questions are simple, though they do not abate the loss.  Only one thing happens in a person’s life to cause them to leave it prematurely — the illness of depression becomes stronger than the instinct to survive.  And there frequently are no signs, and nothing anyone could have done to prevent anything.

A human being’s instinct to survive is one of the most powerful forces on Earth.  Think about  the extraordinary stories you hear about people surviving weeks in the wilderness, scrounging for food and water, or ordinary people lifting things as heavy as cars to save themselves and others from being crushed.   The human body and the brain that runs it are powerful beyond measure in their ability to preserve themselves.  It’s clear, then, that whatever can overcome such power must be incredibly powerful itself.

Suicide is not a choice.  It’s not the result of someone giving up.  It is simply the fatal result of the disease of depression.  Disease.  Cancer of the soul.  Some people go through cancer and then remission and live cancer-free, and some people live with cancer for the rest of their lives and eventually die of something else, and for some people, the cancer unfortunately grows too strong and becomes fatal.  Depression is no different.

I have struggled with depression off and on since I was a teenager, but the past year and a half have been almost as bad as ever.  Chronic pain is the gasoline poured on the perpetually-smoldering embers of depression’s fire.  It’s hot, and I choke and struggle to breathe, but in my case, the fire has not taken me.  And if it hasn’t burned me out by now, there’s a good chance it never will.

This does not mean I am strong.  Nor does it mean I am weak, too weak to end my own pain.  It is not the result of anything other than luck.  People don’t do anything by choice to invite cancer, nor do they choose whether to survive and go into remission or to allow the cancer to take their lives — it’s not a question of allowing anything.  Depression is no different.  Some people never suffer from it, some people go through one tough bout, some people live (and struggle) with it their entire lives, and for some, it becomes just too strong.  There is no action one can take, no decision one can make, to control what, if any, we are saddled with.

The depression attached to me (it’s not “my” depression, I refuse to own it) does not want to take my life.  No matter how bad things get, ending my life is not even something I consider and reject.  It just doesn’t occur to me.  Ever.  And that is just pure chance.

That doesn’t mean there is nothing I can do about it.  Things had already started to turn for me late last week, turning for the better.  They’re turning at the rate of an aircraft carrier, but after being anchored in the same uncomfortable position for so long, any movement feels good.  I didn’t do anything to start that motion, but now that it’s there, I’d like to accelerate it, if possible.  Or at least remove anything in the way.  I don’t know what I’m moving toward, or whether it’s even a good direction, but I’m going to follow along regardless.

To my friends B and M, I pray that you have found peace and freedom from your pain.  To their families and friends, I pray that you (we) can find peace as well.  For now, though, it is just time to grieve.