I last posted about vacation over Labor Day and how great things were. Before that, I was up early every morning to do some sort of workout, my favorite being swimming. After swimming for weeks, I started having pain in my left shoulder. First it was only when I swam and after a while, it was all the time. I couldn't reach for anything over my head and sleep became a thing of the past because the pain was so bad at the end of the day. I mentioned this to my orthopedic surgeon (who is also my concussion specialist) at a follow up visit and he told me it sounded like I tore my rotator cuff and no more swimming. I was devastated. I loved swimming. I was going faster and further every time I went to the pool. He told me that these things happen and I could use a kick board, but nothing until he had the results from an MRI.
I scheduled the MRI and follow up for the week after I came back from vacation. At my follow up, he told me that I have a small tear, bone spurs, and severe tendonosis. He said it wasn't surgical at this time and he wanted to try a steroid injection and physical therapy. I still need to be careful with activities over my head and still no freestyle swimming. This devastated me. I was happy that I didn't need surgery, but I felt like I couldn't catch a break. I felt like physically it was just one thing after the other since crushing my hand in October 2013. Every time something would start to get better, something else would happen. It was really starting to crush my spirit.
This last bad news started a spiral effect with my entire life. School was starting to get intense. Work was work. My brain was getting better, but still not back to normal. My hand was still having problems and I had just had hand surgery #2 in 5 months. My weight continued to come off slowly, but more so because I just wasn't eating. Anytime I sat down to eat, it made me sick. The thought of food nauseated me for several weeks. And then I hit the 20 lbs lost mark and I thought that was the end of the spiral. I was so excited...down 20 lbs in 8 weeks. I had done better than I thought. And looking back, I thought that milestone would get me back on track, but it didn't. The depression that had been slowly creeping in had started to take over my life.
I have battled with depression for most of my adult life. It hit me hard in my college years (the first time around 1997-1999) and it would fade and return over the next 15 years. I have used counseling, medication, journaling, and self medicating over those years. I have made good choices and not so good ones over that time as well. Normally I can tell when I start down that tunnel again and I can get ahead of it. I can surround myself with people and pull myself out without a whole lot of effort. But, this time was different. I never saw it coming. And I put on a pretty good show for everyone, so no one else saw it coming either. It wasn't that I didn't have anyone to talk to, because I have parents and friends who know my history and I don't feel embarrassed to go to them. But, I really didn't see there was a problem. The things that I did notice I attributed to the stress of being back in school: not sleeping, headaches, not eating, eating too much, eating junk, tired all the time, grumpy, easily frustrated.
Finally, I got a text one day that basically said, are you okay, I'm worried about you. I lost it. No, I wasn't okay and you should be worried about me. I'm down this tunnel and I don't know how I got here and I don't know how to get out. I was miserable. The increase in migraines alone was enough to do me in. I broke down. I cried. I yelled. I got angry. I got sad. I threw things (don't worry Mom, I didn't break anything.) I prayed. And then I cried some more. And then I prayed some more.
That was two weeks ago. I have avoided writing this for two weeks. Two weeks ago, I hit my bottom...thank God it's not the bottom that I have hit in years past! For the first week, I was still stumbling around, trying to figure out what to do next, where to start to pull me out of this hole. I knew I had many things that I needed to do, so I made a list.
1. Start cooking again
2. Stop eating crap
3. Start exercising again
4. Keep busting my tail in school (amazingly this was the one area that I didn't let fall apart!)
5. Pray every day, at least once
6. Drink more water
7. Make church, work, and school my priorities
8. Reach out to my doctor about the depression, headaches, and insomnia
9. Write a blog about all of this crap
10. Never quit...don't give up...take baby steps if I have to, just don't quit
It took me a week to make this list. Last weekend was the first weekend that I had cooked in nearly a month. I'm lucky that in all of this, I only gained 3 pounds. It really could have been much worse. I saw my concussion specialist again last Friday. I told him about the daily headaches, the lack of sleep, the depression, and the struggles with having to study so much to retain information. He said it could still be my brain trying to recover from the concussion.
I was diagnosed with post concussion syndrome a month after my accident because my concussion and it's symptoms were not improving. I saw several specialist to help with all the different symptoms and everything was getting better until I started back to school. The added stress of school has turned my world upside down, but I promised myself that no matter how hard it got, I wouldn't quit. I had done that too many times in the past. I wasn't going to do it again. I felt that I was smart enough and determined enough that I could do this, even if I had a slight deficit in my brain.
My doctor agreed that it could be my brain, the lingering concussion symptoms, or stress, but he wanted to try a new medication. It was something we had discussed the last visit, but I opted to wait, since I had just recently gotten myself off of all meds, except for allergies and the occasional asthma attack. But when he mentioned it again, I knew I needed to try. He prescribed Elavil (amitriptyline) and it was an old depression medication, actually a tricyclic antidepressant. It is used for headache and migraine prevention, insomnia, and can also treat depression. It sounded like it was exactly what I needed, so I agreed to try it for a month. So far it has been a week and I think it's still too soon to tell, but I am hopeful.
This weekend I will cook again for the week and I will be adding back in my gallon of water a day goal. I hate water, so this has always been a hard thing for me, but I know that I can do it. I will also be adding back in walking 3 days a week and starting some other workouts that I have at home. I may even try to hit the pool and try out the kick board that I bought 6 weeks ago! I am still struggling with my latest hand surgery and the pain from that. And through all of this, I was rear ended and will be dropping my car off for repairs on Monday. Last Sunday (October 19th) marked a year that had passed since I crushed my hand when the hood of my car fell and latched shut. I have said that day started the worst year of my life as far as my physical health goes. It seemed like my luck went out the window the day that happened.
But, I received a tremendous and amazing blessing on that day this year. I was brought to tears by the generosity of a friend that I have not seen in over 15 years. Someone who did not know all the details of what I was going through, but reached out anyway. And blessed me in a way that I can never repay and that I will always be thankful for. It gave a new meaning to the date October 19th. It is no longer a date that I remember for the worst in my life, but for the day that I received the greatest blessing from God through a friend. I feel like it was God's way of showing me that I am not alone and that He loves me. And even thought I have gone through a year from Hell, I know that things are turning around, starting from the same date that they fell apart.
I know that this blog entry is long on words, short on pictures, and totally all over the place, but I needed to get it out and on paper before I chickened out and found something else to do. I thank you for reading if you made it this far and I ask for prayers of strength to not quit and never give up. And I hope that if anyone else out there is battling through depression, know this: you are not alone, you are never alone, you are not the only one, this is hard, but it will get better, ask for help, it is out there, and know that I am praying for you. Depression is very real...sometimes too real for some of us...but it won't last forever.
#bebrave #bebadass #nevergiveup
