Category Archives: depression

Depressed? Who Me? Couldn’t Be.

Isn’t it odd when how we see ourselves is confronted by an expert’s view of us?  This week, I was confronted by the official write-up from my last visit with my neurologist.  There as the last condition was a word I would never use for myself. Yet there it was, the “d” word. I thought it must be some kind of mistake till I mentioned it to my wife, and she said “Of course.  It’s not like it’s the first write-up to describe you as ‘depressed.'” 

There, I’ve written the word I’ve not allowed myself to think describes me.  She said she’s never seen anyone able to hold a grudge like I do who wasn’t depressed in some way.  When I protested I must be the happiest, luckiest depressed guy on earth, she shrugged pointing out I do take an anti-depressant to sleep at night.  I was told it is an anti-spasticity drug with some anti-depressant  uses as well.  Who cares?  It works.

As I started to defend myself and my positive attitude, I realize it is with logic like, “I have MS, but I can still run, work full time, and…my MS is so much better than Mrs. Soandso’s.”  or “I may not have X, but look at how much of what I need I do have” or “look how many people go out of their way to make my life easier at the hard points.”  I know over half of MS patients are treated for depression.  Part of me wants to scream, many of us should be depressed.  However, that’s a deliberate confusion of situational depression from brain chemistry.

When I continue down that path of logic, all I can come up with is “if I am depressed, my bulwark is a reliably (thus far) inexhaustible ability to find different perspectives in order to find a more desirable outlook.”  Maybe “depression” is always looking for the better perspective, willing to deny the reality as it first presents. 

Don’t we all do this though?  I know the old joke about “De Nile isn’t just a river in Egypt.”  It’s an old joke.  So obviously I haven’t cornered the market on this approach. 

Of course, maybe this is just one of those times where it really doesn’t matter what the truth is.  I figure as I deny, one of these two is true: 1) My first instinct is correct, and I am not depressed or 2) I am depressed but have found ways to bend my mind around situations which would otherwise make me sad.  Aren’t both of those more desirable than lethargy and tears?  The hedonist in me says, “screw harsh reality whenever there is a alternate reality close at hand.”

I think of this choice, and I’m confronted with a question.  How do I get my daughter to make similar choices as she becomes ever more beset by fear.  One moment it’s a spider in the basement.  The next it’s fly in the window.  I see in her a host of anxieties, and I strive to give her tools to befriend that which scares most thoroughly at the moment.  “The spider whose web you are now wearing is the same one who eats the flys and mosquitos you feared a moment ago.  As annoying and scary as it was for you, imagine having your home trampled by a giant.  Who got the worst of this deal?”  Some day, I will learn not to use such logic on my most empathetic of kids…For the next day she was crying over the dead fly feeling bad for it and how much she hated it the night before. 

Ok, so maybe there are limits to this perspective trick.

PS. In a world where it seems timing is only a matter of perception, I had to laugh.  As I was getting ready to go for a run today, I went to the bathroom where a coworker was complaining one of the waterless urinals was clogged.  I told him to enjoy the marvel.  After all, how many places on earth are there where gravity fails?  On a sixth floor waterless urinal, it didn’t fall.  He told me I had the oddest perspective on our terrible smelling bathroom.  I asked if he ever went to a public bathroom anywhere to enjoy the smell…and he said my perspective was odd? 

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"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital"

Richard Wilkenson cost of inequality:


Kathryn Edin, a professor of public policy and management at Harvard’s Kennedy School, said in a phone interview and in a series of emails that a major problem with all three attempts to measure poverty ‘is that the poverty level has no real empirical basis — it is not a good measure of how much it takes to survive nor is it a relative measure meant to reflect what is required for social inclusion in the society. The poverty level is most certainly too low. Most people can’t actually live on incomes that hover around the poverty threshold.'”

The second quote was from Aaron Levenstein saying, “Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”
Speaking of suggestive statistics and studies, on Patientslikeme.com, I ran across a reference to a study suggesting antidepressants may be useful in warding off or curing PML, a major risk of taking Tysabri as I have been for the past 6 years.  http://www.jns-journal.com/article

  
Given that Tysabri remains very popular for many making the same calculations my wife and I have on the value of continuing usage despite the risks, it would seem dealing with any signs of depression should be deemed very important.  According to one meta study done a couple decades ago, between 25 and 50% of MS patients become clinically depressed.  Granted, in the past 20 years treatments have come a long way, but everything I read suggests depression is still quite common.  

I guess I now have one more way to guilt trip those who give me a hard time, or at least those who wouldn’t recognize true clinical depression as opposed to situational sadness.  “You’re going to kill me! Don’t you know depression makes me more likely to get PML and die?”  I shouldn’t joke, but… 
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In family notes, we have been battling to get K out of hospital and keep her out as she battles a stomache virus for the past 5 days.  I’ve never seen so much come out of someone so small.  Sometimes one has to smile even in the face of gross:


 I have no idea why this post has such a funky presentation as it was written in word and copied over the same as the past 100 posts. 
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