A New Year and New Hope
So after my little melt-down on Saturday, I decided to simply take a break from the Copaxone for a while: until I can see my psychiatrist and my neurologist and can get them talking to each other. I haven't taken my Copaxone since Friday night, and already I feel better: more hopeful, a bit more energetic - even somewhat cheerful. I don't know how much of this is due to the placebo effect and how much is due to an actual change in my body's chemistry, but whichever it is I'll take it.
In a lot of ways, I feel like I've spent the last 18 months of my life - since my MS diagnosis - not living. Sure, I've done things here and there over the last year and a half, but I look back on my life as it was in 2003 and 2004, before I left for Boston, and realized I was really living then. I went out in the evenings to do stuff like swing dancing or go to movies with friends. I gave impromptu gatherings and they didn't exhaust me emotionally or physically. I actually wanted to practice the piano and go for regular runs. And I did those things!
What I've done since my relapse in June of '06 is survive: in the beginning I was too tired to do anything anyway, and I didn't care that I wasn't going out and meeting people because I was too fatigued to do so. But as my relapse symptoms improved and I started on the Avonex, everything began to feel like a colossal effort and I did the bare minimum to survive.
But now? Now I want to care. I want to want to meet new people and try new things. I'm tired of just doing the minimum. I'm longing to make some changes in my life but the problem is, I don't have the will to make them happen.
And the key to getting the will is in my mental-health: until this week I don't think I realized how complacent I've become and how much I'm just surviving (versus living) right now. So my next step is to talk to my psychiatrist again as soon as possible and let him know where I'm at so we can figure out what I need to be taking to get me feeling better. And then I'll start taking the Copaxone again and we'll adjust from there.
On top of those things, I'm planning to walk (with Rennie) at least four days a week and hopefully work back into running shorter distances as well. If I can, I'd like to run a 5K (3.1 miles) this year.
I've also realized I've not been doing anything that really nourishes my heart or my soul. So I'm going to plan a couple activities a month where I take myself on a "date." I'll go to a classical concert, or visit the art museum or go to the zoo. Something that makes me happy, inspires me, or helps me feel like I'm part of the world again.
I want to feel good again. And this year I'm going to make that happen.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Comments
i understand what you are saying and i hope it works out for you. i wish i could be so cheerful about it. i feel like i've been barely surviving since i was diagnosed too, it's been the worst year of my life. and that's without depression. that's just because of the ms itself. i can't say i haven't lived at all, because the times i've felt good in the last year were great. neither my brain chemistry nor my meds are making me depressed, because when my ms symptoms are not so bad, i feel mentally good and am happy and hopeful and cheerful. but my symptoms have only been not so bad for maybe 6 months total in the past 12 months. the rest of the time i'm just surviving, waiting to feel better, waiting to get back to my life. not to downplay how bad it must feel to not even want to do your normal activities because of depression but it's also pretty rotten to WANT to do your normal activities, to WANT to see your friends and go running and dancing and travel, but not be able to because you are physically not up to it.
i hope things are different for you and that once you get your depression under control everything is great. but i just have a hard time right now seeing how life with ms is ever going to be more than short interludes of happy living between long periods of just surviving. does that make me sound like i am depressed? maybe, i think it would be perfectly normal for someone in my position to be down about it. but maybe i'm just being realistic about ms. either way, considering i'm spending my second new year's in a row barely able to go up and down the stairs in my house, having my skin numb up to the waist, etc. etc., and having no end in sight -- well i'm sorry if i'm not little miss hopeful about the future right now.
Posted by: jen | January 1, 2008 07:36 PM
I am glad you are feeling better. I hope you can get your meds worked out soon. Happy New Year to you and hopefully many new adventures
Love
A.L.
Posted by: A.L. | January 2, 2008 01:30 AM
Survival is a good thing when faced with overwhelming challenges...but yes, after surviving one is compelled to start living again. Or die...
Glad to see you are feeling better today.
Linda D. in Seattle
Posted by: Linda D. | January 2, 2008 10:13 PM