July 14

Well, I've stopped feeling guilty over not doing a blessed journal entry each and every day.  For a while it was one of the only things I was up to doing, and so it was pretty much all I was doing.  Since I've been starting to mend a bit more emotionally/psychologically I've started to be able to branch out in terms of the things I can and do, do.  Since I started working on the Dark Nursery  it's been my 'main' thing.  Speaking of the dark nursery I peed my first adult diaper last night, too much fun.  I'm amazed at the holding capacity of those things.  I wanted a lot of pee in the diaper for the photo shoot, and I had a big long pee, and it still wasn't wet enough for the images I wanted.  I ended up in a wet diaper with pee and apple juice.  It was a bit of an age play adventure.  The joys of creating fetish photography!

I had someone reading my journal the other day write 'physician heal thyself'  It's amazing how I can get so sensitive sometimes over one tiny thing like that - It's that over sensitivity that happens with the depression.  I wrote back and asked for them to mail me on over the magic wand.  When someone has another biochemical disorder, that is not mood/affect/cognitive based, people have a lot more 'respect' for it, than when it's a mood disorder.  Somehow people, and there are even some people in the profession of psychology who are guilty of this, feel that because the symptoms are primarily those that affect the mind and thinking, that it's something that can be 'fixed' by will power and mind power alone.  Wouldn't that be grand! 

If I had some other form of illness, I likely would not have received that email.  

Be rest assured, I am doing everything within my power to heal.  I visit a very good very qualified psychiatrist who specializes in the kind of severe biochemical depression I do have.  They have found that my depression is very very much of a biochemical nature, my brain chemistry is severely out of whack.  I've also proved to be highly resistant to most medication, the couple of medications that do work for me, they have me on higher than standard doses, I'm on experimental dosage levels.  One of the medications she had to call and consult with the manufacturers of the medication to see what the very highest they had gone with trials to date had been.  I was finally getting some response on those medications, though minimal, at the highest standard dosages, and so they wanted to increase them further yet, and they did.  I now take three different medications, two of which I take higher than the highest standard dose.  It's only with those changes that I've started to see any real improvement, a slow steady climb.  

I have been to the mood disorder clinic, I have seen specialty psychiatrists, I have done trial periods on almost all the anti-depressants out there.  They tried me on bi-polar meds just in case the diagnosis was off, they have tried me on anti-psychotics.  It turns out anti-depressants are the way to go for me, I just have to take very high doses.  Turns out also, that given the way my depression is, it will likely take some time for me to level out to normal again.  I just have to keep taking my pills, keep chatting with my psych, and keep on putting one foot after the other, taking it day by day, and being patient with myself and my healing process.  Patience can be hard sometimes... as you can see by my 'physician heal thyself' email, perfect strangers sometimes can't be patient with the process, never mind maintaining my own patience.  Sometimes being 'insane' just drives me round the bend <smile>  In part it's my sense of humour sometimes that keeps me just barely managing, that and my bit of fighting spirit.

I was talking to Wolfe about that the other day, after we had an unpleasant situation arise with our strata council, I could write a whole 10 other entries around that scenario.  To make a long story short, strata wrote something inaccurate about an arrangement we had with them around taking over some damaged garden space in a public report that was given out to each and every occupant in the building.  This was the first we even heard of their complaint, and we found out about it by getting the monthly report that is slipped under everyone's door.  It cast us in a very negative light, and was embarrassing to think that everyone in the building was reading this when it simply wasn't true.  I was pretty stressed and upset about it.  For me, in those circumstances, the only thing that really makes me feel better, that gives me closure about it, is to set the record straight.  I immediately typed up our side/version of things, and slipped a copy of that under everyone's door as well.  We ended up with a lot of neighborly support, which was nice.  It's the same thing with that email I got - If I don't say my bit around it, I sit and wonder how many other people are thinking ill of me, simply because they are misinformed about the nature of depression.  So if I rant too much... that's why.

Is it just me? or maybe it's the heat... but I seem to be running into a lot of 'testy' people lately.