Stew wanted to help others, to let them people know what it was like, and he wanted to make sense of what happened to him. I’m not sure he ever did understand. I never have. But if you have a mental illness, know that you are not alone, and that there is hope. If you love someone with mental illness, know that you’re not alone, and that there is hope. That’s what Stew wanted people to know.

Did you know the Institute of Medical and Health Research (INSERM) and University of Montpellier financed experts indicated that regulating ‘good’ and ‘bad’ levels of cholesterol may help prevent emotional disorders among aging population?

In a recently available issue of the academic journal Biological Psychiatry (http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com) written in July 2010, leading researcher Dr. Marie-Laure Ancelin of INSERM (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale http://www.inserm.fr) announced that gender specific regulation of cholesterol can aid prevent depression in the seniors.

French doctors followed a large group of men and women aged 65 and older for 7 years.

They observed that depression in women was connected with lower levels of “good” high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), which puts them at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, including heart stroke.
In contrast, depression in men was associated with low levels of “bad” low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C). This association was strongest in men with a genetic vulnerability to depression related to a serotonin transporter gene.

Therefore, proper regulation of HDL-C and LDL-C levels can aid and prevent depressive disorder in the aging adults, the researchers concluded.

The research was published in the July 15 issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry (Reference: http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(10)00393-8/abstract).

Major dietary sources of cholesterol include dairy products, egg yolks, beef, pork, poultry, and shrimp. Plant products such as flax seeds and peanuts include cholesterol-like substances known as phytosterols.
Total cholesterol means the sum of HDL (High-density lipoprotein), LDL (Low-density lipoprotein), and VLDL (Very-low-density lipoprotein). Usually, only the total, HDL, and triglycerides are measured.

It is suggested to have cholesterol tested more frequently than five years if a person has total cholesterol of 200 mg/dL or higher, or if a man over age forty five or a woman over age fifty has HDL (good) cholesterol under 40 mg/dL, or exist other risk elements for heart problems and stroke.

So…what can you do to increase your HDL (good) and decrease your LDL (bad) levels?

1. Working out can substantially increase HDL cholesterol while lowering LDL cholesterol.

2. Smoking has been shown to lower HDL while raising LDL cholesterol.

3. Prepared trans fats raise LDL cholesterol and lower HDL cholesterol.

4. Monounsaturated fats such as those found in extra virgin olive oil and avocados raise HDL and lower LDL.

5. Fatty fish like sardines and salmon contain omega-3 fats that raise HDL and lower LDL.

6. Whole, intact grains contain soluble fiber and niacin, both of which raise HDL and may lower LDL.

Now it’s all up to you…

About the author – Betty Doyle contributes articles for the anti depression pills blog. It’s a nonprofit web site dedicated to her personal depression journey. The blog focuses on giving energy and hope to any individual who is experiencing depression and encourages those individuals to find the energy to fight against the effects of depression. This way she wants to alleviate some of the stigma mental illness depression can cause and help people’s perception of mood problems.

We stop at Top Foods because I need oil for my car. I’m breaking in a new engine, I have to be careful with it, check my fluids daily. Top Foods has a marketing slant that includes many things in addition to the customary food items. Stuffed bears and other critters, for example. I have difficulty finding such an assortment in stores devoted to such things, but Top Foods is well stocked.

There’s a bin of giant stuffed animals. These animals would tower over a child, perhaps causing nightmares. I am unsettled myself, seeing them confined to the big bin. We pull them up and set them so they’re climbing out of the bin, ready to make their escape. Other customers look at us as we do so, but apparently we don’t care.

We find smaller bears, stacked on a shelf, and we ask one where he’d prefer to be. He points to the next aisle, to the Easter baskets, and so we transport him there, and place him in a basket. Or attempt to, he’s a bit larger than the basket, but he is happy.

We move on to another shelf of large stuffed animals; they’re stacked haphazardly, as if no thought was given to their comfort. They’re upside down, in each other’s way, butts in the air and limbs askew. I set about arranging them neatly so they’re happy, and manage to knock over the display of boxes next to them. That’s okay though. Boxes are just boxes, after all.

When I’m done and the critters have given their approval we move on. A Cat in the Hat display is horribly unfair to its namesake, but as I set about trying to set the Cats straight I see why. The Cat in the Hat cannot, under any circumstances, sit or stand in any way recognizable as sitting or standing, so, in the end, they’re just shoved back on their shelf horizontally.

Back to the bears who lost one of their own to the Easter baskets. Another one jumps into my arms, seeking freedom from the drudgery of the bear shelf. We wander, surreptitiously, bear clutched tightly to my chest. I’m sure no one will notice that we’re headed for the cereal aisle. Why we’re headed for the cereal aisle is a mystery, but we end up there all the same.

Bear sees his target and jumps for it. Inexplicably, it is the Captain Crunch section. Boxes of cereal are cleared out of the way, and bear takes his position right in the middle. Boxes are put back in around him, and bear throws both arms over the boxes to either side of him, protecting the Captain Crunch from those who would dare to buy such a thing.

He salutes us as we wander off, knocking one box askew, but it’s okay. It lends a certain air of carelessness, as if the entire scene were accidental and not carefully planned.

We meander towards the checkout. We’re not certain if we’ve been spotted yet, but we’d rather not be banned from yet another grocery store. Eventually we’ll run out of stores, which is why the revolts are never staged in our own grocery store. That, and our grocery store does not have a large supply of stuffed animals.

Along the way we find a display of smaller bears, and when I look at one I see it has a plastic pack of some sort attached to it. I look closer, and said plastic pack should be INSIDE the bear, and not hanging outside of it. I pick up one of his peers in an attempt to figure out the mystery of the bear, and find that the plastic pack should indeed be inside, and that its purpose is to make the bear snore. As everyone knows, this is totally unnecessary since bears are capable of snoring on their own without any problem.

Attempts to place the plastic pack back inside the bear were unsuccessful, and he was left in the care of his peers, who all showed the proper concern by staring at him with their beady little glass eyes.

We made for the exit, oil in hand, secure in the knowledge that yet another bear revolt had been executed if not successfully, at least with enthusiasm.

And the car is running fine, thank you very much.

We’re watching Law and Order. Another schizophrenic (by which I mean, they’re often on television as “crazy people” who cause damage, mayhem, and death) who is guilty of something or other.

And Stew says, “I’m not schizophrenic enough!”

It’s true. He just doesn’t fit the standard perception of schizophrenia.

We laugh about it. “I don’t think the CIA is after me. I see shadows at night and hear voices in the grocery store! What good is that?”

The schizophrenic on TV says Bill Gates made him do it. We say, “Well, duh. That’s pretty obvious.”

What good is it being nuts if you can’t laugh about it?

Prior to that, I was all about extending myself. I needed no help, I needed no support. I don’t know why I didn’t feel a strong bond with my family — perhaps it was me, perhaps it was them. More likely, it was a combination. Friends and family were unlikely to understand why I’d kept taking care of Stew. Some of them disappeared. Some of them became distant, or I became distant because I was ashamed.

I was ashamed of my situation and I was embarrassed.

But there comes a time when you have ask for help, when you need support, and when you must learn to take care of yourself, before there’s nothing left of you at all. That’s how I started with the “Caretaker’s Survival Guide.” I’m still figuring it out.

April 6, 2003 – Turning Over a New Leaf

So I say. A new leaf. Hmmph. Indeed. Why not? Another day, another leaf.

The dog did not want to cooperate this morning. Took her downstairs for her morning activity, the one she does upon first arising. That time of day, I’m barely coherent myself, and stumbling no less, so we just go to the bottom of the stairs for a few minutes while she takes the opportunity to relieve herself. Then we race back up the stairs so we can ponder the wisdom of climbing back into our respective beds (which may be the same bed, if she’s in the mood) while we instead begin to work. I do, anyway, Dog is notorious for being a slacker.

Anyway, there we were at the bottom of the stairs. And she looked around.

She sniffed the grass, she looked underneath the stairs, certain there was a cat lurking about (she’s been highly suspicious of cats ever since she found out there was one entering the premises while she was away), she turned her nose up in the air and looked off into the distance, as if the smell of a big juicy steak was in the air.

And she did not relieve herself.

I pulled her over to the ivy. That usually does it, the promise of soiling fresh green ivy, but not today. She just looked down at it, scoffed, and ambled alongside the border.

We moved back towards the stairs. Well, I moved back towards the stairs. She had no choice but to follow along. She looked under the stairs some more.

She sniffed. She looked at sections of grass as if each inch were different and worthy of notice.

She did not relieve herself. I entreated her to just go about it, just get it done, just move on with it. I am notoriously impatient at that time of day. It’s one of my character defects. She ignored me altogether. Sometimes I think she’s part cat.

I gave up. I moved her towards the stairs and she moved up them, sluggishly, but up them all the same, which she wouldn’t have if she did feel the need to relieve herself. Upstairs she asked to go back out on her deck so she could go back to sleep. She’d slept there most of the night, after first falling asleep with me before deciding my snoring was too obnoxious.
And I sat down here to ponder the 12 million things I need to do before I see my first client in a few hours. Okay, perhaps that’s an exaggeration. I am prone to exaggeration, to hyperbole, to overstatement, to histrionics. Not only prone, but addicted.

Back to my new leaf. I am, in addition to my penchant for drama, a serious overthinker. I think too much. I ponder. I think. I turn things over and over in my head until I’ve made a complete mush of it and don’t know anything about it at all. I doubt. I am seriously thinking that people tolerate me. That in the overall scheme of things, I am unwanted, unlovable, unliked. I wish to turn over a new leaf and stop thinking this way. But what, I ask myself, if I’m RIGHT? Well, that just changes everything, doesn’t it?

See what I mean? Too much thinking. Dog thinks too much too. Instead of just taking care of the matter at hand, she has to examine every blade of grass, every slight breeze, every motion within fifty yards to determine if it’s worthy of notice. But then she forgets about it and does what’s next on her agenda, and I’m certain that whatever she was just doing is gone from her mind altogether. This may be a function of being a dog with a short-term memory, or it may be a function of a devil-may-care attitude. I have no hope of being a dog, at least not in this life, but I could adopt her attitude.

I’ll work on it. After all, what if people don’t like me? Dog does. Well, when she feels like it. When she’s up for it. When other pressing matters aren’t intruding.

Sigh. I’m overthinking my DOG.

Will someone please stop me?

Later that same day:

This time I’ll have to go to the ER, I say no, I won’t go, I won’t, but there’s nothing left of me. I am nothing, and there’s nothing there, and the only people who want to be around me are those who I’m helping or who want something from me without being connected to me. No one wants to be connected to me because there’s nothing there to be connected TO.

There’s nothing left of me. I won’t go, of course, though he says I have to, but I won’t listen. There’s nothing left of me, and there wasn’t much to begin with, and now there’s nothing at all. And it doesn’t matter. There are no words of encouragement, blank endorsements, nothing. In the end, it’s all the same. No one seeks me out.

And no, I’m not suicidal. I just want to not care anymore.

I’m empty.

There’s nothing there.

Damn, I sound bad today.

I think I’ll call my therapist, the one I can’t afford.

(Said therapist eventually fired me when I couldn’t pay my bill.)

Not such a good day, overall. Pinging emotions. Decisions to move on, to get things under control, to regain perspective, kept being made. And forgotten. And made again, and forgotten.

Later, during the summer, I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t think straight. I could barely function. I felt alone, I was alone. I couldn’t cope. I fell apart. I had to seek help.

And I recovered, and I started learning how to take care of myself first. It was not an easy thing to learn, and it was not a quick process. But I had no choice.

I knew that I had to help myself. Calling the crisis line was all well and good, but I was the one who had to do something, I was the one who had to get moving and change my perspective. It was up to me.

My first visit with the crisis intervention specialist went about as well as one could expect. I promised not to hurt myself (not intentionally – harming myself unintentionally is a fact of life because I’m clumsy), to follow up with my psychiatrist on my meds, to work at regaining my sanity. Stew wanted to help me, of course, but he was in his own private hell, and I felt as if there were no one I could call on. There was no one. Perhaps there was, but at the time all I knew was that it was up to me, and there was nothing anyone else could do. I had to keep working, I had to support myself, even with my concentration substandard and my motivation purely financial.

I had the oncologist appointment first and he said, “Things are looking pretty good. Let’s put you on another medication!”

I said fine. He said, “There’s some side effects with this one.”

I said, “okay.”

He said, “Nose bleeds.”

I said, “Annoying but tolerable.”

He said, “It can raise your blood pressure.”

I said, “I’ve lowered it significantly over the past few months… a few points north won’t hurt me.”

He said, (damn I can’t remember the word he used) “IT can cause a tear in your bowels.”

I said, “That doesn’t sound good.”

He said, “Don’t worry. It only affects 5% of the people who take this drug who already had colon surgery.”

I said, “Okay, go on.”

He said, “Blood clots. Do you have a history of blood clots?”

I said, “No. What would blood clots do?”

He said, “Oh…if they traveled to your heart, you’d experience cardiac complications.”

I said, “That doesn’t sound pleasant at all.”

He said, “Don’t worry. It only affects 5% of the people who take this drug who already have a history of blood clots.”

I said, “Okay. Go on.”

He said, “Death.”

I said, “That’s a pretty dramatic side effect, don’t you think?”

He said, “Don’t worry, it only affects 5% of the people who have been dead before.”

I said, “What a wonder drug.”

So…The first time you use this medication (given via IV, so it’s given in conjunction with the chemo meds.) They give it to you over
the course of 90 minutes. “Slow for safety” my nurse said. You gotta worry about any drugs that they need to wear special thicker gloves for. This medication is a liquid, surrounded in plastic bag, inside another plastic bag when they get it from the pharmacy. But still the nurses have to wear special thicker purple hazmat gloves when transporting it from the pharamacy to the patient. But the patient doesn’t get to wear anything when this stuff goes straight into the chest (or arm).

So when they give you this med, they have to take your blood pressure every 15 minutes, and then they come around every 20 minutes or so and check to make sure you’re still alive.

On the bright side….if you do live, the second session with this drug is only 60 minutes. And if you survive that one, then it goes
down to 30 minutes…

What does this drug do? It kills off the blood vessels feeding the tumors. How does it know which blood vessels to kill off? The handout
I got today said, “Researchers are still investigating how <this drug> works, but it appears to kill off just those blood vessels related to
the tumor.”  STILL INVESTIGATING? APPEARS? Is this the best hope we have for the scientific community. Why are they still investigating? Didn’t they create this drug with the mindset that it would kill off the bad blood vessels?

Sheesh…

How was your day?

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