Winston is still MIA.

The jubilant giddiness has been wearing off.  My mind is still clear and free of Winston’s weight, pulling me down, always threatening to drag me under.  This reprieve feels more permanent; the mental shift feels solidified, more tangible, as if a door has been literally thrown open in my mind, minus the fear of it slamming shut again.

The world is my oyster, as they say.  Now I can get on with life.

Well, not exactly.  I’m left with all the behaviors and defense mechanisms created to cope with Winston that protected my psyche against him, while enabling him to maintain paradoxically the reassuring presence I knew; the old friend I loved to hate.  His bed is here; all his toys are still here, as it were.  I still seen the after-image of his presence.  I want to scoop up all his things and toss them out the door behind him, but something stops me.  What feels the void Winston leaves behind?  If I clean house of all traces of Winston, and stop the escapist napping, chronic procrastination, self-imposed isolation, and learned mindlessness, does a skill set I never had morph into its place?

What to do, I asked Dr. G.  She replied that I have to take it slow and allow myself the time needed to transition to the New Judiang.

Ah, transition.

It sounds similar to being like recovering addicts.  Only they have half-way houses and programs to ease them back into mainstream life.  There are websites and videos galore dispensing information concerning Life After.  But what do you do after depression?  I googled and discovered precious few.  On one depression forum, a poster asked that very question.  One respondent asked the OP if s/he was mocking the forum because she didn’t understand the question.  She couldn’t fathom the idea of Life After.  I came away with the sense that depression forums primarily exist for the sufferers only.  If you made it through to the other side, then don’t rub it in here.  Not very helpful.  While forums dedicated to survivors might be more empowering, a tiny lazy part of myself knew there was no quick start blueprint to follow.

So this is where I am.  I’m in the process of reexamining everything about me and life, feeling my way, taking it one day at a time.  I’m doing a total overhaul of my mental house.  Things are in flux.

This has been a long-winded way of saying, Dear Reader, there will be blog changes too.  I recently complained to a friend, “I didn’t know what to blog about”.   That’s not an accurate statement.  What I really meant was, “I don’t know what my blog is about anymore.”  In my last post, I mentioned returning to regular programming, before realizing the programming has changed.  To what, I don’t know.  It’s questions, questions, questions.  What is my place in RA fandom?  Is there more for me to say? Will readers be interested if things change too much?   Has the blog served its purpose?

So, this is where I am – in transition.  Please excuse the dust.

LOST: Crappy little black dog. You can keep him.

If you’ve been following my blog for the past year and a half, you’re aware that this blog has been interrupted by periods of silence.  That is because behind the scenes I’ve been engaged in colossal, knock down, drag out fights with Winston, my black dog of depression.  I’ve won skirmishes but each time, Winston kept returning to mess over everything.  He would morph from a little pug to a hulking monster and I needed all my mental resources for the next round.  Aside from a short reprieve last summer (remember London?) with a new medication (Cymbalta), we have been battling since February 2011.  Things really started going downhill last Fall but I was determined to blog through it.

By Spring, there was no improvement in sight.  The medication did not combat the most severe breakthrough symptoms, loss of concentration and extreme lethargy.  I’d ceased to function in any meaningful way.  I was absent from my job intermittently for about five months. They could not carry me indefinitely, and so they started making noises about either easing me onto to disability or out the door.  As a single woman two-thirds to retirement, neither of these was an option for me.  In addition, my brother uncharacteristically showered me with calls.  My sister-in-law did the same.  My close friends descended on me, cooking and cleaning.  Friends emailed, texted, and called in support.  I learned my family was discussing how to take care of me.

The point made it through my foggy brain that things were dire.  Winston was eating me alive.

Panicked, I told Dr. G. that we needed skip from Plan C over some of the less appealing options (meds with horrible side effects) and go straight to Plan G, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS).  It works similar to the ECT treatment of old except without the shock or side effects. However, it would take time to get insurance approval.  Dr. G. wondered if I had treatment-resistant depression because all of the new SSRI medications all had the same limited affect on me.  These meds all increased serotonin and/or norepinephrine in the brain, two chemicals of the three chemicals responsible for mood.  But what if she treated the brain fog with a psycho-stimulant that increased the third chemical, dopamine?   So, she prescribed a small dose Ritalin.  Yes, Ritalin, a popular drug given to kids with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).   I don’t have ADHD, I said, but hey, I was desperate.

Long story short, it felt like the difference between night and day, in a matter of hours.  The breakthrough symptoms disappeared. Winston disappeared.  I could focus, think, and function.  I returned to work and have been fine for a month and counting.  I feel even keel and a little better than neutral.  In other words, I feel “normal.”   How can this be? According to Google, Ritalin/Adderall/ dopamine derivatives given to people with ADHD, help them focus and slow down.  Without ADHD, it increases focus and stimulates.  So, psycho-stimulants in small doses like Ritalin and Adderall are emerging to augment anti-depressants.  Could it be that after 20 years of experimenting with medication that we’ve finally discovered that my brain needs serotonin AND dopamine?  I’m better due to an offhand throwaway idea?  It’s almost too good to be true.

I haven’t seen Winston in a month.  This isn’t a cure; the symptoms slowly return if I’m not diligent with medication because Ritalin doesn’t have a long half-life.  I must accept that I’m like a diabetic with insulin, but that’s okay.  I’m back to the way I was last summer.  People have again remarked about the change in my personality.  It’s all good.

Right now, I’m marshaling my mental resources and slowly reconnecting with life.  Depression is truly a bitch.  It steals your life, but I’m determined to get mine back. This post has been a bit long-winded but  I’ve revealed all this in the hope that my story may help somebody out there.  Don’t give up.  The solution is out there.

I don’t know if I’ve won the war with Winston, but like another famous Winston, I shall never surrender.