h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's a place where new friendships can be forged.

Where friends can help friends

Hi people,
I also had depression, now it´s self-esteem what worries me. This can easily leads anyone into depression. I´m trying to fight that.
I think about why my self-esteem is so. I think it´s because I don´t socialize for my current circunstances.
A good part of our self-esteem and self-concept come from others, who act as mirrors and also foster situations where you can feel well.
But now there aren´t such circunstances for me. In April last year I broke my achilles tendon , the surgical wound got infected and I have gone through the surgical room six times. Now, it seems that the wound is healing. I hope that it be definitive. I´ve lost a job, and my patience many times during that process. I´ve felt desperate many times.
I´m sure that when I be “normal” again my self-esteem and my joy will get stronger. I´ll be able to work( hope to find a job!) and to walk as much as I can, I´ll have a normal life.

When I first came where I live now, about 500 kilometres far from my hometown where I had spent all my life (I´ve lived here for 12 years) I got depression.
I felt I had wasted my life, my money and my efforts studying to get a good job. I sent my CVs but found nothing. Then I worked in a restaurant, babysitting, etc. as had done many times to afford my studies and get by. I saw myself in the starting point: back to menial jobs.
As I didn´t know anybody here ( except my partner, who was working here and was the reason for coming) I thought it would be a good idea to “socialize” I enroled in an amateur drama group. I had a good time, people told me to send again CVs (I didn´t trust myself nor my abilities to work) Soon I started to work. And it had been so until I broke my tendon.
I think it´s important to have something you enjoy doing, reading, painting... I did that during those low days.
Now, visiting h2 and my doing my studies( I´ve enroled in university again) keep my mind occupied. Also I have my heart full of hope with the new laboral opportunities I see I´ll have in future.

So, to fight depression I forced myself to socialize, did some hobbies, recovered faith in myself and started to work.
Now, I blame this situation of poor health, although compared to you, it´s nothing.
I think I´m not doing it too bad. I try to remind myself the things I´m good at. I try to control my self-criticism. Sometimes we can be really hard and harmful with ourselves.
I´d say that we need to have our mind occupied with whatever except our miserable situation. We need others to overcome bad moments, but we must make the effort to look for the people, known or not, who eventually will help us in a way or another. We need to value ourselves without considering too much that mirror that people around us can be. Sometimes it´s distortioned the image.
Let´s do things we enjoy or we know we are good at or just learn something new. “move your bottom!” as we say here.

tendon injuries are terrible!

SS

how are things with the noisy bloke upstairs???

haven't been in touch for a while

hope you are OK

Mr Noisey isnt too bad at moment. I am having regular conversations with Virgin Mary so perhaps my mental health isnt great, lol!

how are you Taff?

i'm fine

back at work after a long holiday over the summer school break,

glad to be back at work and glad the kids are back at school

5 weeks with a 4&6 year old whos idea of fun is winding me up and knocking lumps out of each other is not something i want to repeat.....untill next august!!!!

family....you gotta love them

CB - re 739 - you're welcome I wasn't able to mention at the time - I'm glad I could now.

Sorry to butt in SS and Taff; as you were lads. I haven't said much to you SS, but I'm watching/lurking from afar and cheering you on quietly. If I think I've anything valid to say to you, I will; I don't think I've had anything like the stuff you[re going thru currently and am politely wary of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, hence the silences.

But Taff, you crack me up with a lot of your entries; more power to you! Tis great entertainment.

In the words of the prophet... Yakky Da - or however it's spelt

thank you

'good health' to you as well

you words are apreciated

Well...on the positive side, SS...at least when you die they'll put your bones on display in Wormwood Scrubs.

(that was gallows humour, btw.)

'Iechyd Da', Evadne. Hwyl!

Thats me Edward, Holy Bones, lol!

*arrives at the discussion in her wheelchair*

Here's my story: I've been in this wchair since the end of May, when I started falling inside my house and became afraid to stand up. I thought at first I was giving up, to have the wchair, but in fact it has extended my mobility.

The name of my condition is syringomyelia. It's not a disease, as such, but rather a state of disarray. I have a long syrinx in my spinal cord, running all the way from T6 to L1, and while I'm healthy from the hips up, below that I have pretty severe paresthesia, peripheral neuropathy.

And I am unemployed and uninsured. I can't get a neurologist to see me because I can't pay for whatever they would want to do to me, and in fact if it weren't for indigent care at the local hospital I still wouldn't know what's wrong with me. But indigent care paid most of the cost of having MRI scans done, first in April and then again in August.

The wchair, the transfer bench, the grab bars, all the impedimenta that make it possible for me to do the basics without falling, have all been paid for either out of pocket or by friends. I can't drive, so again friends take me shopping or to appointments.

I can't apply for disability until January next year because I won't have enough social security credits until then; once I get disability, I'll at least have Medicare, and can get more treatment, but right now the only thing I have been able to afford is a chiropractor, who has been giving me acupuncture treatments. He has been proceeding very conservatively because we can't find the source or cause of the syrinx. But next month we're going to execute a leap of faith and proceed with some adjustments.

The thing is, the syrinx appears to be congenital, and what has happened is, it was catalyzed by something else I did to my back in the past year. The second MRI showed absolutely no change in the syrinx; if it had been caused by recent trauma, which would have to be along the lines of falling off a 3-story building, then it would have grown or changed in some way. If we can adjust my back to the way it was before that last injury, maybe I can get back some sensation and/or strength.

Meanwhile, at least, I have no pain. Just a sense of panic every time life requires me to stand up or take a few steps. The floor is my enemy.


I don't know how I could have managed pain on the level Captain Black described.

Blimey Lil you have it bad at moment! We are luckier in uk and wish I could help you.

Been dealing with an issue over the last cpouple of months with my Dad. He is Eighty next Monday, but has been telling us that he keeps "Seeing" people around his house. On two occasions in August, he actually walked out of the house leaving it wide open. When he was eventually found, he claimed he had to get "away" from them.
We saw a Doctor and he was put on some anti depressants which seemed to be working fine until this weekend.

Got a call from the Police at 2 in the morning saying that Dad had smashed a double glazed window in his bedroom with a Baseball bat.
He claims that people were pouring petrol on him and were going to set light to him. The neighbours heard the noise and called the cops - thank goodness as it seems he had broken the window to "Escape". He could have easily jumped out and straight through the conservatory roof below if he had not been stopped.

Spent most of yesterday at the hospital where they said they wanted to look him over, but because of his behaviour they wanted him in for observation. We pulled some clothes together and in he went, convinced he was being taken away for a birthday suprise. Me and my brother must have told him more than 20 times that he was being kept in so that the doctors could look him over, but in his mind he was in a hotel and we were all going for a meal.

We gave him a hug and left, and this morning I called to speak with him to see how he was getting on. He came to the phone and proceeded to swear at me, saying I was stealing all his money, that I had locked him up so we could have the house, he hated the kinds, hated my wife, etc, etc. I asked him if I could speak with the nurses, but he refused to hand the phone over claiming that "I was just poisoning them against him" I had to put the phone down because he would just not listen.

I cant tell you how hard it was and how upsetting that call was because it just was not my "Dad" - it was somebody else. In the two months he has had a lot of assesments and has passed them all. Medically, he appears fit and well, but he just isnt there anymore.
We are waiting for the results of the CAT scan he had a few weeks back that was to check for Dementia, but does anyone have experience of this. How on earth do you deal with someone who has turned from a loving Dad into somebody who claims he "Hates" his 5 and 8 year old grandaughters?

when not well my dad thought there were men with guns on ward, a Bishop on clouds and the oxgen mask poisened, which since it was caused by a lack of oxyegen to brain caused problems! Try not to take what he says to heart, I suffer from hallucinations and know how realistic and deceitful they are.

I was a caregiver for my dad for more than 15 years and was lucky in one thing -- that he never developed dementia. In the last two months of his life his COPD took more and more oxygen from his brain and I saw him become forgetful and fail in his concentration, but he was mightily focussed on dying at home, not in a "facility". And so he was cogent right up to his death (at home).

So I sympathize greatly with what you're going through, but have no experience of it. It must be terrifying, in a way.

Please CB, I can only give one piece of useful advice which will be very hard to take, but here goes - Don't take anything he says personally.He would be mortified if he knew what he was saying and doing. He is in the best place to be assessed as to whether it is dementia or something else, like a mini stroke which doesn't always show up.

My Dad was out of it and didn't know me for weeks on end. Nervous exhaustion, malnutrition and a possible mini stroke were all part of it, but he came back to us for another four years.We never told my Dad the things he had said and done it would have upset him too much.

As SS says, hallucinations or whatever is causing it, can be treacherous, but I am sure the hospital will find out what is wrong. He certainly can't be left alone in his current state.

Been there done that and I know how hard and heartbreaking it is.

We are here if you need to talk, and many of us have gone through similar things.

Websailor

Relatives who take care of ill people should be adviced by specialist doctors about how to behave.
We have to rely on our common sense, compasion... but sometimes things aren´t so easy to manage. And if at the same time you are going under a not very bright personal moment... well, it requires a lot of patience, effort, and serenity to deal with those stressful circunstances. I´ve also gone through that Captain.
We have to fight a new battle when we haven´t finished the current we are in.
We have to tell us to be brave, that we can and we will manage it. We may not be able to end the pain, our´s or that of a dear one, but we can learn to live with it while trying to reassure or help them and ourselves.

They are vulnerable and need all the compassion and patience we can offer.
It´s heartbreaking seeing our parents suffer. I know from own experience.


To talk about all this is important as WS says. Maybe neither of us knows about psychology but we have our own experience, each one different but each one has felt disheartening suffering in a way or another.
...and we will be here, at least to listen.

Thankyou folks, it really does mean a lot. I am going over to the house to day to get the window replaced and then I am going to visit him.
You are right, he would be mortified if he remembers what he said, so I am just going to concentrate on trying to sort him out.
I really value your advice!