So depressed

Life really sucks right now.  I don’t want to deal with anything.  I’m not getting anything done, I don’t want to do anything, I’m not even really trying to connect with people (and I’m not really caring about feeling so alone).  I’m crying almost everyday, when I wake up in the morning I literally feel like I don’t have enough energy to move, I feel like I’m walking around in a fog.  I’m not suicidal, but I think that’s only because I’ve been here so many times before.  I haven’t cut myself, but only because I’m already worried that I’m not going to pass a home study with my history of “mental health problems”, I don’t want to do anything to further jeopardize my chance of becoming a mom.

I’m tired of being depressed.  But apparently it’s just how my life is.  The ironic thing is, I’m way too depressed to be capable of making any important decisions right now.  Like the decision of whether or not I should go back on my meds.

I just want everything to go away.

Where to start . . .

It has been almost a month since my last post.  I guess I’ve been a little depressed.  And I’ve had so much internal processing going on, I don’t really even know how to get it all out.

I made it through my first injects/IUI cycle.  I started the injects 5/30; 225iu Repronex days 3-5, 150iu Repronex days 6-8, trigger day 9, IUI day 11, luteal phase: 9 days; started my period last Tuesday.  We had almost no sperm, so I pretty much knew it wouldn’t work.  Now we’re back to waiting.  Again.  I’ll send my husband to do another semen analysis in a month or so and see where we’re at.

I’m down one medication (it’s been about 5 weeks now).  I don’t think it’s going so well.  I’ve been pretty depressed the last couple weeks.  With lots of negative thoughts.  Of course all of that could be related to everything else going on in my life and have nothing to do with the medication I’m not taking.  Who knows.  I’m so tired though.  I just want a break from everything.

I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should give up on trying to get pregnant.  Maybe it’s not supposed to happen.  (There are a few different reasons I’m starting to think that, and I’m sure I’ll write about them later.)  Just thinking about that possibility is killing me.  I feel like I’m going to break into a million pieces.  And there isn’t anything that I, or anyone else, can do about it.  I just have to keep going.

My husband got mad at me last night when I got upset about something little.  He told me that I can’t handle anything.  I told him that I am handling SO much.  All of this stupid infertility stuff, making it to work everyday, helping him with some of the things he needs to do, doing some things around the house . . .  I think I’ve said all that before, but I guess he actually heard it this time.  It was so nice having someone acknowledge how hard this is; having someone be at least a little aware of the daily struggle that goes with infertility.  I apologized to him too- I hold it together all day long for everyone else, he really does get the worst of it.

Anyway, I’m going to try to come out of my hole now and rejoin blogland.  Thank you to everyone who left me a comment in the last month.  All of the comments have helped keep me going.  I’m going to work on returning comments (and getting caught up on my regular reads) during the next week or so.

Tough decision

My “almost” depression turned into full-on depression and the last couple weeks have been pretty bad.  I’ve been making it to work but that’s about it.  I think I’m starting to feel a little better, I’ve been up at least part of the time, but I’m still “depressed” at least half of the time.

I started a new cycle last Wednesday, which means I’m supposed to start clomid tomorrow for my clomid challenge test.  My day 3 FSH came back at 11.1, E2 was 27.  I guess we’ll see how high my FSH is after 5 days of clomid.  The 11 pretty much confirmed that my FSH is higher than it should be though.  I just barely turned 29- I’m not *supposed* to be racing against my “biological clock” yet!  It’s kind of funny, I thought I would be okay with getting another high FSH number, it shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, right?  But I still cried for a good hour today when I got the results back.

The decision I have to make is whether or not we should do IUI this cycle.  This is the first cycle we’ve even had the option, and I do feel kind of like we’re racing against time.  But doing IUI means stopping one of my medications during the “2 week wait” and seriously considering discontinuing another medication.  And I have this nagging feeling that the responsible thing to do would be to wait a cycle for IUI and NOT stop taking medication when I’m just barely coming out of a depressive episode.  I still have a week or two to decide.  Maybe I’ll be feeling 100% better by then and it won’t be an issue.

Down again

The last week or so I’ve been feeling pretty down again.  I don’t know if I’m officially “depressed”, but I guess I’m close.  I have just had these chronic feelings of not being worth anything and not doing anything well enough.  Those feelings/beliefs are kind of always there, but I’m usually pretty good at avoiding them unless I get really depressed.  But they haven’t wanted to leave me alone lately and I’m not really depressed.  At least not yet.  So I’m not sure what the deal is.  *sigh*  Hopefully they will go away soon.

Can’t sleep

It’s really late and I have to get up really early, but I can’t sleep.  Someone broke into my car today at work and I’m still a little freaked out about it.  The neighborhood I work in isn’t that great, but overall I’ve felt safe there.  If I’m the last one leaving and it’s dark I usually call my husband and talk to him while I walk out to my car, but I go in by myself on the weekends and a lot of the time I’m the first one there in the morning (yes, I work way too many hours).  And now I’m not so sure . . .

Whoever did it pulled out the handle on the passenger side door and was apparently going for the stereo but they couldn’t get it out (they did a good job messing up the whole panel though).  They ended up taking some random things (calcium chews and a couple of burned cds???) as well as my registration and insurance cards.  So, as my mom so nicely pointed out, this person has my address.  Which is making me even more freaked out.

Over the last few months I’ve been discovering that the more stressed I am the more paranoid I become.  Seriously, some of the things I worry about are a little ridiculous.  Like thinking that an overpass might fall on my car when I drive under it (it could happen).  Or that someone is going to break into our house.  Or that when someone gets raw meat juice on the counter and doesn’t clean it up right away that we’re all going to get food poisoning and die.  Terrible, isn’t it?  At least I’m aware that they’re not really worth stressing about (even though I stress anyway).  And none of them have actually affected the way I do things.  So I’m not totally insane.  But it has been interesting to watch.  I think half of the time the rational part of me just sits back and watches the irrational part of me totally overreact to things.  I’m not so sure the rational part always has the power to intervene though.  But being aware of my “issues” is a good first step, right?

It doesn’t help that I’ve been pretty depressed the last few days.  I swear, one of the meds I’m taking totally switched around my moods during my cycle.  I used to be exhausted and more depressed before my period, now I’m fine during that week but I totally crash the week before I ovulate.  This change started right after I started a new medication last November.  Being the good internet junkie that I am I did some research.  It turns out that the estrogen in birth control pills makes this medication less effective.  So my hypothesis is that when I have more estrogen in my system (before I ovulate) the medication doesn’t work as well.  And I tend to crash.  Hard.  So I get to increase one of the other meds in my drug cocktail to see if that helps.  Treatment resistant depression is great fun!

I know I’m totally rambling, I have that ability late at night, but I suppose I should *try* to get some sleep.  Since I have to wake up in four hours.  Yuck.  I’m making my husband drive my car tomorrow (and make all the phone calls- police report, insurance company, etc.) because I don’t think I can deal with the reminder all day.  Plus I don’t want someone else to try to break into it, now that it would be so easy to do (with the already broken door handle).  Hopefully we’ll be able to get it put back together and all fixed up quickly and then I can move on.

Getting things

So a couple of months ago I asked work if I could go to a job-related training.  They said “sure”, as long as I was willing to come back and give a mini-training on what I learned.  I absolutely HATE talking in front of people, but I really wanted to go to the training so I just figured I’d deal.  Yeah, nice thought.

As long as I’m “baring all” in this blog I guess I might as well go here too- the training was about suicidality and self-harm.  Been there, done that.  For both.  Not part of my life now, but they definitely left their mark.  So now I’m trying to work with someone to put together a fairly objective training about a topic that is anything but objective for me.  And it’s harder than I thought it would be.  It’s really making me go back and revisit that time in my life.  One of the things the trainer said (specifically about self-harm) is that it’s important to communicate to clients that you “get it.”  Not condone, but at least understand.  And it got me thinking- how many things do I “get” because of my experiences?

I get the intense and overwhelming pain that would lead someone to hurt themselves.  I get feeling worthless and invisible.  I get feeling unloved.  I get feeling betrayed.  I get how much strength it can sometimes take just to make it through another day.  I get not wanting to deal with things.  I get that life isn’t fair . . . in the least bit.

Dealing with infertility has only added to my list.  I get loss.  I get extreme sadness and grief.  I get anger.  I get bitterness.  I get wondering if dreams will come true.  I get wondering what will happen if they don’t.

In my journey through depression I learned how to feel.  Infertility is teaching me how to have all of the intense and painful feelings and not fight them.  To actually feel the sadness and let myself cry and be okay with that. 

I would never even begin to think that I understand everything my clients go through, or that their experiences will exactly match mine, or even that I’ve been through as much trauma as many of them.  But thanks to depression I understand being in pain.  And thanks to infertility I’ve learned to be much better at holding other people’s pain.  And I guess all I can do is hope that makes some difference. 

Depression sucks

Last week I noticed I was really tired- like exhausted, can’t get out of bed, don’t want to do anything tired.  It’s the kind of tiredness that usually goes along with my being depressed.  Toward the end of the week last week I kind of realized that.  And I thought to myself, “Wow, I’m completely exhausted and I’m NOT depressed.  Maybe things are getting better.”  Wrong!  I kind of got slammed with the depression on Sunday.  I was on the worship team at church last weekend and I made it through the whole first service doing just fine.  And part way through the second service I was crying.  And I have absolutely no idea why (okay, there are lots of things in my life that I could cry about, but none of them seemed to be the immediate cause).  I cried on and off during the service.  I cried Sunday night.  I cried Monday night.  I actually made it through most of Tuesday without crying.  On Wednesday I learned that I can do paperwork and cry at the same time (it’s a really good thing I have my own office and I can go in there and close the door). 

I honestly have no idea what triggered the depression.  Infertility?  Stress at work?  Family stuff?  All of the above?  It’s not anything new- I go up and down a lot.  I could almost be bipolar except that my “normal” is mildly depressed and my “manic” is probably about normal for everyone else.

My journey through severe depression that began about 10 years ago was hard.  Really hard.  I’m still not all the way through it, but I think the worst is over.  And as sad as it is, that journey is the reason I know I’ll make it through infertility.  Infertility has been just as hard, if not harder, than that time in my life.  Very different struggles, but each carries so much pain.  I really do feel like I’ve been thrown “Back into the fire” in dealing with infertility. 

I haven’t quite decided if it’s a good thing that I know I’ll get through the hell of infertility.  I see other people struggling with IF who don’t have that knowledge and I’m sure it makes it harder.  But at the same time it sucks that I have enough experience with hell to already know I’ll get through somehow.  I shouldn’t have to have that knowledge already.  And once people have learned that they can make it through the hard times it doesn’t seem fair that they should have to go through even more.

Anyway, I’m depressed.  It sucks.  But it will eventually go away, and I’ve gotten good at surviving.