What ails you?

[Qlippoth]

Now, over the last year, I have slowly regain my "self" and a love for life. I no longer sucumb to the ideation of death, although my depression remains a battle every day. I have found a caring doctor and an excellent physiotherapy staff that I trust.

That's a great thing to hear. I myself have been dealing with clinical depression for nearly 15 years; I ended up derailing my college education and sabotageing a long series of personal relationships (including one that ended quite painfully last night). After a few years of recovery, during which my medications seemed to be doing the trick, I've had a relapse. I'm back in therapy now & I'm trying to change my medications to find a combination that can help me more effectively (& as always, it's taking far too long for my tastes).

Reaching out for help is never easy. I'm glad you're taking steps to care for yourself better.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Sticking to physical problems, because I can't really effectively diagnose emotional or psychological issues:

I'm overweight - not a great deal, but enough that I don't have a lot of stamina. Bad luck for me, I live in a house with many stairs built against the side of a cliff. Heh.

Strictly speaking, I never get enough sleep - though I suspect that at 24, I don't actually need very much. I probably get five hours a night minimum, and seven maximum. Last night, for example, I was in bed at 3:30 a.m., had to get up to let my drunken brother in at 5:00 a.m., and got up at 8:15 or so.

Very occasionally I suffer from awful leg cramps - when I woke up this morning, my right calf felt like it was being crushed in a press. Now, at 6 p.m., only a ghost of discomfort remains, but it's not unusual for it to last this long.

I drink a lot of fluid, but I'm not diabetic. I can't stand drinking plain water - what I need has to have flavour, even if it's artificially sweetened - but, for example, I can easily go through five litres of Pepsi Max in an evening. Ironically, I drink less when I game.

One thing I will count is that I've developed some memory and concentration problems - hard to describe, but I've gone from perfect recall of phone numbers and the like to often forgetting them. Damn it.

 

[Nifft]

I...

I...

I'm too sexy for this shirt. And it's killing me.

(Seriously: ever since Atkins, nothing to complain about. )

-- N

 

[Knightfall]

That's a great thing to hear. I myself have been dealing with clinical depression for nearly 15 years; I ended up derailing my college education and sabotageing a long series of personal relationships (including one that ended quite painfully last night). After a few years of recovery, during which my medications seemed to be doing the trick, I've had a relapse. I'm back in therapy now & I'm trying to change my medications to find a combination that can help me more effectively (& as always, it's taking far too long for my tastes).

Reaching out for help is never easy. I'm glad you're taking steps to care for yourself better.

Reaching out for help is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It is in our very nature to strive and struggle to get through life without asking those around us for help, especially when life it at its hardest.

From a young age we are taught to succeed and simply "deal with it" whether it be in school, at home, or in adult life. To accept help is a sign of weakness in many cultures, especially the money driven society of the western world.

Too look beyond that and see one's family and friends as the support network EVERYONE needs can be very hard. The most important aspect to success is to surround yourself with as many positive people as possible and to make sure you are living for yourself and not for others.

I'm glad to hear you are going to thearpy again, Qlippoth. It is an important part of the coping process that is depression. Medication alone will never solve depression. We need to be able to "Express" our emotions in some form and I don't mean weeping like a baby everyday. This expression is done through living, not just surviving.

Even reading and posting to EN World is a method of that "Expression". EN World has been a life line for me, in the past. It has allowed me to release pent up negativity by creativity, humor, intelligent debate, and storytelling.

"We are Humans, not Vulcans. Feelings make us who and what we are."

Cheers!

KF72

p.s. I also suffer from allergies and have asthma.

 

[randomling]

I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a hormone imbalance that gives me excessive hair all over the place, and contributes to my weight problems and possibly my depression as well. I'm overweight. I've never been diagnosed with clinical depression, but I've been dealing with a severe lack of motivation, sleep problems, deadened emotions, near-constant fatigue and occasional thoughts of suicide ever since I can remember. It comes and goes a bit but it's something I have to deal with to a greater or lesser extent every day.

Aside from that I have hayfever, very sensitive and irritable skin, and very narrow ear canals that get blocked and/or infected very, very easily.

 

[AuroraGyps]

My main problems are depression and a social anxiety disorder (many have seen the Zoloft commercial with the little oval people... everything the narrator says, that's me to a T). I also have some arthritis in both my knees, which has developed over the last 20 years on top of some other knee problem (can't remember the name). Plus, I could stand to lose a few pounds (sitting wround depressed for a few years with out getting treatment'll do that to you... luckily, I know I could weigh way more than I do).
I also have two annoying problems:
One is that one of my allergy symptom is that the roof of my mouth gets really itchy. I'll wake up some times with the the roof of my mouth rubbed raw.
The second problem is that I have floaters in both of my eyes. Floaters are blood clots or other opaque substance that can be seen as shadows. My father has had lattice degeneration of the retinas for 30-40 years and we think I may have the same problem (I haven't been to a specialist yet due to $). It kinda looks like little wisps of smoke in my eyes and the left is worse than the right. What makes it annoying is that the darkest spots are in the very lower left corner of my left eye and sometimes I think there's a bug running around just out of my sight. I had a problem with ants this past summer and it was crazy..."ant!.. naw, it's a floater... ah, no it is an ant" for like a week. There's not much that can be done, if it's the same thing my dad has. There's more of a chance of making things worse.

I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is a hormone imbalance that gives me excessive hair all over the place, and contributes to my weight problems and possibly my depression as well. I'm overweight. I've never been diagnosed with clinical depression, but I've been dealing with a severe lack of motivation, sleep problems, deadened emotions, near-constant fatigue and occasional thoughts of suicide ever since I can remember. It comes and goes a bit but it's something I have to deal with to a greater or lesser extent every day.

Ya know, I have a feeling I have the same thing. I went to a doctor once, but I think he missed the diagnosis. I'm in the process of finding new doctors that pay a bit more attention to their clients snd their symptoms.

 

[Emirikol]

I feel your back pain. I am a doctor of chiropractic and we see a lot of torn discs really put people out, especially with the long recovery. Be encouraged though that the natural history (untreated) of torn discs is about 8-9 months of misery with typical _complete_ resolution of symptoms (that's why the orthopedic surgeons are so happy to get you in before that It sucks to think that 50-100 visits (oh, gosh yes that many), to a chiropractor and slow progress is the norm, but it's safer than Vioxx/Celebrex/Alleve and cheaper by about $38,500 cheaper than spine surgery. If you have any chiropractic questions for me, I'd be happy to help out a fellow gamer. Email me at: jayhafner@lycos.com

I struggled for years with chronic back pain, neck pain, and migraines from a fall out of a tree and two car crashes but thankfully, I've learned how to take care of myself (as a D.C., I have the luxury of getting spinal correction every week and I have been problem free for 6 years now).

A movie for everybody to see: "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"
http://www.whatthebleep.com/ It's basically big-time movie about neurology and quantum physics. It's motivating to see that people can use their briains to overcome a lot of life's problems (and pains). Most people at the theater I was at were smoking pot, but physics and neurology is 100% my business so it was like C.E. for me.

Good luck all,


jh

 

[Lefferts]

re: migraines

I'm one of the lucky people who get migraines as well. Mine have intensified so that I get them every day (probably due to taking too much over-the-counter medication - be warned!).

Recently I have started accupuncture/injection therapy treatments. I thought being injected with novacaine in the tonsils was bad until I saw that post about being injected in the eye. But I want to say that the accupuncture has definately helped - both the pain and my attitude. So for those of you with migraines, accupuncture might be something you want to try. It has improved my life and I no longer take any prescription medications.

 

[Azul]

Make that four of us now who have dealt (or rather are dealing with) chronic major depression. Mine has in the past been bad enough to turn me into a paranoid social recluse (with manic episodes... always fun... ugh), nearly fubared my education, had me seriously contemplating doing very bad things to myself and landed me on medical disability for over a year. I've found a good therapist in the past few years and I'm finally showing some signs of long-term improvement, but it's never easy. Still, I'm back at work, still married, off medication and working through the psychological aspects of the depression. I'm hoping it lasts.

Physically, I've had relatively minor ailments. Gallstones (treated with surgery), some minor arthritis, about 40-50lbs I could stand to lose and a lot more exercise I could stand to do. Pretty typical problems for a sedentary 30-something who ate poorly and didn't exercise enough during his younger years. If it wasn't for the depression, I'd say I've had a fairly average set of health issues.

Like most folks said, the best way to deal with such problems is to focus on the good things in life... the catch being that one of the main symptoms of depression is not being able to do that. Severe depression just distorts your entire worldview into a nightmare that has little to do with what is objectively happening around you.

 

[Xath]

Well, after 4 months of off and on toncilitis, my monospot finally came back positive last friday. Mononucleosis; what a crappy virus. Eugh.