Flood Update

Since I published two posts on Monday, and blogger didn't like the way I did it and erased the first one, I thought I'd let you know I wrote about the Colorado floods. You can go back and read it here if' you like. You've probably seen some of the pictures and videos and learned about it, but the post is my thoughts and experiences first hand.

Today I thought I'd catch you up. I know it's late in the day for me to post, and that's because of the flood. That probably doesn't make sense, considering my house is on high ground and my friends and family safe (though not all of them dry). It's just that compared to what so many people are dealing with, I'm unscathed, physically. Mentally, I'm actually quite the mess. You know I struggle with depression. This tragedy has magnified it.

I can't seem to find purpose in anything. What does it matter if I have a clean kitchen? I know people whose kitchen floated away down the river. They can't even FIND their house, or what's left of it. They were safe (for a while) staying with friends, and then all of them got airlifted out. They say it will be months until the road will be ready, and then the rebuilding can begin.

The lovely grandma and grandpa who lived across the street from me for 10 years moved three years ago – to the neighborhood hardest hit by this flood. It shouldn't have flooded, except the river was so wide that it found another path down the mountain and into their neighborhood even though the river wouldn't have reached them had it stayed on its path. It over-ran its banks by a half mile, but their neighborhood would have been dry. Rivers and rain and mud seem to have a mind and will of their own when they get this much power and momentum behind them.

I guess I'm just numb. Trying to comprehend the magnitude of the clean-up overwhelms me. I see evidence everywhere – getting around town is an ever changing maze...

So please excuse me if I'm not myself for a while.

~Tina

*****

You may also be wondering how I can just blithely go on with the book promotions and reminders and the like when all of this is happening. I do that because IT'S SOMETHING I CAN DO to help someone. No, these two friends weren't affected by the floods, but with my physical issues, I can't go shovel mud out of someone's basement, or tear-down dry-wall. But I can help my friends who are realizing dreams and whom I promised to help.

So here's another reminder of where you can find the next installment of the horror story Briane is writing as he promotes his new book.

Temporary Anne:

A contemporary horror classic, "Temporary Anne" presents the terrifying tale of a woman who avoids eternal damnation by sending others to take her place, scrambling to avoid the minions of Mephistopheles while searching for a way to allow her ravaged body to serve her indomitable will. The frightening images -- demons made of ice, babies' souls consumed -- will stick with you for as long as Temporary Anne exists -- which is FOREVER.

Get it on Amazon for $0.99!  


And follow the blog tour to get a live short story, This Is How I..., written based on your suggestions:

1. PART ONE was on Life Is Good on Friday 9/13

2. PART TWO was on Strange Pegs: 9/16

PART THREE IS TODAY:  Laws Of Gravity 9/18

UPCOMING:

4. The Blutonian Death Egg 9/20

5. Nigel G. Mitchell Author, Blogger, Geek 9/23

6. Jessica Bell Author/Musician 9/26

7. Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, Speculative Fiction Author 9/30

8.  Jess' Book Blog 10/3

9. Lara Schiffbauer's Motivation For Creation 10/7

10.PTDilloway.com 10/10

AND A SPECIAL ADDED TREAT: Today, I'm making my book Eclipse available for FREE on Amazon!

Claudius wanted to be the first man to reach the stars, but it was murder to get there: A chilling, mind-bending story of an astronaut so desperate to reach the stars -- and so eager to escape a past that may not exist, "Eclipse" will haunt you the way Claudius' life haunts him.

4.6 of 5 stars on Amazon!

"This book is brilliant. I'm still trying to figure it all out much in the same way that I sit on my couch trying to figure out a David Lynch movie like Mulholland Drive. There is just so much to wrap my head around that it becomes a little mind-boggling."-- Speculative fiction author Michael Offutt.

CLICK HERE TO GET ECLIPSE FOR FREE 

Newton's Laws of Depression

You know I'm a math nerd and a word nerd, but I'm also a science nerd. Can't really help it after hanging out with an Engineer for 30 years (yes, that's actually true – in December we'll celebrate the 30^th anniversary of our first date.) So we're going to talk about physics today. Newton's Laws. Newton was cool. He's one of the guys who invented calculus. Calculus is cool. But that's for another day. Or maybe not. I've found that calculus fans are hard to find...

So yeah, Newton's Laws of Motion. (No, you have not stumbled onto some rip-off of The Big Bang Theory...I will not mention that damn cat, don't worry.) His first law, in regular words, states that an object at rest wants to stay at rest, and an object in motion wants to stay in motion. I've found this to be so true when dealing with depression.

On the days when I'm feeling completely done in by inertia (the at rest part) there isn't much I've found that will get me unstuck. I'm paralyzed by that inertia, and don't want to do anything. Not even fun things, like visiting a friend to drink wine, or hard but necessary things, like paying bills with dwindling funds. “Oh just do it!” Nope. Doesn't work that way. Call it Tina's Laws of Depression.

On the other hand, on the days that I'm moving, like yesterday when I did 8 loads of laundry, and I could have kept going - but I ran out of detergent, and by the time I got home from the store with more, I was out of time - that motion, that accomplishment just keeps me going.

So what determines which kind of day I'm having? I honestly don't know. I just know that some days I wake up, completely stuck, and others I don't. I've tried to figure out if there's some sort of situational event that triggers one or the other, much in the same way that I'm trying to figure out what foods cause the crippling stomach aches and which don't. So many variables, not enough equations. (That's not calculus – that's algebra, by the way.) You'd think I'd have enough equations by now, having suffered depression for twelve long years, but no. That's because the variables just keep piling up.

Am I depressed because I don't feel well? Or does depression make me feel sick? Or both? It's a circle, that's for sure, and that's probably why I'm stuck on this merry-go-round. I know this isn't exactly a fun topic, and I really don't want to whine about being depressed, but I'm stuck in an inertia day and then the fun ideas for writing won't even come.

So do you think Newton's Laws can be translated like this? Suffer from depression, and willing to talk about it? Feel free to discuss. Just don't tell me it's all in my head and to just get up and do it, or I'll hit you over the head with my oh so popular CPAP machine. That sucker's heavy...

~Tina

Depression Hurts

Depression hurts. You've probably heard that phrase, it's the “jingle” for one of the major anti-depressants out there. My depression started with my chronic pain. It now continues with chronic medical issues.

Do you know what depression feels like, besides pain? Let me try to explain to you. Try. It's my theory that if you've never had it, you can never fully understand it.

Depression is like being dressed in chain mail, that's so heavy it's hard to move. It's trying to see through dirty windows. It's small tasks taking on insurmountable numbers of steps. It's the inertia of “I'll just stay right here, it's too hard to do anything else.”

Yesterday I had two more procedures, and my body feels like it's a dish rag that has been wrung dry, run over repeatedly by a truck, threaded through with the drying line, and is flapping in the wind, with no control over what happens next. Is some kid going to throw a rock at it? Will the squirrels come chew on it? Is someone going to yank it down, throw it in the washing machine to drown?

I have a lot of tasks with actual deadlines (we're not talking working on my book which went on the back burner a week ago and is now off the stove and put away). I need to get things ready for an important party. I need to do laundry, because almost everyone is out of clothes (and don't say have my boys do it, there was a third Saturday night trip to the ER and OYT is now one handed with a bad hand sprain.)

We need groceries, which I will have delivered, but let's break that down into all the steps that paralyze a depressed person.

• find website
• find weekly newspaper ad from store
• navigate website
• use weekly ad to choose items that are on sale and family might eat for dinner
• add/remove items to stay within budget
• pay
• arrange deliver time
• be dressed enough with hair combed enough not to frighten driver
• put away groceries

Non-depressed people say helpful things like:

“Cheer up! It's all going to be fine.”

“Pray. God is bigger than this. He'll help you out of this.”

“You shouldn't be depressed, look at all your blessings!”

“Being depressed is not the Christian way to behave. We have Jesus, we're going to heaven, all this earth stuff is nothing.”

“You're being selfish. You don't get to lay in bed all day feeling sorry for yourself. Get up and do something.”

And my favorite, “I know just how you feel. I get sad sometimes too, but it passes. You'll feel better soon.”

Well, there are these these brain chemicals that let the nerve cells (neurons) communicate with one another, sending correct messages all over your brain. They are called serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. When they get depleted from stress, pain, disease or other factors (use wiki “depression” for good info), they can't communicate effectively, and sometimes send the wrong signal, or no signal at all. This disorder has been compared to diabetes where there isn't enough insulin produced, another chemical inbalance.

Would you walk up to a diabetic and tell them to get over it? That if they just prayed more they'd get better? That they shouldn't be diabetic because they are so blessed? I don't think you would.

Please have patience with us depressed people. We are trying. We'd love nothing more than to be normal. We want to enjoy what we used to enjoy. We want not to hurt. Meanwhile, we're wearing chain mail, can't see through the dirty windows, and hurt all over. Give us a break, a gentle hug. And some slack...

P.S You're probably wondering what they did to me yesterday to bring on this dump of personal info. Colonoscopy and endoscopy. Waiting for results of multiple biopsies. Thanks for listening.

How to Deal with Chronic Illness - You Tell Me

I'm feeling blue and introspective this morning, so if you're not in the mood for that, feel free to leave. I just have the need to be brutally honest about what life has been like for me lately, so that maybe in some cathartic way, I can get this all out of my system and not be such an emotional basket case all the time.

Chronic illness changes you. I've dealt with chronic pain, and the depression that goes along with it, but chronic illness is a whole different animal. I didn't know that. In the past, when I've had the chronic illnesses (and you can search to your heart's content, you'll find a lot of stories here – I write as therapy) I've ALSO still had the chronic pain. So it was just another layer, oh look, it's not just snowing, it's a blizzard, well ok, let's hunker down and wait it out.

Some of you are new, so you don't know that a true miracle has found me, and I'm now 100% PAIN FREE. Never thought I'd see the day, but it's here, and has been since about January 2012, so I think it's here to stay. What changed my life is The Feldenkrais Method. I started on 10/3/2011. So three months and then I could walk and move and bend over and tie my shoes and crawl under the kitchen bench to retrieve the errant grape, etc. I was “real” again.

Wait, not so fast though. I was just getting my body back, getting active after three sedentary years (quick catch-up for the much appreciated slew of new followers – I was supposed to have a full hip replacement for my advanced osteoporosis, at age 47) and then I was slammed with asthma complications. Spent a good part of 2012 on bedrest. Am just coming off of round number two, as of 9/7. It's slow going. It's a snail like one step forward three steps back sort of thing. Good days. Bad days. No medium days.

Here's what chronic illness does to you as opposed to chronic pain. It takes away your self-esteem. I can't get out of bed. I can't nuke a burrito for my 12 year old. He is more than able to take care of himself food wise, this boy wants to be a chef for pete's sake. He can make dinner for the family no instructions needed. So can Jake, but there's something nurturing about your mother preparing your food for you, of her doing your laundry and folding all your clothes meticulously (yes, there's a post about my un-natural love of laundry) and filling the drawers once again with clean clothes.

I couldn't climb the stairs, I couldn't sit at the dinner table with my family. They brought dinner downstairs, onto my bed. (We're remodeling our master bedroom, there's a post about that. Put old carpet in the search box...) Life has been upside down. For a person who is a go-getter, a doer, an organizer, a leader, a take charge, a non-stop kinda a girl, there is no punishment worse than bed rest.

Now I'm free to do what I want, as long as I don't get out of breath. It's not a lot, but it's a start. Life is slowly returning, but not my sense of self. I'm still the girl in the bed, reluctantly accepting help from one and all. I don't sleep, even with sleeping pills. When I have a good day, I sometimes see the real Tina. On the bad days, she's nowhere to be found. Last week she was so far away she didn't even blog.

Have you ever dealt with chronic illness or pain? How did you handle the depression? Any psychiatric types out there with a few words of advice? Just don't tell me how great bed rest is and how many movies you get to watch...I'm likely to throw my nebulizer at you. It weighs enough to cause some damage...