RA and Depression Part 2

I can remember once when I was probably 23.  I was sitting in the bathroom/laundry room.  I was crying into dirty clothes.  I didn't know what was wrong with me.  I knew I was depressed.  I knew I couldn't get past the whole weeping thing.  My mom came in and asked me what the problem was.  I thought about it for a minute and realised something, "I looked at her and said I felt like my body had betrayed me."  Within a couple of days I was in the middle of a horrible flare.  The pain was so bad that I almost passed out getting out of the shower.  I had taken one of those midnight showers/bath that I do to try and relieve some of the pain.  I hobbled to my bed after the almost passing out and the next the I remember it was a couple of hours later and I was curled up under my covers still wrapped in my towel.

That is when I started thinking that my depressive episodes were a precursor to a flare.  It didn't happen every time.  Sometimes the flares weren't that bad, but it did happen.  Like so many things with RA you never know what is going to happen.  You have no clue how you may respond to your next flare.  It is one of the many things about RA that leaves me feeling so very hopeless at times.  How do you battle something that you can't predict?  How on earth do you plan a life when you have no idea what you may be able to do the very next day.  This very thing leads to even more depression.  

I still don't know all the answers.  Sometimes I don't think I have any of the answers.  Growing up in the churches I did I was always taught anti-depressants were evil.  It took me a really long time to accept the fact that I needed them.  I couldn't come to grips with the idea that I "wasn't leaning on God" to take care of my depression.  When I was 19 a doctor prescribed me some anti-depressants.  My mother promptly threw the prescription away.  I "prayed" my way through the whole thing.  Don't get me wrong, I believe in the power of prayer.  I believe God heals.  I also believe that it is okay to take anti-depressants if you need them.  I am not un-Godly because I put my emotional health first.  After my third child I was diagnosed with Post Natal (partum) depression.  My GP suggested an anti-depressant.  It was so very hard for me to fill that script.  In fact it was almost impossible, until I decided that my kids deserved a mom who could function.  I didn't have months to "pray" my way through the depression.  I wanted to be happy.  My kids so deserved a mother that could parent.  It was hard enough the had to have a "disabled" mom who had physical limitations.  

I guess I said all of that to say that we NEED to take care of ALL our health.  There are so many studies and articles out that say there is a large percentage of RA sufferers who are depressed.  Studies also say that our emotional health tends to be forgotten.  I think we as well as our GP's and specialists focus on our RA to the detriment of our emotional health.  It is so very important to have doctors that we can talk freely with.  I remember I had on GP who belittled me.  I went in and told him that I thought my RA might be causing some depression.  He looked at me and said, "That's stupid, you have had RA for years, if it was going to cause depression it would have long before now.  You have three kids, that's the only thing wrong with you.  All you need to do is drop the kids off at your MIL's house and get spend some time away from them and get over it."

It took weeks and my husband refusing to leave me alone out of fear that I would hurt myself to confide in another doctor.  I was so terrified to say what I thought to this Doctor.  He was a doctor who had been wonderful with me.  I trusted him, but because of the other man I just couldn't start.  Ben helped me out there.  I finally told the doctor that I thought my RA was causing depression, if that was possible, He looked me in the eye and said, "Of course it is.  You are always in pain, how could that no upset you?"  I was so relieved and gobsmacked by that.  I then told him how sleeping was next to impossible.  I also said I didn't want to go on a certain anti-depressant because the last time I was on it I got to the point of feeling nothing at all.  So he sat there with me.  Explained that the other med had not been right for my situation and asked if I would be willing to try an "old-school" med.  After a nice long talk with him I agreed.  That was such a good decision for me.  I turned a corner.  At the same time my husband got me into see a counsellor.  This is something I would suggest for ALL RA patients.  It helped me realise so many things.  Like learning that accepting my pain, did not in any way mean I didn't continue to try and get rid of the pain.  See I had this crazy idea that if I accepted the pain it meant I couldn't treat the pain.

Depression Part 1

A friend suggested a while back that I blog about my journey through depression.  I have been avoiding doing it for a long time.  Who wants to admit they have a mental health issue, anyway?  After some soul searching this morning I decided it was time to quit putting things off and actually take the plunge to do this blog.  Only I don't think I will be able to handle doing it all in one blog, so this is most likely going to be a series.

I have heard so many people talk about depression and rheumatoid arthritis.  Everyone wants to know what came first, and does one exacerbate the other.  I can't answer which came first,  but I do believe they can exacerbate each other in our lives.  When I was in my 20's I noticed that I would become very depressed right before a flare would happen.  This was back in the days before I was literally in pain non stop every single day.  Yes, there was a time when my RA didn't plague me constantly.

I know for a fact that my symptoms of RA were present when I was 19.  I am pretty sure they were present when I was 17.  I can remember once having such a bad backache that I took 18 Advil one day.  No, I wasn't trying to hurt myself, I was just trying to not be in pain.  I was at school and when I ran out of Advil I went home.  I was basically a mess and mostly in tears.  My father had recently had some dental work done and had some prescription pain killers.  When I got home my mom asked what was wrong, so I told her.  Now I told her I had run out of Advil, but not how many I had taken.  She decided that since my dad was over his pain she would give me one of his pain killers.  I have no idea what they were, just that they were prescription.  I took it, on top of the massive amount of Advil, and quite literally slept for more than 24 hours.  My mom tried to wake me up the next morning and was unable to.  No, she didn't call an ambulance or anything, she just let me sleep off the pills.  This was during finals my senior year, and let me tell you, ALL of my friends were jealous and mad as hell, that I had gotten that much sleep.  Most of us were cramming and not sleeping at all.  Yeah sounds like a flare to me, but I have no medical proof of that.

SO I remember being in pain a lot as a child, but no one even thought of the possibility of RA.  There is no family history of it, so why would they?  I was constantly sick as a child, and always on antibiotics.  My paediatrician once joked that he was going to name one of his exam rooms after me antibiotics Still not sure why that was a great joke, but everyone else thought it was.

That all brings me to this.  I remember being depressed early.  I remember wanting to die at 12.  I remember wanting to end it all at 13.  I have to say, I do not feel like that anymore.  I have a wonderful life, and love it.  I would never do anything to hurt myself, or cause my family pain.  I did feel like that as a child though.  I can remember latching onto one thing to look forward to.  Usually it was a show coming on soon that I wanted to see.  Any little thing could give me the push I needed to break out of the suicidal thoughts.  Sometimes though it would settle in on me.  I was apparently really good at hiding it, cause no one in my family noticed.  Either that, or that just didn't care enough, or want to see what was happening to me.  I refuse to even go into which it was.

I spent years just trying to find happiness.  Look for things to do and enjoy.  When my nephew came along I threw myself into him.  I was 14 my sister was 17.  She decided after having him that being a mom was no fun though.  I took care of that child a lot when I was growing up myself.  I can't even count the number of times my sister brought him to me when I was asleep and laid him in my bed.  She wanted to go do something, or she had to work, or she wanted sleep.  Forget the fact that I was in school, needed to be up by 6 am and out the door by like 6:30.  It didn't matter to the family, only she did.  Okay so maybe I still feel a bit of anger and pain over that time of my life.  I volunteered at a hospital when I was 13 I think it was.  I loved being there.  I loved helping people.  I took a lot of shifts to get out of the house and be around  people who seemed to enjoy my company.  After that I was nominated for an award.  I got my name in a book of thousands of other young humanitarian type kids who did good things in the community.  I was thrilled but didn't really think I deserved it.  I was also nominated for an overseas trip the same year.  I would get to be a part of a group of young people who went to different parts of the world and got to spend time with other families and learn about the daily life in other parts of the world.  This is an opportunity I so wish I had taken.  I talked myself out of it though.  I convinced myself my nephew needed me.  That my parents wouldn't be able to afford it.  That it would be too hard for everyone else, so why should I let myself even consider it.  My parents LET ME convince myself of that.  The whole time saying if you want to go we will burrow the money.

I slipped into yet another depression around that time.  I tried to be happy taking care of my sisters child.  I tried to be happy being responsible for my parents finances.  I tried to be happy...

I wasn't happy though.


I had gotten very good at ignoring myself.  I wasn't taking care of myself.  That is a very hard habit to break.  I still don't think I have even 20 years later.


When I was in high school I started having a lot of pain.  Never understood why either.  It seemed very random as well.  One day my foot would almost feel broken.  Once day my back would hurt.  One day my hand would hurt.  Being in high school I had to write a lot, so I never really thought much about the hands and wrists hurting.  The back pain, neck pain, and headaches were killer though.  I wasn't able to keep up with advanced classes, which was expected of me because I was a debater.  I remember some friends being completely unhappy with me when I decided to drop pre-calculus.  She offered to tutor me.  I told her no amount of tutoring would help with my problems.  My Comp-Sci teacher actually ASKED if I would drop his class for my own good.  Hearing that annoyed the hell out of me and I refused to drop the class.  Forget the fact that up until that moment I had actually been planning on dropping it.  I did have a wonderful friend, Vinny who helped me finally pass that class.  I was kicked out of my Advance Placement English Class.  Then my regular english teacher said I should be in advanced placement.  So this was a very hard and wonderful time.  I enjoyed being at school, I hated being at home.  My mother and sister were always fighting.  I would end up having to take care of my nephew instead of doing homework.  My sister got really pissed off because I was given a car for my seventeenth birthday.  My parents explained to her that the only reason I was given a car was because they hated picking me up at school in the middle of the night after a tournament.  Yes, they told her this with me sitting right there.  My dad started telling everyone that I was his  youngest but my sister was his baby.

I never seemed to be able to just work my way out of the depression.  I was told at church that I should just think myself happy.  I kept trying, but it never worked.  I was taught again and again and again that anti-depressants were evil.  That they would take your free will away from you, and if you took them you weren't a Christian and couldn't follow Christ.  If after all you were a "true" Christian you wouldn't need any "Un-godly" help to be happy.  So I thought, not only am I a bad Christian, I am going to hell, cause I can't just think myself happy.  I got from all sides that I just wasn't good enough.  I was the ugly sister.  I was the fat sister.  I was the reliable sister.  I was the responsible sister.  In fact when I was 13 and my mother found out my sister was pregnant, she came into my room screaming at me.  Why you ask?  Well, according to her it was ALL YOUR FAULT, your sister is pregnant.  Had I just told her when she had let THAT BOY stay the night, then mom could have taken care of the problem from the start.  So I took the blame for that on myself as well.  Of course forget the fact that my parents left to go to Vegas, KNOWING my sister was out of control anyway.