I’m ok, but falling apart, at 46

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Unless I live to be 92 or more, I’m a little past mid-life. Let me take stock. Nest egg = pitiful. Career = meh (doing something tolerable while working on creative endeavors.) Social life = a little quiet, but improving. Love life = mind your own business. Well at least I have my health…. problems.

I’ve got Crohn’s disease, sleep apnea, bipolar depression, and high blood pressure. With the Crohn’s disease comes joint pain and stiffness. Fortunately, pain is infrequent for me. It’s more stiffness. I look like an old fart when I get up after sitting for a while. (No offense to the old farts. Actually, I am an old fart to people in their 20’s. It’s all relative.)

Tomorrow will have a dubious distinction: I’ll be starting on high blood pressure medication.  I declined going on it, as my doctor suggested, for the last several months, hoping to bring it down after quitting smoking and losing weight, and drinking less caffeine, and working out more…. Well, I did the first thing. I was only smoking little cigars mostly on weekends for the last year and a half. Quit cigarettes on 10/10/16.  Completely smoke free for almost two months.

Anyway, my doc was more insistent on this visit than in the past, so I figured I’d humor her and take the silly pill, until I lose some weight and see how it goes.  I call my cat Chub-chub. If he could talk, he’d probably be saying, right back at ya. Just kidding. I’m about 55 pounds overweight and it’s all on my belly.  So, I’m on a blood pressure medication, even though I’m far too young for such a thing. (Is that delusional? They say the mind is the first thing to go.)

I take a lot of pills already, so what’s one more? The pharmacy staff aren’t tired of seeing me yet. My insurance company hasn’t dropped me. I have more doctors than an aging millionaire. Life is good.

All kidding aside, I really do feel fortunate. My Crohn’s disease has been quiet for a number of years, my manic depression has never been severe, and I have a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea.

I can’t say I’ve always felt that way, but I’ve learned that self pity is poison to the soul. While it’s important to let yourself feel what you feel, it helps to keep a positive outlook and enjoy each moment as much as you can.

Signing off, so I can go get some beauty rest. Too late. Oh well, I need to sleep anyway.

 

 

Irritable days

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For those who don’t know, I have bipolar disorder. Well, technically, it’s bipolar depression, which is basically the same thing but with tendencies more for the low side and not the extreme manic highs.

I’ve done well for many years, and thankfully, I still am doing well. I did, however, recently request a change from my doctor regarding one of my medications. I’ve been trying to get in shape and not getting anywhere. I’ve had increased appetite and sometimes pig out almost compulsively. I didn’t make the association with the med until recently.

My doc didn’t want to stop the med altogether right away, so he just reduced the dose. It’s been a couple weeks and I’m feeling very irritable. I also finished up my nicotine gum treatment last week.  It could be either one. I haven’t smoked cigarettes for a year and a half, but was smoking little cigars on weekends and occasionally in between, until the last 6 weeks.  I haven’t smoked at all in that time, but chewed a few pieces of the gum a day.

So, it’s hard to say what’s causing the irritability. I’m just sharing this as part of my experiences with bipolar. It’s something people probably aren’t real aware of, the irritability, that is.  Everyone knows about the mood swings, but there are a lot of secondary symptoms, too.

I also find myself losing interest in things over the years, like film making and origami. But I still like writing and photography, so it’s not all bad. Maybe that’s not a depression thing, but just a normal getting older thing.  I may be over-analyzing. I do that.

Then there’s the anxiety, but I’ll save that for another day, and make this post a short one for a change.

Those who serve(d)

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1

I attended a play today that was immediately followed up by a talk back where audience members asked the actors questions, but they stayed in character, answering as the person portrayed, not the actor. They all did a great job and made it real.

Combat Conversations: Families Affected by War was the name of the production put on by One Fight Foundation and Impact Theatre NYC. It was powerful and eye opening. It was also based on true stories.

The play opened with a unit of soldiers, male and female, who were clearing a building when one of their unit was killed by an explosion, and carried out by two of the soldiers, one male and one female.

We then followed those two home to reunite with their families, the main gist of the play. It did not go as expected for the characters. Joy very quickly disintegrated and turned to disappointment and conflict through no fault of the servicemembers. I didn’t feel like it was about judging either side, though. It showed the difficulty of returning home to changed situations and being expected to instantly reintegrate to work and family, surrounded by those who have no way to know what they’ve been through.  All with little or no support from anywhere.

It also acknowledged that the family of those serving are also dealing with their loved one’s absence.

Not that it’s always so tumultuous with family dynamics, but it often is, and even when it goes better, it’s still not easy. The point is to get more support for our servicemembers returning from combat. It’s not a political issue. It’s a human issue. One that gets far too little attention from either major party, the media, and all of us.

Toward the end of the presentation, one of the members of the play’s presenters asked veterans/servicemembers to stand. I had 4 veterans within a couple seats on either side of me. The same man who asked them to stand made a really good point, that we don’t even know our neighbors names most of the time. There’s no sense of community. How do we offer help when we aren’t even aware who has served?

The media shields us from graphic photos/footage in America. In my work, I see a lot of foreign newspapers. They don’t hold back. I see photos of terror attack aftermaths with dead people lying all over, lynchings, and one very haunting image which appeared in several different papers. It showed a young boy face down in the wet sand, his image reflected in it, where he had washed ashore after he and his family drowned while fleeing for their lives from a war-torn country. I’m afraid I don’t remember which one. There’s so many parts of the world in turmoil.

Our troops are in many of them, out of sight and out of mind.

We’ve never seen war on our soil. Only veterans and those serving can truly understand. But programs like Combat Conversations are helping.  It reminds us that, while servicemembers are away facing a daily kill-or-be-killed environment and their lives back home are on hold, the rest of the world they are a part of keeps moving. Things change. When the service people return, worlds collide.

I could go on and on, but I’ll just wrap up with a heartfelt Thank You to our soldiers and veterans. I have a renewed appreciation for their experience, on the battlefield and off.