The Summer of 2015, Part 2: The Struggle

I am a privileged man, born into and raised by warm, loving, caring and accepting parents who created a stable nuclear family with no major dysfunctions. I am socially, materially and financially comfortable with a job I love. I don't suffer from any health issues or conditions that incapacitate me or require lifelong treatment. I have never starved, never been abused and never beaten. What do I have to complain about?

The answer is obvious, nothing really because I am most certainly among the 5% of the world's population who are best off. So I am aware that there are billions upon billions who are worse off if we were comparing or in a suffering contest. But we aren't, are we?

Just writing this post makes me feel petulant, childish and prissy, so please bear with me. With all my fortunate situation, I have still not been happy this whole horrible year.

I hate death!

Death means someone I love leaves. And not only that they leave me. Being left makes me very angry. I have never learned how to relate to that in a good way.

So my father died in January and my mother went sort of crazy for a while after that. I haven't grieved my father's death properly yet. I haven't shed a tear yet, instead I have been sort of balancing and "coping". Whether this lack of reaction is due to my antidepressants or not, I cannot say.

The reaction I have had instead is fatigue and tenseness and being antisocial. I am so tense that I actually gnawed through two perfectly healthy teeth and a tooth implant in my sleep. Now it seems, I may have damaged another one despite the fact that I now have a tooth guard. The fatigue and anti-socialness leads to me withdrawing from the company of almost everyone, except those who are closest to me.

Although the worst bit seems to be over now, there is still a way to go. And I will make it, thanks to myself, my Tomais and my friends in first life and in SecondLife. 

A Looooooooooong Weekend

I was supposed to work half the day tomorrow, but I have taken the day off, Friday is a holiday and then there is the weekend, so now I get f-o-u-r whole wonderful days off from work! WooT!!!

And boy do I need it!

Since my last visit with my sweet Hungarian doctor a month ago I am under instructions to reduce my normal daily dose of antidepressants from 20 mg to 10 mg. I have done that quiet successfully without any major setbacks. I do however feel unfocused, tired and in need of more sleep and I also feel an increased melancholy. Although my doctor told me that I can increase the dosage to 15 mg or 20 mg if and when I feel the need, I still want to give the lower dosage a chance to stabilize so I can get a sense of how I will feel.

I am going to use the long weekend in first life to relax, rest, sleep more and visit with mother once or twice. My laziness during these four days will break every existing record, I can promise you that!

In SecondLife I am going to kick-start the immense "Organize Your Inventory"-project. It hasn't been done before during my more than eight years here, so it is really high time to take control of it and get it in some order. Every time my well organized hubby gets a glimpse of my Inventory he cries out in shock and amazement "You have everything stored in the root folder, that is crazy!" or something to that effect...

Furthermore I am hoping that Botanical will finally release it's new products so that we can finally finish Project -15, the landscaping project in the South-East corner of the sim. It already looks wonderful and I am extremely happy with the results so far of the toils of Samuel Fallen, of Lytton & Fallen, and Tomais Ashdene and Butch Diavolo, of Southern Charm.

Once the landscaping is all done Tomais and I are going to throw a party to celebrate. You will all receive an invitation through the blog and/or personally.

The 8th and 9th Days After

On Thursday I visited with dad one last time.

My father was laying in a casket, without the lid on, in a large chapel where all religious symbols had been removed. The sunlight was streaming in through the big windows, it was a unusually sunny day. Around the casket six large candles had been placed on safe distance so that one could walk between them and the coffin.

Someone had also put a red rose in his left hand. The right hand was covered, as the undertakers assistant told us, because it had been badly bruised and the bruises had torn when he had been stored in the freezer.

I was - thankfully - accompanied to this visit by my oldest niece, who is also a registered nurse.

My dad looked peaceful enough, but as if he had been in a fight at the end. The veins on his eyelids, closest to the lashes, were red and seemed to have burst. He also had two symmetrically placed bruises on his upper lip, which my niece informed me, was from when they had tried to resurrect him in the ambulance and at the hospital.

Dad was cold to the touch, as I felt when I held his hand and caressed his cheeks. One or two of the hairs in his left eyebrow were sticking out, which made me wish that I had brought a pair of small scissors along so I could have cut them. Instead I gently stroked them down and blended them with the rest of his left eyebrow.

Inside I was in complete and utter turmoil, my mind was moving fast through memories of dad from throughout my life. On the outside I must have appeared calm, a few small tears nothing more.

My father was a loving, caring and accepting father. He loved my mother, me and my siblings dearly and did everything he possibly could to protect us, save us and carry us. Dad also knew all my trigger points and was the only person who could - the few times that he wished to - drive me from calm serenity to a wild frenzy in 15 seconds flat, and then he would ask me calmly why I was so angry...

My niece and I only stayed about 20 minutes, not long at all considering. Outside the chapel we hugged and said a few words and then went each on our own way. She was going to pick up her kids from daycare, while I was going back to my mothers home.

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Nine days after my father had passed away, on Friday, I suddenly realized one of the reason why I was in this strange state of feeling and thinking so much, but not expressing anything, as if I was cloaked in numbness over an uproar of torrential feelings. All was expressed in being much more tired and a slight irritability.

The reason was of course the antidepressants I have been on for 4,5 years now, since a couple of months after Ars died. 20 mg of Cipralex daily has an effect in the long run.

I felt terribly stupid for not having realized the connection earlier.

Christmas Gacha Yard Sale For “SOS”

Survivors of Suicide, is a depression support project in SecondLife. The UpToDate Magazin – Das Magazin Team in association with SL Live Radio want to support the project with a huge Christmas Gacha Yard Sale from December 1st through December 24th to help raise funds for the organization to continue to help people in need for a long time.

This project will need the help from all of you!

For facts about depression and suicide please visit: UpToDate Magazine.

Take me to the yard sale (SLurl) 

Big thanks to Esme Capelo of SL Live Radio for tipping me about this event!

The Science of Depression

(via J.M.G.)

Second Thoughts

So, on my last visit with my sweet old Hungarian doctor I was told I needed to stop smoking. Just as I have been told by other doctors, parents, friends, lovers and coworkers ever since I started smoking. The only difference was that this time I listened, which I am now regretting.

Anti-Smoking Sign, Zion, Illinois (circa 1915)

I am now well into the second week of my Champix-treatment and I passed my preset cutoff date on Thursday. As I was having second thoughts then I moved it to Saturday, i.e. today. I have had a miserable week and have started experiencing some of the side effects of the drug, but have soldiered on despite the clear signs of the onset of another depression.

Those signs are are no strangers to me and I recognize them with a small nod as they turn up, one after the other, like long lost acquaintances. The tiredness, the unsociableness, the complete boredom with everything and everyone (but mainly myself), the feelings of ugliness, unwantedness and self inflicted loneliness and isolation.

Today I did not smoke at all during the whole day, and with the medication that went smoothly - physiologically. I felt almost no withdrawal symptoms from my body and when I did, I sprayed some nicotine in the mouth and they passed within a minute. But emotionally and psychologically I have suffered all day, which is ridiculous really because I didn't really think those parts of me would be the problem.

Intellectually I have accepted the fact that I must quit smoking or else I am well on my way to getting COPD. I can stop that developing by quitting, so I must quit. There really isn't much more to it. I also accept the fact that continued smoking can cause my death or cause other health issues. I am finally well aware of the ever increasing social stigma against tobacco smoking.

Yet, I feel like a part of me is being ripped away, a part that has given me comfort, fun and relief for so many years. What will the new me be like? Will I like it? And is it really necessary for me to live past my 70th birthday, I will not have much of a pension then anyway will I? Why am I doing this to myself?

Anyway, even if I did go out and buy a pack of cigarettes at 10PM local time and have smoked three already, I am going to try again tomorrow.

...and if I don't feel better mentally on Monday I am going to call my doctor and ask his advice on whether to continue or stop the Champix-treatment. 

The Next Step

The time was exactly 8:10 on a beautiful and sunny Tuesday morning when I suddenly found myself laying full length and facedown on the cobblestones outside the main railway station of Malmö.

I had been hastily making my way from the railway station to my sweet, old, Hungarian doctor's surgery nearby, for one of my regular visits. It is still unclear to me whether I tripped on a curb or slipped, but somehow I had barely prevented myself from smashing my teeth and nose on the ground. I could however taste the dust and grit from the street on my lips.

At first I was simply embarrassed and grumbled to myself in my native tongue "satans, helvetes, förbannade, djävla skit", then slowly I started checking sensations from my body to ascertain its condition. I felt a slight pain from my right hand and and wrist and from my right knee, otherwise everything seemed OK. As onlookers hurried to my assistance and asked how I was doing, I slowly rose to my feet again, dusted myself off, smiled shyly and told them that I had been lucky and everything was fine.

The visit with the doctor was good. I could honestly tell him that I was feeling excellent and that I had not had any mood swings since before the summer. He, in turn, informed me that my observations were corroborated by the results of the blood tests, which apparently showed vast improvements from the lifestyle changes I had made.

However, the beneficial news and my lousy results on a Spirometry test that had been conducted recently, moved him on towards urging me to "take the next step", which of course is the favorite subject of any one from the medical professions when they encounter a smoker, i.e. to quit smoking.

My doctor knows me well enough by now than to try to badger me, so the dear man spoke softly and convincingly with me for about twenty minutes and finally made me agree to "move forward". I have now made a commitment to quit smoking and also have the Champix-medication to help me in doing it, whenever I decide to start the cure. It will be my secret and I am not telling anyone, except a few chosen ones so that they can keep their eyes open to signs of recurring depression and other negative side effects.

Later the same day, after lunch, I began feeling stronger pains from my right wrist, especially if and when I tried any rotating movement, and I also noticed a pronounced swelling of my hand and around the wrist. These problem have continued during the rest of the week, but are now slowly getting better. As I am completely right handed, this at the time being means that I prefer chatting in voice and that my last remaining sexual thrills are totally - albeit temporarily - screwed. Hopefully this will soon pass so I can stop feeling sorry for myself and start the new project in making beneficial changes in my life.

World Suicide Prevention Day 2013

This is a guest post by Krissy Sinclair who has run the Survivors of Suicide-Depression Project in SecondLife for five years.

The Survivors of Suicide Group in SecondLife has over 400 members and is free to join. The goal of the group is to help people in SecondLife find real life help near them. The group offers 24/7 peer to peer support inworld and also offers education on how to prevent suicide and deal with depression. The group does not offer therapy as that should be done in first life with a trained and licensed professional. 

Krissy Sinclair is a social worker in first life, so this is a issue close to her heart.

Survivors of Suicide-Depression Support Project in Second Life

Suicide can be prevented through education and public awareness.

Suicide Facts

• Suicide takes the lives of nearly 30,000 Americans every year. Many who attempt suicide never seek professional care.
• Suicide rates in the United States are highest in the spring.
• Over half of all suicides are completed with a firearm.
• Over half of all suicides occur in adult men, ages 25-65. For young people 15-24 years old, suicide is the third leading cause of death. Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death for 15- to 24-year-old Americans. (CDC)
• Suicide rates among the elderly are highest for those who are divorced or widowed. The highest suicide rate is among men over 85 years old.
• There are an estimated 8 to 25 attempted suicides to 1 completion.
• The highest suicide rate is among men over 85 years old.
• The strongest risk factor for suicide is depression. Substance abuse is a risk factor for suicide.
• By 2010, depression will be the #1 disability in the world. (World Health Organization)
• In 2004, 32,439 people died by suicide. (CDC). Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S. (homicide is 15th). (CDC)
• An average of one person dies by suicide every 16.2 minutes. (CDC, AAS)
• There are four male suicides for every female suicide. (CDC, AAS). There are three female suicide attempts for each male attempt. (CDC, AAS)
• According to the Violent Death Reporting System, in 2004 73% of suicides also tested positive for at least one substance (alcohol, cocaine, heroin or marijuana).

The Good News

Research has shown medications and therapy to be effective suicide prevention. 80% of people that seek treatment for depression are treated successfully. It is estimated that there are at least 4.5 million survivors in this country. (AAS)

What we can do in Second Life

We can band together and offer education and support to everyone. We can try and touch as many lives positively as possible as a group.

The Survivors of Suicide-Depression Support Project in SecondLife is such a group. We offer:

• Daily positive living and healing articles
• 24/7 Peer support via the groups chat
• Join a community that understands what you are going through, as they are also
• Education about depression and depression related issues
• Referrals to real life resources
• Don't be alone

Who can join us

Anyone! We are open to anyone who needs support, has needed support, has lost a loved one to suicide, who has depression, who wants to help in the fight against depression and suicide.

Look us up inworld at: Survivors of Suicide-Depression Support Project in Second Life (SLurl)

Join the Survivors of Suicide Group inworld! 

If you have any questions feel free to contact: Krissy Sinclair

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I would like to thank Krissy for sharing this important information. Although it mainly focuses on facts from the United States, the conditions do not differ much around the world except possibly concerning the means used to commit suicide.

For more International information please visit The International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP).

Change

To change, i.e. to do things differently or to become different by changing personal traits, is difficult for me. I am very much a creature of habits. Although I may like change as a concept, I do not like sudden and unexpected changes that I do not feel I can control. 

When it comes to changing my ways of doing things or my ways of thinking I procrastinate a lot and drag the process out. I first need to feel, then think and then to re-feel and re-think before I go ahead and start doing it by trying things out. It's a slow and arduous ordeal, even when I am aware of the need and see the benefits of changing. This cautious approach to change is of course the fundamental reason for my political affinity for reform rather than revolution. 

Even if I have this guarded enthusiasm for change I mostly adapt with relative ease to new situations in my surroundings - if they do not crave personal change. Surprisingly, I have no problems with unthinkingly establishing new bad habits, the problem is rather to break these when I realize they are destructive. My insight of this character flaw in my personality at an early age has made me  relatively cautious in my relationships with alcohol and drugs. 

The drugs I do abuse on a daily basis are caffeine - well, I am Swedish after all - and nicotine. Both these addictions have become excessive over the past three years since I was diagnosed with depression, I drink many litres of coffee and have increased my smoking from 20 to 40 (sometimes 50) cigarettes per day.   My weight has also increased with 10 kilograms during the same period due to the fact that I completely stopped exercising. From being a moderately fit man I have become a couch potato.

I need to change my life, my choices and my habits.

☆Cough-Cough-Cough☆

Is there anyone still out there?

Waking up today from the feverish, cough-ridden and pitiful condition I have been in the last couple of days, I still feel a bit weak and am wondering what can have happened to the world when I have not been able to be around and take care of things and guide you all.

"Le laird aux camélias - self portrait" (2013) 
Artwork by Bock McMillan
based on a photograph by an unknown photographer

Looking back it has been a couple of horrible days. I have strange bruises on my body and can remember fainting on at least two separate occasions, almost fainting about 123 times (but I managed to get hold of a door post or something else firm or could huddle down to the floor before all the oxygen had left my system) or finding myself crawled up in a couch,  in bed or sitting on the floor in a fetal position with my neck bowed to the front and my arms and legs drawn up against my torso in a rigid cramp.

I took a cab to my appointment with my sweet Hungarian doctor yesterday, because I was too afraid of getting a cough attack while driving. He was rather calm and casual about my vivid descriptions of my condition since the onset of the flu on Friday. "My dear man", he said kindly and calmly, "you need a cough suppressant, because with your coughing attacks you are forcing the air out of your body instead of sucking it in." He gave me a prescription for my favorite medication of all time Cocillana etyfin.

The most dramatic aspect of my present condition taken care of we could move on to the rest. 

I feel mentally and emotionally stronger and the antidepressants seem to be working well in keeping me stable.

To my complaints about my diminishing eyesight he suggested I call the specialist that had examined  and diagnosed my cataract and tell her what I was telling hem, that my eyesight was getting worse and that as a lawyer I actually needed to be able to read and write to work, not in five or then years time but now. He could not make the specialist change her mind, but if she called him and asked his opinion - as she very well might do - he would support me.

The visit over with I went home and pottered around looking sexy in my boxers grabbing hold of the walls and door posts from time to time but feeling better and did not faint any more. This morning I woke up after a good nights sleep and felt that the fever had finally left. 

Oh, did I tell you I love my old Hungarian healer?

Setback

I´m not quite sure what happened, but suddenly and quite unexpectedly - for me at least - I am back in the dumps. The medication I am on have now so limited the scope and depths of my feelings that everything seems connected with "tired". "Happy and tired", "doing fine and tired", "sad and tired", "bored and tired" and sometimes even "tired and tired".

Even I get bored with myself, its no wonder that others do too.

Photography by Peter Marlow

The way I know if I am feeling better or worse is if I wish contact with others or not. Right now I just avoid contact, I can easily do that in first life by turning off the cellphone or simply by refusing to answer, in SecondLife it´s not that easy, so I am staying away until my mood changes.

Found To Be Wanting

"Conversation around a column" (1978) Richard Kalvar

I have promised myself and those of you who happen to read my blog to be honest about what goes on in my lives, so there is some news I need to share.

Three weeks ago we got the results of the biannual employee survey at the company I work. In the survey half of the personnel in my department found me to be lacking in certain aspects, the other half thinks I am just great.

The results were a bit surprising to me as I usually receive great marks in these surveys and considering that I have been completely open with them about the depression I am undergoing treatment for. I suppose they think I should get over it after two and a half years.

Since the results of the survey came in my co-workers and the personnel manager have been analysing the results together to pinpoint what flaws they believe I have. The co-workers written summary of this analysis was - due to some unfortunate delays - handed to me on Friday morning. This was on the morning of the day we were going out for Christmas dinner together.

In the summary the main points of criticism is that I "seem tired" and "lacking in ardor". They also believe that I set a bad example by taking too many "smoking breaks" (they are all non-smokers) and that I seem afraid of conflicts.

Well, that put a damper on my participation at the Christmas dinner, I attended all the same but avoided alcoholic beverages completely. During Friday and Saturday I have been mulling over this the whole time and I have come up with a strategy on how use it for a beneficial developments for myself and the workgroup.

I am grateful to my co-workers for being open and honest in their responses, because if I do not know how they feel about things I am denied the possibility to improve. Of course, I recognize my responsibility for the situation that has arisen. However, I believe that there are some errors in their evaluation of the situation and also some misconceptions that we have to discuss or clarify.

From my point of view, I also see that there is a potential for improvement among them too and that we need to discuss these matters openly to achieve a lasting improvements in our working environment. Our dialogue about this and other improvements have just begun, but if we all have the common goal to feel better at work and with each other, it can take the time it needs.

A Strange Day

Photo GETTY

As I woke up this morning I had the feeling this was going to be an awful day, but in hindsight it turned out not so bad. That should teach me!

So even if I overslept a little, I got to my work place in time for my meeting with one of my staff members. We were going to discuss a few problems in his performance lately. As he sometimes has a tendency to shut off all lines of communication when he feels pressured and just respond with "yes", "no" or "I don´t know", much like a teenager in a bad mood ,even though he is thirty-one years old I had been making plans on how to handle this.

Amazingly enough we had an open and honest exchange of views and after that could reach an agreement on how to move ahead.

After that I had to rush to my doctors appointment and got there just in time. Usually they let me right in but this time no one came for me so after fifteen minutes in the waiting room I mad inquiries. As it turned out my doctor had moved to new offices and had forgotten to inform me about me. When I made a telephone call to his offices the nurse was very sorry about the oversight and gave me a new appointment in the afternoon and the new address.

The meeting with my sweet Hungarian doctor was swift and good. Have I told you earlier that he is one of those very rare kinds of doctors that actually listens to what the patients are saying?

Well I told him about my strange mood swings and that I felt that my mood curve had a declining trend. I also told him about my occasional problems falling asleep. He increased my dosage of Cipralex and allowed me the flexibility to choose what dose to take between 10-20 mg depending on how I feel. I was also prescribed a non-addictive sleeping medicine I could use on those occasions.

I had some difficulties getting my prescription filled for the sleeping drug. Sweden used to have a well-functioning chain of state-owned pharmacies up until a few years ago. The conservative government in their infinite wisdom decided to carry out a pharmacy reform in which "pharmacies would be improved and made more efficient by increasing competition". As a result of this reform anyone with certain qualifications can start a pharmacy and some of the earlier pharmacies have been privatized.

The big benefit of the reform is that you today can buy the most common nonprescription drugs at gas-stations and supermarkets but for the rest it has resulted in a big mess where the pharmacies now only carry a few of the medicines and look more like cosmetics stores than pharmacies.

Earlier every pharmacy could tell you where you could go to get your prescription filled if they did not have the medicine themselves. Now you have to drive around yourself to at least three different of the new chains and check if they have it. Usually the new private chains don´t have many medicines, I am suspecting they only sell the thousand most common prescription drugs, while they leave the rest to the old state-owned pharmacies.

Finally after asking at six different pharmacies in two towns I could get my prescription filled, by the state-owned chain of course.

Progress

Today I took out my vacuum cleaner from the cleaning cupboard for the first time since March 12, 2010. I even used it and cleaned up the living room. It felt very good!

Art by Eugène Jansson  - "Male nude, sitting model" - 1906-1914

The antidepressants I started on shortly after Ars´s death made me able to function well at work, but when I came home I was mostly extremely tired and only able to cope with the most essential household chores.

Since that day I have only been doing the bare necessities to be able to exist, go to work or move around other people. I have been maintaining my personal hygiene, doing laundry and using the dish washer when the kitchen sink was too full or I had no plates or cutlery left to eat from or with. I have however managed to keep the toilet and the washbasin clean - or sort of, my mother wouldn't approve - but no one has been let into my apartment since that day.

Before the depression I was a rather fastidious and tidy person, an inheritance from my perfectionist Lutheran parents. I thrive in ordered and clean surroundings, so the growing clutter and dust around me has not been helpful. Not since I lately started noticing it, which I did not do the first years. So during my last vacation I slowly started on decluttering, step by small step.

Slowly but surely now my home is starting to come back to normal. There is still very much to do, but I have set a generous time limit for myself. Everything should be finished and my home presentable again by mid-December, because then I intend to have a get-together at home with my team at work.

Please, keep your fingers crossed for me!

It´s time for a confession

I need to come clean with something to you all, because I want you to read it here first.

There is a person whom I have told about this. At the time when I told her I thought of  her as a friend, but we have since parted ways and broken all contact. Still she keeps on baiting me on almost a daily basis and I am just waiting for her to "spill the beans". I do not wish to be afraid anymore, so here goes.

After my husband Ars passed away I was diagnosed with clinical depression.

Clinical depression is a serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act.

I was unable to function as I used to and lost interest in activities that were once enjoyable to me. I felt sad and hopeless for extended periods of time. Clinical depression is not the same as feeling sad or depressed for a few days and then feeling better. It affected my body, my mood, my thoughts, and my behavior. It changed my eating habits, how I felt and how I thought, my ability to work and how I interacted with people. In short I did not "feel like myself" anymore.

Clinical depression is not a sign of personal weakness, or a condition that can be willed away. Clinically depressed people cannot "pull themselves together" and get better. In fact, clinical depression often interferes with a person's ability or wish to get help. Clinical depression is a serious illness that lasts for weeks, months and sometimes years. Mental health counselors and psychiatrists are trained to diagnose and treat clinical depression. With the right treatment, most people who seek help get better within several months. Many people begin to feel better in just a few weeks.

I am grateful to my boss for forcing me to seek medical help at an early stage already in May 2010, and for the support I have since received from her, from my co-workers, from my true friends and family in real life and in Second Life. I have been receiving medical treatment for this since May and mostly I feel much better and stronger although not quite my old self yet.

I am relieved that I have now come to the decision to tell you myself rather than wait for it to be hurled out on another blog.