Am I Depressed???

This blog will probably have me in trouble, but at the moment I just don't give a shit, because things need to be said, to show how every little thing can accumulate to my already instable emotional status.

Some of you may have wondered where I have vanished too on facebook.  Well to cut a very long and painful story short; I’d had enough.  

Over the last month I have mentioned that I feel old and ugly and remarks of 'oh you look better in your wig' or jokes about my so called laughter lines just arn't getting the laughs back from me that they used to get. I could at one time take these jokes on the chin and laugh as much (if not more ) than the rest of you, even the point of me making fun of myself and how I look before anyone could get the chance to first. But I suppose there has to come a time when I say 'Fuck it'. Let's face it, writing my journal is my therapy not yours and if I need to get something off my chest then so be it. It is not to make you feel bad, it's to make you realise that just because you see me plastered with makeup, have my wig on and am smiling my bloody head off that inside it's a totally different scenario. I'm frickin screaming inside. Who the hell wants to walk around in an itchy hot wig all the time just be accepted into what is classed as the normal society. Well it sucks and I am more comfortable with no make-up, no wig and thrown across my sofa in my PJ's.  

Let's get something straight, if you have the sniffles, don't friggin complain to me and expect sympathy, try living with a constant sniffy nose from the treatment and medication I’m on.  If you wake up in a morning and have a stiff neck, or achy back or leg, then welcome to my world. Deal with it, try and give a thought to the thousands out there who are suffering constantly day after day, whether through pain from the cancer or emotionally and physically due to the toxin chemicals that are being pushed through your body every single second of every friggin day that leaves you a drooling snivelling zombie spaced out in the corner of the room.

So why have a snapped. Well it's plain and simple, I have tried hard this last year to fight the side effects of treatment, and look forward to getting some quality of life back that I never thought I would find again, I'm still looking especially with all the pain that I am enduring at the moment.  It's seems that no matter how hard I try to do the right thing, the right thing turns out to be wrong, so I'm in a no win situation no matter how you look at it.

Spending the week in hospital is probably the culprit of me feeling the way I am, hospitals just arn't a good place to relax and feel good about yourself.  How can they be, there is way too much time on your hands and laying there hooked up to a drip and looking like friggin death is defiantly not the sort of look people are used too, resulting in the tilt of the head sympathy look saying 'how you feeling'. Obviously me being me has answered every single frickin time with 'I'm fine' and with that stupid idiotic grin splat across my face.  Well I'm not fine. 

Sometimes I feel that I can't do right for doing wrong and probably with feeling so bloody crap I just wasn’t emotional fit enough to take on what I least expected when I got home, and that being a a whole group of women’s messages that inevitably had me in tears.  Oh don’t get me wrong some were nice (very nice) messages, but a whole friggin lot em weren’t and were of blame.   I felt used, abandoned and blamed for something that I didn’t even do.  

Ok so there was a book written about ‘Chatter’ the support group that I had created by one of it’s the members.  I proof read the book highlighted alterations, and was bloody well chuffed to the smithereens that it got published and that in a month had sold over 300 copies, raising nearly £200 for Macmillan Cancer Support.  I’d received some phone calls and private messages saying they were utterly shocked with the way the book opened, reading as though the author of the book (not me) created the group.  Some had downloaded the free version first but insisted that they would NOT buy the book until it had been amended and one was threatening to report the book.  What I didn’t expect was the verbal abuse that I got from the group members, because the author removed the book from sale (after or before) deleting me as a friend and herself from the group, just because I pointed out to her that I’d had some complaints sent to me and asked if it could be amended.  At the end of the day, my group was a support group, yes a SUPPORT GROUP to bitch and moan about anything to do with cancer and treatment, to help each other, not to bitch and moan about no bloody book.  I soon realised and felt that all the support that I had given, even from my hospital bed was one side.  I needed support and got none.  Not one member who complained to me about how the book had been written came to defend me, except in a private message, which was no bloody good.  Maybe if I had been in a better frame of mind and not doped up with morphine handled the situation differently.  Maybe, but the final straw was messages coming through telling me to take time away and hand the group back over to the Author WTF, she had nothing to do with the creation of the group, she was not admin and had been in the group for a total of 7 months baring in mind that she had removed herself once before just because I asked her to curb all the jokes.  May sound petty, but I don’t give a shit, it was my group.   I announced that the group would be closing and panic stations started of posts saying ‘Where will we go to chat?’ and then posts for other groups.  Not one was to say ‘Are you ok Karen?’ So Monday 14^th May 2012, BreastCancer Karen for the first time in years became inactive and with the help of my matey Pauline, the group ‘Breast Cancer Chatter’ that I created over a year ago was closed down, emptied of all its contents and deleted.  I cried as I watched each name disappear, I cried as each picture was removed and cried at the removal of the Prayer Events that were held for lovely members who we’d lost.  Even though I had Pauline to talk to that night, I have never felt so alone and not knowing who I could trust I shut myself away.  

On top of that, I also had emails to deal with regarding my complaint about ‘Dr X’.  I had emailed a couple of weeks before being admitted to hospital; giving them a dead line of May 17^th (the 5 yr mark to when I was diagnosed).  I got a reply saying that they thought that a satisfactory conclusion had been made back in 2101 and so my case had been closed.  As you can imagine I was downright bloody infuriated.  I’d sent a reply back but didn’t get a response back until I emailed them again on the 17^th telling me that I had to go through the proper channels and write in a complaint letter to the complaints department.  Errr excuse me, but didn’t I already do that FIVE YEARS AGO?   I spent all day, emailing back and forth, while trying to get my head together to write my name and shame document.   Unfortunately, because I got so stressed out and Lee making me put my laptop away the document wasn’t finished and so the hospital is probably thinking that they are safe and didn’t mean that I would name ‘Dr X’ and all involved with my complaint publicly.  Well they got another thing coming, cos when I get this document finished, I am going for the bloody jugular.     

The hurt that I have felt over this last week has left me totally confused, upset and very angry.  The little bit of self confidence that I had left has been crushed to nothing.  I have had to cope with being a doped up junkie for the pain that I am still in, the awful pain from being constipated and so bloody tired that I have spiralled down and down and down to the point of crying just because I wake up in the mornings.  So I guess the answer to the post title of ‘Am I Depressed’ is a big bloody massive YES.  Over the last week, I have lived in my PJ’s, I haven’t even been arsed to brush my teeth and so probably up to this morning stunk worse than poo.  I have cried more tears than I have in a life time, shouted and snapped at Lee for just being in the same room and shouted at the dogs and not paid them any attention at all.  All I’ve wanted to do is go to sleep. Lee has had to work overtime to keep me functioning and to be honest, I have no idea how he has kept control, because no matter what encouraging words he said to me, I have thrown negative back at him.  I threw in the towel, I just couldn’t take anymore and felt that this was my life from now on, constant pain, and being so bloody dizzy and high from the pain medication that I didn’t know whether it was night or day.   So much for my banner’s word of ‘A Positive Mind is Half the Treatment’ where has my mind gone, how did I let it all change?  That’s the problem with depression; it bloody sneaks up on you bit by bit just like frickin Cancer.

And then as if things couldn’t get any worse, Lee’s back went and when I say ‘went’, I don’t mean to a sunnier climate, I mean it as going from straight to curving all over the place, the ‘went’ meaning his disks (get the plural cos there is 2 sneaky buggers) popped right out from picking Luke up off the floor after falling off his scooter to take him to the hospital.  That evening and for the next 3 days all 3 of us were laid up; me with my latest problem, Lee with his prolapsed disks and Luke with a broken ankle.  We coped, because we had too because even now as I write this, not one person has been to the door.  We joked about putting a notice on the door ‘INVALIDS ABOARD’ but knew that no-one would see it anyways.  This in itself puts me into my feeling sorry for myself mood.  It worries and scares me with Lee’s back because if my mobility stays as it is, which I am hoping and praying hard that it’s just a temporary setback, but it scares me of how we would cope.  I know my mother’s answer would be to move back to Doncaster, but my home is here, it has been for the past 8 years.  My hospital is here, my wonderful amazing oncologist is here, my Bessie mate (Thank you Pauline) is here and another important factor is; my favourite one and only step-son Luke is here.

I suppose admittance to having a problem is the first step.  Yes I admit it; I have been pushed and pushed to the point of every little thing exploding into one huge atom bomb.  Maybe it serves me right for spending too much time thinking of others when in fact the person that needed the support was me all along.  I thought I was strong and positive, but yet without my group I have nowhere to go, to ask a simple question such as ‘How long will this pain last’ Another ironic thing is for a long time, Lee has told me I spent too much time on facebook, but seeing how everything has affected me over the last couple of weeks, he has been trying to talk me into re-opening the group.  He has realised that the group helped me too, but the group thing has been and gone, it’s in the past now.