Rebuild from Depression Blog

We've had comment problems, so I made the decision best for sanity: Turn them off. They are on now. Hopefully they even work. ;)

Consider this an "update post" and the title of the post "the best question I was asked" this week. It's been a bad couple of weeks around here and it has ended quite well.

With continued fatigue from the wedding (and I suppose from growing a baby), I broke one of my rules about how to stay out of the pit and I got involved in a political issue. Symptoms that have plagued me this summer got bad enough that we all got a little bit panicked. My fatigue was terrible, I had a lot of uterine pain, possible contractions, headaches, edema, tingly hands and feet, and high blood pressure. I had most of the symptoms associated with preeclampsia, a pregnancy condition that can result in premie babies (and really much worse). I moved my midwife appointment up ten days to get some wisdom. We scheduled it for an afternoon last week when we would be in civilization anyway to see a dermatologist.
(Nitty gritty continued...)

Technorati Tags: basal cell, depression, melanoma, preeclampsia, pregnancy

Somehow, cannabis has been an on-going theme of our summer and now news of cannabis and mental illness keep the theme alive.

Apparently there is a link between smoking pot and developing psychosis at a younger age. On an anecdotal level, there is a pretty powerful testimony of the link in a recent story about new therapies for depression. In the context of "deep brain stimulation" therapy (only used in severe cases not responding to treatment), mental health victim Sean Miller recounts the marijuana-mental breakdown link in his own experience:

Miller first became depressed in his early 20s, and then again at 27; the second bout of the disease, he says, occurred after he smoked a single marijuana joint while vacationing in Thailand, and was marked by anxiety and fear and brought about his first thoughts of suicide. In both cases, he was helped by antidepressants, though he experienced sexual side effects that led him to explore alternative therapies like meditation.

The depression resurfaced again at 36 after he smoked marijuana with some friends. "It was the dumbest thing I ever did," he now says. “I couldn’t function.”

I don't actually smoke anything, so I thought "phew," but our summertime theme here continues. We've discussed the risks and benefits of growing, considered becoming entrepreneurs, but we don't care for jail. My mom made a case for going organic; a local law enforcement officer told her there is no benefit to organic in this field. "The people on the other end don't care and you'll get a bigger plant with conventional fertilizer."

As a native Californian, I've always been warned against hiking in parts of northern California in fear of stumbling onto a well-armed farm. We've now been warned about our own little area of the Sierra. Authorities estimate there were sixty plantations in our area this year. Helicopters have been busy moving bundles of pot from the farms to a well-armed truck waiting at our local dump. If you get out a good pair of binoculars or a telescope, you might even notice that six big armed men ride around with those bundles (not that anyone here would spy with a telescope or anything).

Technorati Tags: cannabis, depression, Rebuild from Depression

"Depression buster" foods are foods high in the nutrients that depression folks tend to be deficient in. The list of foods is pretty wild and crazy. There is a lot of wild game on the list. I used to run around here saying "That animal in the tree is a depression buster. Let's eat it for dinner." Here in the Sequoia National Forest, there is an abundance of options for dinner if you keep an open mind, even at night in your chicken coop. But I've realized that I've lost a bit of spunk being tired and pregnant.

A few nights ago I found myself still awake at midnight and heard a lot of cackling in the hen house. My husband was just turning in so we both grabbed flashlights and headed out. At night you don't think to take a camera, but I really should have because as I carried up the rear by about thirty feet, I could see a shadow of a large rodent against our fence. The chicken coop is a building with chicken wire screen on the upper portion of two walls. One screen wall faces the fence with the rodent silhouette. My husband was in the coop with a flashlight strapped to his head like a miner, shining right on the possum, and casting a large shadow on the fence. It reminded me of the scene in "Lady and the Tramp" where a large rat shadow is cast on a wall and Lady and Tramp scramble to save the new baby from a rat attack. In any case, the only picture is in my mind.

"It's a possum."

"Shoot it and throw it into the canyon."

"First, I don't have a gun and, second, isn't this a nutrient dense food that fights depression?"

He grabbed a stick and tried to usher the possum out of the coop. The problem is that possums freeze rather than move. Faced with bludgeoning it to death or heading back to bed, we let the chickens fend for themselves. Since that night, chickens have disappeared rather strangely, so there is obviously more than possums around here. I guess it is time to load the gun and have a camp out.

Technorati Tags: depression, depression busters, foods that fight depression, Rebuild from Depression

This is a story that has little to do with depression. It happened long before my depression days but it certainly is one strategy we can all use to create a better environment for ourselves. My environment in the story was Indiana University in Bloomington in a Slavic language class. I could say which language but then I might as well use names as well and that is probably a bad idea.

I was entering my second year of this language, taught by the same teacher as the year before. In the first year, the students in the class bonded over teacher loathing. The teacher was generally despicable toward everyone in the class, but I had him pegged with "gender issues" as well. I actually got a C+ in the class one semester, likely because I did not show up in his office and cry. The last C+ I had gotten was in 1981. I'd rather have a string of Cs than show up in an office and cry to anyone so loathsome.

On the first day of class in that second year we were assigned to write an essay in the Slavic language about what we did over the summer. I wrote a story that went something like this:

The Rooster

This summer, I went home to California and tended my chickens. I discovered that the rooster was hurting them. He pecked them and pecked them until they bled. In my house, there is a consequence when men do not treat women with respect. The rooster continued to abuse the hens, so I got a gun and I murdered him. I threw his carcass down the canyon. He will not hurt the hens again.

On the day the essay was due, our classroom was not available. We met in a seminar room with a large rectangular table. He was seated at the head of the table in his position of authority. Other students sat at his side. I sat at the other end of the table, in a tall and confident manner. Predictably, he asked me to read my essay first. Most of the vocabulary in my essay was new so only one other student understood it -- one whom I translated it to before class. As I read the essay aloud in our Slavic language, the professor's eyes got wider and wider. When I read, "I murdered him," he gasped and said to the class, "Do you know what she just said?"

He asked my friend who was in the loop, but also the least likely person in the class to understand the vocabulary.

"Yeah, she killed a rooster," he answered.

"How did you know?" He asked excitedly. The teacher turned to me, "Really? Is that true?"

"Absolutely. We don't put up with that kind of behavior," I answered with a long, stern stare.

Of course, the truth was that my dad shot the rooster, but there is no need for truth to ruin a good story.

(Just to clarify, the verb "to murder" was the only one I could find in my little dictionary. I expect I would have chosen something a bit more subtle in English.)

Slavic writer Milan Kundera (perhaps in "The Unbearable Lightness of Being) says "Relationships are formed in the first week." His meaning is that we create a dynamic in that time between the two people that endures. His warning: be careful what dynamic you allow in that time. It is true of any relationship, including a teacher-student relationship. Students are always vulnerable to teachers who have a need to wield power unnecessarily. My relationship with my teacher was probably largely formed in that first week, but there was a notable change after "The Rooster." If memory serves, I got B+s that year with the same amount of work as the year before and no pleading tears.

***

And on a side note, Polit Tsk Tsk Tsk blog has created a Sarah Palin baby name generator. They write:

Sarah Palin has picked out an All-American set of names for her children. There's Track, Trig, Bristol, Willow, and Piper.
Ever wonder, What would your name would be if Sarah Palin was your mother? Well now you can find out!

I entered my husband's name in the generator and this was the response:

Sander, if you were born to Sarah Palin, your name would be:
Chase Rooster Palin
Who knows, Chase Rooster Palin you just might be president one day!

That's when I realized I probably should have been named "Sander." Apparently, Sarah Palin would have named me Rot Pipeline Palin. That would be a tough one growing up.

You too can find out your Palin baby name.

Diets of teenagers have likely never been particularly good. I remember leaving my junior high campus with my blue "off campus" pass to purchase the a soda and fried burrito at Elmer's Drive-In. It cost a whole buck. A friend of mine didn't have a pass, so I forged one for her and she spent a whole buck as well. In high school we left our law-breaking ways behind but I do remember eating a package of Zingers for lunch one day (like a Twinkie with frosting).

Today is no different except perhaps that the average American diet is so abysmal that the average American teenage diet looks like an abomination of nature. When I went back to my hometown after a decade of being off in college and graduate school, I happened into town during the lunch hour. The quick stops along the main drag in Delano had turned into lunch providers. Students exited with half-gallon sized soda pops and those "Big grab" bag of chips, chips designed to be eaten by one and yet should not be considered food.

I was appalled and mentioned it to my father who was still teaching high school at the time. "Breakfast is a big soda and a donut," he responded. There was a small donut shop just off campus to tempt students on their way to school in the morning.

Inside the campus fence offered some temptation. That is where I purchased the Zingers after all. The lion's share of campuses have had soda machines, some have snack machines as well, in addition to the food prepared in the cafeteria itself.

Here in California last year, a new law went into effect monitoring those on-campus vending machines. They have limits on calories, fat, and sugar that any particular item in the machine can have. The law also allowed only juice, milk, and electrolyte drinks to be sold, causing an uproar with companies providing sodas. A new law was passed in August clarifying some elements of the original law. Even though peanuts, for instance, are exempt from the calorie/sugar/fat requirements (perhaps because it is an actual food, bless its heart), you can't cover it with chocolate and get around the calorie/sugar/fat requirements. You can't turn milk into a sugar drink, call it "milk," and avoid those same requirements.

Good for California.

Certainly students are plagued by obesity and later diseases with abysmal diets. They are plagued by depression as well. Depression has increased in every new generation in this country. Diets of chips, donuts, and soda pop do not help: at a minimum they displace actual foods in our diets that contain nutrients depressed people tend to be deficient in.

Now if students could just be convinced not to buy the donuts off campus...

Technorati Tags: depression, foods that fight depression, teen nutrition, Rebuild from Depression, school lunches