People like me, people who depend so much on a sense of humor and a good laugh on frequent occasions, are usually subject to depression. The bad thing about being up is that eventually, you come down. And the higher up you go, the further down you fall.
I have learned a great deal about surviving a depression in my time on Earth. I have been in the emergency room for a sufferer of depression three times, one of those when a child hurt himself. I have talked people out of a suicidal depression in the middle of the night exactly three times… three very long nights, two of them over the phone, not knowing where the sufferer actually was. I have had three different family members in psychiatric care, hospitalized for a week, five separate times. They don’t tell you these things can happen in teacher’s college. They don’t tell you that sometimes it is part of a teacher’s job to deal with it, both the depression of students in your care and family members subject to the effects of stress in teachers’ lives.
I have lost three former students to suicide. (Typing that line just made me cry again.) One of my high school classmates ended it all with a gun. And, of course, we all lost Robin Williams to the deadly darkness of the mind as well.
And I am depressed right now, a depression brought on by a week’s worth of weather-related arthritis pain. I was also betrayed today by someone whom I thought was a friend. But before you panic for my safety and call a hotline in my name, don’t worry. I know the answer. I fought depression long and hard enough to know where the ladders are in the mythical dark pit of despair.
For one thing, you have to make the sufferer remember the good things in life. There are people and places and things to do that everyone can use as that wonderful good that you have to live on for. Listing things you have to stay alive for is a ladder. I have children still in school. I have pictures to draw and stories to write before I am through. There are people I love that I have to live for. I wrote about one of those yesterday, and I have at least two thousand more.
In fact, I met a former student in the Walmart parking lot the other day. She had lost her mother to suicide. She suffered bipolar disorder and depression herself, and in her junior year of high school, we almost lost her. But she had to stop me and make me recognize her to show me that she has made it. She is alive and happy, years after the fact. She is now a rung in my ladder.
When you have to talk to somebody who is dangerously depressed, it is not enough to keep saying that everything is going to be all right. You have to show them the ladders. It helps to know where the suicide hotline telephone number is posted, or have a copy of it in your wallet. It helps to know where to find good professional help. It helps to know that every school has a counselor who will either provide the help or direct that help to you. That is another important ladder.
Eating chocolate helps, or fruit. Serotonin levels in the brain are low if you are depressed. My wife left apple turnovers in the refrigerator for me. Of course, non-chocolate candy is a bad thing. A sugar high leads to a sugar crash, and that is worse than where you started.
Singing songs also works for me. Hence, the novel I am working on is called Sing Sad Songs. Even singing sad songs increases the oxygen flow to the old brain and helps it think more clearly, sing more melodiously (not odiously), and feel better. Ladders made of candy and ladders made of song… bet you didn’t see that one coming. Telling a joke, even a bad one, can make a ladder too.
Writing this blog can be used as a ladder. As I close in on 700 words, I am feeling better than I did when I started. So, please, don’t be afraid of the darkness, and don’t let it defeat you. You can win. I know it. Because I have walked that path, fallen into that pit, and found the ladder out.
No one here is asking to live forever, but you would think horsemen could be a little more sympathetic and not layer on quite so thick a layer of never-ending disease. And yet, I am reminded that I do plan to look at the benefits of the worst things that happen to me in life, and what good things they lead to. I have been ill enough in my life to become quite good at it. Arthritis has slowed me, but not stopped me. I still get around quite speedily, even though I often require a cane to do it. I am still not on insulin for my diabetes because of my diet and exercise efforts. I have learned how to cope with illness and keep going in spite of it.
ege. It struck me that it was hauntingly beautiful… but maybe I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
Catch a Falling Star 
Weekend Fun with Heart Attacks
I’m not sure why I decided to have a heart attack over the holiday, but my body decided it was time and didn’t really give me a chance for input. I should qualify it a little bit. I didn’t have an actual heart attack according to the final tests, but the preliminary tests were all red flags and shouting.
So, I woke up in the middle of the night on Wednesday night with a pain in the left side of my chest. My left arm was hurting and tingling with numbness.
Now, it is not something new. I have arthritis in my rib cage and I tend to sleep on my left side. So, although the pain was concerning, it was not reason to make a middle-of-the-night dash to the emergency room. I eventually got back to sleep on my right side. I was sluggish and ill the next morning, but I got a lot of house cleaning done and the chest pains were gone.
Thursday night the pains returned, but still not different than the arthritis pains that sent me to the cardiologist before, and not nearly as harsh and painful as the night before. Again the pain went away in the day.
Friday night I picked up my son the Marine at the airport. He was home on holiday leave. We talked about my chest pains over a meal at I-hop. He pulled rank on me and vowed to take me to the ER. I talked him down to Primacare because it’s cheaper, still not believing it was real heart pain.
The next morning Primacare didn’t go so well. The EKG machine there predicted a major earthquake… or a typhoon, or something… and the Prima-doctor got all serious in the face. “Do you want me to call an ambulance? We are required to make the offer in these situations.”
“No, no. My son is with me and can drive me to the Emergency Room. I promise I will go.”
And so I did.
At the ER they are very concerned that you don’t have anything in your pockets. They quickly dressed me in a hospital gown and then surgically removed $200 (due to the wondrous way my insurance company has of not paying their portion of the bill). So, lighter by that amount, they immediately hooked me up to their own EKG machine. I had so many patches attached to the hair on my chest that I was guaranteed to be bald-chested when it came time to rip them all off again. Then they repeated the EKG testing done earlier in the day. I swear, the same squirrel that was visiting Primacare when I was there earlier, sneaked into their EKG machine too and vigorously jumped up and down. So, there it was. The proof they needed that I had too much money left in my bank account. And so they put me inside the hospital.
Once inside, they rigged me up so one arm could be crushed by a BP sleeve every two hours, or more if they felt like it, and the other arm could be drained of blood so that they could tell if there was any further money in my bank account.
Three days later, the enzymes in my blood said that what I had was mysterious and not a heart attack. The stress test I had on Monday nearly killed me, and told them that I didn’t have enough money left in my bank account to keep in the hospital any longer. I got out still wearing my arm band and allergy warning band as reminders that I really, really didn’t want to go back, but life is like that, and I still don’t know what caused it all, or if I will have to return to deal with it later on.
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Filed under autobiography, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, healing, health, humor, illness, Paffooney