Depression

I have pets already, they are awesome.

Still feeling pretty down. All I've had time for as of late is work 12 hours, come home and spend an hour with my son, put him to bed, eat and go to bed myself. I guess that's somewhat helping keep my mind off things but not much.

Found out my dad had an attack last night. His illness causes weird things to happen in his body. Last night he was sitting there and his went into a coughing fit and his throat closed off causing him to pass out. My mother was there to help him sit up and open his airway and he was only out for about 5 or 6 seconds. Today though the rest of his body is responding and his feet are swelling up to the point where his skin is splitting so he's stuck in bed unable to walk, not that his legs would be strong enough to support him anyway. He'll be this way for a week or so probably.

Kills me to know he's going through this shit. Kills me even more to know I'm 11 hours away from him and can't help out.

He has a rare form of muscle myopathy and only a hand full of people have it. It's of c quadrant, it's slowly degrading his body until he'll be in a wheel chair for the rest of his life. It started in his legs where his feet would swell and split/bleed and he would be walking and his legs would just give out on him. There is no cure and he went 11 years without doctors being able to pinpoint what it was, the only reason they figured it out was a doctor from London was at Henry Ford the same day he was, saw his chart and talked with my dad and ran his own series of tests. It's genetic, but can only be passed on by the mother.

Over the years (it started when he was 36, hes 56 now) it moved into his chest where the muscles in his chest will tighten to the point where it's like he's having a heart attack. We've been told if he ever does have one we wont know until it's to late because we'll just think it's his myopathy. It then moved into his throat and his throat will now just close off at random choaking him until he passes out.

Now all of the three will just hit randomly or all at once and he will be stuck in bed for a few weeks while his body is too weak to move. He'll then get better and be okay for awhile until it starts all over again. Doing too much can cause an attack as well or any jar to his system. I saw him hit his knee on the tailgate of his truck and 4 hours later was in bed for a week and a half. Its even more heart breakin gbut my dad was a very active outdoorsman. Hunting, fighing...he loves lawn work and almost all of it has been taken from him.

It wont kill him, but its slowly crippling him. Hes also being treated for prostate cancer at the moment which is throwing his body out of wack on a constant basis.

So yeah, that's my dad.

Sorry if there's a lot of errors in this, typing from my phone.

j00t_sl said:

Its been said before all throughout the thread but the most important things are keeping yourself busy... Don't give your brain a chance to think about feeling empty. Make sure you are getting enough sleep. Lack of sleep will wreck you faster than anything else. A change in diet can work wonders depending on the kinds of foods you are eating regularly. Make sure you have friends that you can talk to. All those things sound great and wonderful but in the heat of depression you will not have the motivation to do any of it. You need friends that you can talk to and make them take you out, bring over a movie, have dinner with. You don't even need to sit and talk about your depression with them. You just need them there to keep you happy enough to naturally raise your serotonin levels.

Depression sucks because when it's rough, you cannot brute force your way out of it. You have to put things in place before it hits.

Lastly, stop working 12 hours a day. Stop. No amount of money or job security is worth the fallout in your body.

Good luck, man.

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Can stop working the 12 to 15 hour days, this is our busy time of year and I have to until the second week of Aug. It's that or lose my job. It's this way every year and everyone else has to do it too.

I mean you're right, I could choose to be unemployed instead of working through a month of overtime but I'd rather not do that.

My hours are only crazy one month out of the year. I can deal with that just fine.

It really helps with the long hours

Only major recent diet change was I stopped drinking soda. I'm actually the same amount of sleep if not a bit more and routines aren't really out of whack.

I think it's just a big boy case of being home sick.