Starting a Anxiety & Depression Forum?

Kaloni, (and mods)

It might help because a lot of us don't even know we're depressed.  I don't mean exactly that.  Just that for me...once I had all my surgeries and good path reports I started to "lose" it.  My regular doc saw that I had something like post partum syndrome.  He was great, making me feel okay about it.  I didn't want to take "drugs" but ended up on effexor.  It really helped me.  I didn't want to take it but he said to try it... he was very low key.  Wish my BS had suggested it.  It was my PS who said perhaps I might be a "bit depressed".  Anyway this depression isn't usually mentioned as a side affect of BC but it can be a real problem with trying to get a regular life back.  Plus it shows up under all the categories.  Me, I vote to set up a separate one...Can't hurt and it might help a lot of others.  Phyllis

I agree 100% that would be like taking a ton of bricks of people's chest. Alot of times we are afraid to talk about how we feel for fear of people saying or thinking that we are crazy or just complaining about the same shit. I know that there are so many people out there that suffer from depression and need something like that so they can open up and see that they are'nt the only one's that feel like that. This could be a depression healing thread for so many I believe!.I suffer from anxiety and depression.  I'm a worry freak i guess!

Karen

Great idea. This would come at a good time because sometimes the holidays can depress people even more.

This is my second cancer I'm dealing with in which it has hit me more emotionally this time around. I started getting fatigue after my chemotherapy treatments 10 years ago. I guess fatigue and depression go hand-in-hand, so I was given one medication that deals with depression and anxiety. 

Kaloni - Please post a link to the thread you start.

I'm struggling with PTSD, and would love to talk to other people who are pushing through, and getting to the other side, without scaring any newbies.

Wish - I think it's one of those damned quality of life issues. Is it interfering with your life, or does everything feel like it's all sort of gray? Then it may be depression - I struggled with depression in my 20s, when I lost several family members in a short period of time, ended 4-yr relationship, and started abusing alcohol. Everything felt pointless.

PTSD is different. I have nightmares, I relive experiences like being told that that the mammosite device had to be removed, and seeing all the pus run out and down my stomach (sorry), I cry on the way to work and home for no good reason (for a month or so there, I cried at work too). I'm mean as a snake in stressful situations, and any doctor's office is a stressful situation. I feel like going in with a note that says, I'm apologizing in advance, I'm doing the best I can. I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding, and then go into the family room and cry. Yes, I'm in therapy.

You might want to consider a physical. Just because we have had cancer doesn't mean our thyroids are ok (in fact, the opposite), or that we don't have some low grade infection or other problem. 

If you want to, try changing something. I added an exercise class (water aerobics). I enjoy the company, and the activity is good for my brain. Sometimes that's what we need for mild depression (also called the Peggy Lee syndrome - Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friend, let's break out the booze and have a ball).

By the end of the week, if Kaoni hasn't answered, I'll start a thread and we can see what happens.

Any idea where I should put it - Getting Through Treatment, or Hormones (I hate to put it in Hormones, though)

This is absolutely necessary.  Each of us will 'experience' disease in our own way.  Those of us who have been exposed to the devastation of breast cancer are a different kind of "patient" than the 'average' pt.  And in a lot of ways it is very hard to talk about, even on these open boards, because the psychic TRAUMA (the "T" in the PTSD) that we experience heightens the physical trauma we experience.  We don't want to scare others looking for general information, and we want to be encouraging (reinforcing for each other that we CAN do this.)  But the trauma is real, the physical effects are real and the suffering is real.   And all can be extreme.

I lost my mom 15 years ago, and yes it was a different world then.  I walked out of the initial meeting with my MedOnc because there was NO WAY I was going to go through what my mom did.  But DH hung back, talked to the doc, found out the next 'hurdle' was the bone scan.  But I KNEW that is wasn't just a routine test and that they were looking for the dreaded mets.  (DH convinced me to at least find out.)  Of course, at this point I wasn't supposed to know about the mets thing, so when the poor radiologist/technician asked, "Do you have pain in your lower back?" I burst into uncontrollable sobbing.  Poor guy didn't know what he'd done.  He kept assuring me he was only asking because it appeared I have some arthritis in my lower back.  My onc was going to have the results the day after Thanksgiving.  I think I called 3 times that Friday, and about 5:30 pm she called to say my scan was clear -- we would follow up on the arthritis later (and only then did I believe the guy giving the bone scan.)  DH and I danced around the kitchen singing about my arthritis.

It's been 2 years.  I stopped taking anti-depressants.  Still take Clonazapam.  Seems to go in spurts -- I may go for 2 weeks without so much as an aspirin.  Then, I'm gone again.  Crying daily (including at work, in the car, brushing my teeth.)  Every nerve is raw.  "Phantom pain" in a nipple that doesn't exist anymore--I can't touch where it hurts; there is no place for the hurt to be coming from.

At first I was really energized about bringing the PTSD-related aspect of BC out of the closet with my PCP.  But with 2 wars raging on the other side of the world, I came to realize that if you aren't a soldier, you can't have PTSD.  (Just like if you're a young woman, you can have cancer.)  It's not real PTSD.  (Funny though that when you read the symptoms there's nothing about bombs and guns, but something about recurring nightmares and flashbacks.)

After 2 years, my DH says my whole personality has changed.  I know I am NOT the same person and never will be.  While he has been supportive, I am scared to death that our fundamental relationship has changed.  This week both my DDs had birthdays (20 & 22) and I couldn't help remembering those early days of hope and promise and a bright furutre.  Now, I'm just trying to be there for them as long as I can without wiping us out financially and trying to figure out how I'm going to cheat the Reaper out of his prolonged and horrible end-game.  We all promised my mom we would not let her suffer and we would not take any extraordinary measures to keep her alive.  But in the end, we all failed her.  And now I will NOT let anyone make me promises I know they can't keep.

Instead of "getting through treatment" or "hormones" how about calling it what it is "Personality Disordered."