not sure where the line is (repost from 12/8/08)

From 12/8/08 (had to delete original and repost - long story):

Feel as though I'm losing my mind. I was afraid today that I'd need to go to a walk-in clinic because my sadness is debilitating. At what point do I need medical intervention? I don't know. I have a history of anxiety and depression (runs in my family - e.g., a close family member was just hospitalized for mental illness, my mom had to be on 'nerve pills' when she was a teenager, etc....), both of which flare up in certain contexts. Meaning that for me it's situational; e.g., once I had the teaching job from hell, and the resulting depression and anxiety were crippling. It hasn't been this bad since then - when the job ended - and that was 3 or 4 years ago.

I've lost everything. I've lost the one pregnancy I ever had (I should be 13 weeks pg, as of yesterday, and should be phoning my parents to tell them they're going to be grandparents), lost interest in my career (don't want to teach if I can't have my own children, since it's painful to care for other people's children), lost most of my faith in God (I'm terrified about dying), lost my chance to be a mother, lost my chance to be a grandmother, lost so many friends because of infertility (they're all parents, so we have almost nothing in common anymore), losing my closeness to DH (I just can't talk about this crap to him anymore, and I've got nothing else left to say), etc., etc.

Doesn't help that the one thing I was looking foward to - a group trip to Albuquerque in February to co-present our work at a conference - has been cancelled again. Just found out. No one's really interested in going, and/or they can't take the time off work/school, and/or they don't want to pay to go (even though they've had over a year to save up the $500 or so that the trip would cost). I'm so effing pissed off about it, too. They cancelled last year, too, because they felt that we were unprepared. Meanwhile, I am READY to present, plus I've paid the registration fees, I've arranged for my university to cover my costs, and it's the only thing in my life that I had going for me. Now I have nothing to look forward to.

I'm being crushed, physically and mentally. I feel as though I'm on uppers and downers at the same time - or Vicodin and espresso simultaneously - and it's disorienting and scary. DH wants me to talk to him, but I can't say anything. He prayed for me, and it made me feel worse. He mentioned his dad's funeral, just in passing, and then all I could think about were the kids that day - my three-year-old nephew wanted to be only with me, my 8-year-old niece held my hand the whole time, and my three-year-old great-nephew rubbed his cheeks all over mine and kissed my eyelids oh so gently. It was one of the worst days of our lives - burying my wonderful father-in-law - but I'll always remember those three dear children and how wanted and needed they made me feel. Wish I could have that in my life more than just once in a while.

Think I wore DH out - he went to bed at 8:30. I can't live this way, I said to him. I can't go on like this.

Can't find a family doctor, so if I still feel this way tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'll do. I could go to a walk-in clinic, but they won't prescribe any kind of drug that might help me. So what's that gonna help? Earlier, I drank myself into numbness, just so that I could get dinner prepared. I cooked enough food so that I don't have to worry about preparing dinners and lunches for a couple days. And now, I took a Vicodin and a Flexeril from my American stash, but I've got only about 12 Vicodin left and 3 Flexeril; I do need them for back/neck pain, and can't get them from Canadian doctors, so I should save them for pain flare-ups, but ... yeah. Vicodin evens out my mood temporarily, and I need to chill out, so there ya go. I never thought I'd become the self-medicating type, but you do what you've gotta do. I'll phone DH to come home if I feel bad; he's got a few sick days that he can use up before the end of the month.

I won't be on here for a few days - I've effed up my computer (my fault - downloaded something I shouldn't've, so it's full of viruses), and it's gotta get fixed. Sucks, too, since writing is what fuels me these days (my thesis and this blog), and now I can't have that, either. Handwriting isn't the same - I don't know if I've got some kind of disability in that area, but I have a hard time writing by hand - the letters my hand writes often aren't the ones that my brain wants. I have no problem typing, though. Weird. Anyway, I'll be back in a day or two.

In the meantime, I'll obsess about my physical symptoms, I guess. The Estrace is making my estrogen zoom, so I've got ewcm already, even though af isn't even finished yet. I have my first monitoring appointment on Saturday morning, so we'll see what my lining looks like and what my estradiol is at. Talk to y'all later, and thanks for reading. I'm very appreciative of the people who read my blog.