Depression After Surgery

Sundanceh said:

$ I 2
Dearest, Lisa

John has a good handle on the situation and I agree with what he said. It's early on in the fight and his first steps of awareness are washing over him. He is dialing out right now as he assimilates his feelings and reasseses his life.

My heart breaks for you and your husband. I want you to do me a favor. I found this in the book and it speaks to me on some of what may be ailing your husband. These words might help him - I know they will help you:)

Just tell him that Tex understands where he is at and what he is feeling. Tell him I licked cancer 3x in 7 years and that things can get right - but it takes Time and Patience. And give him some room to "grow." He is starting a new growth spurt as we spoke.

Please read on....and accept this gift from Santa Craig this year. Tears are in my eyes as I write you and I just felt this incredible desire to help you and your husband for the holidays.

Remember, you're together - and you have your family. He will pull out but it's all been in fast forward for him and now that the train has slowed down, he's had the time to begin thinking - and believe me, that's where he is right now. It will not all pull together magically or overnight. Just because something looks over - it 'ain't.' We'll talk about that another day.

Enjoy the holiday!

START

I’m truly convinced that pain and suffering are human elements that are absolutely essential for human growth to occur. Without these two elements present in our lives, then as people, we cannot grow and reach our full potential.

It’s not so much that we are going to have pain and suffering somewhere in our lives – rather, the issue is how do we ‘manage’ those feelings when we find them on our doorsteps?

With cancer, we never get to choose any of the dates of our pain and suffering. Those days are made for us by our various medical schedulers and then become “The Days of our Lives.”

Like a game of poker, we never got to choose our cards – we merely play the hands we are dealt.

Pain and Suffering are the price of admission to our cancer matinees. They are our membership dues to the Cancer Club. However, as time passes and the wounds begin to heal, we ourselves begin to experience a transformation towards personal growth.
This is what the world sees and how the world will remember us. It seems we cannot have one without the other – they go hand in hand.

Pain and Suffering is like when you prune your hedges before each spring. By cutting deeply to the quick, it triggers that reaction in the plant cycle that stimulates new growth in the spring. When those wounds heal and you look at your hedges later, it looks as if there were never any damage done

“It’s sort of like that with cancer, isn’t it?”

The ‘cuts’ reside so deeply within each one of us that we begin to think we will never be whole again. If we can weather those storms, then what blossoms from that ‘pruning’ action turns into a beautiful work of art.

You see, with cancer, there is a part of us that does die, yet there is that part of us that is reborn. It is a subtle reminder of the cycle of life and how that works.

I think of all the human emotions that we experience, that Pain and Suffering is the hardest of them all, and yet it offers the greatest yields in our potential as human beings.

It is when we expose that vulnerable side of ourselves and open the door to our hearts that gets us in touch with our human “Frailties and Fallibilities.”

That willingness to take a closer look at ourselves and acknowledge our shortcomings, while also having the ability to express our inner most feelings to others, is where the beginning of personal growth begins to take root and start growing.

NEW

You’ve probably heard the expression, “You Never Walk Alone.”

There’s a lot of truth in that statement when talking about cancer. We might think we’re alone sometimes, but really there are several roommates that want to bunk with us along the different stops in our journeys.

Let’s get to know a few of the players who just might show up on your doorstep.

HOPE. What an interesting fella’ this guy is, right?

He’s a very elusive guy and if we’re not real careful, he can just slip out under the fence and take off out of our lives – and when he goes he’s sometimes hard to find again.

And when Hope moves out, Depression can move in. Then, he invites Despair, Hopelessness and Loneliness to the party and from there the lives we once thought we knew can begin to slip away and then disappear entirely until there becomes nothing but existence.

And that’s a very bad place to be – especially for too long.

I know these ‘roommates’ intimately since I spent the second half of 2010 and the first half of 2011 with them on a daily basis. They are not nice ‘house guests.’

They don’t pay any rent – they don’t clean up after themselves – they don’t do any chores or run any errands and they try very hard to rob us of our lives.

So, it becomes up to each of us to play the role of landlord and ‘evict’ our uninvited houseguests and find a way to get Hope moved back in with us, so that we can flourish once more and feel some sense of optimism.

“What is my definition of Hope?”

I’ve come to think of Hope as that “Intangible element of humanity that we cannot see, but one that we feel.”

It’s the single common denominator that every one of us shares. It’s the driving force behind our individualism and more importantly, the one thing that we ‘cling to’ and ‘reach for’, in times of dire circumstances that beset each of us, somewhere in our lifetime.

Hope is very important in all of our lives. This is especially true for the cancer patient and their caregiver. With such a grim diagnosis to contend with any of us are looking for a nail that we can hang our hats on. Having Hope with you during your cancer battles is a priceless gift to possess.

I believe it is “The Straw That Stirs the Drink.”

Hope keeps our spirits high and our beliefs in what we are trying to accomplish even higher. A life without hope is very sad, but a cancer battle without hope is something I would not want to go through for too long. It’s like most of the things in life – you never really miss it until it’s gone or has been taken away from you.

NEW

When you’re in treatment and have depression, it’s very hard to see the other side of the valley. You’re generally feeling so badly and have lost interest in many things as well as life and the things inside it. It becomes a little bit harder to appreciate all of the little things in life that we take so much for granted anyway.

I’ve found it’s like a lot of things in life – we all just want our share of the pie – we want what the other guy has. By this, I’m not referring to materialistic trinkets, I’m thinking more along the lines of ‘being well.’ We see everyone else well and we just want what they seem to be having - their health.

It’s just good old-fashioned basic human nature in its most primal state. There’s nothing wrong with it at all. It’s just a basic human need that we desire to have met.

NEW

Before we close out the subject of depression, I wanted to take a moment and discuss the topic of depression medication as it relates to having cancer.

It appears to me that as a society, we tend to over medicate the population. I suppose it seems only natural to do so.

After all, since we were all children we have been taught to ‘take a pill for this – and a pill for that’, and then all of our worries, concerns, and hurts will just go away, right?

“But, do they really go away?”

“Or are we just masking the symptoms of what our normal feelings should really feel like and what we should be experiencing in a more natural way?”

I believe that by suppressing our feelings and emotions with meds that we may be doing more of a disservice to ourselves than we can foresee. The human condition is a volatile sea of emotions even with our best faces on.

With a cancer diagnosis, we have suffered major, mental trauma and we have to look at it from the standpoint of a natural grieving process.

The emotions that come with that are Disbelief, Denial, Anger, and finally Acceptance.

Trying to put a lid on this cauldron with medication, is like putting a band-aid on a surface cut. It only acts to cover up the external wound, but it does not treat the internal wound, which in our case are our feelings and emotions.

We need to allow ourselves the permission to have our moments of grief for what has happened to us, and to be able to express our thoughts and feelings in an outwardly fashion of our choosing, providing it does not harm others. And we need to be able to come to grips with our situation on our own timetable.

“Does anyone remember the good old-fashioned tea kettle?”

You’d fill it up with water and place it on the burner and when the water heated to a certain temperature, the water would boil and then release steam through the spout and make that whistling sound?

Think of our feelings and emotions just like that. As they reach a boiling point they need a natural way to escape and let off that steam. By allowing that process to occur, we are allowing the human body a natural method to vent its frustrations and keep ourselves sane.

Suppression and stuffing your feelings deep down inside you has never been a real solution. We can keep our feelings and emotions buried deep down inside us for many years, but eventually our minds and bodies can only withstand so much and as Popeye the Sailor used to tell us, “Thar’ She Blows!”

Please do not be embarrassed by what you may be feeling or experiencing. It is all part of the normal human condition when in the grieving process. Just be glad that we have the capacity to recognize and understand our emotions and also have a healthy way to unload those feelings before they can eat us alive.

One important note I wanted to emphasize is that not all of us react the same to trauma conditions or the need for medications. Depression meds may indeed be a good option for many of you.

If you and your doctor feel that you need them, then this may be the best course of action for you to take. We need to do whatever it is we need to do to keep us functioning enough to continue our treatments and fight our fight. As I’ve said before, I’m for whatever works for you.

Love you guys!

HO HO HO!

-Santa Craig