Much better now

For those of you who read my previous post, I did feel a little better the next morning. Not a lot, but just enough to get me through the day.

Another possible reason for my depression was that my hearing and balance had been distorted for several days. I finally went to the doctor on Tuesday morning. Turns out both of my ears had fluid in them. I took one Claritin D and within 12 hours, my hearing was back to normal. All of the fluid that had been clogging my ears drained out. Then I felt feverish for a day or two. Now I feel much better, physically and emotionally.

My theory is my ears got clogged because I spent one or two nights sleeping without a pillow. My allergies (which I can normally ignore) provided the fluid and gravity did the rest.

JF has been home sick all this week, with a runny/stuffy nose, a cough, and a fever. His IEP is on Monday at 2:00, and his surgery follow-up is the same day at 4:00, so I hope he's better by then.

So far though, it has been one of his standard illnesses, rather than the circus act we had the last time with HSP. I have a theory about that, too: JF had been starting to get sick (runny/stuffy nose) when we spent a weekend at the Jessup house. I got tired of the dirty floors, so I found a broom and started sweeping it up. JF wanted to help, so I allowed him to push the broom a few times. My brother-in-law and his wife had many pets in this house, including cats. JF is allergic to cats. My theory is that the sweeping kicked up a lot of cat allergens (and who knows what else) into the air. JF's body responded to it by pulling out all the stops. We really must have that place professionally cleaned of allergens before we move in!

I think I should take back one thing from my previous post. I complained that I had not had one of my typical weekend breaks (reading fiction) since before Thanksgiving of last year. While this is true, it's not the whole truth. After Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day was over, I probably had a few opportunities to read fiction. But by then, I was hooked on blogging. I squandered my free time writing blog posts!

I don't mean to disparage blogging. I just mean that my complaint wasn't as valid as I had thought. I will still try to make time for reading, soon. But it doesn't feel as urgent any more.

Another possible reason for my depression was frustration about going to church. I was raised Roman Catholic, and we went to church every Sunday. We had to be in dire straits to skip it. This annoyed me when I was little, but as I got older, I found it to be time well spent. It provides a welcome break from the rest of our lives, and makes us think about how we are living our lives.

Shortly before AF and I got married, I switched to Unitarian Universalism, because of my skepticism about many things in the Roman Catholic creed. We married in a UU church, and we started attending that church nearly every Sunday. I even joined the choir.

Then JF was born. I quit singing in the choir. We dropped the habit of going to church. I have taken JF to church maybe twice in the past (almost) four years. At first, it was because I felt too overwhelmed to squeeze in a trip to church between breast feedings. Then JF became old enough to attend the UU Religious Education classes. When children reach this age, they attend the first part of the service with their parents, then they go to the RE classes so that the parents can enjoy the rest of the service in peace. Sounds great, until you ask about enrolling your child in RE. You have to volunteer for the church, spend a certain amount of time on RE work or other church work. You can't just pay a fee.

Maybe this is okay for most of the parents in the congregation, but it doesn't work for me. I have a hard enough time juggling work and housework and bills and so on, I don't need to add more responsibilities to that. I know when to say no!

So I gave up the idea of going to church. Until recently. When JF and I spent a weekend at the Jessup house, I tried to visit various places in the community, like the library, playgrounds (of course!), and the UU church in Columbia. We were late for the service, but I peeked in. I saw no children. My heart sank. I didn't realize until then, that I had been hoping that this UU church would be different. I talked to people in the hallway, and was introduced to the RE manager. She said that they just recently changed their policy, so that you can't just pay a fee to enroll your child in RE, because there's just so much work to be done. They need the volunteers. (Is it really volunteering, then?)

She did, however, mention that volunteers are needed to buy supplies for the RE classes. Each volunteer chooses a class and goes shopping once a month for the supplies needed in that class. I'm hoping that this volunteer position is still open after we move.

As far as addressing JF's autism, I've been making some progress:

• I've learned that JF has had two doses of Thimerosol from flu shots: One flu shot given to me when I was 15 weeks pregnant and one flu shot given to him at 17 months.
• I asked my sister-in-law, a nurse, to take a look at generationrescue.org. I haven't heard from her since then. I hope she is as impressed as I am. My husband is still skeptical about all of it.
• I started conversing via e-mail with a Rescue Angel from the above web site. She has given me so much valuable advice, it will take me time to digest it all.
• I shopped at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's for GFCF foods. Each has a selection of gluten-free products, and I can figure out which of those are also casein-free. Whole Foods had only two that I could find (molasses ginger cookies and morning glory muffins). Trader Joe's had much much more.
• I ordered four books from Amazon.com: Special Diets for Special Kids, Unraveling the Mystery of Autism, The Out-of-Sync Child, and The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun. So far, only Special Diets has arrived, so I've started reading it.
• JF has voluntarily switched from cow's milk to almond milk. We give him a choice, and he always chooses almond milk. He still eats cheese and other dairy products, but this bodes well for when we do change his diet. He has also tried bites of rice cake and other GFCF foods that I've been eating.
• I think I've seen some improvements in JF's communication, but I'm not sure. Maybe I need to do another snapshot soon.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I need to get off my butt and get ready for work. It's going to be a long day.

Fighting depression

I'm depressed today. This has been building for the past few days. I'm not sure whether there is any particular reason. Too much to do and not enough time? That doesn't explain it because sometimes I see it as a challenge. Hormones? I hope not, because it's the middle of the month. I don't want to be fighting off this malaise for two weeks.

It's almost a physical feeling. My brain keeps looking for reasons to be sad. I don't feel like doing anything. I made myself go to work today. I made myself eat dinner when I got home. I tried to help AF get JF ready for bed tonight, but I didn't do as much as I usually do. And I'm making myself write this post.

I feel like a battery that has run down. I need to be recharged, but I don't know how. What do people do to recharge themselves? Yes, I know people go on vacation, or engage in a hobby, or whatever, but how does that work? Why do these activities make people feel better about returning to their real lives afterwards?

My current theory is that these activities are simply distractions. We periodically distract ourselves from our problems, whether it's two weeks per year, two days per week, two hours per day, or two minutes per hour. When we recognize that our problems are starting to overwhelm us, we look for a way to take a break and distract ourselves. Then, hopefully, when the break is over, we come back to the same problem with a fresh mind (and body?), and are better able to cope with it. Theoretically.

This is also one of my favorite parenting techniques. When JF is upset about something, after I have sympathized with him for a little bit, I distract him. It helps a lot!

The next question, then, is how much distracting do we need? How can we make our self-distractions more effective? And I mean "effective" in the sense that the distractions have reduced our anxieties and made them easier to cope with. Is another problem an effective distraction, if it is a challenge that you feel you have a chance of mastering? Is a two-week vacation proportionately more effective than two hours of writing a blog post?

Every Friday, AF and I have the same conversation: "Hey, it's Friday!" "Yeah, it would be nice if that still meant something." AF has been working on the house for over a month now, and we have not taken any of our typical weekend-type breaks during that time. For AF, a typical weekend break is spending a day with his buddies at the gym. For me, it is spending a day reading a science-fiction or fantasy novel.

As a matter of fact, I think the last time I did that was before Thanksgiving last year.

No wonder I feel like crap.

Also, perhaps I had been concentrating on JF's surgery, as if nothing after that point mattered. Then I came back to work the day after his surgery, and it was the same old grindstone. I still had work to do!

Now, if I were my own psychologist, I would prescribe for myself a holiday. Just curl up with a good book and some hot tea, and ignore reality for a whole day.

I would love to, but...I can't. AF will be taking JF to the dentist tomorrow, and otherwise entertaining him so that I can catch up on our finances in Microsoft Money. Then on Sunday, it will be my turn to entertain JF while AF continues with his work on the house. Next weekend, we'll have the floors in the other half of the house refinished, so I'll have the boy both days.

If I took tomorrow off for leisure-reading, that would mean it will be at least a month between Microsoft Money updates. With all of the spending that we've been doing on the house, that scares me. And fear is stronger than this depression. So I will put off that book, indefinitely.

Since I don't have a specific date for leisure-book reading, I'm looking forward to our summer vacation with AF's family. AF has two brothers and two sisters, and each has a spouse and two kids. AF's nieces and nephews range in age from four to college-aged. This collection of families tries to do a vacation trip together every summer. Sometimes it's Knoebel's, a campground and amusement park in Pennsylvania. Sometimes it's Lake Rescue in Vermont. The last time we went to Vermont was before JF was born. (Maybe it was 2002?)

This summer, it's Vermont. It will be two weeks [correction, one week], at the end of July, beginning of August. The last time, all five families crammed into one big house, and tensions were high toward the end of it. This time, we have three new additions to the clan: JF and two of his cousins. So this summer, each family is renting it's own house.

By the time we go to Vermont, many of the things that I'm worried about now will have changed:

• The improvements to the house should be long done, and (hopefully) the house should be sold. We should have already moved to the Jessup house and settled in to a new routine.
• We should have seen at least two more doctors about JF's autism. (The developmental pediatrician that JF's PEP teacher had recommended, Dr. Chernoff, will see JF on 4/27. The DAN doctor will see JF on 6/8.)
• JF will also have had an MRI on his brain by then. (This is scheduled for 5/8. The neurologist finally answered my questions about using the MRI to look for ACM: She said it's standard to look for that kind of thing.)
• I might even have a different job by then.

I feel somewhat better now. I will try to think happy thoughts and go to bed. Maybe by tomorrow morning, the task of updating our finances (and surviving the next few weeks!) will feel more like a challenge than a burden.