· Family
(continued):
My oldest
daughter has been burdened with the lion’s share of our family’s medical issues. Starting when she was in middle school, she
has suffered from repeat, chronic UTI’s, migraines, and sinus infections that
led to two surgeries. When she hit high
school, she continued to suffer from these things, but the migraines got worse
and she ended up with Cancer (and more surgeries). On top of this, her various maladies and
their treatments led to her developing mental issues that ultimately led to a
quack mixing the wrong medications within her and, as a result, she now has to
deal with periodic seizures for the rest of her life.
I love
both of my daughters unconditionally.
However, I do not have to like the things they do. For the most part, I have no problems with my
youngest. She is basically a ‘mini-Me.’ My oldest, however, is a huge source of
stress for me. The way she acts because
of the mental issues she developed, added to her anarcho-liberal political
philosophy, makes it impossible for her and me to live under the same roof. We have actually had some serious, screaming
fights that ended up with more than one door being slammed. Some of these have been severe enough that I
would find myself wishing that she was just completely out of my life. Then I would sink into a deep depression,
condemning myself for daring to think that about my own child. Out of shame, I would inevitably back off and
become passive around her which would inevitably lead to her treating me more and
more poorly until I was nothing more than an indentured servant to her which
would lead to me finally blowing up and having a serious, screaming fight. It has been the epitome of a vicious circle.
So, there
you are. The primary points of stress
that have fed my depression. And, of
course, all of these things have led to issues with my own health.
In late
May 2010, I’d been feeling run down and noticed that, no matter how long I
slept, I would wake up feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all, So, I went to a doctor who sent me to a
Neurologist who did tests and took scans and determined that I didn’t have any
cancers or tumors, so he had me do a sleep study. They determined that I had severe Sleep Apnea
(I was actually waking up over 80 times per hour. Basically, I was only sleeping for about 40 –
45 seconds at a time. So, in July 2010,
I began sleeping with a C-PAP machine.
It made
quite a difference. After the first 90
days, I was only waking up an average of 3 times per night, not per hour. I was finally getting good REM sleep. I started feeling better. During this time I also finally found my “Happy
Place.”
Everyone
has a “Happy Place.” For some, it is just
a pleasant image in their imagination they use when they need to calm
down. For some, it was a place they
visited once upon a time that provides them with warm, pleasant memories. For a small, lucky percentage of the
population, it is an actual place to which they can occasionally retreat to
revive their bodies, minds, and spirits.
As I mentioned, I started taking the occasional acting gig in August
2008 to bring a few bucks into the household until I got a “real” job. In May 2010, my wife and youngest daughter
saw that the Texas Renaissance Festival was holding auditions for their
Performance Company. They talked me into
auditioning. At the time, I was under
the impression that all the performers at all renaissance festivals supplied
their own period costumes. The only ‘garb’
I had was a set of black robes that could be used as either a wizard or
medieval priest, depending on how it is accessorized. So, I auditioned to be just a ‘roaming priest’
for TRF. I was absolutely stunned when
the Producer for TRF called me and offered me the role of ‘King of Germany.’ I cheerfully accepted, not knowing what I was
really getting into.
From the
first days of rehearsals at TRF, I had a feeling of ‘home.’ With the exception of the Drama Club in high
school, I cannot remember any place or group that has so quickly made me feel
such a sense of belonging down to the very core of my being. By the end of the 2010 season at TRF, I knew
I had well and truly found my “Happy Place.”
What does this have to do with my health, you may be wondering? Well, I’ll tell you.
Working at
the Texas Renaissance Festival is a labor of love. Believe me, I ain’t doing it for the
money! My role at TRF and all of my
Faire Family is basically a form of psychological therapy for me. For 3½ months a year (rehearsals and
performances), I am in a place whose very existence lifts my spirit, provides
me with a basic physical workout, and keeps me outside, bringing joy to peoples’
lives. Don’t get me wrong: it is hard
work. Short of lightning, floods, sleet,
or fire, we are out there performing; in temperatures ranging from 113 Degrees
to 25 Degrees Fahrenheit, in conditions from glaring sun to heavy rain, for up
to 12 hours each day. And I am sad every
year when the Faire season ends.
Between my
C-PAP and TRF, I was feeling better than I had for some time. I still had my periodic “black days,” when
what I now know is full-blown Depression hits the hardest (such as the day I
started this Rant), By the end of my second Season at TRF (Dec 2011), I was 69
pounds lighter than I’d been on the day I originally auditioned. However, by March 2012, I had regained 40 of
those lost pounds. I was starting to
wake feeling unrested again. I had my
C-PAP checked out. It was working
properly and showed I was still only waking up 3 – 4 times per night. Then, in April, a blood test showed that my
Thyroid had decided to call it quits. As
one of my doctors put it, with my Thyroid MIA, I could go outside and eat nothing
but grass and I’ll keep gaining weight.
So, I was
placed on Thyroid Replacement Therapy: a little pill that I have to take at the
same time every day for the rest of my life.
But, it will still be exponentially more difficult now for me to lose
weight. Add to that the problem that I
have hit a plateau with my Apnea and my mental condition started to
deteriorate. The 2012 Faire season (Aug –
Nov 2012) gave me a little lift, but I was still slipping into my “black days”
more and more often. The final straw was
when I went through my records and determined that, as of 31 December 2012, I
had submitted 1104 applications for employment, had only 39 primary interviews,
7 second interviews, and no ‘regular’ job.
In 4½ years, I have only been able to get the occasional acting gig,
temp job, seasonal job, or short-term contract.
By the end of January 2013, I finally admitted that I could no longer
handle this by myself. So, I was put in
contact with a Counselor through my wife’s employer’s Employee Assistance
Program.
Through
the EAP, each of us in the family are entitled to 8 no-cost Counseling sessions
each year. So, I began to speak with a Counselor
who, after the third session, was sure I was suffering from Major Depression
with Severe Anxiety. She referred me to a
psychiatrist who was finally able to see me at the end of April 2013. He put me on a medication that would treat
both my depression and my chronic pain. It
helped a little, but I always felt like I was being ‘numbed;’ that my physical
and mental pain was just being held at bay and not being dealt with. Everything finally came to a head in August
of 2013.
My various
doctors and I had determined that my mental state (most likely my Anxiety) was
keeping me from getting a good, deep REM sleep at night, even with the
C-PAP. This was actually feeding the
Depression and Anxiety. Add to that the
stress of having my oldest daughter and her son living under our roof again and
a strange side effect of my anti-depression/pain medicine, and it all became
too much (it appears that the medicine I was taking starts out by making the
user a little drowsy [I felt like a zombie the first day], then flips its
effects after 8 – 10 days and instead makes the user jittery. After that first day, I started taking the
medicine at night, just before bed. Is
it any wonder I wasn’t getting REM sleep?).
On 20 August 2013, I completely blew a gasket and make a vague threat
about ending my life.
Always before,
my Depression had led me to just wish that all the pain … physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual … would just end.
It was what my counselor and my psychiatrist both called “passive
terminal thoughts.” That night, it was
different. For the first time in my existence,
I went from saying, “I wish I’d just die,” to, “I should just kill myself.” My wonderful wife was frightened. She recognized that this was a major shift in
my thinking. So she stayed with me and
helped me to calm down. I ended up going
to a local ER and told them what happened, spoke with one of their mental
health counselors, and together with him and my wife, determined that I needed
to spend a few days in a mental health facility. I ended up spending a week there.
I’m not
going to go into details other than to say that I was introduced to DBT therapy,
which has helped me tremendously, and that whenever I would go over with any of
the staff or other patients what I had been experiencing over the previous 4 –
5 years, every one of them said, “I would never have lasted as long as you
did. I would have ended up in here 2
years ago!” Many people in my life over
the last half-century have tried to tell me I’m something special. I always pointed to my failures as proof that
I wasn’t. It was good to have people who
did not love me or have any sort of vested interest in me telling me how
special I am; telling me how tough and resilient I have been up until now, and
telling me it’s okay if I let things affect me and wash through me, as long as
I don’t let them keep me down.
Now, here
I am. It’s March 2014, two years and ten
months since I began this Rant. I found
it to be just as relevant now as it was when I began it in May 2011, possibly even more
so. My stay in the hospital helped me to
balance out and regulate all of my various medications and gave me tools to use
with my mental health issues. As of 1
January 2014, I am up to 1217 submitted applications, but no job. After a 3-week hiatus, we have electricity
again in our home, but our refrigerator gave up the ghost a bit over a year
ago, and our HVAC system quit 3 years ago and needs to be completely replaced
(lowest bid so far is $4200). I am back
to ‘putting on my brave face’ for most of the public. If anyone discovers our home situation, I
shrug and say, “Eh. I’m a Survivor.” Day by day, I pray for an end to our travails
so that my wife won’t have to live like this any longer. I continue to work with anyone I can find to
see what I am doing wrong, to tweak my resume, to get advice on programs that
might allow me to retrain for a new job.
I haven’t given up, not by a long shot.
I thank God that He has blessed me with special people in my life, from
my Faire Family to a good friend who is letting me help him start a new
business, and in return letting me get training on new business applications to
make myself more marketable, who have all worked to help my family and me
through this ‘rough patch.’ If you are
one of those people and are reading this, “thank you” does not even begin to express
the appreciation I feel for all you have done.
God bless you all.
Until next time, best
regards...
© James P. Rice 2011,
2014
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