Friday, May 29, 2015

Happy Anniversary

May 26th was our 14th wedding anniversary.
I had originally planned to take the day off, drop off the kids to school, and take my wife out for brunch at a lovely french restaurant.
Well, that all changed after she was unable to sleep the night before.  I could almost predict that it would happen, as she talked about the night before wanting to avoid taking the sleeping pill.
So, I wound up cancelling my 1-day vacation, went to work, while my wife went to the pharmacist to renew her medication.  I did give her a back massage at night after the kids went to bed, at which point she finally realized it was our anniversary.  Happy Anniversary!

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Day 11

My wife went to emergency yesterday to ask the doctor to diagnose the tension in her jaw and neck.  Luckily for her, Emergency was not busy that night, as only one critical case happened and less than 5 people were waiting when we signed in with their triage nurse.

After waiting for about an hour, the doctor on staff saw her and made a brief exam of her neck, jaw and ear.  As I expected, the doctor found nothing.  I tried to convince my wife earlier that there was no physical ailement causing the tension in her jaw - it was all from her anxiety disorder.  However, she was not convinced and persisted in seeing a doctor.

The doctor told her that her jaw was normal, and the tightness was caused by anxiety.  I asked the doctor to prescribe some sleeping pills for her condition.  He cautioned against making any such prescription, as he said he does not know my wife's history, and it was better that my wife's family doctor make the diagnosis and prescribe appropriate medicine.  However, I told him that due to the long weekend, our family doctor would have a backlog of patients to attend to on the first business day after the long weekend, and we would be on a waiting list to see her.  I asked again, can he prescribe some sleeping pills just as a temporary measure until we were able to see the family doctor.  He relented and prescribed some small dosages of lorazepam (0.5mg).

Lorazepam, as I found out from Google, is actually a drug used to treat anxiety disorders.  Its primary function is to calm the nervous system.  The main side effect of this is to induce sleep.  Lorazepam is habit forming, so now the new challenge is for my wife to be able to wean herself off Lorazepam.  In fact, all of these drugs used to treat anxiety and depression (Trazadone, diazepam and other benzodiazepines, SSRI inhibitors, MAOI's, etc) are basically a dark, slippery slope down into the weeping and gnashing abyss of no return.  A lot of the time, even the physician does not know the best medication to treat depression and anxiety disorders, and as a result, the patient becomes a guinea pig of sorts, trying out different drugs or even different combination of drugs to see what works best.  Not surprisingly, this and the rise of the internet age has led to many people trying to self-diagnose.
Prevention is the best medicine, and these kinds of drugs are to be avoided at all costs.  The way to avoid them is to keep your body in an active, healthy lifestyle of healthy diet and exercise, and to listen to the warning signs that your body sends out, because it will send out warning signs.

Facebook: Prologue

There was this recruiter from Facebook who contacted me through LinkedIn.  There is nothing unusual about that, since I receive unsolicited emails from recruiters about once a week, and this recruiter was one of many who tried to persuade me by dangling the carrot of a lucrative job opportunity.
The first time I received these unsolicited recruitment emails, I was flattered.  But as I received more and more of these types of emails as time went on, I began to realize that I was nothing more than a number in their database, and the cold call to sell me on a job opportunity was more about them to make their monthly sales quota.

However, this recruiter was persistent.  The recruiter sent me several emails over a span of a month, and eventually, being the young and naive dreamer that I am, I responded to one of the recruiter's email pitches.
I passed their phone screen, and now have a scheduled in  person interview with one of their engineers.  Let's see where this takes me.

The 3-Headed Hydra: Anxiety, Depression, & Insomnia

These 3 disorders (Anxiety, depression, insomnia) on the surface appear to be separate and distinct mental disorders.
Anxiety is usually associated with some form of worry in the person's head.  Wikipedia describes anxiety as a  mental disorder that is the result of a difficult challenge for which the subject has insufficient coping skills.
Insomnia is the inability to fall asleep or stay asleep.  Insomnia is classified by the academic powers that be (aka Wikipedia) as a sleep disorder and not a mental disorder.
And depression in general is classified as a mood disorder (which itself is a subcategory of mental disorders) and there is generally a stigma associated with what appears on the surface to be a mental illness.

However, here's where the 3 are interconnected:  Anxiety triggers, leads to, or maybe even causes insomnia, which then creates the fertile ground necessary for depression to take hold.  Once the person enters a depressed state it allows the anxiety and insomnia to grow like weeds.  All three feed on each other.  However, resolving the anxiety disorder (by positive self talk and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) does not fix the other problems (insomnia and depression).  Depression, once it takes hold, is the toughest monster to slay. People who suffer from chronic depression does lead me to wonder whether the monster ever did  go away, or actually has been there all along, but just sleeping.

Depression is the hardest to fix, and requires a combination of positive self talk (CBT), lifestyle changes like eating a balanced meal and exercising consistently and a support system.  Also, the person suffering from depression must force themselves to be preoccupied with some work or task throughout the better part of the day.   When the mind if focused on the task or work at hand, that means it is not focused on the depression.  It is not fed and that is key.   Having a support network of people helps to stick to the lifestyle changes and positive self talk.
Insomnia is the easiest to fix, and usually a trip to the doctor for some sleep medication, along with some good sleep hygeine usually fixes insomnia.

Monday, May 18, 2015

Day 10: Hello Darkness My Old Friend

My wife has been experiencing depression.  I'm not sure if the depression is caused by lack of sleep, or whether the lack of sleep is caused by the depression, but it all seems interconnected in her case. She started losing sleep when my friend from out of town came to visit us.   That was May 8.  That weekend was a bit busy for us, as we had 2 Mother's Day dinners to attend, one with my family on Saturday night, and one with my wife's family on Sunday night.
When the work week started on Monday, my wife took the day off on May 11 to help recover from a sinus cold that was plugging up her ear.  She kept complaining about how her plugged ears was waking her up in the middle of the night.  Despite having the day off, she continued to lose sleep.   It got progressively worse.
I seem to be affected by her depression as well, as it has affected my sleep patterns as well.  My memory of what has happened in the past week or so has been fragmented and spotty at best.
May 11: she took the day off, used the humidifier to resolve her blocked ear.  She did some chores around the house.  Nothing exciting happened that day.  But that night she lost sleep and stayed up all night.
May 12:  She went for a massage, which seemed to help temporarily.  However, it did not seem to improve her sleep.  I notice her personality started to change.  She was more subdued and quiet, she didn't yell or get mad at anything anymore.  We decided to head to Walmart to pick up some Melatonin.  I did some research online and read some good things about melatonin, how it can help restore your sleep cycle.   However, we probably did not understand enough about how melatonin can help or harm the body.  She took 2 tablets, for a total of 10mg of melatonin.  She didn't feel drowsy right away and the anxiety came back.
May 13: She woke up complaining about being drowsy.  It would appear that the melatonin that we bought was not instant release, even though the label described it as instant relase.  I had left early from work to help out with chores  around the house.  My wife had gone to see an acupuncturist about her condition.  After her acupuncture session, the acupuncturist prescribed some chinese herbal medicine in tablet form as well as some Cal-Mag and B-complex vitamins.  I'm not absolutely sure, but I believe my wife had around 3-4. Hours of sleep.  However, she feels she had only 2 hours of sleep.
May 14:  I had left work early again, although this time, my project manager asked about me leaving early.  I was supposed to take my son to gymnastics, but he was complaining about knee pain as he had hurt his knee from a fall earlier in the day.  As a result, he convinced me not to take him to his weekly gymnastics lesson.  We went to a western restaurant near our home.  My wife went for a walk by herself.  She did not sleep well that night.
May 15:  We went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner, and after dinner, we went to the park nearby to throw the boomerang around with the kids.  It was the first time that I had thrown a boomerang, and it was interesting to learn the proper technique for throwing a boomerang, mostLY through trial and error.  While we were throwing the boomerang around, my wife went to walk around the track a few times, occasionally joining us to throw the boomerang.  My wife decided not to take any melatonin that night. She slept well that night.
May 16:  We didn't go for any walks after dinner.  Tried to sleep at 11pm, but was not able to.  I wound up sleeping at around 220 am after watching the moview "The Day After Tomorrow" online.  My wife tried to sleep early, but could not fall asleep.  She eventually did fall asleep shortly before I went to bed.  I went to bed after I finished watching the movie.
May 17:   I woke up at around 630a and listened to her complain about lightly sleeping the night before, and then not being able to sleep at all after 430a.  We started late (at around 130p), but headed up Mt. Seymour for a hike to Dog Mountain.    This was the hike that I wanted to do on May10, but was not able to do so when my friend came into town.  We took a bath together at her suggestion.  I had never done this before, so it was a bit strange to be showering together.  she took some Melatonin and advil and was able to sleep