I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: General Discussion => Topic started by: KICKSTART on April 30, 2008, 03:01:56 AM
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Anyone else had them ? Last night i had another awful attack (that felt like heart attack) again , so i have spent ages on the phone to my renal nurse this morning . Near enough word for word the symptoms for a panic attack are the symptoms im getting (they can be so bad you think your having a heart attack) Its seems these are being triggered in my case by a chemical imbalance cause by kidney failure, also it seems i have depression again caused by a chemical imbalance ! My nurse wants me to try the tablets again that left me feeling stoned all day , great. Im dreading that feeling again , because i live on my own i need to be able to function!
Anyway if any of you have had panic attacks, how has it gone for you ? Let me know !
Could do with Stauffenberg and his words of wisdom here ! :2thumbsup;
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Oh poor you! As I think I said in another post, my son's friend has them and they are really scary. It sounds daft but get a paper bag and breathe in and out of that for a few minutes when you have an attack or feel one coming on, it's something to do with reducing oxygen intake (Stauffenberg will be able to tell you all the 'technical' side I hope) I just know it works. Depression is a cause (as in my Son's friend's case). All I can tell you is that he is learning to cope with them (he's 24) and is on anti-depressants which have helped a lot, but the paper bag trick is good (he says). He says he can now tell when one is coming on so he sits quietly and breathes in and out in the paper bag. Hope that helps, I'll be sending good wishes your way :grouphug;
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Hiya Kickstart
I did a Google search of "panic attacks self help uk" and found some links that look quite interesting and possibly worthwhile for you. I limited it to the uk because that's where you live but you could expand the search by removing the uk part. I was thinking you might find some tips to help you deal and maybe need little or less meds. Hope you find something useful.
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Until the end of the 1970s, psychiatry liked to explain all mental problems in terms of psychological stresses, social tensions, childhood memories, early traumas, etc. Then, with the rise of a new, highly conformist and right-wing social landscape in the 1980s, psychiatry learned to play along by pretending that the existing society was just perfect, so that if people developed mental problems, it must be because of chemical imbalances. Since that time there is a lot of discussion of chemical causes of behavior in psychiatric, but the old talk about how people's mental illnesses represent valid responses to a poorly designed society with real problems in it that can make people crazy is totally gone.
That is unfortunate, since I think it is patently obvious that since dialysis is a horrible thing to endure, it is perfectly sane and normal for people to experience depression or panic attacks in reaction to it. The cure for this depression and its associated panic attacks is not to dope up the patient's body with chemicals to suppress the capacity to react to anything, but is to cure renal failure and get rid of dialysis.
I don't think your symptoms are due to any chemical imbalance, since otherwise everyone on dialysis would respond the way you have. I think they are due to your ability to understand the horror of dialysis for what it is and your personal sensitivity to and perception of that horror.
Psychiatric medication is one of the most profoundly clumsy and stupid areas of medicine today. Essentially, the treatment for depression simply involves whacking the patient on the head with a chemical club so hard that the patient can't think of anything, which includes the inability to think of the causes of the depression or panic attacks. As humans had already discovered thousands of years ago, however, alcohol works just as well at smashing the brain as modern anti-depressants do. Remember, even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV), the 'Bible' of the profession, defines clinical depression as continuing sadness WHICH IS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REACTION TO EXTERNAL STRESSES. Well, in your case, since your mood 'disorder' is justified by external stresses, it should not even be classified as depression. You'd be neurotic if you didn't react the way you are now responding to something as unendurable as dialysis.
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Marvin doesn't have these attacks, Kickstart, so I don't have any tips or words of wisdom to share. Know that I'm thinking about you and hoping you'll find some answers to deal with them or, better yet, not have them at all.
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The cure for this depression and its associated panic attacks is not to dope up the patient's body with chemicals to suppress the capacity to react to anything, but is to cure renal failure and get rid of dialysis.
Stauffenberg, while I agree enthusiastically with the ideas you put forth in your post, the question remains about how to endure the unendurable which is dialysis until such time that medicine manages to cure renal failure thus eliminating the need for it. I mean, bad enough KS is having to endure the usual ESRD serving of reduced quality of life but now she's hit with this extra component. Added burden of crap is my technical term for it. I certainly agree that her panic attacks are in no way a deficiency on her part let alone a neurosis and she certainly does seem sane and normal, whatever that is. I also agree that the DSM is a source of much amusement. Now, KS may take some comfort from the fact that she possesses "the ability to understand the horror" and is so personally sensitive to the perception of it that she is responding in a non-neurotic way by experiencing panic attacks but then again she might also wish she could be at least a little "neurotic", like some of us other afflicted souls who manage NOT to add to the already large burden of crap we carry.
Hopefully KS can get some non-pharmaceutical help manage this merde. (translation: the s word in french)
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Marvin and I must live in some fantasy land because we don't see the "horrors" of dialysis. Dialysis is certainly not fun and not easy for Marvin, and the effects of it have affected my life, too; however, we choose to focus on the positive -- that being, dialysis keeps Marvin alive. To both of us, that's a very, very, very good thing. It's all in the way you perceive it, or at least that's how we have lived with it for 13 years -- and counting!
My heart goes out to you, Kickstart, because you're having to go through this.
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I understand what you're going through, but I get my panic attacks in relation to the other idiot patients I'm forced to endure. They like to sit me next to these bearded fool who regularly blasts his television. So for two hours I get more and more agitated because I can't control the situation. And then as I'm having the panic attack, this moron is telling me to shut up and be quiet. I've been very vocal lately and indicated the jerks at the clinic I cannot endure because of their lack of common courtesy.
The funny thing is they almost always help me because they know I have a blog and I'm not afraid to use it.
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Guys guys guys ..I have had kidney failure for 7 years , been on dialysis for 4 , so i hardly think im 'reacting' to the horrors of dialysis ! I was actually told by my neph , that the kidneys produce and balance alot of chemicals in our bodys and that mine are out of balance atm producing 'panick attacks'. Maybe not everyone gets this , let face it i havent for 7 years ! But my body is just going through a bad phaze , i mean i dont get alot of the troubles other folk on dialysis get. Thanks for all your theories tho ! :2thumbsup;
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Kickstart I had a several occurances of panic attacks but long before I started dialysis. I found that a mild anti-depressant stopped it and has done ever since. I know what it feels like though a feeling of imminent demise and you feel powerless to do anything about it. You think that any second i'ts going to be Goodnight Vienna! :cuddle;
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Kickstart: you can get psychologically, not chemically, induced panic attacks over any continuing psychological stress, such as dialysis and renal failure represent. It is not as if we just experience a single shock on finding out we are condemned to dialysis and then we coast from there on with no further psychological decline. Quite the contrary, the longer we remain on dialysis, the longer we have to cope with all the stresses of renal failure, the more the tensions in the subconscious mind build.
Keep in mind that humans are the product of a million years of evolution during which time severe chronic illness was unknown. Given the raw struggle for existence and the lack of medicines, you were either healthy or you were dead. So we have no adaptive responses hard-wired into our genetic inheritance for being sick long-term. Our basic instinct consists in the alternative of fight or flight: the problems we are hard-wired to deal with are either those we can overcome in a short, sharp conflict or which we can run away from. But with chronic, incurable illness, which humans have been able survive only during relatively recent times, we cannot fight to overcome it and we also cannot escape it. When the subconscious mind is put under the continuing pressure of such an unnatural challenge, the response is depression and panic attacks.
The chemical theory of human response is silly in any case. Obviously, every time we think of something or feel anything there is a physical correlate of the thinking and feeling process which occurs in our brain and nervous system. But this does not mean that the chemical changes which parallel these thoughts and feelings are the cause of our problems, rather than the events in the outside world which cause us to have these thoughts and feelings in the first place.
The problem, for example, of being Jewish in Nazi Germany is not your feelings on seeing a concentration camp cause a change in the seratonin levels in your brain, but the fact that concentration camps exist. If you would stop reacting with horror when you saw the concentration camp if only a surgeon would perform a lobotomy on you, your problem is not that you have not yet had a lobotomy, but that there are concentration camps out there. The same way, in your case, the problem is not that no one has yet turned you into an unthinking zombie by smashing you on the head with anti-depressive chemicals which keep you from thinking or feeling anything, but the problem is that medicine can't cure renal failure. Your response to this is not some chemical imbalance in your brain, but just a normal reaction to something bad which never ends.
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Hey kickstart
I used to get panic attacks lot in college and then again when i started dialysis a year and a half ago. THey suddenly come on and i admit that they are scary. They also happen anytime and anywhere. It is a pyschological response to what you are going through. I look funny but when i have one i normally grab the wall or whatever is near me i can and i say outloud to myself "claudia, breath 1,2,3 etc" and i slow down my breathing. I have had bad ones in which i literally hide under my bed. My psychiartist with the transplant team prescribed me Xanax - which helped alot and it didn't knock me out. When you have one just think of something peaceful like the ocean or somewhere you like to go or think about. I think about oceans and dogs and cats when i have my panic attacks. They have lessened a great deal but i still have them at times and i adit they are scary - as they suddenly come on so very quickly. Talk to your doctors about this and maybe the social worker as she or he can help you learn some coping skills that can help you. Good luck.
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. . . . no one has yet turned you into an unthinking zombie by smashing you on the head with anti-depressive chemicals which keep you from thinking or feeling anything . . .
Wow, stauff, has this really been your experience with antidepressants? How sad that they have this effect on you, which is the absolute opposite of what I experience when I take them. A couple haven't worked that well for me, but the ones that do work great! For me, antidepressants produce a quite subtle effect, sort of like the lights in my brain coming on again, that makes it feel like I CAN think and feel again. When I'm afflicted with depression is when I feel like the "zombie" you describe.
Just wanted to put in my 2 cents on this, as sometimes your pronouncements have a very authoritative sound to them which I'm not sure is appropriate in this case, especially when you consider the tremendous variety of ways in which human psychologies and physiologies can react to the same stimulus.
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I'm so sorry you're having panic attacks. I do have them occasionally. The very first one I had was so strange since at the time I was just watching TV. My mind was racing, I couldn't control my thoughts, my breathing was heavy, and my chest hurt. I thought I was dying, which made me even more panicked. Now I have them once in awhile if things are really stressful in my life (and it seems that school makes me more stressed than dialysis! haha). Now that I know what is happening, I try to relax as much as I can and know that I will not die. Hang in there! I hope you get some relief without having to feel drugged up. <3
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Moose: Neuroleptics are known to have extremely variable effects on various people. Children with attention deficit disorder, for example, can be calmed down by amphetomines, but the same drugs make people without this condition quite irritable and agitated. This class of medications is almost untestable on animals, since animals routinely have the opposite reaction from humans. Thus you can put a cat straight to sleep with an injection of noradrenalin, which would make a human in the same dose wakeful and energetic.
I have never taken anti-depressants myself, so my account is based just on what I have seen and heard from patients about their effects.
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My sister has had panic attacks most of her life, says she...On lots of pills that make her a zombie, and she prefers it that way. She says panic attacks can be inherited...a chemical thing...I don't know (but I tend to agree with stauffenberg.)
When I have a "panic attack", which is very much like what you describe, I use relaxation/meditation techniques. usually within 15-30 minutes it's over and I feel fine. I'm not against the pills...I just know what that's done to my sister so I refuse to take them.
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There seem to be a lot of conflicting opinions about panic attacks so i will put exactly what my neph said to me about it ! .
She said the kidneys have alot of jobs and one is reproducing certain chemicals in the body and hormones and that at the moment mine are not in balance hence my body is panicking..not with stress or worry but because of this imbalance that is going on. So regardless of relaxing/chilling/avoiding stress it wont help as she said its actually a reaction to this lack of chemicals/hormones being produced right now.
The tablets they have put me on are supposed to bring things back into line with regards to balance , but they make me feel like a dope head!! I have been told to give them 2 weeks to let them even out and then i shouldnt really notice them or their effect on me , so all i can do is give them a try.
I just hope its not one of those devil and deep blue sea situations , because neither is very nice !
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If your nephrologist's theory is true, ask her why only a tiny fraction of dialysis patients, all of whom have perpetual chemical imbalances to deal with as a result of renal failure and the inability of any modality of dialysis adequately to replace normal renal function, don't have panic attacks and depression.
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If your nephrologist's theory is true, ask her why only a tiny fraction of dialysis patients, all of whom have perpetual chemical imbalances to deal with as a result of renal failure and the inability of any modality of dialysis adequately to replace normal renal function, don't have panic attacks and depression.
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Then again i could also ask why a tiny fraction of dialysis patients get other dialysis related problems , none of which i seem to have gotten. I obviously know myself better than anyone and am completely suprised by these panick attacks/depression . Without going into detail , i have delt with several major situations head on , so to speak , that have not resulted in this reaction and as previously stated have been on dialysis for 4 years ..so why would these panick attacks manifest now ? What has triggered them ?
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William and Henry James, the famous psychologist and novelist, respectively, both suffered from panic attacks, which almost always occurred when they were in settings which were entirely calm and relaxing, such as while smoking a good cigar after dinner. The reason they occurred during calm periods, which seems totally illogical, was that they are not products of the logical mind, but of the subconscious. So from the totally obscure, murky forces generating responses from the subconscious, no one can consciously discern the 'why' explaining the sudden appearance of panic attacks in respect of one theme rather than another, even though the conscious mind may not find the former situation any more or less panicking than the latter. Something in your subconscious may be reacting to the particular stress of dialysis now in ways not obvious to the conscious mind. There is even a theory that panic attacks are a circuitous device of the subconscious to 'speak' to a conscious mind which is internally not listening to it, so it has to be jolted into listening by an external physical symptom.
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Psychiatric medication is one of the most profoundly clumsy and stupid areas of medicine today. Essentially, the treatment for depression simply involves whacking the patient on the head with a chemical club so hard that the patient can't think of anything, which includes the inability to think of the causes of the depression or panic attacks.
Stauffenburg, are you really Tom Cruise posting here? :) He vehemently opposes the uses of psychiatric medicine also. I get what you're saying and it makes sense in certain situations. IMO what we feel makes us human, I had a few panic attacks and took XANAX but I felt so numb and dead inside I'd rather deal with the panic attacks. In fact I think the Xanax made it worse for me. But Valium makes me hyper so figure that out.......it is a thought provoking subject.
Donna
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:bunny:
I fight it the best I can. Antidepressant's don't work on me and give me terrible side effects.
I''m exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.
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:bunny:
I fight it the best I can. Antidepressant's don't work on me and give me terrible side effects.
I''m exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.
When I had my transplant in 1995 they had asked me if I wanted an antidepressant. I thought it was so strange they asked me that and my doctor told me nearly all ESRD patients are on antidepressants. In 2000 I started feeling yucky so I asked to have one. They put me on Prozac 40mg and I didn't notice a thing. I gave it a chance, two years I took it and felt no better so I stopped taking it. No withdrawls, no nothing. And I had heard from others not to stop it because I'd suffer because of it. Nothing happened. Sometimes now I get feeling a little yucky, not all the time but somedays I get depressed. How do you know if you should take something? How do you know WHICH antidepressant to take? A friend of mine was on one and it made her sleep all day and made her worse. It it trial and error? Isn't St Johns Wort supposed to help with depression, it's a herb? I know when I had the transplant they told me to absolutley not take that it interferes with the TX drugs.
Donna :bandance; (Feels happy today!)
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For some, medication truly does help. It is a personal choice, but many benefit from some form of medication, either short or long term.
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For panic attacks it always helps me to go into a meditative-type of state wherein I "go" somewhere else where I have been happy
at some point in my life. This in conjunction with breathing techniques learned in meditation classes have worked wonders. I would highly recommend seeing if there is a meditation or Yoga class locally to see if this will help you. What have you got to lose?
As for depression, I definitely think there is a chemical or hormonal imbalance which leads to some, and not all, depression. Studies have shown depression can run in
families. Women have been shown to have monthly fluctuations related to hormone changes in relationship to their menstrual cycles.Women also can have depression
at Menopause when their hormones significantly change. I, myself, suffered unbearable depression when I contracted kidney disease (Dah, who wouldn't), and noticed significant
change because my body started functioning in a lowered state. It's hard to describe the difference in my "before" and "after" functioning
due to ESRD except to say my nephrologist explained it was because my body is now out of balance. No matter how hard we try to keep our bodies in balance
with medicine or vitamins, the fact remains that with Renal Disease we are NEVER normal. It makes complete sense to me that the imbalances caused from Renal Disease can contribute
to depression or panic attacks. After all, the whole human body functions from chemical reactions firing away within.So why wouldn't it be possible that some of these
chemical reactions are mis-firing?
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For panic attacks it always helps me to go into a meditative-type of state wherein I "go" somewhere else where I have been happy
at some point in my life. This in conjunction with breathing techniques learned in meditation classes have worked wonders. I would highly recommend seeing if there is a meditation or Yoga class locally to see if this will help you. What have you got to lose?
As for depression, I definitely think there is a chemical or hormonal imbalance which leads to some, and not all, depression. Studies have shown depression can run in
families. Women have been shown to have monthly fluctuations related to hormone changes in relationship to their menstrual cycles.Women also can have depression
at Menopause when their hormones significantly change. I, myself, suffered unbearable depression when I contracted kidney disease (Dah, who wouldn't), and noticed significant
change because my body started functioning in a lowered state. It's hard to describe the difference in my "before" and "after" functioning
due to ESRD except to say my nephrologist explained it was because my body is now out of balance. No matter how hard we try to keep our bodies in balance
with medicine or vitamins, the fact remains that with Renal Disease we are NEVER normal. It makes complete sense to me that the imbalances caused from Renal Disease can contribute
to depression or panic attacks. After all, the whole human body functions from chemical reactions firing away within.So why wouldn't it be possible that some of these
chemical reactions are mis-firing?
This is exactly what i was told , that its an imbalance in chemicals and hormones causing my depression/panic attacks.
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I've been having a BIG problem with panic attacks lately. I first started with them about 5 years ago at a job. One of the employees there hated my guts and was making my life miserable. They stopped for a few years until recently. I get rolling attacks for hours, where the symptoms are constant, but increase in intensity for a few minutes, every 5 minutes or so. Lately, they've been getting worse and worse. It used to just be spasming intestines and stomach and light headedness, but now I've added vomiting to the mix. The last time I had one, I even passed out! I have an appointment with my doc next week, so I plan on bringing this up. My Lexapro is helping my depression, but definitely not the anxiety attacks.
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Well, now I can really sympathize with you! I just had a massive panic attack today while my nurse was trying to change the bandage on my permacath. I felt dizzy, tingly, and utterly panicked. I told my boyfriend I was going to pass out so he should be sure to catch me. I did and throughly freaked out the nurses. When I woke up there were a bunch of people in the room, my feet were elevated, and I was on oxygen. I then proceeded to throw up. Panic attacks are real and they are frightening. If I had been able to go lie down in a quiet room things probably would have been fine, but that just wasn't possible at that moment. Hang in there! The docs gave me the lowest dose of Ativan available so I can take it before my next procedure. :grouphug;
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I enjoy being depressed, as paradoxical as that may sound. If I see something in the world that affects my intellect in such a way as to arouse my anger, disapproval, disappointment, or regret, then I find it perfectly healthy and pleasurable to be able to feel the appropriate and corresponding emotion to the full, which is depression. What I hate is having to pretend to feel something I really don't, either because I am hiding the truth from myself or from others. The pleasure of self-realization in feeling depressed when you encounter intellectually depressing things is enormous, and it is the pleasure of enjoying the harmony between the negative stimulus in the outside world, the assessment of it in the mind, and the mood in the emotions.
To take a pill to destroy that harmony is to make yourself insane by destroying the unity of emotion, perception, and thought. The term 'schizophrenia' was coined by Dr. Manfred Bleuler in 1911 to describe a condition in which patients' moods did not match their thoughts, so their drives ('phrenia' in Ancient Greek) were split and opposed to each other ('schizo' in Ancient Greek). In terms of this etymology, giving anti-depression pills to people who are experiencing realities in their lives which would make any normal person feel depressed amounts to turning them into schizophrenics!
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I'm just trying to destroy the unity of vomit that flies out of my mouth before a procedure.
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I enjoy being depressed, as paradoxical as that may sound. If I see something in the world that affects my intellect in such a way as to arouse my anger, disapproval, disappointment, or regret, then I find it perfectly healthy and pleasurable to be able to feel the appropriate and corresponding emotion to the full, which is depression. What I hate is having to pretend to feel something I really don't, either because I am hiding the truth from myself or from others. The pleasure of self-realization in feeling depressed when you encounter intellectually depressing things is enormous, and it is the pleasure of enjoying the harmony between the negative stimulus in the outside world, the assessment of it in the mind, and the mood in the emotions.
To take a pill to destroy that harmony is to make yourself insane by destroying the unity of emotion, perception, and thought. The term 'schizophrenia' was coined by Dr. Manfred Bleuler in 1911 to describe a condition in which patients' moods did not match their thoughts, so their drives ('phrenia' in Ancient Greek) were split and opposed to each other ('schizo' in Ancient Greek). In terms of this etymology, giving anti-depression pills to people who are experiencing realities in their lives which would make any normal person feel depressed amounts to turning them into schizophrenics!
Interesting comments but ... it is not a case of suffer depression or take a pill and become a zombie ! When i first started on my 'depression tablets' i thought they were slowing me down but was asked to carry on taking them and give them a chance to do their stuff , the results of which are really good now .Believe me i dont walk around an unfeeling emotionless zombie by any means as you seem to think taking tablets does to someone. All i can say is i dont get that racing feeling of agitation now in my chest , nor the heart-attack like pains . I can still react to outside events by expressing anger , happiness etc , im not numb to any sort of emotions at all , in fact i just feel like my old self !!!
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I'm just trying to destroy the unity of vomit that flies out of my mouth before a procedure.
:rofl; :rofl; :rofl; :rofl;
My anti-depression meds don't do that to me either. Before I was on them, I would cry all day, everyday. I stopped going to classes and going out with friends and my husband. I was even suicidal. Now, I am happy, and feel like being a productive member of society once again. I still "feel my emotions." I cry if something upsets me, like a normal person. I get angry if my husband does something stupid ;). I felt the way you described while taking Paxil, but that was a long time ago. Now I am on Lexapro. It works in a totally different way on the brain than most anti-depressive drugs. Not every drug works the same way for everyone either.
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paddbear, I'll have what you are taking. :rofl;
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But can you still feel your emotions when you encounter something which objectively deserves to be experienced by the feeling of depression? No: you have chemically blunted the natural response of your brain so that you cannot respond to the reality around you, at least in certain respects.
One Jungian therapist I heard lecture theorized that depression is characterized as a disease only in modern capitalist societies where it is deemed important for people to remain constantly upbeat so they will continue to be productive at work and to buy products durng their free time. Since depressed people do neither, this natural human state is not good for the economy, so it is defined as a sickness, thus justifying numbing the brain with chemicals to stop it and thus keep the hamsters turning the treadmill of producing and shopping. In contrast, in many other societies depression is celebrated as a noble state to be honored as an essential part of being a human. Thus in the Middle Ages the figure of the 'lovesick knight' was celebrated by minstrels, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries melancholia was indulged in as a way to deepen consciousness (Cf. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy").
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Can you still feel emotions that deserve the feeling of depression? Absolutely! I still grieve, worry, get "down in the dumps" but I can find my way back now. My family has a long history of depression. I am so glad to have something help balance my life, but still allows me to cry and be sad. I am not a zoombie, or just going through the motions. I am living.
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I will second that Paris ! Im not quite sure how Stauff expects us to feel or behave, it seems to me his idea of treatment involves the production of unfeeling zombies devoid of any emotion. I mean how do you define depression ? its different things to different people .. i didnt have 'mood swings' highs and lows , i just sat quietly and thought i was having a heart attack , i didnt hyperventilate or sit in floods of tears feeling suicidal. Now the only thing the tablets i take have changed is the panick attacks that manifested, my moods are neither highs or lows they are what they were before and no one can see a difference in my behaviour ..so are you really saying Stauff that to enjoy life to its fullest i should go with the chest pains that manifested ?
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I applaud anyone who has panic attacks over dialysis, since dialysis is so horrible it objectively deserves that response in people of normal, sane sensitivity. Oppressing sick people with an utterly inadequate form of treatment and then stuffing them full of pills when they react to that inadquacy with panic attacks looks to me more like a system of totalitarian social control than therapy for the patient's own good. "Don't criticize the system implicitly by your negative response to it! Instead, let the system define you as 'sick' because of the way you are manifesting your criticism of it and dope you up so you stop making the system look bad. There there now, good patient. Now the private dialysis facility and the doctors can get back to making tons of money by offering the patients catastrophically inadequate care without anyone screaming in the background to call the whole neat arrangement into question."
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Stauff why do you think we are 'doped up to the eyeballs' ? I for one am not 'doped up' at all to please the system. I am sure that there is more than me on here been diagnosed with depression/panic attacks that are not walking zombies ..something you keep insisting we are to keep us quiet and please the system .
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I chose to be put on anti-depressants. I walked into my doctors office and said, "please put me on an anti-depressant." No one told me to take them nor did they force me to.
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Not being able to respond to situations which objectively call for a reaction of profound depression amounts to being emotionally crippled -- at least in that specific context. Wanting to be numbed in this way represents the way the current, dominant social ideology has shaped your perceptions about how you are supposed to feel, even in situations that cry out for a depressive reaction. If you lived in a different time and place you might be more equipped by your cultural matrix to respect rather than reject the feeling.
Having panic attacks or being deeply depressed about something the majority healthy society is dishing out to you and saying is 'fine,' all the while it is constantly feeding you the propaganda that 'you too can lead a normal life on dialysis as long as you do what the good doctor says,' etc., is a profoundly revolutioary act, which no system of social control wants to permit. Maybe if all dialysis patients had a perpetual panic attack over the inadequate treatment we are being offered then the majority healthy society would be forced to listen to us and make some improvements, rather than, as is now the case, stupidly assuming that we are satisfied, that dialysis is a 'cure,' which many laymen think, or that patients are simply uncritically grateful for having their life saved, as the medical profession assumes.
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Depression and panic attacks are not states of mind that we can just call up for the purpose of demonstrating our outrage at societal injustice. They arrive unbidden and impair our ability to be productive (not just consumers). And as the consciousness raising properties of melancholy, I doubt that I would have lived long enough to reach a deeper level. Because every time I drove onto an overpass I wanted to just floor it over the edge. Thank God for Lexapro!
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Right on, kidley! Well said.
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I never said depression and panic attacks are anything other than spontaneous, natural, uncontrolled responses to negative stimuli in the surrounding world. Their spontaneous origin does nothing to keep them from serving as an important protest against a society which is not providing people with an environment adequate to what they require. On the contrary, the fact that it is spontaneous and cannot be controlled by the person experiencing it shows that the responsibility lies with society for imposing intolerable living conditions on that person, not with the person's own option as to how to respond to them.
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Yah,Yah,Yah! Enough already.
The fact is, we still must find a way to function in This society with This disease.
If that means getting drugged up on whatever it takes to makes ourselves fit in and function, then so be it.
Unfortunate that it is, those are the facts. Better for me to find a way to want to get up in the morning since
my kidney disease isn't going away any time soon. I have tried being drug free and functioning with this disease,
and drugged while functioning with this disease. Either way, I find it difficult. Antidepressants do make it more bareable.
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My mother has been on dialysis for just over a year and has began to experience panic attacks during dialysis. It is to the point where if she hears the word dialysis she will cry. She has also stated that she does not wish to contine with dialysis because of the attacks.