R30 wrote:Having an awful time on CAPD at the moment. Depression is getting worse; I cannot take anti-depressant medication as I had a severe reaction to it this time last year. Am losing friends left, right and centre and am starting to feel that this disease is thoroughly a punishment.
Have just contracted an exit site infection which means that I have to stop dialysis for a week - have been told that feeling ill may well return.
Can't seem to see the wood for the trees at the moment and frankly, I feel like giving up. It's just one thing after another. Please tell me it gets better - I cannot take much more of this.
Yours, very miserably
Ruth
Hello Ruth,
I think that most of us have been where you are at some stage in our illness and treatment. Those days when it all seems too much bother, when you wish like mad it would all go away, and get angry and resentful, the 'why me?' syndrome. It sounds so glib to say, been there and done that. Or, it gets better, honest.
But although they are platitudes, they are true. I have been there, and I would be less than honest, which isn't my scene, if I said that I never have a bad day when that black cloud begins to descend. I do, but they are few and far between these days, and you know what? When they do come, I just say to heck with housework and everything else, and I spend the day being selfish, doing the things which bring me joy and pleasure. I sit and read or watch rubbishy daytime telly and knit. Or I may have a really long moaning email to a friend who knows what depression is like. But most of all I tell myself that this is just a blip, that it will go away.
I hope this won't sound too harsh or rude, but if you are losing your friends simply because they can't cope with or don't understand how you feel and can't be there for you, then really they are not 'true' friends. And as for thinking you are being punished, no way. It's just that there are some people who sail through life having an easy time of it, they don't know the meaning of illness or hardship, nothing seems to harm them or knock them off kilter at all. Whereas there are others, often the nicest, kindest, most generous-spirited people you can meet, who get knockbacks all the time. Yet, we cope with them and are stronger and better for them, truly.
And before I get off my soap box, I must just tell you that I have a friend who was in just the same position as you, and I can remember how she had one darned thing after another, the exit site infection, then something else, several operations one after the other, lots of problems with CAPD ( and she had no alternative ) and I was asked by my consultant to go and chat to her on one occasion when she was admitted to the unit we attended. She was so ill, sick all the time, couldn't get out of bed, very low mentally too. Convinced she wasn't going to bother with a transplant, she'd had enough of it all. I had just had my transplant, so I went to chat to her, made her laugh, made her feel more positive. Now, several years down the line she has a working kidney, and so grateful that she didn't give up, that she went ahead with the transplant when the chance came along.
So please Ruth, don't let it get you down, and if you want to respond to this, then please do.