Category Archives: Happiness and/or Depression

Parents Aren’t The Only Ones

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This was on Kelly Bagnasco in my Facebook. This doesn’t only go for parents. This can also go for brothers, sisters, and aunts and uncles. I can’t help but to wonder why aunts and uncles never get mentioned whenever there is anything to do with children. It’s always the parents and grandparents that are thought about. Aunts and uncles are capable of having and giving love to their nieces and nephews the same as parents are of giving it to their children and grandparents are of giving it to their grandchildren. So why are aunts and uncles always left out. It just hurts. This is especially true if they wanted children really badly but were never able to have them. Watching everybody else having fun with the children just punches it home all the harder. And yes I am one of those people that was never able to have children bur wanted them more than anybody could know. Even though I am 65, it still hurts to this day that I was never able to have children.

Just think about that the next time everybody that has children gets together and leaves the childless members of the family out. Just because we don’t have children doesn’t mean that we are not capable of loving children and wanting to be around them.

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A Post For Thought

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Saw this little poster on Facebook and thought I would expound on it some. Hope you give it some thought too. I will have to type out what the poster said because it gives me an error when I try to open it in this post.I copied it and pasted it here, but I don’t know how long it will continue to show up, that is why I am also typing it here. It makes a whole lot os sense when you really stop and think about it.

The poster is by The Mind’s Consciousness. It goes on to say:

“Imagine this: If you had $86,400 in your account and someone stole $10 from you, would you be upset and throw all of the remaining $86,390 away in hopes of getting back at the person who took your $10? Or move on and live? Right, move on and live. See, we all have 86,400 seconds each day. Don’t let someone’s negative 10 seconds ruin the remaining 86,390. Don’t sweat the small stuff, Life is bigger than that.”

It also says to type yes if you agree, but that is only effective if you are doing it in Facebook. It won’t work here, unfortunately.

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When you think about it this way, it doesn’t make sense for us to let what another person says or does ruin our day. Of course that isn’t the case if the other person physically hurts you, it’s only talking about their negative actions. It’s like the little saying that most parents teach their kids growing up, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never harm me.” The words may make us feel bad, but it is only because we let them. If we just turn and walk away while shrugging the words away, then they won’t upset us.

Hope you have or have had a great day today. I’m going to try to remember this analogy of the seconds in everybody’s day and not let others negativity upset me. I know I won’t always succeed, but at least I will be better off for trying. Why don’t you try it too?

Dealing With Touching Memories

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I heard Kelly Clarkson sing the song Piece By Piece on the farewell season of American Idol. The song was very touching and emotional. Kelly Clarkson even cried a few times during the last part of the song. She wrote the song when she was expecting her daughter and she is currently expecting a son. Listening to her sing made me cry.

My tears were on account of my past. My real Father left when my Mother was expecting her fourth child by him. I am child number two by him. My oldest sister is child number three by him. The boy she was carrying and later had was number four by him. After leaving my Mother, my Father went on and married another woman and had three more children. There were two more girls and the last child was a son. In the past few years, my oldest sister, child number three, looked up the other three children. Everybody is grown and there are even grandchildren by some of the other children. The last three have had what seems to be pretty good lives. After all they had their Father from the day they were born until the day that he died.

Hearing that song made me wonder what my life would have been like had my real Father not left when I was just three years old. I know one thing for sure, I would not have had two step-fathers. Fortunately for me the second step-father was great. I loved him dearly and miss him terribly. Had he been my real father, I would not have had any step-fathers and I know without a shadow of a doubt that my life would have been much better than what it has been. I loved my Father, but was always hurt that he left the four of us. Why didn’t he love us enough to stay with us?

The answer to that question I will never know. My Father has already passed away. Now all that I can do is pick up the pieces and go on with my life as best as I know how. I have to really concentrate on the good things that are happening in my life now. one of them being known as Mamma Hen. I love that name. I was never able to have children of my own, but that’s OK, because now I have chicks(friends) that I can call my own.

This is all a part of making the best of whatever situation that you are in at the moment.. No matter how difficult a situation is, ylu can find someone in a situation that is even worse than yours if you look hard enough.

 

Some Tips On Living A Fuller And Happier Life

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Recently I saw some posters that had to do with living a better life. I thought that they would be good for everybody to read and think about. The pictures are below. I will expound on each one as best as I can.

The poster below is from intelligenceforyourlife.com

As you read each tip and think about it even just a little bit, you will realize that it makes very good sense. I will repeat each tip and expound on it as I come to it.

Go to sleep when you are tired. If you try to make yourself stay up for any great length after you get tired. you really do yourself an injustice. When your body is tired, you can’t function up to your full potential. The reason being because your mind is not as alert as when you are fully rested. The next day, after you wake up, you will probably find that you have made many mistakes and have not accomplished as much as you figured you would from staying up.

Take all your vacation days. Your employer gives you vacation days for a good reason. They are so that you will have an extended amount of time to be able to do fun things that you want to do and not have to think about work 24/7/365. There are many people that may brag that they didn’t take any vacation because they wanted to show their loyalty to the company for whatever reason. Unfortunately, these are the same people that may experience burn out before the next vacation rolls around. It is better for the company and for you if you take your vacation like you are supposed to.

Make a home cooked meal once in a while… You have to be away from your house enough as is without having to eat all of your meals away from home as well. Sometimes it is just nice to sit home and fix what you want and cook it just the way you want , and not have to deal with disrespectful waiters or other restaurant problems such as food cooked improperly. The improper cooking could be either the food is not cooked long enough or is over cooked, or it is not put together the way it is supposed to be. When you cook your meals at home, you will know that it is cooked properly and seasoned the way you like it.

…even better, share it with people that you love. You may have been so bust lately that you have not been able to spend as much time as usual with your dear friends or your family. When you cook your home cooked meal, it may be a good time to invite your friends or your family over to eat with you. All of you will enjoy seeing each other and catching up with what has been happening with each other.

Notice something positive every day. By concentrating on something positive every day, you are putting your mind in an upbeat attitude. When your attitude is upbeat, more things will go correctly than if your mind is in a bad state, or a negative attitude. The positive attitude may even help you to laugh. Like they say, “Laughter is the best medicine.” When you laugh you produce good endorphins and it makes your whole body react positively.

Get a good dose of fresh air every day. We get Vitamin D from the sun, and just being outside usually tends to makes people be happier. You may even see some of your friends outside as well. Just enjoy it while you can.

Drink more water. Drinking water helps to cleans our systems of some toxins that enter with all of the processed food that we eat. This is especially true of our kidneys and our bladder. Needless to say, when we don’t have as many toxins in our systems, we feel better and are happier.

Take pictures of your pets and look at them when you’re stressed. Our pets give us a lot of pleasure and unconditional love. When we are away from them for any length of time, we get down to some degree. This is true even if it is just a little down. If we have pictures of them to look at, it will help to boost our spirits. This is especially true if we are having a stressful day at work, or wherever we are that is away from them. If we are on a trip where we were not able to take our pets, it is even better to have pictures of them. When we look at the pictures, we can think of all of the joy that they bring us when we are with them.

Shake up your routine…find a new way route to work, or try a new food for lunch. From time to time, we all get in a rut and need a change. This is true no matter how small the change is. The change could be as simple as eating one thing different with your meal, or taking a different way to work. When we see the same scenery everyday, it becomes part of the monotonous routine we follow everyday. The routine that is commonly called a rut. Do something unexpected to change it even if only for a little bit.

Talk to a friend every day – even just to say “I’m thinking of you.” When you do this, you will not only brighten up your day, you will also brighten up their day as well. The little things really do make a big difference.

10 Tips For Happier Life

The next poster is from hplyrikz.com  If you value the relationship with the person that you are having a disagreement with, then maybe it would be worth your time and effort to apologize to that person. This is true, even if the disagreement was not your fault. By doing this, you will be the bigger person for it. Like the sign says, it doesn’t mean that you were wrong, it just means that you value the friendship that the two of you have. It also shows that your ego is not entering into the equation of your friendship. In other words, you don’t have a big head and think that you are better than your friend.

Apologizing

I sincerely hope that these little words of wisdom will help you in being able to live a happier life. Everybody deserves to be happy, and you are no exception.

 

Through It All You Have To Persevere

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There is another way that I know, from experience, and that is from a really bad time in my life. I came down with asthma, bronchitis, and double pneumonia all at the same time while I was visiting my family back home. This was in March of 1990. I had to stay an extra two weeks, because the doctors would not let me fly back to my house before the two weeks was up. After I got back to my house, I was being rushed to the hospital, every 7 to 10 days, with asthma attacks so bad that I couldn’t breathe. On June 9, 1990, I lost both my permanent full-time job that I had had for 16 years, and my permanent part-time job that I had had for five years. I was devastated, but too weak to put up too much of a fuss. I ended up on oxygen, and had to pull the oxygen tanks around with me everywhere I went. I also had to wear a medical mask whenever I left my house. I was on Prednisone and therefore had a weakened immune system. If you had a cold and I caught it, it could go into Pneumonia on me. The Pneumonia that I had was micro-plasma-pneumonia. The worst kind for damaging your lungs. It took the doctors until April of 1993 to come up with the magical combination of medications to control all of my new medical conditions. In May of 1993, I started back to school at the local community college so that I could go back to work. I was still pulling the oxygen tanks behind me and still wearing a mask on my face when I started back. I had just found out the week before I started to class that I was also diabetic. But nothing was going to stop me.

Half way through the course I was taking, I ended up in a wheelchair and had to change my major. I had been taking courses to be a respiratory therapist, but you can’t do that from a wheelchair. The only choice that I could figure would work out was to change my major to computers. This was really hard to do though, because I had been chosen third out of 300 applicants for the program. Needless to say the tears flowed freely.

All together, it took me six and a half years to finish and graduate from the community college where I live. I finished my classes in December of 1999, but did not go through the actual graduation until May of 2000. During the time I was attending classes, I had to have eleven surgeries. But, nothing was going to stand in my way of finishing school.

It took me from January of 2000 until March of 2000 to find a job. My job was in the flood insurance department of a local bank. During my time at the bank, I had thirteen surgeries, with three of them being very major surgeries. The three major surgeries were two major surgeries on my bladder, and having to have a total knee replacement. The first surgery was the artificial bladder, the second surgery was the total knee replacement, and the third surgery was reconstruction on  the artificial bladder as the first surgery failed. In November of 2004 I was returning to work from the last surgery that I had had to have. As I approached my desk and was getting ready to sit down, my supervisor met me and told me not to sit down. She then went on to tell me that I no longer worked there. I had been out too much with all of my surgeries. That being the case, I was deemed too disabled to work and was sent home.

It has now been over fifteen years since I received the artificial bladder. Doctors have told me that there are only a handful of patients left that received an artificial bladder when I did mine. The doctors went on to say that all of the other patients, except for the handful, had passed away within the first two to three years after their respective surgeries., and that that handful of patients are in medical books all over.

Besides the artificial bladder, I also have diabetic neuropathy in all of my extremities with almost constant pain. I have many allergies to medications, and I had a heart attack when I went into anaphylactic shock from IVP Dye. I am partially deaf in both ears, but cannot afford hearing aides, and Medicare does not cover hearing aides or glasses. My glasses are provided to me by The Lyons Club. I thank God for The Lyons Club. There is a tumor behind my right leg that is inoperable due to the fact that if they operate, I will probably end up being paralyzed in that leg. There are many other problems too, but I’m not going to go into them here right now. I’m just trying to point out that I have a lot stacked against me, but I still keep on going on. I am a survivor and and will be a winner, because I persevere and “Winners Never Quit and Quitters Never Win”, like I point out in a poem that I wrote long ago. The poem is copied below.

WINNERS NEVER QUIT AND QUITTERS NEVER WIN

Winners never quit and quitters never win

For if you’re a quitter then you’ve stopped trying and given in

A fighter never won a fight with delivering a powerful blow

A runner never won a race by running very slow

This is how it goes in everyone’s life

Even in the middle of turmoil and strife

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

Is a phrase that helps people do a lot of growing

They say “The best things in life are free.”

And that “No one ever said the way would be easy.”

There are so many different walks in life

Here too you have to decide what for you will be right

If by chance the first one you choose doesn’t work

Don’t be a quitter but a winner and for another one look

For you can’t give up if you want to win

Because winners never quit and quitters never win

ONE WHO IS GOING TO BE A WINNER

Bonnie Jean

November 11, 1989

This poem won an Honorable Mention March 31, 1991 from the World Of Poetry.

Notice To All Of My Readers

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Notice To All Of My Readers

 

After having to go through the loss of my friend’s parents dog last month, I never thought that something like that would happen any too soon again. I was oh so wrong.

My guinea pig, Alisha is now resting in peace. Here is a picture of me holding Alisha, my furry baby, and of her getting ready to give me kisses. I loved her so dearly. My friend had listened with a stethoscope and had heard at least three if not four baby’s heartbeats. I was so excited that we were going to have babies again. This was to be the last time. We never let any of our guinea pigs have more than three litters and this was her third litter.

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Wednesday, February 3rd, she seemed to be going into labor to have her babies. When I woke up Wednesday morning, there was every indication that she was in labor and had already had one still born baby. There was a lot of blood covered bedding in the cage. I was a little sad not to see a live baby, but not too concerned because I didn’t know how long it had been since she had had the still born baby.

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She was just staying in the corner being very quiet. I tried to pet her, but all she would do was shiver all over. I left her alone to see if she would finish having the babies. After about three or four hours I went to check on her and see how many babies she had had. To my dismay, she had not had any more babies, but was still bleeding. I thought that she was still having babies, but apparently they were all being still born. It was a very sad time not to see any live babies.

On Thursday, February 4th, when I first looked in on her, she was just the same as I had left her the night before. I also noticed that she had not eaten anything and had not had any water either. I had put a piece of tape on the line where the water was to check on her water intake.

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Throughout the day I continued to check on her and to pet her. Being scared that she was not going to make it, I had my friend to take some pictures of me holding her, for what could possibly be the last time. They are below.

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A few hours later I went back to check on her, but still no more babies. Not knowing anything else to do, I covered her cage up and left her alone for the night hoping to see babies in the morning.

But, that was not to happen. Much to my dismay, in the morning, Friday, February 5th, there still were no live babies to be seen. But Alisha was still very big, so I knew that there were still babies to be born.  But she was sitting in the corner differently from what she had been the day before. Now she was pressing her head up against the side of the cage and breathing very quickly. The carrot that I had given her the night before was dried up and still beside her. Obviously she still was not eating or drinking.

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My friends and I started trying to force water into her by using a small syringe and giving her a few drops at the time. We were hoping that after doing that, she would have the babies. So once again, we left her alone for three or four hours at the time, in between trying to give her water. At around 7:00 PM I went to check on her, and to hold her and hug her just for a little while. I had my friend to listen to her and to see if he could hear the babies’ heart beats. Unfortunately, he couldn’t hear any and could barely hear her heart beat. He thought that she had a collapsed lung. When I picked her up, she had an accident on me.

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I was a little alarmed, but thought that maybe she was getting ready to have her now dead babies. That, she had been in labor too long and the babies had all died. So once again, I went out and left her alone for an hour. My thoughts were that if she had the dead babies, just maybe, then she could rebound and be OK. At least that was what I was hoping.

At 8:00 PM I went back to check on her and her babies. There were no babies, and she was not breathing either. I had my friend to listen again, and he confirmed my worst fears. Alisha had died. She had died from the exhaustion of trying to have her babies. She had apparently been pushing so hard to have them that her lung collapsed and she just could not rebound from that stress. At least she is no longer suffering from her ordeal. I will miss her dearly.

All day Saturday (yesterday), February 6, I was just sort of in shock. I had been counting on watching the last babies grow up and go to loving homes. That was not to happen. Instead, I had to say “Good-Bye” forever to Alisha, my furry baby.

I am sorry that I have been unable to do my blogs during this time, but to me, my furry baby was more important. I loved her so much. I watched her grow up from the day she was born, and I bought her from my friends, when she was old enough to be taken away from her mother. It had been a wonderful time with her, and I certainly was not ready to let her go. I know that at least she will not suffer anymore.

I hope that this is the end of anybody that I know losing a pet to an untimely death. They are having a really bad effect on me lately, and I am sort of befuddled to understand as to why.

More On Depression

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I Googled: what percent of people have had severe depression? It is not a sin or a crime to be depressed. At some time or another, chances are that every person over the age of 18 has had at least one bout of depression. The Google inquiry provided the following information, and I copied one of the replies below.

Depression

Affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. While major depressive disorder can develop at any age, the median age at onset is 32.5.

More prevalent in women than in men.

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I then went to the website of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) : www.nimh.nih.gov

There is a booklet that they have published called Depression: What You Need To Know. In the booklet there is basic information about depression such as its signs and symptoms.

About this booklet

This booklet, prepared by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), provides an overview on depression. NIMH is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.

This booklet will help you learn the following four things that everyone should know about depression:

  • Depression is a real illness.
  • Depression affects people in different ways.
  • Depression is treatable.
  • If you have depression, you are not alone.

This booklet contains information on the signs and symptoms of depression, treatment and support options, and a listing of additional resources. It is intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered a guide for making medical decisions. Please review this information and discuss it with your doctor or health care provider. For more information on depression, please visit the NIMH website.

Here is the information about the booklet if you are interested in obtaining a copy for yourself, a loved one, or a friend.

Citing This Publication

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health. (2015). Depression (NIH Publication No. 15-3561). Bethesda, MD: U.S. Government Printing Office.

National Institute of Mental Health
Office of Science Policy, Planning, and Communications
Science Writing, Press, and Dissemination Branch
6001 Executive Boulevard
Room 6200, MSC 9663
Bethesda, MD 20892-9663
Phone: 301-443-4513 or 1-866-615-NIMH (6464) toll-free
TTY: 301-443-8431 or 1-866-415-8051 toll-free
FAX: 301-443-4279
E-mail: nimhinfo@nih.gov
Website: www.nimh.nih.gov

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
NIH PUBLICATION NO. 15-3561

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The information that I gave above was to provide you with professional advice. I am not a professional trained in anything having to do with depression or the human body. Any information that I give, except for when I say that I copied it from somewhere, is information from personal experience or from witnessing the behavior of someone going through whatever it is that they are going through. This goes for depression, having a broken bone, being in an automobile accident, or having cancer. All of those are things that I have either had myself or witnessed someone close to me going through one or more of them.  What I am about to relay to you is from my own experiences from the age of nine when my six month old baby sister died. She had a birth defect that the doctors didn’t even know that she had until they did the autopsy after she died.

At the time, I had never even heard the word depression. I just knew that I missed my baby sister, and I prayed to God for Him to take me and bring back my baby sister. I thought that my Mother and Step-Father needed her more than they needed me. This was because I thought that I had killed her. Earlier in the day, after she had died, I had overheard some neighborhood women talking about babies dying. They said that they had just read about a baby that had died because the brothers and sisters had suffocated it by putting too much baby powder on the baby. I had two brothers and one sister at that time. We all loved our half-sister. However, we were not allowed to hold her or pick her up, or do anything other than look at her. A few days before she died, I had to sneak to even put baby powder on her, just to see her smile. She loved having baby oil or baby powder put on her. So when I heard the neighborhood ladies saying what they were saying, I thought it was my fault that she had died. All I could do was cry and pray for God to take me. I was miserable. A few months later, I tried to go to God myself. If He wouldn’t take me, I would just have to go to Him by myself and try to convince Him to take me and to send my baby sister back. Obviously I was going through a bout of major and severe depression. I wasn’t crazy, nor was I contagious to anybody. I was having a hard time dealing with the death of my baby sister, and my thinking that it was my fault. I never told anyone what I had done, until many many years later. And yes, even for a little girl, it was a daily struggle. I became very withdrawn almost immediately after hearing those ladies talking. About the only things that I would do were go to school, go to Church and come home. I didn’t even want to play.

It wasn’t until my half-brother was born about a year later that I snapped out of it. He was born with a birth defect that the doctors diagnosed when he was just a few weeks old. He was in and out of the hospital a lot. He was born with a defective immune system, and had to have gamma-globulin shots every week until he was five years old. At first the doctors would tell my Mamma that they didn’t even know if he could live to be six months old. They would tell her “Let’s get him to six months old first, then we’ll talk about the future and what it may hold.” My Mother couldn’t handle it very well. When my baby brother would wake up in the middle of the night, my Mamma would come and get me up to hold him until he went back to sleep. The doctors would always tell my Mamma and my Step-Father to let them get my baby brother to the next six month milestone. This went on until he was five years old. By the time he was five years old, his immune system had seemingly healed itself, and the doctors told my parents that they thought that my brother would be fine, and be able to live a long healthy life.

What I am trying to show is that depression can hit anyone at any age, but it is possible to get through it. Once I had my brother to concentrate on, I forgot about being so unhappy and wanting God to take me and send my baby sister back. And I had a lot of friends helping me too. After the family moved away from where the baby had died, we all seemed to do a whole lot better. Having the new baby helped all of us, except for my Mamma. She was so scared that my baby brother was going to die also, that she was sort of scared to get close to him. She took care of him, she just wouldn’t let herself get as attached as she should. For the longest time, my little brother thought that I was his Mommy. And I loved it. I was old enough to babysit, so I did a lot of stuff with him and his little friends in the neighborhood. I would get all of his friends and bring them to my house and have like a pre-school and teach them their alphabet and their numbers. All of the little children (all under five years old) loved it, and I looked forward to it every time I did it. All of their parents loved it. I was a free babysitter for that hour or two whenever I had them at my house.

I know I got off on a tangent, but I thought it was necessary to show that depression is an illness and is not contagious, just a bad day or a phase that someone is going through. The person with it isn’t crazy, and no they can’t just pull their self up by their bootstraps. By no odd chance is it their identity. It is a daily struggle, they will get through it, and other people, especially their friends need to be patient and supportive of the person with the depression. I know it from experience.

 

 

Words Of Wisdom

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Words of wisdom are usually very helpful to whomever they are imparted. The older a person is, the deeper their words of wisdom may go. They have lived more years to be able to have learned these important little tid-bits and pass them on. The older people are in hopes that the younger generation will glean important information from what they have learned in their many years. With that being said, here are some more posters.

The first poster was obviously written by Winston Churchill. I don’t know who actually put it in poster form though.

When you stop and really think about it, the advice is very true. Most people think that once they succeed at something, they have finally arrived. But success is not always final. It is hard for most people to succeed to a point where others see them as a success, but unfortunately far too easy to lose that success and fail at whatever it was that they had succeeded at.

Failure, by the same token is not fatal. It does not mean that it is the end of the world just because you failed. Failing and having to feel its’ bitter sting is a part of life. Most people are not willing to try to work through the failure and turn it around to a success. When they unfortunately get to that point, it usually is fatal in that the person is not willing to try anymore to succeed.

Like the last part says, “it is the courage to continue that counts.” Just stop and think about it for a minute. If Thomas Edison had not had the courage to continue trying, at least one more time, after that 1,000th time, we might not have the electric light bulb today. Thank You Thomas Edison for having the courage to try that one last time.

Failure and Success

The next poster was obviously written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, I don’t know who actually put it in poster form. We are not always proud of the things that we do, and or how we have lived. Everybody makes mistakes. The poster speaks for itself. When we are not proud of who we are, or how we have lived,  we have to have the strength to start all over again. When you lose the strength to start all over again, in essence you have given up and given in to failure.

By F Scott Fitzgerald

This poster is from Fb/HugsandKisses. I don’t know who actually wrote it though. A strong friendship lives in the heart through a strong relationship. Once two friends have this, their friendship will never end. These people will always be true friends, and will never part. There is not very much that I can say to actually expound on this photo

Friends That Are True

I have some friends that I have had for many many years. There are times that I go for months and don’t get to talk to them. When I do get to call them, they talk to me as if we had been talking every so often all along. Other than asking for updates as to what has been going on, it’s as if we have talked every few days, the same as we used to do before we got older. Getting older also means getting slower and forgetting a lot of things, usually until it’s time to go to bed, and then it’s obviously too late to be calling old friends. We have lived apart for decades, and only gotten to see each other every few years. But we have remained friends in our hearts. We love each other the same as if neither one of us ever moved away. So they “live” in our hearts always, and especially in between the times we get to talk to each other. That’s what a true, strong, friendship is all about.

 

 

A Discussion About Depression

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Depression Is An Illness

I Googled: what percent of people have had severe depression? It is not a sin or a crime to be depressed. At some time or another, chances are that every person over the age of 18 has had at least one bout of depression. The Google inquiry provided the following information, and I copied one of the replies below.

Depression

Affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. While major depressive disorder can develop at any age, the median age at onset is 32.5.

More prevalent in women than in men.

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I then went to the website of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) : www.nimh.nih.gov

There is a booklet that they have published called Depression: What You Need To Know. In the booklet there is basic information about depression such as its signs and symptoms.

About this booklet

This booklet, prepared by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), provides an overview on depression. NIMH is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.

This booklet will help you learn the following four things that everyone should know about depression:

  • Depression is a real illness.
  • Depression affects people in different ways.
  • Depression is treatable.
  • If you have depression, you are not alone.

This booklet contains information on the signs and symptoms of depression, treatment and support options, and a listing of additional resources. It is intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered a guide for making medical decisions. Please review this information and discuss it with your doctor or health care provider. For more information on depression, please visit the NIMH website.

Here is the information about the booklet if you are interested in obtaining a copy for yourself, a loved one, or a friend.

Citing This Publication

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health. (2015). Depression (NIH Publication No. 15-3561). Bethesda, MD: U.S. Government Printing Office.

National Institute of Mental Health
Office of Science Policy, Planning, and Communications
Science Writing, Press, and Dissemination Branch
6001 Executive Boulevard
Room 6200, MSC 9663
Bethesda, MD 20892-9663
Phone: 301-443-4513 or 1-866-615-NIMH (6464) toll-free
TTY: 301-443-8431 or 1-866-415-8051 toll-free
FAX: 301-443-4279
E-mail: nimhinfo@nih.gov
Website: www.nimh.nih.gov

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
NIH PUBLICATION NO. 15-3561

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The information that I gave above was to provide you with professional advice. I am not a professional trained in anything having to do with depression of the human body. Any information that I give, except for when I say that I copied it from somewhere, is information from personal experience or from witnessing the behavior of someone going through whatever it is that they are going through. This goes for depression, having a broken bone, being in an automobile accident, having cancer. All of those are things that I have either had myself or witnessed someone close to me going through one ot more of them.  What I am about to relay to you is from my own experiences from the age of nine when my six month old baby sister died with a birth defect that the doctors didn’t even know that she had until they did the autopsy after she died.

I can definitely relate to the copy of the poster, shown at the beginning of this section and being shown again now, about depression.

Depression Is An Illness

At the time, I had never even heard the word depression. I just knew that I missed my baby sister, and I prayed to God for Him to take me and bring back my baby sister. I thought that my Mother and Step-Father needed her more than they needed me. This was because I thought that I had killed her. Earlier in the day, after she had died, I had overheard some neighborhood women talking about babies dying. They said that they had just read about a baby that had died because the brothers and sisters had suffocated it by putting too much baby powder on the baby. I was nine years old at the time. I had two brothers and one sister at that time. We all loved our half-sister. However, we were not allowed to hold her or pick her up, or do anything other than look at her. A few days before she died, I had to sneak to even put baby powder on her, just to see her smile. She loved having baby oil or baby powder put on her. So when I heard the neighborhood ladies saying what they were saying, I thought it was my fault. All I could do was cry and pray for God to take me. I was miserable. A few months later, I tried to go to God myself. If He wouldn’t take me, I would just have to go to Him by myself and try to convince Him to take me and to send my baby sister back. Obviously I was going through a bout of major and severe depression. I wasn’t crazy, nor was I contagious to anybody. I was having a hard time dealing with the death of my baby sister, and my thinking that it was my fault. I never told anyone what I had done, until many many years later. And yes, even for a little girl, it was a daily struggle. I became very withdrawn almost immediately after hearing those ladies talking. About the only things that I would do were go to school, go to Church and come home. I didn’t even want to play.

It wasn’t until my half-brother was born about a year later that I snapped out of it. He was born with a birth defect that the doctors diagnose when he was just a few weeks old. He was in and out of the hospital a lot. He was born with a defective immune system, and had to have gamma-globulin shots every week until he was five years old. At first the doctors would tell Mamma that they didn’t even know if he could live to be six months old. They would tell her “Let’s get him to six months old first, then we’ll talk about the future and what it may hold.” My Mother couldn’t handle it very well. When he my baby brother would wake up in the middle of the night, my Mamma would come and get me up to hold him until he went back to sleep. The doctors would always tell mamma and my Step-Father to let them get my baby brother to the next six month milestone. This went on until he was five years old. By the time he was five years old, his immune system had seemingly healed itself, and the doctors told my parents that they thought that my brother would be fine, and be able to live a long healthy life.

What I am trying to show is that depression can hit anyone at any age, but it is possible to get through it. Once I had my brother to concentrate on, I forgot about being so unhappy and wanting God to take me and send my baby sister back. And I had a lot of friends helping me too. Once the family moved away from where the baby had died, we all seemed to do a whole lot better. Having the new baby helped all of us except for my Mamma. She was so scared that my baby brother was going to die also, that she was sort of scared of getting close to him. She took care of him, she just wouldn’t let herself get as attached as she should. For the longest time, my little brother thought that I was his Mommy. And I loved it. I was old enough to babysit, so I did a lot of stuff with him and his little friends in the neighborhood. I would get all of his friends and bring them to my house and have like a pre-school and teach them their alphabet and their numbers. All of the little children (all under five years old) loved it, and I looked forward to it every time I did it. All of their parents loved it. I was a free babysitter for that hour or two whenever I had them at my house.

I know I got off on a tangent, but I thought it was necessary to show that, like the poster says, depression is an illness. It isn’t contagious, just a bad day or a phase that someone is going through. The person with it isn’t crazy, and no they can’t just pull their self up by their bootstraps. By no odd chance is it their identity. It is a daily struggle, they will get through it, and other people, especially their friends need to be patient and supportive of the person with the depression. I know it from experience.

There is another way that I know it from experience, and that is from a really bad time in my life when I came down with asthma, bronchitis, and double pneumonia all at the same time while I was visiting my family back home. This was in March of 1990. I had to stay an extra two weeks, because the doctors would not let me fly before the two weeks was up. After I got back to my house, I was being rushed to the hospital, every 7 to 10 days, with asthma attacks so bad that I couldn’t breathe. On June 9, 1990, I lost both my permanent full-time job that I had had for 16 years, and my permanent part-time job that I had had for five years. I was devastated, but too weak to put up too much of a fuss. I ended up in oxygen, and had to pull oxygen tanks around with me everywhere I went, and I had to wear a medical mask whenever I left my house. I was on Prednisone and therefore had a weakened immune system. If you had a cold and I caught it, it could go into Pneumonia on me. The Pneumonia that I had was micro-plasma-pneumonia. The worst kind for damaging your lungs. It took the doctors until April of 1993 to come up with the magical combination of medications to control all of my new medical conditions. In May of 1993, I started back to school at the local community college so that I could go back to work. I was pulling oxygen tanks behind me and was wearing a mask on my face when I started back, and I had just found out the week before I started to class that I was also diabetic. But nothing was going to stop me.

In conclusion, don’t let depression get you down. It is possible to get through it. I know from experience. I got through it against all odds.

 

 

When Grief Takes Over

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To My Readers,                                                                                                                              I am sorry that I have not posted anything since I wrote the blog last week titled Dealing With Loss And Grief. Little did I know what I would have to deal with myself. I honestly thought that I would be able to handle what had happened and still be able to function. Of course I knew that there would be times when I would be overly sad and even cry about it. What I did not realize was that it would hit me so hard.

The sudden death of a family pet is always hard to handle. When a pet is sick and the family knows that there is no way for the pet to get well, they know that death is going to be coming. They have time to try to prepare for the inevitable. Don’t get me wrong, knowing that the death is inevitable does not eliminate the empty feeling and the feeling of loss. However, when the death is unexpected and due to the pet being hit and killed by a vehicle, the loss seems so much worse.

When my friend’s parent’s dog met this fate last week, while my friend was keeping the dog, I experienced this in a way very unfamiliar to me. I don’t know if it is because of my age or what, but last week I lost almost all sense of time and days. I thought that I had only missed a couple or three days of posting. I was absolutely shocked when I looked at the website and found out that I had not posted anything since the initial post about the accident and how to deal with the grief. The post was meant to help others that may be going through it. I never thought that I would be posting it for myself, but I now realize that that is exactly what has happened.

Please accept my apology for that happening, but I could not help it. Hopefully I am over the initial shock and can get back to my obligations. I am certainly counting on that being the case. There will still be times that I will feel sad, but I will do my best not to let it take over me like it did last week. I will get back to a schedule tomorrow. I didn’t want this post to appear further down and be missed.