The Best Therapy for Depression

Music and laughter - both good therapies, legal, free, and without those unintended consequences we call "side effects."

I see it's been a week since I posted. I was right, the rash is shingles. So it hasn't been a great week. Even doctors agree that shingles is very painful. You'd think plenty of legal oxycodone sounds great, but opiates have disadvantages; notably, they shut down your GI tract. So not just stomach pain, anorexia and and indigestion, but the kind of constipation that can turn into an impacted bowel if you don't bring a whole arsenal of treatments to bear on it.

And then there's the demotivation of opiates and of illness. Yesterday I tackled the heap by my bed - everything I'd worn all last week, on top of everything I'd worn the four days before the rash presented, a stage called the prodrome, in which I felt sick and weird. And household laundry undone.

When this hit I was optimistically planning a life.  I was (am) doing PT for the broken arm, and had just driven two short drives, getting ready to be independent again. Getting back strength and range of motion in the arm has been slow and very painful, and isn't over.

And yes, Christmas day I got a cold. I wasn't over that really when the shingles hit - no one ever seems to get clear of this cold this year - but I took a leap and joined the church choir. Singing in harmony with others felt challenging and terrific. Then the shingles hit.

So I lost ground in my general fitness program and in PT. All sorts of things around the house are a mess; haven't taken Christmas down. Who cares?

This is not so special.  This is old age. I'm not the luckiest 69-year-old around, but I do live in middle-class America with decent financial stability and good insurance, so maybe this is old age at its best, unless you're the Queen of England's doggie.  I had a transplant last year (and had just begun to feel recovered from that), which means I take immune-suppressives, so it is likely this will take months to pass.

This is that present moment we talk about.  Reality.  Growing old means your parts wear down, regardless of how sunny your disposition. Every one of them.  I find I keep thinking of another song that goes -

Dance if you want to dance, sing if you want to sing.
Nobody ever knows what tomorrow may bring . . .

 Can't find it on YouTube or Googles, but I remember it, don't I?

Healing with Music

the music
Exploring YouTube I came up with this.  After several starts, it was the one that went straight to my core, started me singing along and moving in rhythm.  Listening to music before breakfast is a new practice I have found energizes me.  I believe it is healing, too . . . thinking how it is a way of breathing, and how very human it is.
 
on the medical side
My friend is in the infusion lab right now getting chemotherapy.  I wrote to her about it.  I did infusion once for several days for iron stores "in the toilet."  There was nothing threatening, as there would be with cancer, no major side effects, and I enjoyed the rest and the peaceful atmosphere.  It also reminded me that everyone there was probably worse off than me.  I didn't know then how awful chronic kidney disease would become, that I would be facing death or dialysis - a more prolonged dying - by the time Laurie heard I needed a kidney.  I knew the iron would make me feel better.

The day I had to be on the drip 3 hours I took a book by Lama Surya Das, who is an easy read, and elected to be in a hospital bed instead of a chair, and enjoyed reading and breathing.  They even brought you a packed lunch if you wanted.  I felt pampered.  It is my nature to feel overloaded by my sense of responsibility, and being sick all these years I really can never get things done, so I sort of enjoy being tied down, even being in the hospital (for a short stay), having someone bring me food, choosing just what I want.  However, I do like normal life better.  Whatever normal is these days.  And there is no "normal," is there - that's just a statistical term.

Today promises to be my last IV dose of cefepime, with all its damn uncomfortable side effects, so maybe I'll have a week or so of wellness before the next UTI hits.  Have to work on getting a new kidney doc and examining this problem.  Meanwhile, "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."