Diseases with no cures, just comforts

Posted on August 2, 2003 in Crosstalk Depression Hope and Joy Sugar and Fat

Butuki writes movingly of his diabetes:

Getting the disease has, of course, irrevocably altered my life and my reactions to it have ranged from rage to despair. Most people when they think of diabetes think of the scare scenes in movies, so often depicted as occuring when some hapless diabetic just so happens to be at the wheel of a car and blacks out. I’ve never blacked out, though there have been a few humiliating moments when I miscalculated my insulin dosage and, having fallen asleep, woke up sweating up a river and shaking so badly that water would spill from a glass I was holding. Luckily I was never alone when these incidences happened, but I wonder what I would do if ever something like that caught me while I was up in the mountains?

I’d eat. Lots of sugar. Fast.

I’ve never been bitter about my diabetes. It’s just a disease doing its thing. Being mad at it is like being mad at the rain for leaking through the roof or at the roof for getting old and letting the wind shift the shingles so that the rain can come in. Even if I forget myself and eat what I shouldn’t, I can take a breath and say “Well, there’s this disease here and it needs to be lived with in a special way.” So I measure my food, drink my water, and exercise, get myself back into shape.

I’ve found it easiest to cope with most of my illnesses — my asthma, my gingivitis, my depression included — by saying “it’s only a disease, not a demon sent to punish you”. Of course, the depression likes to take a human voice — it has access to the speech processing centers after all — and say that it is a demon. I’ve learned to ignore the talk of heaven and hell, everlasting damnation, and punishment for sins or, at very worst, learned to repeat them to friends who will tell me that my disease is acting up again.

I don’t have a name for my diabetes even though it is right here every day, but I do call my depression “the Beast”. Butuki has it right when he says:

….diabetes is like a strict coach, doing good by you when you treat yourself right with balanced food, exercise, rest, and right attitude, but punishing you when you trip up and act stupid. The symptoms that diabetes throws at you can really open your eyes at times, and remind you just how sensitive your body is to changes and things which aren’t good for it.

The same is true for the asthma, my problems with my teeth, and my gout, but that Depression never wants to be found out. For this reason, I rely on my wife and a group of close friends to whom I have explained what I suffer from. When I get to articulating thoughts of cruel destiny, they know to pull me aside and say “Joel, your disease sounds like it is getting the better of you. What can we do to cope until it decides to leave again?” Then I do things like listen to the right kind of music (no heavy metal, nothing with lyrics), read, write about the pain, write about anything except the pain, take a walk along a shaded path, call a friend, make sure I am taking my meds, and get out to someplace that is air conditioned. Depression may keep chewing at the fringes of my composure for a few days more, but these words from Natalie Goldberg point in the direction of understanding about this and other diseases of the brain:

Back in ninth-grade biology class, when Mr. Albert Tint announced that we would study the involuntary organs — the heart and lungs — he forgot to mention the mind.

Goldberg’s right on: there’s not much you can do when the Beast decides to chew on you except not feed it. Like the mythical diabetic behind the wheel, you run into the myth of the guy to whom nothing can be said: why, if you said the wrong thing, he might kill himself! The fact is that most depressives just wallow and mental health professionals are beginning to wonder if suicide is at all related to depression because they’ve seen it happen to people who’ve shown no signs up to the moment when they did it. To cope with these ideas people get about me, I’ve been open: I suffer from major depression. Sometimes it gets the better of me. I know when it acts up, you want to run as far as you can from me, but I suggest another course: come on by, remind me that there are other living people out there. Don’t tell me to just snap out of it and don’t give me advice. Just be with me though I am a pain in the ass. Your kindness will see me through and when it’s over, I’ll be grateful.

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Thanks as always to the friends who have taken the trouble to learn what this is all about. Thanks especially to Lynn who has been there all the time and knows that even in my lows there are points that I will not pass.