I'm not quite dead

Your patience deserves an answer.

The answer is that I'm having a bit of a hard time the last few/several days. There is of course the whole "am I accomplishing anything worthwhile here" business that always plagues me; only the awareness of it varies.

But there's a little more and while I've been reluctant to dwell on (or even reveal) here much of anything personal other than my opinions, I'm going to do just that for a moment. My excuse is that it will help to explain my silence; the truth is, I think it will be therapeutic to "say" it "out loud."

The first thing to know is that I get what I call "springtime blues." It's happened almost every spring at least since high school - I clearly remember it from that time - if not before. I was not a popular kid in high school and where we lived was sort of on the edge of town so what friends I had were not in the immediate neighborhood. I used to think that I got depressed in the spring because the weather was turning nice, it was a time you felt you could be, should be, out doing something - and it seemed to me I had nowhere to go and no one to go there with. That reasonable explanation proved hollow in ensuing years when I did have places to go and someone to go with - and I still got the blues just as bad.

It turns out that my diagnosis was on the right track but fell down because of my sense that "I" felt that way: I learned today from my psych-experienced RN wife that, contrary to popular belief, springtime is the time of year with the highest suicide rate as people suffering from clinical depression share that same sense I get of increased isolation in the face of a blossoming world. (The holiday season, often thought to be the time for the most suicides, actually ranks second.) What's more, I discovered by googling the phrase "springtime blues" that I wasn't even the only one who gave that name to the feeling. So much for my sense of uniqueness. (Sidebar: This has nothing to do with Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, which occurs in the winter and is produced by chemical imbalances related to lack of sunlight.)

They say misery loves company but personally I've never found that to be true: The idea that others are having the same experience really doesn't make me feel any better - although it does make me feel rather lucky knowing that there are others who suffer far worse. I mean, I get depressed, my energy level drops dramatically, but I never get suicidal. But no, knowing my experience is by no means unique does not cheer me up. (I also noticed a few sites that claimed to relate it to spring fever, that lazy, dreamy, lassitude that many of us experience in the spring. Let me assure you that this is not the same thing.)

The other thing is that I have a heart condition. Not a real big deal: While there is no such thing as a non-serious heart condition, what I have - atrial fibrillation - is as close to it as any heart condition gets. As a normal "let's check things out" measure, I had a stress test done, which, as you may know, involves walking on a treadmill that gradually goes faster and rises to a steeper angle. The idea is to stress your heart, to make it work hard, while your heart and blood pressure are monitored.

When I started walking, my heart rate almost immediately went over 100. My heart was working too hard for the level of exertion. What hit me, though, was the cardiologist saying "you probably don't feel it." He was right: I didn't. I had no sense, no physical awareness, of the effort my heart was making. No pounding, no discomfort, no heavy breathing. He assured me that this is common in people with a-fib, but it was still disturbing.

One immediate result has been to add a beta-blocker to my list of medications - I joked the other day that one sign of aging is the increasing number of pills one takes in a day - and plans for further tests.

The other immediate result was that I arrived home in the afternoon feeling frailer than I had when I left that morning. I was shaken to learn that an effort that amounted to one no greater than climbing a flight of stairs had sent my heart rate to almost 110 - and what's more, I had been blissfully unaware of the stress my heart was experiencing.

So there will be some more changes and for the moment I'm trying to make the leap to embrace them. Again, I'm aware of how lucky I am; many people are much worse off: my wife, for one, who had a nearly-fatal heart attack in August of 2002 and is still experiencing the after-effects. Nonetheless, my image of myself has changed for the worse and I have to make the adjustment to that new image before I can get to making it better.

All in all, it hasn't been the best of weeks.

Footnote: I'm also up for two jobs, both of which would require moving - for the fourth time in 2-1/2 years. Maybe this time we shouldn't bother unpacking everything.