Wow, ever since my last blog about effexor, my life has changed so radically that its almost unbelievable…

During Halloween, i managed to do something so incredibly stupid, everyone always said they didnt know that could happen…

A little background: i used to be a dancer, nothing professional, but i was in a few dance groups at school from hip hop to classical to square dancing (yeah complete with cowboy boots and all)… On Halloween night, under the influence of more than my prescribed medication, I attempted (and succeeded) in lifting two successive people into the air above my head. Commonly called an aerial lift. Everyone loved it, my back did not. Long story short, I slipped a disc in my lower back. Strangely enough, the way back pain works, I felt fine that night. The next day I was in mild pain. By the 4th day, the pain was excruciating, my nerves were on fire, and I was paralyzed from the waist down.

Allow me a morbid joke here in saying, you thought your depression hurt? try slipping a disc in your back… oh my fricking gawd! that was the most pain i've ever been in my entire life! no joke!

While i was hospitalized at the ER for almost 2 weeks, they took me off most of my psych meds so they wouldn't interfere with my pain killers etc. And i must say, that I like it that way….

I'll do another blog later about how fluoxetine (Prozac) is a seriously FUCKED UP drug, and how its been messing up my nervous and metabolic systems for a long time.

That said, I just wanted to let everyone know that while I'm mending (which will take until about April drs say), I can for the first time in a long time, see above and past my depression. Its always been this unknown forbidding darkness that would take me whenever it wished and swallow me in its depths… I never ever thought i would really find my way out, no matter what the doc prescribed. If you had talked to me at the beginning of October, I would have told you that it seemed like depression was here to stay.

But now, I see that maybe just maybe so much of the things that I felt I couldn't do or thought I couldn't do were just cruel illusions from that demon depression. You REALLY begin to appreciate all you used to do when suddenly you can't walk.

I'm healing slowly now. I'm still using a walker to get around and I cannot stand or sit for long periods. I'm still unable to drive myself anywhere and I'm on enough painkillers to tranquilize a horse. But I must say that I have not yet had a major depressive crash… you know the crashes that were diagnosed as "cyclical" and were a common reoccurrence last year… You would think I have even more to be depressed about now. But I actually see it the other way, I have so much more to be grateful for….

Food for thought/// One love

Dave