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| after 300miles, it feels good to stretch out with my feet up to rest and reset my brain |
This is a disclaimer about having MS and why motorcycles are good medicine for me. So a little back story: I describe my MS in many terms, none of them flattering; but my personal favorite is that it's like "death by a thousand cuts." No single or even a few cuts, will wreck you; but add them all up and it's gonna set you back, knock you down, or ruin your day. So this is a little something about one of the lesser known symptoms or little deep cuts of MS; it is depression sometimes accompanied by anxiety.
This is not a passing sadness or gulp of fear, but more like a weighted wet blanket embroidered with random episodes of paralyzing panic and they have clingy little barbs like burdock pods. Before I experienced either phenomena, I thought they were figments of imagined weakness triggered by moments of emotional crisis in people not like me; drama queens who thrive on attention. Then one random evening in 2007, when my house was suddenly empty as grandmom drove my children away to movies and shopping, I was educated about how devious my own brain could be.
Blatantly , my heart went from normal to pounding and my brain screamed "...I'm gonna die, here and now and they won't be here to help me...." I couldn't breathe, I couldn't stop my hands from shaking, I couldn't speak coherently. I stumbled to a phone, feeling my heart throb in my temples, it felt like it wanted to leap into SVT (super ventricular tachycardia, my heart would jump from 62 to 215bpm back in the day); but they fixed that in 2003, I tried to reason. I'm not in an impossible relationship anymore....why am I feeling this way? I hadn't learned about PTSD from toxic relationships yet. I stumbled to a chair, found my cell phone and dialed a friend, "Linda, I'm not feeling well, can you come and just sit with me?"...she listened to the panic in my voice, stated she was not able but would send a mutual friend. Just hearing her voice and words; relief washed over me. What is going on in my head? Minutes later, Cindy and Brittany arrived. We had tea for a while, and finally I felt safe. The next day, I surfed the internet MS web sites to sort out the why's and what-for's. This is a common issue for many on the MS spectrum (if you ask, I'll explain that, but not here).
That was a full blown panic attack, anxiety at Large. Now I know how it feels and how to reset my thinking to quell it. Depression, on the other hand, is not so easily pacified. It feels like a heavy, cold, wet blanket; a claustrophobic garment that I can not remove easily. Fatigue and frustration are the triggers, so that means dozens of episodes throughout any given day. Living this way is not an option, so what to do? I don't want talk therapy, our health system makes enough money off of my illness. I tried anti-depressants; the weight loss was kewl, but the extinction of libido was unacceptable(learned that 15 years earlier in my first marriage). Exercise and fresh air were limited to brief outings filled with tripping, staggering and falling (leaving me pretty spent for the day, thus more fatigue). So no talk, no pills, no walks. What then?
I could write pages of clinical discussion on why riding brings relief to my depression: a furlough from the intensities in my life, the liberation from my emerging limits. None of that matters as much as the smile it brings me in the wind, the gleam in my eye as I look over his shoulder, the feeling of "better than normal" as we roll over the roads. What I do know is we'll need a full tank of gas, money for more and all the miles it takes to make that happen. In my life, riding 2Up is good medicine, the only side effect are some bugs in my teeth and an exhausted lust for more miles. God bless the bikerman(s) that makes that happen. (that's another story)
What ever it takes, treat your depression, read that out-loud to yourself...
peace ~resa
ps This is not the story I intended to scribe, but my stories can wander off like that...
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