The depression thread

Something with THC in it can be useful too…

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He him?

Nah some young lad has a legal hemp farm. I cant find the article on the google. Ill have to keep digging

I decided to give this another try last night.

I had no trouble sleeping but christ I’m like a zombie today, my limbs and head are almost numb. That’s with one tablet. My prescription says two tablets per day.

I can see now how people were slowly shuffling around the psychiatric unit with vacant faces.

Four months today since I woke up blind in an eye. I’ve seen fuck all improvement in the eye since October.

Fuck all improvement in my depression either. Today has been a bad day. I slept until 1pm after taking a full quetiapine tablet last night. No walk. I can’t eat anything much, except crisps and chocolate. I had a bowl of soup and bread and butter and that’s it. There’s a table beside me. I feel trapped by the table, hemmed into a corner. The table will not be moving, ever, because it’s the “good” table, and the good table doesn’t move, because it’s been here for 57 years, and it has an exalted status in this house, above me anyway.

On Wednesday I went for an OCT test at Specsavers and my eye has not improved from six weeks ago. The thickness of my retina has gone down in places but increased in other places. The examiner says my epiretinal membrane might be contributing to my distortion. Of course I know any opthalmologist will say otherwise. I spent most of last night looking at videos of epiretinal membrane surgery. I’ve written most of an e-mail to a guy I came across on YouTube debating that doctors should be more pro-active in removing epiretinal membranes, a guy called Colin McCannel at the Stein Eye Institute in UCLA. I probably won’t send the e-mail to him, because what’s the point, he won’t reply to me, and even if he does, he can’t operate on me. I’m 100% sure nobody in Ireland would operate on me, because they’ll say there’s too much to lose, “you have excellent visual acuity”. My visual acuity is worth fuck all. Visual acuity means nothing unless it is not accompanied by distortion. Visual acuity does not count distortion. I’m 100% sure the distortion in my eye will never go. I’m terrified. When I was on my own today I started screaming and crying. The despair is like the sea. You can sail along calmly for a while, and then the storm comes, when you consider the crushingly grim reality of your present and your future.

I sent away to the Regional to get my hospital records some weeks back. Nothing yet. No answer on the end of the line when you ring. There never has been an answer at the end of the line any time I’ve rung over the last two months.

My new brainwave is that I should get a thing called an “Optomap” test done. This “Optomap” shows you most of your retina, as opposed to the 10-15% of your retina visible on a fundus autofluorescence image you’d see in a normal eye test. The Optomap might allow me to see where my retina tore. Very few places have this Optomap. Nowhere in Galway has it, not even the hospitals. There’s an optician in Swords that has it. So I’m thinking of going to Swords. I doubt I’ll go. What’s the point.

Last night I came across a study done by a lady called Geraldine McBride, an orthoptist (somebody who deals with double vision) at the Regional in Galway, who recently moved to Canada. The study was on post-operative diplopia (double vision) in retinal detachment patients in Galway. In five years McBride said she had only had five patients with persistent diplopia after retinal detachment surgery (if she’d waited a few more years she would have had a sixth). Only one of the five had intractable diplopia which resulted in the operated eye having to be occluded with a blank contact lens. But this person sounds suspiciously like me in their symptoms. They had a “deviation” of “3” (I presume this means 3%) at near distance and a deviation of “18” at distance. They had the same operation - vitrectomy plus cryotherapy. Nothing could solve their double vision. Yesterday I went for a walk and looked at houses in the distance. 18, whatever 18 is, looks a conservative guess as to my ocular deviation at distance. The image from my good eye showed the houses as they are. Way below it to the right, my bad eye shows a squiggle of a houseen, like out of Alice In Wonderland.

Counsellors talk about a tunnel, they tell you there’s always a light at the end of it. I don’t see it, and if there is a light, I know what it will be.

People say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. What if the problem is permanent? What then?

You keep writing

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Keep probing, keep asking questions, keep looking for solutions, you’re doing all of that, keep it up.

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Send the email, the worst is he doesnt reply pal, if you dont send it you’ll never get a reply.

Also go to that clinic and get the scan done. We all know your a determined basterd, and we love you for it on here. Do everything you can at least. Your doing great research so follow up.

Really hope your having good days at least. National leagues around the corner so im lookong forward to your stories of matches of old

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If your sight did happen to come back you’d get a record number of likes on TFK. If that isn’t something to live for I don’t know what is pal :handshake:

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Well I have sight but it’s not good, useable sight. Because the image coming from each eye is too different, I’ve lost my ability to “fuse” vision. This isn’t a problem with the brain or with my eye muscles. It can only be remedied by the eye recovering to produce an image that matches up with the good eye, and so far it shows no sign of doing so.

I will list the positives compared to what I’ve read some other people suffer.

I) My retina has not re-detached. This can happen in about 10% of people, usually due to a thing called Proliferative Vitreoretinopathy (PVR), which means scar tissue. However I do have an epiretinal membrane which is sort of a form of scar tissue. This was almost certainly caused by a Posterior Vitreous Detachment (PVD).

ii) I have full peripheral sight. This can sometimes be lost, ie. I believe Brian McGuigan lost some of his peripheral sight when his retina was made shit of back in 2007.

iii) I have my full spectrum of colours in the eye. There’s no difference in colour perception between the eyes. Sometimes eyes which suffer a retinal detachment lose their ability to appreciate colour.

iv) My ability to see in the dark is basically the same as my good eye. This is often not the case in eyes which suffer retinal detachment.

These positives are heavily outweighed by the negatives.

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Which is your good eye?

Been asked before but would an eye patch not help no.

I know I was being flippant above. But I do feel sorry for you. But what good is my sympathy

Right eye.

I’m right eyed, right, handed and right footed.

Something else has to balance that out.

No, eye patches don’t help. They’re uncomfortable and don’t help recovery.

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I’m left eye dominant and right sided

The optician said that was very rare

I have the most troublesome left eye since Lisa Lopes set fire to Andre Rison’s house.

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Good trait for golf apparently

Well thats a pain. Look. I’d a relative who ended his own life, like most of us i suppose. I was about thirty at the time and I’d gathered up enough bother to make me view his situation as a travesty of a wasted opportunity. In my mind he’d already reared a family, he could turn his hand to anything, he could leave any time he wanted, and he was as likeable as they come. It looked like he’d everything he needed to leave, start afresh and be whoever he wanted to be. As years pass you empathise more and you start to understand that all he saw was despair, emptiness and defeat. As more years pass you start to realise that your first assessment was half right. He had no shortage of talents and gifts, but what really set him apart was that he had a decent education, was living is a western democracy, he didn’t fear for the safety or nutrition of his children, he had a guarantee of employment, shelter and healthcare, and had no-one to prevent him pursuing any recreation he fancied, etc etc etc. That sets him apart from at least eighty percent of the worlds population
He didn’t see any of this, very few of us really do…but i bet he saw and understood it right at the absolute terrifying panic-stricken no-turning-back end. There’s a million and one things you could throw yourself into. Take a heap of mushrooms, buy a fishing rod…or a bow and arrow, write your screenplay, go on tinder, glue yourself to @Little_Lord_Fauntleroy’s bicycle, see what those freaks are up to who sit around stone circles at solstices(solstici?), laugh at yourself, stop being an arse.
It’ll all work out someway or other. And if you convince your good eye to go with your left hand your iq will jump by ten points and you’ll be statistically less likely to get alzheimer’s.

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Jack Nicklaus was the same

Did he suffer with the veins as well? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: