Depressed or Miserable?

   With my recent hospital discharge and my online careers course 'training wheels' complete it was time for me to get back toschool for realsies. I knew going back to my previous normal high school wasn't an option. I would need something more accommodating. My brother had taken a summer course at a small private school with very flexible hours, so that seemed like a good place to try.  At this point my sleep schedule was so out of whack I had to start classes at 2 pm, but the system worked. Unfortunately it's rather inconvenient for other important things, like having a social life, to switch schools in grade 10. I was leaving all the friends I had been with since nursery school and didn't really have the opportunity to make new ones since the only way my crazy sleep schedule would work is if I took private classes. Even when I switched to regular classes there were only a few kids maximum. I had also come to realize there were only two types of students at this school. There were those with some sort of life crisis who needed accommodations. Sometimes it involved health issues like with myself, other times a parent dying, etc. If you didn't have to switch to this school because of a crisis, chances are  (though not with everyone!) you had to switch because you are a poor student who needs to be watched closely to get any work done. As someone who fought like hell for the chance to be back in school I had trouble getting close to these students and didn't really look to them as new friend material. Speaking of social life inconveniences, having to start school at 2 pm wasn't helping things so I got referred to a sleep doctor specialist.

     To see what exactly was going on with my sleep I had a sleep study done. Sleep studies require you to sleep over at the doctor's clinic and are rather unpleasant. Why are they unpleasant? Well, for starters, they involve dozens of electrodes being glued all over you. Just putting them all on takes half an hour and they all have wires leading to a receiver box placed next to your bed which severely restricts your movement. Every time you need to go to the bathroom they have to unplug and re-plug most of the wires while carrying the rest with you. After you're all set up they make you go to bed at 10 pm; even with the knowledge there would be no way I would actually fall asleep before 2 am. Not only is simply lying there for so long excruciatingly boring, it was horribly uncomfortable due to all the god damned electrodes and of course my pain. That wasn't even the worst part, not even close. The worst part is they make you wake up at 7 am despite the fact if I woke up before 2 pm I would be so fatigued I couldn't hold a conversation. It gets worse because they make you stay until the early afternoon so they can do what they call a series of daytime sleepiness tests. This entails filling out a bunch of forms gauging how shitty you're feeling and then trying to fall asleep for half an hour 5 times throughout the day. Despite me being unable to properly describe how exhausted I was, I didn't fall asleep once. This happened for the same reason naps were at the time never an option for me, that reason being the pain. My pain was so severe it was impossible for me to fall asleep without the aid of many sedating medications. Since I don't take those medications during the day, I couldn't fall asleep despite my fatigue, which is what the study results confirmed.

     The results also showed that I was having what they call an "arousal" about every 14 minutes throughout the entire night. Before you ask, no this isn't a sexual arousal, you pervert. It means your body has reached the surface of sleep. It basically means waking up except it only lasts a few seconds and you usually aren't conscious and won't remember it. Obviously, if your body reaches the surface of sleep every 14 minutes for the entire night every night, you aren't going to be getting much deep sleep. This also explains why the results showed my REM (Rapid Eye Movement) deep sleep was far less than what is normal. The assumed reason I woke up every 14 minutes was that my pain was preventing me from falling into a deep sleep. Go figure, but unfortunately it wasn't like we hadn't already tried everything we could think of to reduce the pain. I had just got off morphine for Christ's sake! Anyway, to sum it all up: how could I not be constantly fatigued with results like that? Apart from the obvious chronic pain problem, the doctor's diagnosis was Phased Delay Syndrome. This disorder essentially just involves your biological body clock being completely thrown off. Getting it back on track is a long tedious process that involves slowly shifting your sleep schedule night by night. Well, I had to start somewhere.

   In a very interesting turn of events the sleep doctor also gave his opinion that I wan't depressed, merely miserable, which was a very unpopular opinion at the time. He said that anyone in my situation would be miserable, and that the goal is all about improving my quality of life to improve my mood. Of course being miserable for an extended period of time puts someone at risk of depression, but they aren't the same thing. Being sad or miserable is both not necessarily chronic and is usually in direct response to some sort of problem you have. In contrast depression is the problem itself and can continue even when the supposed problem is solved. Sometimes there's not even a discernible problem at all.  I agreed with the sleep doctor's assessment. After all I had been fighting to keep my focus on my pain issue rather than my supposed mood issue every step of the way. It raises an interesting question: do you need to be depressed to attempt suicide? Surely every human has his or her breaking point for something like pain. Does exceeding that point and then seeking to end the pain automatically mean you're depressed?  Depression is by definition a mood disorder. A healthy mind gets sad when something bad happens, which is a very simplified version of the situation but definitely isn't disorderly. When someone can't take their pain anymore and their pain is so severe that they can no longer enjoy life, is it not a logical and rational response to end the pain in the only way available? Even if that sole escape is ending one's own life? I thought so, though I was perhaps slightly biased on the matter.