Day one–first full day after diagnosis

I had a good night’s sleep, and went for a walk as soon as I woke up so already, there was a sense of accomplishment. I made up a to-do list and did the first thing on it – a blog post announcing my depression and my plans for dealing with it.

I was mucking around on the internet – reading blogs, catching up with Twitter and Facebook and then bam – a sudden surge of fatigue. My brain just shut down.

I’ve come up with an image to describe what’s going on with my brain at the moment. I see it as a series of tracks (because I am at my best when I’ve got one thing to focus on). Usually, running on these tracks is this FABULOUS steam locomotive – it’s got a boiler that can go for hours, and it’s all steampunky. So let’s say, for example, a track runs out and I need to shift to a new one – well, spider legs poke out of the train and it scuttles over to the new track, sets itself down, withdraw legs and goes off down the new track. Easy peasy. If I need to think about something on a different track but can’t afford to leave the current one, then my train can deliver a new, smaller train down onto the new track. It goes off, does what it needs to do then when it’s done, grows spider legs and scuttles back. The real train picks it up, settles it down then gets on with what it’s supposed to do.

Cool, right? Well, what’s happening at the moment is that my steampunk spider train is gone. I’ve got a regular, ordinary steamtrain with a boiler that will only last an hour or so before requiring several hours at a station to fill up again. It takes a while to get up to speed but when it’s there, can motor along nicely – until the boiler runs out. If it needs to leave the track we’ve got to stop the train, put it up on a truck, take it over and put it down again – a slow, laborious process that takes FOREVER.

In fact, I can feel the train running out of energy right now.

Well yesterday, I went and started reading Gail Carriger’s Blameless (why yes, that probably IS where the steampunk imagery came from), Over the course of the day, I pottered around with a few other things as well – finished the book, got my new boot bag to almost complete, booked hubby’s car in for a new radiator, posted a letter and bought some new anti-histamines (non-drowsy).

I had hoped I’d stay awake all day, but around 2.30 I flagged seriously so at 3 I gave myself an hour to sleep. Boy, it was hard to wake up – I don’t normally keep hitting the snooze button like that.

Was a bit out of sorts for the rest of the day, until the lovely Donna came for a chat. That helped and for a while there, in discussing her new WiP, my brain actually worked. Ah, such a lovely feeling.

Sleep wasn’t as good as the night before, but not too bad and knowing the cause, I didn’t get frustrated either. Slept in this morning and when I went for my walk, was still pretty much asleep but it got done.

Today, I”m going to see The King’s Speech. I’ve wanted to see it for ages, and in the middle of the day will hopefully help me stay awake so I have a better chance of good sleep tonight.

Tomorrow – a road trip to Sydney with Tracey O’Hara. Looking forward to that.