State of mind
After a couple of months being OK Anita seems to be at the low point of a new wave of depression. As mentioned previously it comes in waves, she starts to deteriorate gradually then bottoms out, then after a week/weeks she picks up again. She is much worse in the morning than she is later in the day. This is why she hasn’t posted to the blog for a while, I guess she feels it will be too negative so tends to talk about these things in emails to other people out there who are suffering a similar fate. She knows she is having problems coming to terms with what’s happened but it’s a chemical switch that makes things look even bleaker.
Her state of mind was demonstrated yesterday when Anita sat for 6 hours in the kitchen looking at the wall. I go out to work all day and she is left on her own apart from carers visits. Although the door was open and she loves her garden it seems she just stared into the house blankly. This week the doctor has started her on a new anti-depressant called venlafaxine and she has had a visit from a psychiatric nurse.
It’s horrific to see her so humbled like this, stunned into an almost comatose state, it’s so not Anita. Occasionally you get a little peep of the fighting Anita (she is the strongest person I have ever met), only other brain injured people and their families can imagine just how difficult it is. I know that like the sea, the depression will come and go out again, unfortunately there is no waking up from the bad dream that is the reality of the situation.