Today was a sunny day, the days are getting finally noticeably longer – it is nearly six p.m. and it is still reasonably visible outdoors. I went for a nice walk in the sunshine.
And I feel like crap anyway. I was feeling reasonably well last winter as well as most of this one. But the last two weeks I was feeling under the weather, being cranky and tired and getting hardly more than an hour or two of work done a day. And today, depression has hit me like a brick in a dark alley. Getting out of bed was a huge amount of work. I hoped the walk will help somewhat, but it did not.
My specialist physician has performed a number of blood tests to evaluate whether they reveal some possible cause behind my chronic tiredness, but they came out mostly OK. I even had OK levels of vitamin D, so the 4000 IU that I am taking daily each winter seems to be not too much and not too little either.
One result was slightly out of whack though and she has halved my thyroid medication as a result. Maybe the depression is an aftereffect of my body getting adjusted to that. I do hope to be able to do something, soon there will be a lot of work in the garden to do.
Commiserations. We just had a couple sunny days in Helsinki and I managed to get some overdue household maintenance done. Now it’s again windy and grey and sprinkling variably rain, sleet and snow. My depression is very sensitive to the weather, almost more than the seasons.
It’s been very icy since New Year, and the recent heavy snowfall has made the ice pack on the walkways so thick it’s not going to melt very soon even though it’s raining in February.
I hear you. Commiserations from me as well, I’ve been somewhat low on spoons also.
lumipuna @ 1
I’ve gone to the heated streets (Aleksanterinkatu, Keskuskatu) in downtown Helsinki to take a walk a few times. I wonder if purchasing some spikes for the shoes would make sense? (I don’t currently own any, do you?)
Charly
Having your thyroid meds halved seems to me to be a very likely explaination for your depression. Have you looked at the numbers your doctor is getting? I am obviously not a doctor, but I have had to remind doctors that the whole point of the “normal” range is that normal symptomless people vary where they are on the tests. Which means their patients should be in different places within or even at the edges* of the normal range so eg trying to get me into the middle of the range is possible but isn’t helpful as that is not where I am symptom free. It might be worth a discussion, though I understand you won’t be feeling like having one huge *hugs*
* The normal range for test excludes the weird 5% of people who are healthy with exceptionally high or low results -- how does your doctor know you were not one of those before yuo needed the medication?
Ice Swimmer
I found the spikes for shoes very helpful when I lived higher up in the Pennines and we got enough snow to result in icy pavements regularly. They really do make walking far more easy, you don’t end up being tense because you instinctively know you are at risk of falling and you are constantly braced for the possibility.
Ice Swimmer -- I have used ice cleats on my shoes for a few winters now. There are various technical solutions for those, for example at my local Prisma department store. I wanted a solution that’s versatile and not too much pain in the ass when I have to walk alternately indoors (in stores etc.), on open pavement/grit, ice and snow.
I use a rubber webbing system that stretches over the shoe, with six detachable spike buttons. It took some experimenting to find optimal usage routines for it. For example, I only use four spike buttons at a time and replace them sequentially as they wear out. It does help walking on ice, though not tremendously -- it’s still awkward and tedious to get around if it’s very slippery. Just using it is generally something of a hassle.
I didn’t want to buy a solid strap-on sole type system with spikes because it felt entirely unsuitable for indoor/pavement walking. OTOH, they’re perhaps somewhat easier to get on and off compared to the rubber web, and they may be more effective on ice. Still, if you take the spikes off in stores etc., you’ll have to carry them around in a designated plastic bag because they’re dirty, and you’ll probably need a place where you can sit down to put them back on.
Jazzlet @ 3, lumipuna @ 4
Thanks! We’ll see if I get around to buying spikes before the ice melts.
This!
Also thyroid meds shouldn’t be changed rapidly. I don’t know what dosage you’re taking, but whenever mine need adjustment, we do that by 12 or 25 mg. Even when I started and it was clear that I would need around 100ish mg, we started on 25, 50, 75, …