Nobody ever talked about it . . . .

Until just recently most people would not talk about mental health, especially if someone in their family had problems. I am greatly saddened that mental health has not been seen as the real medical problem it is and that it has always been shoved into the closet and hidden away. Now that I am in my 70s and in retrospect in can see where mental illness was a problem in my own family, my mother's side as well as my fathers. My mothers side of my heritage has apparently always suffered from undiagnosed degrees of depression, running from the milder side to BiPolar Disorder. I grew up thinking they were all just normal and so was I (I thought), until my daughter was diagnosed as BiPolar at almost 40 years of age. Because no one ever talked about mental disease, I just thought she was another one of those sour pusses from my mother's side of the family. After her diagnosis, (which coincided with the oncoming of the internet), I began doing sporadic research about depression and bipolar disorder, especially. The more I read the more I realized that one entire half of my family was affected by it. My father's side had their fair share of "oddballs" too, they were a little "batty", but mostly harmless and just plain funny once you figured out what their problem was. But the depressive side has been really the worst of all worlds. I finally admitted that I was depressive when I was in my 60s and was put on anti depressants. The difference in my personality was absolutely amazing, and I began to like myself for the first time. I often tell people that if it wasn't for Prozac they would hate me.
I will delve more into my own dizzyingly out of control life in a later post, but meantime, let's all be more aware of mental health and talk about it openly so people who are mentally ill don't have to suffer for years before they are helped. Now that I am somewhat better, I realize how miserable life has been and how miserable I made others because of my mental illness

Something so simple!

I have been suffering from excessive head sweating for years. You know, the kind that feels like your head is on fire and the sweat starts like a waterfall at the top of your head and just goes out 360 from there. Sweat in your eyes, hair soaking wet, flushed, people wondering if you were ill, embarassing as all heck, always mopping up sweat. I blamed it on menopause for years, then that was over and the sweating continued. The doctor would just say to drink Gatorade if I thought I was getting dehydrated. I read or saw somewhere that acetamenophin (tylenol, et al) could cause excessing sweating in some people. That started me on an internet research safari into sweating, drugs, and other stuff that said anything at all about excess sweating. I stumbled onto an obscure website that said to take an antihistamine to help with the sweating. The article talked about some drug I had never heard of being used in a very small study into excess sweatingso, and that a small percentage of the people actually quit sweating. I looked it up and it turned out to be just plain old antihistamine! Well, egad I thought, my husband has that stuff around all the time for his allergies, Soooo I got the stuff out, read the label and started taking it as directed. Believe it or not I think it is working, I haven't lost a drop to sweating yet today. Would you believe it??? That might have been a small study, with small results, but apparently I am one of the luckier ones that the stuff will work for. HOORAY for acetamenophin!!! I'm not a doctor, just an old woman trying to stay dry, try it if you want or not. I will let you all know if it continues to work or if this is just a fluke of a day.