Star stuff...

Over the past week and a bit, I have spoken to three other TOF parents who are a good bit earlier in their journey than Freya and I - well one is still a TOF parent-to-be - and it has really brought home to me just how far we have come in the past 4 and a half-ish tears since Christopher was born, and we first discovered what on Earth "TOF/OA" was...

TOF/OA, or Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula and Oesophageal Atresia to give it its full name, is a rare (roughly one in 4000 births) condition where a baby's oesophagus is not joined up (the atresia bit) resulting in a dead end in the top part and having the bottom part that connects to the stomach attached to the trachea (the fistula bit).  Remarkably enough, the operation to fix it is usually surprisingly straightforward (assuming you're a paediatric surgeon!), but it can come with a variety of other related complications.  Christopher was born TOF/OA (and with a large hole in his heart), but had, I suppose, the relative good fortune to be born within a short ambulance ride of one of the leading specialists in the repair of this condition.  So it was that he had  "keyhole" surgery to join his oesophagus and fix his trachea at two days old. 

The operation was a great success (as was the later one at Yorkhill in Glasgow to fix his heart), but it has been (to paraphrase the Grateful Dead) a long strange trip since then.  Only in the past year have things really started to go reasonably smoothly, and Christopher, Freya and I have all spent way more nights in the Sick Kids.  

This, however is not the main thing that I am thinking of at the moment - I am more focussed on the positive side of Christopher's experiences.  The thing that shines out more than any other to me is the Wee Man's confidence - not much fazes him, he has never been a clingy child, and he is well at ease in the company of adults and will happily chat away, quite the thing.  I think that this is likely due, at least in part, to the amount of time that he has spent in hospital surrounded by doctors and nurses, and not always in the company of mummy or daddy.  Don't get me wrong, if there had been a tick box offering TOF/OA as an option, there is no way I or any other TOF parent would have chosen that, but I am relieved to see positive aspects of the ordeals that my beautiful, caring wee boy has been through.  And compared to some TOFs, he has had a relatively straightforward journey.  

I hope with all my heart that all of the other wee TOF children can reach the stage the Christopher is at now - able to eat most of the things that other children can eat at his age, though we still need to make sure that he chews carefully and drinks between bites etc - mealtimes will probably always be a wee bit different Chez Rennie, but that is ok, and I hope that other TOF parents can take hope from my brave wee lad.  We are all made of star stuff, but to Freya and I, Christopher shines brighter than most...

W = F.d

I finished this week a little bit happier in my job than I started it...  I do quite like my job - I get a chair with wheels on and a computer to play with, it's indoors and there's no heavy lifting - but I am definitely in the "work to live" camp.  
It's not what I grew up dreaming that I would do or anything like that, but it plays to my strengths, is reasonably challenging and I am reasonably good at it.  My employer is decent for a big company - I have no complaints there - and I am reasonably well rewarded for my work.  The perks can be good too, a company bonus, a discount on my council gym membership and MS Office Professional Plus 2013 for £8.95 are not to be sniffed at.  
But what made the difference for me this week is that the head of the project that I work on came over and thanked me and my colleague for our work in getting a part of the project "over the line".  For all of the financial rewards and such like (and lets be honest not many of us would do our jobs for nowt!) sometimes it's the personal touch that makes it feel that much more worthwhile.
On a related topic, I have a way of approaching my work and how I feel about it that helps me keep going with it when it gets tough - and with my depression in the mix, that can happen more often than I would like.  I divide my work into two parts - the part that I'd (almost) do for free and the part that I get paid for.  The "free" part includes the problem solving and the programming - that sort of stuff - I suppose the more mentally challenging part, while the "paid for" part involves testing and documentation - the motivationally challenging part!
Also this week, I was saddened to note the passing of Reg Turnill, a true giant of scientific broadcasting - the man who amongst many other things "broke" the story of Apollo 13.  This week also saw the 25th anniversary of the death of one of my biggest science heroes - Nobel Laureate, communicator of science par excellence, bongo player, artist, wit and raconteur Richard Feynman.  If you want to experience complex physics explained straightforwardly and clearly, pick up pretty much any of his books and prepare to be amazed.

Feeling Gravity's Pull...

Thursday past, I was on a flexi-day to take Christopher to see his surgeon for his regular six monthly check up - and they are so happy with his progress that they don't need to see him again for a year - which definitely made me float a bit higher.  
I also took advantage of the day off to go to speak to C's nursery about the stars, planets and gravity - the nursery like to encourage parents to speak to the children about their jobs etc.  I don't mind my job, but I can't imagine any child in their right mind wanting to know about Insurance, so I fell back on having done quite a cool degree...  One thing that made it a good bit easier is an incredibly cool piece of software called "Celestia" which is free to download and allows you to "travel" around the universe and do some sightseeing.  Christopher loves it - so does his dad!
Anyhoo, almost as soon as I agreed to do the talk, I realised how tricky it is to describe gravity in simple terms (specially to 3 and 4 year olds!), but I had to give it a go.  And I think that I managed to an extent, with the help of thinking about things falling, a video of Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt dancing and singing about on the moon ("I was walking on the moon one day...) and an improvised experiment involving a ball and a bit of string.  I don't know how much they understood, but at worst I showed them a funny video, some cool pictures and a silly game with a ball!
We followed that with a nice (and carefully calorie counted) Pizza Express lunch as an early celebration of Freya's birthday, cos she was headed down to see her "Ooh errr Matron Of Honour" Iain to see Rocky Horror on her actual birthday.
Yesterday was slightly odd - left to our own devices, C and I had a chilled morning, but things got a bit stressful over lunchtime when C wouldn't eat his soup - small things, but they can really tell on your mind.  I find (in a vague parallel with C's TOF issues) that the worst part of being a depressive is that it's not big things that cause down times so much - more an accumulation of small things.  Like tiny crumbs of discontent and failure that swell and stick in your throat.  Small failures like winding up shouting at C for things that are ultimately my own fault.  So when we headed along to C's swimming lessons, I wasn't in the best headspace - but how quickly things can turn around...  
Once the Wee Man was ready to swim, he headed off and did very well, which definitely started to lift my mood - and I made sure that I told hum how proud I was.  Then our friend Chrissie took him off for an hour so that I could head to the gym and he could play with her wee girl Caiomhe.  That finished the job for me - the combination of physical exercise and Killing Joke at high volume really lifted my mood back up.
That seems to be typical of my experience with depression - I don't have more things than anyone else to weigh me down - I just seem to interact more strongly with gravity...  Though with the love of my friends and family, music and exercise maybe I can fire my engines and take off from this black planet and at least orbit it a bit more distantly, so the tides of my moods are smaller. 

To infinity and beyond...

I went to the doctor the other day - nothing exciting just the regular check in to see how I am going and renew my prescription for anti-depressants.  And in the course of discussing my recent experiences, she told me something that gave me pause for thought - and left me somewhat conflicted.

I have been feeling, by and large, better more consistently than I have for a while - and, despite my scepticism, I reckon that it is a lot to do with the fact that I have started going to the gym.  So, with this in mind. I asked my doctor when it might be wise to start thinking about reducing my dosage, with a view to eventually coming off the tablets completely...  She asked me how many episodes of depression I had experienced, so I answered (honestly) that I wasn't really sure, but that it was more than two - two that I have sought treatment for, plus too many in the preceding nearly 20 years of my life that I did my best to ignore.  

Her response surprised me, having assumed that she would be keen to get me off the pills.  It seems that the current thinking is, given that the Mirtazapine that I am on is not harmful, that it would probably be best that I stayed on them indefinitely, minimising the risk of a further serious relapse.

On the one hand, I mostly content that the tablets have a relatively small impact on my life - a trip to the docs every couple of months and a wee pill every night before bed seems a small price for me generally being easier to be around, better able to function mentally, and as a perk, sleeping way better than I have for many years.  The effects of sleeping better are boosted by having a CPAP machine to combat my sleep apnoea. 

On the other hand, I don't feel particularly comfortable about being dependent on any drug for the rest of my life - even if it is legal and prescribed.  And then there is the cost to the NHS (of which I am a great fan - not just because of what they have done for me, but also because of the amazing things that they have done for my son, Christopher.), which makes me feel somewhat guilty.  For now at least, I think that I will follow my doctor's advice - not least because I am still somewhat nervous as to what I would be like without them.  I have no desire to blindly hang on to a crutch that I may not need, but sometimes you need a crutch to stop you falling on your pus!

On another topic - I visited the NASA website the other day - as is my wont - and saw a piece saying that the first of February is the annual memorial day to those who have lost their lives pushing back the boundaries of mankind's ignorance while working for NASA.  The human cost of our exploration of space (both for NASA and Soviet Cosmonauts) is definitely something that we must remember, but it also struck me that between Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, NASA have only lost 17 lives on missions and the Russians 4 (I am possibly cheating slightly by calling Apollo 1 a mission, but I think that it's fair since they were in a spacecraft at the time).  It could be reasonably argued that those are too many, but I can't help but think that given that manned spaceflight is probably the riskiest thing that mankind has ever undertaken, it could have been a lot more...