X-Message-Number: 20744
Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 07:56:43 -0800
From: James Swayze <>
Subject: Depression, Anger, Vitriol and dealing with it.
References: <>

> Message #20736
> From: 
> Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2002 02:18:49 EST
> Subject: Anyone else out there depressed? (perhaps off topic.)

<snipped for brevity>

> But, excuse my arrogance for a moment, things like this just don't happen to
> ME!  The RAGE, ANGER, and VITRIOLIC thoughts that obsessively course through
> my brain for the last two weeks have been unprecedented in my experience.

<snipped for brevity>

> The economy, the rumors and realities of war (WARS!?), the psychic losses of
> 9/11.... There is such a thing as "group consciousness",  and ours is not
> looking particularly hopeful as we face 2003.
>
> I promise to not try to make Cryonet into a psychobabble forum.  This posting
> and it's type will not be repeated.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Rudi
>
>  PS.  Thanks to you all for being there.

Rudy and all,

Well you might have expected to hear from me on this, yes?

Part one: Anger, Vitriol and dealing with it.


Don't feel alone for feelings of self righteous indignation. We all feel them 
and we all to some degree or another fantasize revenge. The degree to which each
of us indulges will depend on how self deluded one wishes to be about having 
become enlightened such as eastern religious thought or forgiving as in western 
religious thought. I say bollix to all that crap it's natural to feel hurt and 
want to hurt back and I embrace it though cautiously.


I think it is cathartic to work out one's anger through fantasy exploration of 
seeking justice for perceived wrongs. Of course one should be careful to always 
try and recognize one's own part in causing the situation and never adopt the 
attitude that one is always right and all perceived wrongs are always someone 
else's fault. I feel in fact that the cathartic exercise can help one recognize 
one's own part in creating events to work out the way they did and to explore
one's limitations in rectifying justice.


I didn't always feel this way and felt awful guilt over what came natural and 
could hardly be helped. This was when I was religious and was admonished not to 
hold anger towards another and "turn the other cheek" and "to kill someone in 
one's heart is tantamount to committing the act for real...[sic]". Bullshit! To 
try and suppress these feelings without dealing with them leads to all manner of
ills. Just try not to think something. The moment you try not to you just

have! I especially dislike the one about not lusting after someone because it's 
the same as committing the sin of adultery or fornication. Bullshit here too! It
sure did not feel as good as for real!


To overcome my guilt over acting out in my mind what I knew better than to do 
for real such as kill someone for really pissing me off or doing harm to me or a
loved one, I would couch it in fantasy such that I would pretend I was a writer
exploring a script scenario. Let's be honest here, when you said vitriol I 
believe you meant for the briefest moment you felt rage enough to do physical 
harm to the unknown entity harassing you, correct?


This too is natural. It's a normal survival instinct. They have threatened you 
and your kin. They have threatened your livelihood and by extension even your 
life and furthermore even your extended life if it should really go bad and 
bankrupt you and thereby cause you to lose your Alcor membership. Don't feel bad
about initially and even for some time after holding feelings of wanting to 
throttle someone.


I find that when I've, in my mind only, completed the act of revenge I also feel
the remorse for the act and thereby find the way through to the realization of 
my own part in the events and the understanding that we all share a commonality.
This commonality allows us to forgive one another because at bottom we know 
that "there but for the grace of chance go I". The act of forgiveness and the 
ability or capacity to do so has nothing to do with religion and everything to
do with being a fallible human amongst other fallible humans.


When I was around 12 years old my father partnered with a fellow in a business 
venture to take over operation of an airport and build a flying school and 
aircraft rental and repair facility. My dad had all the talent and his partner 
apparently all the bullshit. He ended up emptying the coffers and disappearing 
leaving my father with the bank loan for now absent funds and through diminished
capacity to repay an eventual judgment against him for it all.


The judgment could not be met and after a while it seemed to go away. Years 
later I was 17 years old now and was alone at the shop and in the act of closing
the hanger door so I could leave for lunch and meet my father at the coffee 
shop. Up pulls two cars, one a sheriff vehicle and the other a Cadillac out of 
which steps a tall man in a business suit. As I am closing the door he walks up 
asking for my father and I reply that he's not there whereupon this jerk slaps 
my

hand down hard, the extra force being necessary due to the weight of the door 
and my tight grip on it trying to close it. This prevented me from completing 
closing the door as he then quickly steps inside and promptly starts taking 
inventory as if it all belonged to him suddenly!


You have no idea the rush and mixture of feelings that went through me just 
then. I immediately grasped what was going on and that I had failed my duty. I 
wanted to pummel the man! How dare he lay a hand on me?! I could have done him 
some damage too. I was as tall as he and outweighed him and I was a student of 
the marital arts. I could at the time lift a Lycoming or Continental 65 hp 
aircraft engine minus some extraneous parts (approx. 500 lbs) from floor level 
to

chest and hold it there for my dad to bolt it to the engine mounts. Perhaps the 
discipline taught to me in those arts held me back or maybe it was the gun 
holstered on the sheriff's belt. Even the sheriff himself felt bad as he noticed
my anguish and apologized that it was out of his hands.


The judgment was executed and it really placed a hardship upon us. We basically 
lived in poverty from then out and my folks divorced though they would have 
eventually anyway. It likely cost me the opportunity to go the college at that 
time. Not going to college at that time set up events that eventually led to my 
paralysis. I can't really blame that man... that LAWYER!! for all my woes but 
you can imagine what I have from time to time ever since fantasized about

regarding 'what if' scenarios. I must have murdered that lawyer a hundred times 
in various ways by now. However, after all is said and done I do know he was 
just doing his job although he was a particular asshole about it and should not 
ever have touched me. Sometimes I feel it's really too bad that there is not a 
hell for all evil doers and asshole lawyers! ;)

Part two: Depression


Now this only remotely relates to the above story and opinions in so far as the 
path that I mentioned leading to my eventual paralysis and all the ensuing woes 
therein. I know it won't lessen your problems or make you feel them any the less
but you asked if anyone else was depressed and well, yes, I can admit I am. 
However, I've long worked through any catharsis over who is at fault for all 
that led me to the situation that leaves me from time to time depressed, so I

just have to deal with it. What helps is knowing that, thanks to all of my 
friends in cryonics, my ultimate revenge is that I will live through it, past 
it, well and way way beyond it!


Ok, what has me depressed... beyond the obvious that is? First though, I only 
tell this for the benefit of all our shared commonality, "if but for the grace 
of chance go we all".


If one has paid attention to my story one knows I have a bone disease that 
exacerbates my paralysis and occurred expressly as a result of becoming 
paralyzed. In short, because I was tall, between 18-30 years of age and 
athletically active (wear on the bones) at time of spinal injury, I was unlucky 
enough to develop a disease called heterotrophic ossification. I happen to have 
the worst case known, unless someone has surpassed me in only the last few years
that I have

not been made aware of. My case supposedly is well known in spinal injury, 
physiatry and orthopedic journals. It results in the growth of extra aberrant 
bone material where it does not belong. It has infiltrated my circulatory 
systems, both lymph and blood, surrounding my hip joints, knees, neck, rib cage 
and a host of other places. The hips are the worst and the subsequent 
encroachment of my leg arteries and veins and lymph system has reduced my leg 
blood and fluid
circulation significantly, especially return against gravity flow.


It is the reason I now am bed ridden mostly all the time or as much as 27 days 
of every month. The situation is further exacerbated from my contracting 
diabetes 10 years ago from a viral infection that occurred due to urinary 
plumbing difficulties... again attributable to my paralysis. Because the blood 
pools in my legs from lack of muscle squeezing of the veins and their return 
one-way valves, if I were to get up in my wheelchair every day for several hours
a day as I

used to, up to 18 hr. per day, I would end up with even more sores on my legs 
than I now have. The tissue literally dies from lack of blood reoxygenation. 
This is made worse by the diabetes because food also is interrupted from 
reaching my cell tissues. It all makes for a very very slow healing process, if 
at all.


A few years ago, just prior to the only Alcor Conference I ever was able to 
attend--not long after I joined cryonet, I had to have surgery on my right knee 
to remove a bridge of aberrant bone material that had bridged across my right 
femur to both the lower leg bones just to the left side of my right knee. It had
caused my knee to be frozen immobile and really hampered my mobility.


Not long after that surgery we noticed that my suture site had reopened a small 
hole that drained a nominal amount of really dark blood. It would seal back up 
but open up again later and sometimes in conjunction with flexion of my knee. We
watched it and kept it clean and hoped for the best... for a really long time. 
Some may wonder why I didn't immediately seek help. Well I try not to rush to 
the doctor for every little thing and it did seem to go through cycles that

we attributed to perhaps being sharp bone fragments inside tearing at tissues 
and that these and the wounds inside would eventually heal. They didn't or 
rather that was not the problem in the first place after all.


Finally about a year ago I went back to the orthopedic surgeon that did the 
surgery and got an xray which showed no sharp bony protuberances. He had no 
answer for why it kept opening up and sent me home again to just watch it and 
keep it clean... the prognosis I expected. Fast forward to about a month ago and
I notice one day that suddenly the hole had become a 3 inch gash oozing blood 
at a steady rate. So, I went to my primary physician and this time he wondered 
if the

real issue under it all was that my marrow is exposed and for some reason I 
don't quite understand this marrow blood prevents the wound healing and builds 
up pressure in a pocket that must from time to time be released and for some 
reason still unknown my bone disease might be responsible for the marrow 
exposure not healing over. This is a really worse problem but for extenuating 
reasons.


These reasons begin with the fact that along with this knee wound I have for the
past couple years been dealing with a constant battle with additional dicubitis
(pressure sores) wounds on my lower legs. They get almost healed and then 
soften and open up again for no apparent reason. Or they get bumped or I spasm 
in the night moving my legs a new position where pressure is applied and cuts of
circulation at the crucial spot and again the sores recur. What is now becoming

cruelly clear to me and my family is that the circulation in my lower limbs has 
just about had it.


My depression then comes from the final realization that I am losing a battle I 
have long fought... the battle to keep my legs. One doctor a long time ago, 
around 1985, wanted me to agree to amputation then thinking it would be a lot 
less painful for me. He would have probably been correct there because my legs 
are probably 50% at least responsible for my chronic pain. He told me, "we'll 
never cure spinal injury... you will never walk again... they're just in your 
way".

I felt he was wrong on several counts and still do. Furthermore, it was not that
simple and still isn't. The entire issue is that we don't sit just on our 
butts. We also sit on our femurs and on our feet. In other words, the load is 
spread to all three of these points. When you have diminished circulation and 
cannot move to relieve pressure these issues become monumental. Amputation will 
remove one third of the weight bearing structure and thereby possibly increase

difficulties with producing pressure sores. I have had good luck in not in over 
23 years ever having any pressure sores on my bum. This all doesn't even take 
into account the psychological issues of appearance and loss of marrow 
containing long bones for producing new blood, etc... questions and issues I 
admit to having avoided.


Not only that but what I have to question now is that if I already have a hole 
exposing my marrow, what happens if they need to lob off my femurs just above 
the knees? Won't that also expose marrow? If my bone disease is somehow 
responsible for or partly so in not allowing the marrow hole to seal up then 
won't there be even more trouble with sawed off femurs? Then there is the issue 
of the weight of the lower limbs that does keep my legs pulled down. In other 
words,

without them I worry that my hips will morph slowly so that my legs bit by bit 
pull up closer to my chest. It is already difficult to lay flat because the hip 
joints are fused at about 60 degrees.


Well, it's a lot to think about. My new wheelchair is in the shop so I can't yet
go to see the surgeon again and discuss possibilities. I also don't want to 
give in yet. I've found an apparatus that squeezes the legs pneumatically to aid
blood and fluid return and avoid edema, quite like one Kennita kindly 
introduced me to by the way. I want to see if the device could save my legs. 
However, it might not work, it might be too late and I might lose the legs 
anyway. I

guess I'll see. In the end I might have lost a battle but I won't lose the war. 
I won't keep my legs to the point they endanger me for gangrene.


Well that's it, that's what has me depressed of late. Thanks all for the free 
shrink services. :) I hope it was ok to share all this.

James
--
Cryonics Institute of Michigan Member!
The Immortalist Society Member!
The Society for Venturism Member!


MY WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/~davidpascal/swayze/ While there follow the
links to photos of me and some of my artwork and a radio interview on Dr.  J's 
ChangeSurfer Radio program with me and the father of cryonics Prof.  Robert 
Ettinger, author of "The Prospect of Immortality".
A RELIGION I actually recommend: http://www.venturist.org
A FAVORITE quote: Last lines of the first Star Trek the Next Generation movie.

Capt.  Picard: "What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived, 
after all Number One, we're only mortal."
Will Ryker: "Speak for yourself captain, I intend to live forever!"

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