HomeoDr

Hi there, so this is for me.
If you would like me to fill out a questionnaire, let me know.
My main problem is depression. Fatigue, lack of motivation, a sense of hopelessness about the future, frustration with a lack of purpose. Irritability with occasional fits of rage, which I modulate with an herbal tincture of verbena hastata-- blue vervain.
I feel lost spiritually. I feel I can't trust God because he has let me down in life. Sometimes I wish I had never been born. I feel like I have utterly failed my family, especially my kids and my husband, my friends, even God. I feel like I must be such a cosmic disappointment ---if the cosmos even cares, that is. I feel the truth must be that it does not care, that I am meaningless, yet I can't accept that, and keep searching for some purpose to life. Yet, finding none. Wishing to have a future, but despairing of any.

I feel like there is no help for how I feel and then I wish I could just die and get it over with. I feel life itself is meaningless and wonder why people were ever created. The usual stories just don't satisfy me. I have always wanted to know "why", from a young age, and get very frustrated when I can't understand something or figure it out. My response to that kind of frustration is to give up, that it's not worth it. I feel I have given up on life, because it's too hard. I'm getting by, on the least amount of effort I have to put out because everything makes meetired. Having company over is especially depleting and it usually takes me a couple of days to recover after one evening of entertaining and basically pretending I have it all together when I would much rather crawl away and be alone for a very long time. The kids especially wear me out. With the baby here (5 months old), I have given up starting any project or doing anything that I can't easily put down in 5 minutes. Since the kinds of things I love are usually involved like reading a long book, knitting, painting, or playing guitar or keyboard, I don't do them anymore. Even if it was just the older two kids, they get into all my stuff, want to use my paints, want to play my guitar, so I'd rather not even get it out because I can't enissues.
Normally I like a lot of alone time, but that's not possible with three kids.
Sepia used to be my remedy, but it stopped working after the birth of my third baby 5 months ago. I tried more hits on the bottle, a higher potency, and it only made everything worse.

Physical problems:
I feel like the left side of my body has issues. When I get headaches, it feels like it originates on the left side of the base of my skull, radiating to jaw, eyeball, ear, and sometimes shoulder on the left side. I feel like my left arm is slightly weak, tiring faster than it should. It gets tingly down into my fingers and wrist if I don't take vitamin B12 regularly.
I get slightly dizzy for short bursts each day, maybe 5 times a day or more. Its just for a moment or two at a time.
Oftentimes I will have an ache on the left under my ribcage, apparently my spleen (guessing from location of the ache). I notice it most first thing in the morning after I've been sleeping on that side, but sometimes during the day I'll feel it, too. Sometimes when it's bothering me, I'll also notice a similar ache under my right ribcage, too. I read that when your spleen is not working like it should, your liver will take up the slack, sometimes overtaxing it. That seemed a good explanation to me for what was happening. Doctors have never felt any enlargement in my abdomen.
I have a heart murmur now, this is new since delivering the third baby. My heart races from time to time (paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia), this is something that happened with each pregnancy, and I went on medication to control it, but it went away after delivery. I inherited it from my mom who has it all the time but is controlled by blood pressure medication. Seems this time it didn't go away after. It leaves me out of breath and unable to do much exertion without having to sit down. Sometimes I am just carrying the baby (20 lbs) and will feel weak in the legs and have to sit down.
My midwife says my thyroid is enlarged, since delivery. Thyroid tests came back normal. But when I lay down on my stomach, my favorite position for sleeping, the pillow seems to push on my throat, so I can't lay that way anymore. I lay now on my sides. If I lay on my back, my throat closes up and I startle awake. My dad has sleep apnea; sometimes I fear I must, too, because I'm always so tired. Sometimes I snore, especially when my nose is congested. I can't stand trying to sleep with a stuffy nose, so I use a nasal spray when it is stuffy to open it up.
I have always felt I needed more sleep than the average person, favoring 10 hours a night. Yet, since having kids starting 6 years ago, a solid night's sleep has been a dream. My kids have all been poor sleepers (as I was as a infant/child), and I feel chronically sleep deprived. I feel my concentration is poor, I feel I could use naps everyday, yet don't often take them because of the kids. At night I hate to go to sleep because it means I have to start a new day and I don't want to face it. I stay up late many nights to be alone from the kids just a little longer.

I was born with duplicated kidneys and ureters on both sides. The kidneys,they tell me, look like double-yoked eggs--two inner functioning parts within the single organ, each part with its own ureter. They didn't discover this until I was 3, meanwhile, I had likely been having UTIs many many times and was always, always crying/screaming as a baby. Every picture except one or two of me as a baby, I am red-faced and crying. My mom would let me play in my crib at night until I dropped from exhaustion around 1am. Then, after they found out, I was on constant antibiotics for about 7 years until my mom fou f a more natural way of fighting the infection with cranberry juice, vitamin C, probiotics, etc. In the meantime I had developed an allergy to 3 different antibiotics from overuse. They said I had a ureterocele, a partial blockage on the right ureter. They suggested surgery to my mom, but I got a cold right before the surgery, and she begged off. They told her I might grow out of it, which it seemed I did after my mom started the natural stuff, but I think I just was learning better how to keep it in check. After I got married it flared up again and I got it surgically corrected after our first was born. I had to have it re-corrected after the third was born.

I tend to be constipated and eat a prune a day to regulate.
I catch myself sighing a lot.
I often get irrational fears and find myself dwelling on them, such as getting the house broken into, my kids or myself getting shot. I always feel helpless in that hypothetical situation and just feel that I would be weak and my kids would die, or I would die. My worst fear ever is that I would be killed and my children left helpless and alone with no one to care for them or comfort them. When my husband is home, I think like that a lot less, but when he's away working, I feel, what would I do? If fire, or an earthquake, or someone breaking in, could I protect all three? Could I escape with all of them safe? I play it out in my mind and each time, it ends badly. I can't see how I could do it alone. I don't know how to shoot a gun, even though we have one, I don't have the chance to ever get away and get taught, and we can't afford a class anyway.
I feel like I will fail and I would never forgive myself if my kids suffered because of my own weakness. Which is exactly what is happening now. To me, being weak is the worst thing ever. And yet I can't hardly be a mother to my children. I have no energy. I don't want to play outside with them, I don't have time or energy for making fancy meals, or hardly any meals--my husband often cooks. I get angry easily with them, and feel I have no reserves left for them. I take care of their basic needs, but I always envisioned being that loving, soft, supportive, nurturing, fun mom that every kid envied... Instead, I'm the one with kids who envy other kids' moms, maybe. My oldest son especially suffers, I feel. He reminds me of myself as a child, in a lot of ways. A lot of fears. Nightmares (which thankfully he doesn't get often anymore). Insecure.

I have barely any sex drive, which my husband is understanding about but still, we wish it could be better. I feel completely turned off to it, many times. It seems like one more person to have to take care of. I can't even hardly take care of myself...

I have a hard time feeling interested in food. I eat anyway, because I dislike feeling hungry, but I would just skip it if I could. It's just more work.

I had my hormones tested, and I came out less than 0.1 ng/ml of progesterone, which no one could ever tell me whether that was normal for lactating or not. But I have many, many symptoms on the list for low progesterone. Of course, I also have many on the list for all sorts of things. Anyway, I tried supplementing with OTC progesterone cream. It starts out, the first day and a half, I feel better, my sex drive seems to come back, and my head clears, and I feel better. Then, about 36 hours into it, I feel awful. I get fits of rage and the depression gets way worse. I just tried it again because I read that you can be supplementing with too little, and it can make the problem worse. So I used about 4 times more. It was the same--great at first, then utter despair and rage. I'm through with that.

Also, FWIW, here is the link to my lengthy previous thread when I was taking Sepia.
http://abchomeopathy.com/forum2.php/422290/

Also, I am currently on progesterone-only birth control and 50 mg of Wellbutrin I reluctantly started about a month ago. It's much less than even the starting dose, but more than that makes my heart race, but other antidepressants just kill my sex drive, and I don't need that. It sort of gives me a little energy in the morning but dies away midafternoon.
Thank you again for all your help, and I know you are busy so please take your time.