Can Major Surgery Cure Depression?

The holidays are a good time to look back on our lives.  On this past Christmas eve, I was reading an article in the American Journal of Physics (AJP) on the topic of energy spectra for power-law potentials.  What a great coincidence that I had done this same calculation exactly a decade back, as I was reminded by a blog post from that time (see 2010 post).  I had not mentioned the details of the calculation in that post but was instead writing about how my wife Pat allowed me to isolate myself to work on this fun calculation while she and the rest of my family were preparing for our Ukrainian dinner.

At age 94, that would be my father’s last solo trip to Pullman, something I had expected at the time based on his cognitive decline.  Both our children were home for the holidays, waiting for the first visible star to appear, which would signal the time for our twelve-course Christmas Eve meal to begin -- a Ukrainian tradition that had been passed down through countless generations.

All morning, my father hovered over Pat in the kitchen to make sure that the cabbage was properly steamed, enough onions were sautéed for the butter topping and that the borsch had lots of garlic.  All the burners were on and the windows were painted in condensate that was crisscrossed by several rivulets that ended in miniature puddles on the windowsill.  Ukrainian Choral Christmas music blared over the speakers, drowning out the cooking sounds.  My father sang along with his rich operatic voice, with hands clasped behind him as he monitored the kitchen.  Our children were contacting old friends to plan for their yearly rendezvous at Ricos.  I was content in my calculations and secure in the presence of family.

My past posts consistently show the centrality of family and physics in my life.  Our families have grown -- both of our children with spouses and children of their own -- but I am now the father and the grandfather, taking the role of the patriarch.  My father briefly saw his first great grandchild (by Skype) just before he died in 2014.  Hopefully, I will see my own great grandchildren some day.

2020 was a year of illness and isolation.  I started the year by learning that I had prostate cancer.  My surgery coincided with the peak of COVID deaths in April (see link to the details).  It went well and the experience was a blip in the grand scheme of my life.  I kept busy writing papers (a couple which were accepted for publication in AJP and a massive review article that was accepted in the prestigious Advances in Optics and Photonics) and pondering new ideas, so my mind rarely wandered into the minefield of anxiety about my health.

My prostate surgery had other benefits.  I had been suffering with an undercurrent of depression since the passing of my father in December of 2014.  Though I had many reasons to be joyful since then, a deep-seeded darkness tugged at me, preventing me from feeling the unfettered happiness that was warranted by major events in my life.  This darkness lifted when I awoke from prostate surgery.  The experience reminded me of my mother’s depression years before she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.  Could it be that the human body signals the brain during a serious illness before other symptoms arise?  To investigate the plausibility of this hypothesis, I studied a plot of my Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) test over time (see figure to the right).  Being measured as part of my yearly physical blood draw, my PSA data spans two decades.  In my younger years, the PSA data varied about the mean in a way that is characteristics of random noise.  But in 2014 (or perhaps as early as 2012), it started rising ever so slowly, following an exponential that a couple years ago pierced through to the level considered worrisome.  This proves nothing other than my depression being correlated with my father's death and the rise of my PSA.  But an intriguing correlation that my oncologist said he has independently observed...

My wife and I were isolated for most of 2020, but nevertheless we got COVID in November.  I traced

the probable location of my infection to the ice hockey rink, where I played masked with only 5 players. (The photo gives proof of us wearing masks -- but taken after I recovered from COVID).  Given the large separation between us, I was surprised that this was ground zero.  However, the  cold air and lingering breath droplets that it suspends, coupled with the heavy breathing associated with physical exertion no doubt made the ice a more dangerous place than I had expected.

We are fortunate that we had the mildest possible COVID symptoms and only for a short time.  I started feeling fatigue after playing ice hockey on a Sunday morning.  Most of the fatigue subsided after a 2-hour nap that afternoon after I had completed my weekend chores.  For the next couple days, I continued to feel mild fatigue, some achiness and had slight congestion that was comparable to what I normally experience from allergies.  I tested positive on the day after my symptoms appeared, and by Wednesday, I felt fine.  The only symptom that persisted for a couple weeks was the loss of the sense of smell, which returned gradually over time.

Overall, it was a good year, with the added benefit of the optimism I feel for 2021.

2021 has already started out well.  We visited my son, his wife and daughter on the other side of the country and also visited our daughter and her family.  Being immune to COVID (I tested positive for COVID antibodies) allows us to travel, so getting it was a net positive.  Also, I bought myself a nice Questar telescope (used on eBay), which I had coveted for decades, and plan to use it in our wilderness.  I will be teaching two graduate courses this spring, one of them a new prep (Thermodynamics), a topic that I am excited to revisit with the goal of deepening my understanding.  I am writing this post as I take a break from preparing my notes and doing the homework problems.

We will be using the thermodynamics textbook by Herb Callen, the professor that taught me the topic when I took his course at the University of Pennsylvania 40 years ago.  I recall the class being the worst in my graduate career – perhaps I was to blame.  But his book is fantastic, presenting the material clearly and resolving common points of confusion.  Working all the problems in the book consumes most of my time but doing so helps me to anticipate issues that students might have when learning the material.  And I am learning a lot through an enjoyable process of frustration followed by the satisfaction of success.

It is wonderful having a job that requires me to learn new things every day and a network of family and friends with whom I play and share my life.  Happy New Year!

 

November 17, 2005 Time Capsule

On November 17, 2005, when computers did not work as well as they do today, Bush was serving his second term and I was a youngster of 47, I stumbled across the time capsule portal on the Forbes website and wrote myself a letter from that simpler time.  Here is what it said:

Today is the day before my new Megrez Triplet Fluorite refracting telescope arrives.  I am so looking forward to getting it.  Both our children are doing well in college, our careers are successful (but hectic) and the sun is out on this almost-freezing beautiful November morning.

I just had my "optical cantilever" paper accepted by JOSA B, I corrected the proofs of my new PRA paper on the dipole free SOS expression, and I am anxiously awaiting word from PRL about the "ultimate limit" paper.  In the meantime, I am working on the symmetry paper with David Watkins.  All this while teaching two classes and doing lots of service - not to mention my debate with Bob Olson on religion.  Gotta run to a staff lunch. Oh yeh, and I scored 3 goals and had one assist in my ice hockey game two nights ago!  --Mark

It is interesting to see how some things have changed and others have stayed the same.

I still play hockey and coincidentally scored three goals in my last game.

But, my telescopes have been gathering dust.  I was into telescopes at that time and the Megrez is truly an exceptional instrument.  I enjoyed it for many outings and for a while I stored it on our upper deck, which towers above our neighborhood; well, that is, until I got a frantic call from a neighbor that the tarp was acting as a parachute and the telescope was hovering over our roof.  Given that my memory of those times is fading, perhaps it was a different telescope.  But I can state with emphatic certainty that this beautiful piece of art graces our study today and I still enjoy its elegance.  Some of the photos of the heavens that I took at that time can be found on my website at http://nlosource.com/Astro/Saturn2003-12-06.htm.

The PRL paper was rejected, but I found a good home for it in the still-respectable Physical Review A.  The other papers appeared and have done well, especially the dipole-free paper, which has been used extensively since then to take our work to the next level.  What I didn’t mention was that I was sitting in on a class on general relativity and traveled to Australia for the first time to attend a conference in Sydney.  The famous opera house was truly majestic from a distance, but up close its curved walls of white tiles was dirty as a frat house shower.  Though I spent an afternoon walking around town, visiting the government buildings and the gardens, I spent most of my time at the conference and evenings working on my general relativity homework.

What impresses me most about this window into the past is my efficiency, doing so much with so little time.  Now that I have more time, I spend too much of it trying to get everything just right.  Yesterday, I was telling a student that being on a teaching assistantship might take time away from research, but it makes you more efficient – and I was right.  The lesson from my past self is to take on more and worry less about being perfect.  I also need to remain passionate and engrossed in my activities, like working on our cabin in the wilderness.

All right, here I go…    

Ambien® Ramblings

Ambien ®, or its generic name Zolpidem, is a sleeping pill. A good night's sleep is not common for me, especially when my biological clock responds chaotically to overseas travel through many time zones. On the road, I suffer from continual insomnia, headaches and exhaustion. This response is suboptimal since the purpose of my travels is to awe other scientists about the beauty of my work, and to convince R&D agencies to give me precious funding for my research.

Zolpidem has been a godsend for my travel woes, but it is not without consequences. My wife and I sometimes observe each other under the spell of Zolpidem just before passing out. In one such episode, my wife was aware of her own gibberish, so she pulled out a notebook and recorded her own ramblings. The results are quite poetic.

I am told that I too say some very strange things.

This past weekend, I played 5 games of ice hockey over a 36 hour period. I would get home at 10:30 and get up at 6:45am the next morning. Since I had to air out my gear and shower in the evening and repack my bag in the morning, as well as eat, etc., the net time I had for sleep was substantially less than 8 hours. Add to that the bright glaring lights at the rink and the intense exercise; and, it was a sure recipe for sleeplessness. I needed my Zolpidem!

Two nights ago, I took a Zolipidem and then spent a few minutes composing a word for the iPhone® App "Words Free," basically a Scrabble® game that one can play with others over the internet. (I have recently been playing a game with my daughter.) I then plugged my iPhone® into the outlet to recharge it before going to sleep.

The following night, when preparing for my next move, I noticed that there were two games in progress with my daughter. I called her to ask her if she had started it, and she had not. The second game had started the previous night 20 minutes after my first, so it was certainly at a time consistent with the Zolpidem taking hold of my neurons. I must have gotten up, grabbed my phone, started the game, made my move, plugged in the phone again to recharge, and returned to bed.

I have also done some other crazy things on Zolpidem, like sending bizarre emails that I had to later retract.

My daughter's friend once drove through a blizzard and showed up at her place well after midnight with a wound on his head and no memory of how he had gotten there. Again, Zolpidem.

Have you had similar experiences?