Midlife Blues

I can't identify for certain when it started. I think the earliest indication was that I had difficulty in conversations. Sometimes I had plenty to say, but found it impossible to compose the thoughts into coherent discourse; othertimes I found it nigh impossible to string two words together. I'm quite sure people would have found me rather odd. At work and at home, I found it very difficult to choose my battles – every disagreement was a watershed issue, and "letting it go" was a luxury for people with fewer and lesser concerns than me. I was given a much heavier cross to bear. More recently, I found I was overly emotional about relationships and work: after coming across anything to do with parent/child emotional connections in my children's bedtime stories, I would have to stop and wait for composure to return before continuing; I'd break down on criticism from my wife that I worked too much; and officious emails from my boss that failed to show any understanding of my situation would upset me.

Recurrent Idiopathic Acute Pancreatitis

After trying unsuccessfully over a period of time to join a specific forum on this subject in order to post this, I'm posting it here instead, under the aegis of midlife health issues. The purpose is to share the information and understanding that I have gained through five years of intermittent pancreatitis attacks. There are a lot of experiential hypotheses on the internet, and in one respect, this post simply adds to that collection. In another respect, however, I might have a unique perspective: on one hand I am a scientist with 25 years of education (through PhD) and experience (in academics and industry), and am therefore inclined toward the scientific method; on the other hand, after seven attacks, the condition is still classified as "recurrent idiopathic acute pancreatitis", i.e. inexplicable isolated episodes -- so I am left to draw on the experience of others in an attempt to identify conceivable, albeit unproven, potential solutions.