Shelagh, if people can talk to plants and elicit a positive response in the form of improved health and growth, wouldn't we be nuts NOT to talk to our fish?
Personally, I think sanity is overrated, and I have done a lot of stressing and grieving over various fish, but I COULD NOT manage without them.
I trashed the tendons in both hands and arms several years ago, had an unpleasant lab diagnosis of a progressive disorder, lost my ability to do almost anything, (although having gradual, almost imperceptible improvement in the tendons over time) along with my horse, home, my life, my income (apart from my horse, such as they were, lol) and moved back in with my parents after living on my own for years.
I could carry things over my left arm, although it hurt like a swine, at least it didn't just instantly 'go' on me, and I could carry dump buckets with the edges on my curled fingertips (the one position using things not trashed, because not otherwise used) with a careful hand and arm position straight up and down and tip the bucket for dumping with a knee, and manage rather sloppy and time consuming water changes (fouled up my fingers as well, with thumbs the absolute worst, and one elbow too-often outright refusing to bend or straighten,) and sufficient fish and dog related stuff to get by - I could still DO something, which meant SUCH a lot.
I was mostly eating a slice of bread a day, as getting anything else was too slow, frustrating and painful, although I did eventually manage to get even tins of dog food open when required, etc - I think and hope my animals never suffered (apart from a lack of physical petting for my dog) as a result.
Without my dog and fish, there would have been really nothing of any use remaining that I WAS able to do in that period.
Although I did get practice swearing. (My area of expertise.)
And while I often dropped the lightweight, disposable water glasses and coffee cups I could barely manage for the first year or so, (drinking through a straw rather than trying to lift and hold them, once carried over to where I sat,) I never once actually dropped anything live or broke anything fish-related.
(Of course, I'd do things like that first, before my arms worsened with everything done through the day, but still, thank gawd...)
I couldn't do much of anything for long, and, while gradually improving, compared to the so-distant normal, still can't, although more than before every season, as far as the tendons go; it's still too easy to sometimes overdo and wind up having trouble turning a doorknob to let my dog out or manage a cup of tea, but I generally do one large or several smaller waterchanges a day in rotation and have had to learn to not push to do too much at a time.
And I have access to the internet here at my parents, something I didn't have before - spent a LOT of time looking up 'fish stuff' and on forums.
I often get too tired and/or depressed to be able to talk to or face people in person, but I have my dog and my fish, so who needs a life, lol?
Many of the people on this board, like many pet owners off it, are suffering health issues, disabilities, emotional trauma, etc., and additional results such as depression, poverty from income loss or reduction, and a loss of respect from family members or others who can't remember you have problems or understand why you can't just 'shake it off and manage' with some semblance of normalcy, as you have may have managed to more or less do with other injuries and issues.
But as long as you can manage their needs, pets don't know or care about such things.
And not only do they fill your life and make it worth living, but they provide an imperative reason to keep going, because they utterly and absolutely depend on you.
All this apart from the more often discussed aspects of fishkeeping, such as the calming effects of fish watching, the beauty of an aquarium (not yet stricken with some new form of algae, lol,) the emotional attachment to fish who often have very definite personalities and may interact with us in a manner that sometimes surprises those who've not spent much time with fish.
Probably a lot of us could say we get almost everything out of fishkeeping - including the provision of the multi-tank channel obviating the need for TV, and balancing the cost of electicity used, in this and many ways.
They really ought to be tax-deductable as therapeutic and health-improving...
I think you are amazing 
