Depression Incapacitates

Before being diagnosed with depression, I would never have guessed how incapacitating this disease could be. I remember a time when I was sitting on the couch staring out my window, unable to motivate myself to do anything. As I watched, two neighbors came outside and started chatting. I distinctly remember having the thought that it would be good to head outside and join in the conversation and yet, I couldn't move. These weren't strangers but good friends that I knew well and enjoyed being around. They must have talked for over an hour but there I sat, alone in my house with no ability to put thought into action. How does a disease have the power to do this?

Thank you!

I appreciate all the comments on changing medications. I think I can now at least make an appointment with my doctor and start the process. I will be sure to let you know how it goes.

Do I Change My Medication?

So for about 10 years I took Effexor for my depression. Then our insurance stopped covering the bulk of it and it would cost us about $200 per month. My doctor was great and just gave me samples until the drug companies stopped bringing them. I then switched to Prozac because I have siblings that have used it. I noticed no improvement and I was already too far down the pit so I went back in to the doctor. They gave me a second anti-depressant, Wellbutrin because it appeared that prozac only treated one out of three issues of depression.

So my question is this: Effexor has finally come out with a generic for Effexor and now it is affordable. But I am scared to go off my other depression meds so that I can get on Effexor? I just don't know if I can handle another episode of darkness but Effexor worked so good for me and I really think it gave me my best 'new' normal life.

Please, please share your thoughts and experiences that you have had with your meds!

MEDICATION!!

A huge frustration of this disease is that it takes six to eight weeks to know whether the medication is working. If the first one you try doesn't work, you go right back to square one and start the process all over again. The first time I was held captive by depression, the months seemed to crawl by as the doctor and I tried to get the right medication and the right dose. Finally I slowly returned to a 'new' normal for me. I don't think I will ever be the same person I was before all this happened but I am happy to have found me again.

After a little more than a year, my meds stopped working! I was falling back into the dark and couldn't find a rope or even a thread to hang on to. It took a lot longer to realize what was happening because I told myself I was on medication and this couldn't be happening. I went back to the doctor and we started the process over again. After six weeks and feeling no improvement, I was scared. I was at the airport and I saw my doctor. I ran over to him and the tears started to fall and I started pleading with him to get me a new prescription. I must have been a spectacle in the middle of the airport but at that moment nothing else seemed to matter. I was devastated when he told me I really needed to give it two more weeks. I wasn't sure I would survive two more weeks.

That medication never did start to help but the second one I tried after that started to bring me back to my 'new' normal. It can be so discouraging and yet please believe that there is something out there that will help.

You Are Not Alone!

Several months into my struggle with depression and still waiting and hoping the medication might start to work I had an experience that will always stay with me. I had gone to church but I was so tired and started to cry. I couldn't seem to control the crying so I went home. I sat at home for the next couple hours and cried. I didn't know how much longer I could survive in the bottomless pit. My husband came home from church and told me that one of the ladies had approached him. She then told him, “I feel as though Suzy is in a very dark place and if she ever wants to talk, tell her I am there”.

No words can express the small sliver of hope she had extended to me. She used words that told me she had been where I was and could understand what my suffering was all about. From then on I knew there was at least one other person that truly got it and I was not alone!

Judgment & Criticism

Depression is a very difficult disease to understand and I speak personally of my own error in judgment of my mother before I suffered depression for myself. No one except those that have become afflicted with this disease can understand the pain and anguish of being in the suffocating blackness of our personal pits. No one can comprehend how desperately we try to find our way out with no success. I felt like this was something I should be able to do on my own and yet regardless of the prayers I offered and how badly I wanted a different life, I couldn't change.

One of the most frustrating things about depression are the comments made by those around you and even those closest to you that suggest this is an easy fix! It is a very difficult disease to understand so if you do not have depression please do not offer advice! I wish others wouldn't trivialize what to me is such a devastating illness. We give ourselves enough grief and self doubt. We are in the bottom of the pit as it is and this only adds to our feelings of worthlessness.

I have been told that if I would pray more then this would all go away. Other advice I have been offered has been; that I needed to have a positive attitude, read my scriptures, get out in the sun more, get outside of your home, get a job, have parties... the list goes on and on.

Medication is such a miracle to those of us who have found medications that work. Without this we would be unable to get up everyday and function like a human being. I wish it wasn't so and cursing this disease made no difference.

Depression Diagnosis

I couldn't sleep, I was crying all the time, my headaches became excruciating and I couldn't care for my family like I wanted. I felt as though I was headed for a nervous breakdown. It felt like I was in a deep pit where the walls were closing in and the blackness was suffocating. It was a darkness that sucked out all light, joy, desire and will.

As I attempted to cope, I went to the doctor to get some help from the headache pain and he asked me if I could be suffering from depression. I hated that word! He had me fill out a questionnaire to determine if I was suffering from depression. I remember there being only about 10 questions. It took me more than an hour to complete the test and the nurse kept coming in to see if I was finished. I told her I had answered all the questions except for one. The one question I couldn't answer was if I had trouble making decisions!!!! I felt pretty stupid but I was done. The doctor came in and and told me he believed I was suffering from depression and he prescribed some medication. He also told me that anti-depressants would take 6 to 8 weeks for me to notice any difference and that I needed to be patient.

I was so angry! I was angry at my mother for having the genes she passed to me. It was her fault. Things felt hopeless and my only survival instinct was to close my doors to the world and hold onto my family with everything I had. I grew up with a mother that lived behind closed doors and I wasn't going to shut my children out of my life so if that was the ONLY thing I could do, then so be it. My children also deserved to know what was going on with me. I didn't want a shroud of secrecy in our home. If I failed them, nothing else mattered. My eight children were the most important part of my existence.

Here I sit for another day, not leaving my house and having little motivation to do anything. I wasn't supposed to have depression. It wasn't fair. I was a happy, outgoing person and now my life is usually spent inside my house and a lot is spent in my darkened bedroom. Depression is bad enough but I also suffer from migraine headaches 24/7 and am extremely light sensitive so I have room darkening drapes in my bedroom, towels along the bottom of the doors to keep even that slight light out. I even have post-its covering the lights on the television because they are too bright. Sunshine and light are supposed to be helpful when you suffer from depression and yet I have to keep the light out.

I know the stigma surrounding depression is better than it was fifty years ago and yet I feel as though it is still the silent illness no one wants to talk about much less admit to having. I grew up in a home with a mother that was secluded much of the time because of depression but we never knew that. Neither of my parents talked about it. I was 33 years old when my parents told me that my mother had suffered from a life-long battle with depression and that it was hereditary. That was it, nothing more. I didn't get to ask questions. They did their duty because it might run in families.

When I was first diagnosed with depression I knew I had to approach my depression openly. I wanted my children to know what was wrong with me. I didn't want them to wonder why I spent so many days in darkness. I also knew I needed to talk about depression and bring it out in the open.