Posted by Pfinstegg on March 16, 2003, at 16:30:54
In reply to HELP THIs is time of year I try suicide , posted by shar on March 15, 2003, at 23:48:05
You sound so much like me- also with a good marriage, successful work in a medicine-related field, one 26 year old son doing well, but a 10-year history of depression with terribly low self-esteem and suicidal thoughts. Mine was not seasonal, however. I have a couple of thoughts- things which have helped me this past year. The first thing was adding Cytomel to my long-standing synthroid supplementation. I asked an endocrinologist to try this after I read the 1999 NEJM article about how helpful it can be in depression. We aimed for, and got, a TSH of close to 0.5; I do watch bone density but so far am doing fine with that. I tried to discontinue HRT last summer after the new information came out, but found that caused a paralyzing degree of depression. I have a wonderful gynecologist, and we are working together to see what the lowest possible dosage can be. He uses Ogen, a plant-based form of estrogen, and I am currently doing fine on about one-third of the regular dose daily.(plus a normal dose of progesterone)
I do pay attention to vitamins and minerals, and take a lot of all of them, the B's especially. I also added fish oil- enough to make 1000 units of EPH daily. Because the depresssion was still pretty severe despite all of these measures, I underwent a three-week course of TMS in January. It was an easy treatment to undergo, with no side effects such as short-term memory loss, and resulted in a complete remission- the first for me in ten years.
I didn't mention medications, but I tried a lot of them; they would usually help quite a lot initially, but none had any staying power.
I hope something in my post will be helpful- and do wish you the very best.
Pfinstegg
poster:Pfinstegg
thread:209595
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030316/msgs/209746.html