Posted by AuntieMel on May 6, 2004, at 12:42:20
In reply to And it gets worse again, posted by Racer on May 5, 2004, at 18:14:23
Wow, this hurts to read.
It's like a part of my family is in pain.
History:
I've been fighting depression forever. A mild - if anything is mild - form at first, starting probably in elementary school. As the disease tends to do, I just chalked it up to being faulty - I wasn't capable of adjusting to others.
The last several years it got worse. And worse. And much worse. Finally went to a pdoc - after a trip to the er. Put on paxil. There were a couple of days of placebo affect, but the only real effect it had on me was the weight gain.
After the first of '04 I started going downhill.
Getting up and going to work was all I could manage. Forget doing anything while there. A true wonder I wasn't fired. Not that I would have cared. Doc switched to effexor. No change.
Class of 2K connection:
The only thing I could manage at work was a bit
of net cruising. It started with google searches on paxil, then on effexor. I stumbled on some of the posts onbabble. Didn't pay much attention at first, because it wasn't an official medical site
after all.But then I found the home page, and the archives. What could it hurt reading a few? Not like I was working or anything. By then I was so out of it I couldn't remember what I did an hour ago, or would be talking and forget what I was saying. Things like that.
So, being a good scientist I started with the archives and worked forward. From them I got the concept that I should be proactive and do my own research (seems pretty obvious now) and learned so much about how the brain works. All of it lead to other outside research. Then back to babble to continue on for the next lesson.
Eventually I determined that part of my problem was a dopamine shortage. Took that info to the pdoc and - surprise! - he listened. Augmented the
effexor with wellbutrin and *The Fog* finally started to lift. We're not all the way there yet, but it's a definate improvement.Meanwhile I got to "know" my new family. It felt
to me that I was reading present news. So I laughed at bob's 'Joke em', cried about sar, fretted over vesper, suffered through the med trials and came to love you all.Sorry Racer - I know this is the opposite of what you are experiencing right now. And I don't even have a clue how to help unless you want me to come there and camp on the clinic's doorstep 'till you get an answer. I just wanted to tell you (and the rest of the class) that you have made a difference and thanks to all of you I am alive now.
mel
poster:AuntieMel
thread:343998
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20040430/msgs/343998.html