Snap out of it! Or can you?

By DARCIE BORDEN
Featured Blogger

I began 2008 with bronchitis and didn't hesitate to go the doctor for antibiotics. I took Zithromax for 5 days and Robitussin DM. I didn't question the doctor's diagnosis, and I took my medicine, no questions asked. After all, our physical health is vulnerable and sometimes needs medical treatment.

But, what about our brain? Can our brain be just as vulnerable to a temporary illness and need medical treatment? When we think of mental illness, it conjures up images of straitjackets and schizophrenia. But, can't the brain have it's own version of a cold?

And why do we seem to think of the brain as separate from the body? It is part of the body, after all. But, mental health is discussed differently from physical health. And there still seems to be a stigma attached to anti-depressants and psychotropic drugs, even though one out of every 10 women and one out of every 17 men is taking these drugs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Furthermore, it is reported that 25 percent of us will experience a major depression at some point in our lives. Depression is in fact a disease.

I experienced my own "mental flu" recently, and now I'm taking Cymbalta, an anti-depressant. But, it took two gynecologists , three family physicians and nine months to convince me to take it. I had never taken drugs for mental health before, and I, like many people, thought I should just "snap out of it." When I finally hoisted up the white flag in surrender, I sort of felt like a failure. But, now in retrospect, now that I have educated myself on the imbalance of brain chemicals and how stress hormones can affect them, I realize how ridiculous it is to feel guilty about it. I don't feel like a failure for getting bronchitis.

This, however, was the first time I couldn't talk myself out of a funk, or pray myself out of it, or will myself out of it, or exercise myself out of it. Yes, eventually, maybe after a year or two, it would end on its own, but only after causing devastation in its wake to my health and possibly my relationships. This was bigger than me and I felt completely helpless. I've had the blues before, such as postpartum blues or small depressions when something upsetting happened or life inevitably changes. But, I always "got over it" in the past without the need for pharmaceutical intervention.

This was the first time I was having panic attacks and I actually understood for the first time the meaning of heartache. My heart actually hurt. In fact, I was sort of having a strange mixture of anxiety and depression. The anxiety was so bad that I couldn't eat and lost 20 pounds. This depression felt different, not like any I'd ever had before, and it felt connected to my hormones, which seemed to be causing my menstrual cycle to become erratic. My instincts told me there was a mind-body connection.

But, the first gynecologist I went to, a man, told me that our hormones don't cause us to go crazy. My first thought was, "Hey mister, I never said I was going crazy!" My second thought was, "Ok, he's fired."

So, for nine months I tried everything. I made lists of what I'm grateful for. They say that works. I wrote in a journal every day to get my feelings out. They say that works. It was so frustrating that my emotions just wouldn't match what I intellectually and rationally knew to be true, which is that I have two beautiful, healthy children, a wonderful husband, a wonderful life, and lots of things to look forward to.

But what was also true was that my life in one year was changing too fast all at once. There were too many things all stressing me out at the same time, and my reservoir for stress spilled over to the point that created a generalized anxiety disorder. It was the perfect storm.

I talked to friends, I tried a therapist, I got the whole slew of blood tests to rule out thyroid disease or any other physical malady that can be associated with depression or anxiety. Heck, I even tried praying the Rosary, and I'm not even Catholic. They say it works, and I was at the point where I would try anything. Anything except anti-depressants.

I was a fool. It should have been as easy as if you have a headache, you take Tylenol. This was just a different kind of headache. In fact, I thought my head was going haywire. I thought I was cracking up. Well, maybe I don't want to be quite so forthcoming. I wouldn't want anyone carting me off to the loony bin. But, what can we fess up to these days? Do other people feel the same way?

What finally convinced me to take Cymbalta was two things. First, during one of my crying spells, I saw a look in my husband's eyes that really bothered me. He looked scared. The only other time I'd seen that fearful look in his eyes was when I had a partially malignant breast tumor removed along with at least a quarter of my right breast.

The second thing was finding a really good doctor who listened. He then referred me to a female gynecologist who said that absolutely this could be related to my hormones changing, especially since I'm almost 40, and that if I'm under a lot of stress it could create all the symptoms I had described, especially since they seemed to happen most at hormonal times of the month.

But, what really made a difference to me was when my new doctor suggested that I take Cymbalta, and he looked into my eyes and said, "I can see you have some hesitation. What are you afraid of?" I've never had a doctor take the time to ask me that before. I told this doctor all my irrational and rational fears, and he didn't judge any of them. He simply said this: "If a doctor told me that I had to take one medication for the rest of my life but that I could pick which one, this is the one I'd choose." Sold!

When I asked this doctor "Why me? Why is this happening? It's never happened to me before." He explained that sometimes low serotonin can be just as hereditary as high cholesterol. Our brain chemistry is subject to the same kinds of hereditary influences as other parts of our body make-up. Someone else might not have the same reaction to my set of circumstances as me, because they don't have my body or my brain.

So, now it's three months later and my dark cloud is gone. I do, however, still feel the cloud trying to cast its shadow every once in a while, and that's how I know it's not time to go off the medication quite yet. The doctor prescribed it for six months. And let me say at this juncture that antidepressants DO NOT cure depression. And they don't make you skip down the street high on life either. But, they do help you manage better until the depression goes away. They help you to maintain a quality of life, enjoy relationships, and function at work and home until the depression goes away. They give you yourself back. Depressions can take anywhere from six months to 2 years to diminish and can vary from mild to severe.

My son Julian told me the other night that my brain is the size of my two fists put together. He showed me with his two little hands, and it made the brain seem less scary. In fact, the brain has no nerve endings, so you can't feel it being cut or burned. But something that seems so powerless somehow has the power to take over our lives. Before antidepressants were discovered, women were called "hysterical" or put in hospitals for severe depression. It was a misunderstood science. It's no wonder that people didn't want to admit to feeling depressed.

And that still carries over to today. No one comes right out and declares that they are on antidepressants, but when I started talking to my friends about the topic, one friend admitted, "Girl, I've been on 'em all." Another told me Lexapro (another antidepressant) saved her life. It seemed like the more I told people my story, the more I found out that almost everyone I knew had at some point in their lives been on an antidepressant or suffered through depression untreated. It's a shame that when we're going through it, we feel so alone and don't realize that it's just part of the human experience. After all, aren't we all just trying to struggle through life? No one has it perfect, and no one has all the answers. We're all in this boat together.

For me, everything always goes back to anthropology, because that is where I find answers. I read that the evolutionary reason we experience depression is to force us back to the cave when we are ill or under severe stress. I also read that when you are at the point of a crying spell, your stress hormones have reached the point of damaging your health. Stress is one of the biggest killers in this country. So, why would we need to go back to the cave? Well, we need to rest if we are ill, or we need to rest after being pursued by that big scary predator. In today's world, that predator could be a boss who demands too much of you.

My brother Jonathan once told me that in a time like this I need to "just stay home." It took me a while to realize what he meant. Give myself permission to just stay home. The world will go on without me for a day, or two. Go back to the cave. Get well.