::Serendipity::

The Sun is Shining! ________________________________________________________________

A big symptom of depression for me is that I don't have interest in the things I used to love. Like blogging. So many things I used to enjoy feel pointless. I think that is slowly getting better... Maybe.

My general practitioner sent me to a shrink. She was changing my medication and wanted to see me back to see how it was going, but said she wanted to refer me and thought I needed counseling. I was going to blow it off. Because, ew! Scary.

Then I had my pregnancy scare. I missed my last period. I had major symptoms. So my doc requested a blood test ASAP. I called every day, and her nurse didn't return my calls. So over the weekend, Michael and I were really getting used to the idea of one more baby in our future. Finally, she called, five days later and said it was negative. I was disappointed, couldn't reach Michael until late that night, but I was okay. When the nurse was trying to reach me to schedule an appointment with the shrink, she called me a couple times a day. That irked me.

The shrink's office called and said they had cancellation, so I went ahead and took it before I could talk myself out of it. I was nervous as hell all day.

It wasn't so bad. He determined I've had at least 4 bouts of major depression in my lifetime and we're switching me over to a different class of medication. He thinks with my family history, medication is really the way to go, but we'll keep re-evaluating because I really don't want to be married to meds for the rest of my life.

The hard part was, when he did a few tests to see how my memory and concentration was. My memory was fine, but I freaked out during the concentration evaluation. He gave me several chances, but when I burst into tears, that was enough. I was so embarrassed. And scared. He reassured me that it was just another symptom of depression and that one in five women suffer from it in their lifetime. We didn't talk about therapy. My life situation is good. I'm happy. I like who I am. I like everything about my life. This isn't a situational thing I need to learn to deal with better.

I'm still embarrassed that I saw a shrink. So what do I do? Confess it to the world wide web! Somehow, that makes it seem less of a big deal... Who am I kidding? It's not like I'm going to tell everyone I know. Or anyone I know for that matter.

But literally, the sun is shining. The days are getting longer. The kids are outside playing more. I still don't feel like going "out" much, but I feel good about getting a handle on it before I backslide too far.

posted by Terri at 2/27/2009 12:52:00 PM >5 comments

5 Comments:

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