I Thought I Had Fallen Into A Deep Depression. It Took Me Months To Figure Out My Actual Mystery Illness
I slept 15 hours a day and couldn't even make it through a game of Clue with my kids. Turned out all I needed was one simple pill. (Hint: It wasn't an anti-depressant!)
Hi sweeties!
To get right down to it, thank you, I guess, for telling me to go to therapy yesterday. It wasn't a blockbuster session, but I did get some wisdom out of it and took notes for you all as payback for encouraging me to do it. Here's one note from my extremely wise therapist*: The most essential piece is to practice unconditional kindness to self.
OK, I was writing it down awkwardly while I was holding the phone with the other hand and maybe I missed a word, but let's all just go with that general idea and enjoy today's interesting post from Jenn. I find her story fascinating and always want to find the pill that will cure whatever emotional issue I'm having, so that appeals to me also. Thanks Jenn!! Love you all!
-Jane
* The story of this therapist is that I was going through a super hard time and Courteney Cox (of Sassy T-Shirt model fame) brought me to her therapist, knowing I couldn't at that point even drive there or go in on my own. She sat through that first session with me, taking notes, and then helped me make a schedule with the therapist so I would keep going back, which I did and it turned around everything. I've said it before, but she is the best friend. The other funny side story is that this guy looks like Santa Claus and Court calls him Santa Claus when she's talking to me about him, so I had seen a picture at her house of Coco sitting on Santa's lap and literally thought that the therapist dressed up as Santa Claus at Christmas time. So at my next session, I complimented him on being Santa and told him I had seen the picture of him with Coco and would bring my own daughter to him now, too. Well, as usual, I was way too literal. You can be embarrassed for me if you like! I do it all the time!
By Jennifer Dines
A week before Christmas, on a video appointment with Jillian, my psychiatric nurse practitioner, I laid out the case for why I deserved an antidepressant.
“I passed out on my desk at lunch and when the bell rang, I had drool on my arm. DROOL! Can you imagine if the students came in? Or the principal? And I drive home at three-thirty in the afternoon with one eye open. I’m that tired!”
Jillian and I have met every couple of months for the past few years about my Bipolar II Manic Depressive Mood Disorder. She always asks me the same questions: “Do you want to hurt yourself? Have you thought about suicide? Are you drinking?”
She wants to know if I’m still taking “x” grams of Trazodone and “y” grams of Clonidine and “z” grams of Lamotrigine and Gabapentin? Five minutes after the appointment concludes, I receive a text telling me that my prescriptions have been sent to Sullivan’s Pharmacy in Roslindale.
Before signing in to this particular appointment, I hadn’t planned on asking for an antidepressant. I hadn’t even considered that I might be depressed. But Jillian’s first question, “How are you doing?” checked my reality, Jiminy quick.
“How are you doing?” No one had asked me that in a while. Probably because people knew the honest answer would be something tragic or complicated or, at best, a lie about “fine.” In October, my grandmother died. Right around the time my daughter punched out a pane of glass and landed in a mental hospital. One look at me, and you could tell something wasn’t quite right.
I had dark circles under my eyes, brittle hair, and when I looked in the mirror I saw a cloud over my eyes.
Maybe people did ask how I was, and I just don’t remember them doing it. For a while, I was simply not there.
Before delivering my passionate dissertation on my state of ennui to Jillian, I’d told her I didn’t feel like hurting myself or killing myself or drinking. I told her I didn’t have the energy to do or even feel many things at all. I’d contemplate grocery shopping or taking my kids to the movies, and, in the midst of contemplating, I’d pass out in bed.
DAMN, GURL, YOU’RE DEPRESSED! That’s what popped into my head as I relayed all the details to Jillian. And then I felt foolish, first for not realizing I was depressed when it was so blatantly true, and then for not having thought of the obvious solution:
“But you could just give me an antidepressant, right?”
Jillian winced for a moment and then took a deep breath.
“No. For patients with Bipolar II, we absolutely cannot prescribe SSRIs. It is very possible and highly likely that you will have a serious manic episode and…”
“I used to take Zoloft,” I pleaded. “I was FINE!”
I had never spoken to Jillian so defiantly. But my desperation reduced me to a backtalking tween. I had taken Zoloft for a couple of months in college, more than a decade before my bipolar diagnosis. (And I wasn’t fine. I stayed up for days at a time.)
“I absolutely cannot prescribe you an antidepressant. It’s extremely dangerous.”
I was incredulous. I had no idea I had asked for something so verboten. I mean, here I was, a bona fide Bipolar II head case taking a “Serious Chemical Cocktail by Jillian” every single day, and I couldn’t even score a god damn antidepressant. Everyone in the United States of America takes antidepressants! It’s a PROZAC NATION.
Jillian wrapped up the visit with a nonchalant, “You could always get a second opinion.”
What I said in response was: “I’ll see if I feel better over school vacation. Maybe I just need some more rest.”
But what I wanted to say was: “Is that a DARE? If that’s what you want, FINE. I WILL GET A SECOND FUCKING OPINION!” I dialed my primary care doctor’s office, but then tossed the phone down on my bed. The whole conversation had worn me out. I burrowed under the covers, shut my eyes, and forgot my feelings as I conked out.
Over Christmas vacation, I did feel better in the sense that what little energy I had went towards my family instead of work. But every day of vacation felt like sludging through wet cement.
A game of Clue or Monopoly, an hour of ice skating, picking up take-out …any and every activity wiped me out. I slept fifteen hours a day and still never felt rested.
On January 2nd, I rang Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates as soon as it opened and landed a same-day appointment. As I drove along the Jamaicaway to Kenmore Square, I felt downright dirty. Was a second opinion a gateway to doctor shopping? I had been sober from alcohol for almost three years. Was asking for drugs I’d been warned against sitting me right back in the lap of addiction?
But then I looked out at the lapping gray waves of the pond and the barren silhouettes of tree trunks and snapped out of it. I didn’t care anymore. I would rather fly high like Icarus than lead the life of a corpse.
The physician’s assistant I saw had all the vibrancy I lacked. Cinnamon freckles constellated her opaline skin, and her eyes twinkled like Christmas lights.
“Hi Jennifer. I’m Marjane. Thank you SO much for coming to see me today. What brings you in?” she chirped. Next to her, I looked and felt even more like a decrepit Nosferatu. Maybe I could just sink my fangs into her neck and draw out some of that life force?
I had meant to seem completely in control, a normal woman in need of a little balm for a touch of ongoing sadness. But I spilled my guts, repeating everything I’d told Jillian and then repeating what Jillian warned about antidepressants being dangerous.
“Can you believe her? The holidays were a blur, and now it’s almost time to go back to work. I just want to feel better,” I whined, concluding my tirade.
Marjane had maintained a Virgin Mary-esque Mona Lisa smile the entire time I talked, and now she swiveled to face the computer screen. Click. Click. Click.
“Hmmm,” she said, taking in my chart as if it were a sumptuous meal in a cozy bistro, ”Hmmmm.”
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