Depression

There is much written on depression these days. Millions of Americans are on some sort of anti-depressant...rightfully or not. Depression in others is easier to determine than in oneself. After all, how do you separate what you've known all your life to be normal when in fact it isn't?

Schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder are more obvious in people, but moderate to severe on-going depression is hard to discern. Often we just think someone is having a bad time of it or are in "a mood" not realizing that, in fact, it could be a clinical problem. In ourselves we just tend to think being "down" is normal when we perceive that life isn't going the way we want.

This is what happened to me. First, it took me to move away from everything in order to see differences. Then it took marital problems to make me realize I had a problem. Another realization is that I suffered, unbeknownst until now, from anxiety instilled in me by the way our father treated us.

Long story short, I got myself on Cymbalta and that has had a huge affect on my life. Anxiety: gone. The ups and downs of good/bad feelings: gone. I feel more even keeled and overall good about myself. I'm not one for regrets but sometimes I can't help wondering if my past would have turned out different if I'd diagnosed this issue many years ago.

Number one reason for no regrets: my family. I couldn't possibly look at my wife and kids and regret anything because it's always possible I wouldn't have them. And in the end, water under the bridge is water out to sea. Only the here/now matters and the decisions I make.

But, of course, this isn't the biggest problem. No, that belongs to seeing one of my kids suffer a similar issue. Both my wife and I suffer from some form of depression and are now on medication. We both have family histories that include bi-polar and schizophrenia, so should we really expect our children to go unscathed?

My son was born 5 weeks early and one of his lungs collapsed. Until now I thought the worst thing in my life was walking into the NICU and seeing a tube sticking out the side of his chest knowing they cut into him and shoved the tube with no anesthetic. That was hard to swallow. But seeing him suffer now is worse.

At first we just thought he had a bad attitude or our parenting was inadequate. Once we decided to do something about it, that made all the difference because you never want your kids to suffer the same things you did. So, we got him on medication, after making sure we did all due diligence to ensure that was necessary...we didn't just walk in and have him medicated. No one wants to medicate their kids, so we chose a very well respected and conservative child psychologist (to the tune of paying cash as he isn't on the insurance plan--and it ain't cheap, let me tell you).

For six months things were greatly improved, but then seemed to slide back. After meeting with the doc we upped his dosage and that had a temporary improved effect, which quickly turned negative. So, we bumped him back down and are currently waiting to meet with the doc again. Hopefully, this may simply amount to changing the type of medication as it hurts to watch your child knowing something just isn't right and knowing he's not happy.