Gordaen's Blog

This post is one in a series about depression. It uses humor and reflection to explain and relate what depression really is. For those who regularly read my blog, you’ve probably noticed that I generally don’t post much that is personal. I debated for a long time about whether I should write about this experience, and finally decided that it can probably help a lot more people than a PHP tutorial or yet another Bush joke. Hopefully some of you out there can benefit from this.

After a while, I was able to make an appointment with the VA and I started the process of bouncing back and forth among the various doctors, psychiatrists, and counselors. I went through the same diagnosis procedure as before with the usual questions. “Has anything tragic happened to you in the recent past? Have you lost a loved one? When you were growing up, did everyone else on the block get an SNES except you?” I’m sure he thought, “Gotcha!” when I admitted that my parents had divorced when I was in 8th (or so) grade. I had to tell him that my parents never once fought in front of me or my brothers. We did not see the divorce coming. It wasn’t traumatic; in fact, I actually have become extremely close to my dad as a sort of side-effect of it.

He tried to trace it to something in the military.

“Were you in the Middle East at all?”

“Yes”

“Did you get shot at or did any of your buddies get injured.”

“Nope”

“Did something exciting or dangerous take place?”

“One time rain started pouring down like crazy when I was on the night shift with one other guy. The power SDC‘s were in a foot of water after half-an-hour of rain. Breakers were tripping. Sparks were shooting out all over. We were running around in the dark with flashlights, starting backup generators and making every adjustment possible to try to keep our connections to the satellites. Both of us were shocked but it was just a little hand-numbing—nothing a swear word wouldn’t cure.”

“That sounds pretty intense. How did it make you feel?”

“It was great! I was excited and got a rush from it all.”

“Oh…”

My depression definitely wasn’t caused by any one thing. It didn’t have any specific trigger (at least, nothing obvious).

Eventually, I talked with an MD at the VA center in Seattle. We spoke about the history of my depression and the medication I had tried. He didn’t seem to like Lexapro either (scoring himself bonus points in my mind). He said it made patients want to sit around in their underwear and watch TV all day. I wondered how they got the motivation to put on underwear.

The medication he found most successful was Bupropion. After he told me more, I agreed to start on the lowest dosage (75mg twice a day, but for the first few days it is just 75mg once a day). An extended release version was available, but I couldn’t get it through the VA, so I went with the “regular” kind for the low (copay) price of $8 a month.

I was told that it would take a few days before I would notice a difference, but I started noticing a little bit of a change the first night. After a few days, I was starting to feel normal. I even remember the first time I was sad after starting the medication. It was actually a good feeling! Real emotions, a range of emotions… it was amazing! You can’t appreciate normal levels of sadness until you’ve come away from depression.

More to come in the next post…