depression

two years ago i was diagnoised with depression. i wasn't suprised when i finally figured it out. depression has a history with my family. it manifested itself by constant crying. i often tell people that i began to cry one day and didn't stop for three weeks. anything could trigger episodes of massive crying bouts. one day ou neighbor dropped off a crate of fresh ears of corn. two days later i went to put one in the microwave for lunch and couldn't find them. hubby had thrown the rest out because they had started to go bad. i reacted as though my best friend in the world had just died. it wasn't that the corn was gone and i couldn't have any; it was that there was one more thing that wasn't going right.

i was lucky. one of my colleagues was also a therapist. wheni told her that i thought i might be depressed she asked when i was coming in for a session. when i told her that money had become an issue (another big depression trigger) she stopped charging me, actually refused to take my money. and my doctor, without hesitation put me on zoloft. within days of beginning my meds i was a different person.

at first i was embarrassed by it, but as time went on i realized that it was just like any other illness. i wouldn't be embarrassed by being a diabetic would i? of course not. i don't go around broadcasting the fact that i have depression, but i have become pretty open about it. i've found that sometimes it helps to know that other people "get" what it feels like. i've needed that and other people have needed to know that i know.

after the family moved (back in december) i made the mistake of letting my prescription laspe. it wasn't intentional. i couldn't find the script and then i didn't have another doctor yet.

and then, in the middle of the summer, i felt some of the tell-tale signs: i felt weepy for no reason, easily annoyed, tired, had no ambition for anything. i put off going to see the new doctor until a friend of mine (who also has depression) made me call the doctor and make an appointment. she too, like my other doctor, wrote up a script right away. i also asked her for a sleeping pill. i wasn't sleeping (another sign) and i just wanted something to get me back on track.

i dropped the scripts off at the pharmacy and went to pick them up the next day only to discover that my insurance no longer covers zoloft (a much prescribed anti-depressant) and the co-pay on the sleeping pills was $48.00. i told the woman behind the counter that was enough to keep me up at night and make me depressed.

so... i found another way to get to sleep at night and the doctor prescribed another drug which was covered just as i got strep throat and had to go on anti-biotics. my doctor wants me to wait to start the anti-depressant until i'm done the anti-biotics... so i wait another six days to begin.

what really frustrates me is that my insurance co, which is one of the better ones, would do this to me. now, i was able to deal with the whole mess... though had this been two years ago i would have had a psychotic break right there at the pharmacy counter of the cvs.

but there are people out there who would have been absolutely crippled by something like this. as my friend, the boston pobble, would say and did say: agencies do this on purpose just to make people give up.

and that really is enough to keep me up at night and make me depressed.