Depression

I just watched an interview on GMA regarding a person going thru cancer treatments, going thru remission, but then being depressed even in remission.  This brought back memories of myself feeling this way after I got the all clear for driving after six weeks of no driving due to brain surgery to remove an AVM.

One would think that a person would be too happy to be depressed after going thru a traumatic life event, no matter what the life event is/was.  That's the thing.  Once a person has gone thru the diagnosis, the treatment and procedure, the recovery, the full blunt of what you have gone thru finally hits you.  Even when everyone else has gone about their day, the reality hits.

This is what happened to me.  I was very busy with dealing with the diagnosis, what treatment to choose, the meal schedule for my family, how I would tell my kids, writing my will, more medical scans and appointments, getting thru the procedure, recovery, and post recovery appointments.  There was so much to do that I had no time to even think of what I was going thru.  I did have a great sense of humor thru/out all this tho, my saving grace for all things in life.

Then the all clear came so I could drive again.  Life went on as before for everyone so this is when it all hit me.  I JUST SURVIVED SEVEN HOURS OF BRAIN SURGERY!!  I could have lost my life or come out of surgery paralyzed or I could have lost some of my memory and I had three young kids and a husband!  And how was it that people could go back to the way things were when life was way too short and could be taken away from them in the blink of an eye?? And why didn't my husband see that life wasn't going to be the same again??  And how could he go back to life as it was??  And holy cow, why was I feeling like this??  And what was it that I was feeling anyway??  I really had no clue what it was I was feeling, so I tried to go about life like 'I was supposed to'....

But that wasn't working for me.  I wasn't sure what I was to do with my life.  I went about being a mom to my kids, but I felt like I was in a fog.  It took me awhile to see that I was actually in a depression.  No one tells you this, plus, the word depression is depressing in itself and depression has such a negative stigma attached to it and so people don't like to admit they are experiencing it.  And a person doesn't have to have a drastic or traumatic event in life to be experiencing depression.  Sometimes it just occurs and people shouldn't be ashamed of this.  We shouldn't have to hide in shame.  There's help out there.  But most aren't aware of how to identify being depressed.

I wish there wasn't a stigma attached to depression, it happens to the best of us.  It took quite a few months for me to work thru this.  My home life suffered, my kids and my husband.  Life on the outside looked ideal, but I wasn't happy, I was just going thru the motions.  Life hit rock bottom before it got better.

I am writing about this because I want others to realize that you don't have to be ashamed if you have, are, or going thru depression.  There is help out there and to please seek help.  I wish I had known that going thru such a life event would bring about depression even after given the all clear.  That's when it would have been nice to have been told by my doctors that this could happen, then maybe I could have been better prepared.  But yes, life experiences like this made me stronger, but for some, it can cost them everything.