Four years ago my life took on a new normal. Prior to this I always suffered with bouts of depression throughout my lifetime. But always lived a fairly normal, functional life. A trip to my family doctor and I would be ok again.
But this relapse/episode took on an whole new meaning of the word depression. I experienced a total shut down of my brain and physical body. After 28 years of having my own business, I could no longer work, I was totally disabled.
I was seen weekly by my psychiatrist who tried for months to find a medication or a cocktail of drugs that would even eleviate some of my symptoms. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and major anxiety disorder; for which there is no cure. It was confirmed that I was treatment resistant and nothing was working and I was only getting worse.
I was hospitalized for a period of time for assessment where they decided because of my high anxiety levels; I would be best treated from home. My doctors then decided to try ECT; Electrol Convulsive Therapy.this is where they would shock your brain with an electric current to induce a grandmal seizure, hoping to reboot my brain. After seven treatments I was only getting worse and therefore they decided to stop the ECT treatment. At that time I lost a lot of my memory, I recall little about those days.
We ran out of options and our world was crashing down around us to a point where we had to move to Bay Roberts. Amidst all this darkness and turmoil we were blessed with a baby girl, only to find out on her first birthday that she was diagnosed with cereabal palsy. The fear, uncertainty, unbelief that we felt was inexplainable. Here was a family with a little boy who we so desperately to shelter from all this chaos and turmoil; but we were falling apart.
In our human minds we could not understand or comprehend why God was allowing all this to happen. We were hanging by a thread. We questioned why? God where are you? We felt like we were left alone and God was nowhere to be found. But you see when you are in a storm of this magnitude your thoughts are distorted. For we knew deep down that God was there, we weren’t alone, because He said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”.
With all the change that had taken place in my life; it only exasperated my illness to a point where I hit rock bottom. Nothing left but flesh and bones, no will to live; I just wanted to die. And I prayed to God to just let me die.
But that was not God’s plan, he had a purpose. I remember one Sunday morning I got up and I knew that day I would die or things would change. I told Lisa to arrange a way for me to get to church. I was so weak and had to be basically carried. A chair was placed at the front of the church, at the altar, I had to get there. This was my last hope! And I did and from that time on I gradually saw glimmers of hope through all the darkness. I realized that God was my only option.
I still struggle to this day but I know He’s holding my hand. And we don’t walk alone. I place my life in His hands, I give Him Logan, Lauren and Lisa. I can’t do this alone, I put my trust in Him, that He knows what’s best. I take one day at a time and give Him the rest.
Today I’m an advocate for mental illness. It’s my goal to break down the walls of stigma that go along with this illness. And be a voice for those who suffer in silence. We have nothing to be ashamed of. I have a broken mind, no different then if I had diabetes, heart trouble, kidney failure, etc. Things go wrong with any organ in your body and your brain is no different. It’s just the way society looks at it, it’s stigmatized. If I could give you my illness for just one moment; you would look at mental illness in an whole new light. And the walls of stigma and ignorance would come down!
