Someone Saved My Life Today (And Doesn't Know It) Original Post on Jan. 21, 2010

"We all go a little bit crazy sometimes."

- Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in "Psycho" (1960)

When I read a news story about someone going postal and committing some horrible act of violence against others and/or himself, I very seldom react the same way I used to.

"That guy's nuts!" I used to think. "What a shame there's so much evil in the world."

Nowadays, having personally lived with the physical symptoms of the illness clinical depression, I'm more inclined to respond differently:

"That guy's nuts! I wonder if he went off his meds because he can't afford them anymore?"

As I have stated in previous blogs, I live with clinical depression. A common misconception about the disease is that it is a mental illness. It is a physical illness, caused by biochemical malfunctions. In my case, the malfunction is of the natural body chemical, serotonin, which controls the body's emotional response system, sometimes referred to as the "fight or flight" reactor.

I was first diagnosed in 1994 and for most of the time since, I have taken daily medications --- Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, to name a few --- which control the emotional responses caused by the disease. The responses, left unmedicated, cause the clinically depressed person to overreact to emotional stimuli. Something scary can cause unnatural overreactive panic. Something annoying can cause angry outbursts. Something funny can cause uncontrolled laughter. And something sad causes tears unceasing, as can acts of kindness.

"How will I know if the medication is working?" I asked my doctor when he originally wrote out my first prescription.

"You'll feel ... normal," he said.

I had been feeling emotionally out of control for so long that I couldn't remember what "normal" felt like. But he was right --- the meds did make me respond normally to the stimuli I described. I could handle sudden, unexpected problems without panic. I could respond calmly to annoyances. I smiled and chuckled instead of guffawing at humorous situations. And I no longer cried, except occasionally at funerals. Normal.

I wonder sometimes, though, if having a clinically depressed person also is designed to make the people who take the medication SEEM normal to others. Inside, even with medication, there is turmoil and a feeling of being somewhat muzzled --- perhaps for one's own good --- but muzzled, just the same.

When I was diagnosed, I made a decision to be upfront about my illness and not be ashamed of it. It's just something that happens to people, I figured. Everybody's got something or will come down with something eventually. In being open about it, I discovered that about half the people I know are taking some kind of medication for depression. And I decided that what I had wasn't so bad.

As long as I stay medicated.

I have a friend, an older lesbian whom I think of as Poor Crazy Elizabeth. Elizabeth suffers from assorted bipolar disorders, for which she is heavily medicated, and also has clinical depression. When she's on her meds, she is very productive, albeit somewhat eccentric in ways that probably have nothing to do with her illnesses. But she does have a good sense of humor about herself.

I encountered her one morning at her home and she was in a noticeably foul mood. I asked her what was wrong and she replied, "Oh, an annoying call from one of my children. I'm not in a good mood. But give me five minutes and I will be." She turned around, went upstairs and sure enough, in five minutes, she came down cheerful and humming a show tune.

"I told you I'd be better," she said. "Sometimes you just have to wait for your internal weather machine to kick in."

I am currently not on my meds for clinical depression, because of my current uninsured economic situation which forces me to make choices between meds, food, gasoline and utility bills. Through nearly 20 years of dealing with the disease, I have developed some coping mechanisms that so far, about 90 percent of the time, work. It mostly has to do with taking a little time to recognize a potential stressor and think about how one is going to handle it.

It's not an easy way of dealing with the disease, but it can be done with practice and a lot of determined effort. I don't recommend it as a permanent way of dealing with the disease and spend much of each day looking for financial solutions to my situation that will eventually allow me to afford at least a co-pay for prescriptions.

Sometimes, the stressors win, sometimes they lose. Today, they won for a while.

For the past few days, a computer virus and/or worm (I honestly don't know the difference; they're both evil and the people who create them deserve a death penalty) has been affecting my computer. I've run antivirus software but it obviously was not taking care of the problem, which was embedded somewhere in my computer that I couldn't locate.

I woke up early this morning and attempted to turn my computer on. I could not get past the log in. The virus/worm had won.

My reaction to this was panic. With all the other issues I've been dealing with in my life lately, this was the last straw. I called a local computer repair toll-free number and was told that the minimum cost, for at least a house call, would be $200. I thanked him and ended the call.

I'm embarrassed now about the emotional turmoil this sent me into. The Serenity Prayer and The Lord's Prayer were recited. I screamed and punched things. I declared, "I've had enough." And I thought seriously about Ways to End It.

I tried sleeping for a while. I tried watching "The View," which I usually enjoy, but today the sound of five women all talking loudly at the same time about men who don't put the toilet seat down just made me want to hang myself, swallow anything lethal I could find, slash my wrists. I think it would make me react that way even if I was on my meds.

I started pacing up and down my apartment and then finally decided I needed to talk to someone. I didn't want to call any of my kids and upset them, nor did I feel there were any friends I could talk to. So I called the 24-hour emergency hotline of one of the local mental health service centers.

I ended up speaking to an older-sounding gentleman named George, who gave me some of the tough love I normally am able to dish out to my kids. He was good; he said all the right things, about making lists of positive reasons to keep going, of thinking about any consequences negative actions on my part would have on others, of going to a hospital and getting help for myself.

My favorite line of his was, "Sure, you'll end up running up bills you can't afford, but you'd do the same if it was your car broke down, right?"

The problem was, I knew what he was doing and because of that, I just wanted to resist. He was playing me to keep me alive and I wasn't sure I wanted to be alive anymore.

In the middle of the call, my cell phone notified me I had an incoming message. I checked and found it was from my son-in-law, Jonathan-Allen, age 20.

George was running out of steam, I could tell. I was being too tough a nut to crack. I finally pointed out to him that he was starting to repeat himself and asked him if I was keeping him from other duties. He admitted there were a couple of other emergency calls he needed to deal with. I ended the call politely, saying I would think about what he had to say. I know I didn't sound very convincing.

I then looked at the message from Jonathan-Allen:

"Dad, I was just thinking about you for some reason. How's it going? Are you OK?"

And I broke down and cried again. Real hard.

I should explain that Jonathan-Allen is a new addition to my family. He and my son, Mike, age 29, have been living together as partners for only a few months. Jonathan-Allen is in way over his head, and knows it. First time living away from the home he grew up in. First time in a new city, a big one. Brand-new job at a bank. Brand-new husband, who, while very much in love with Jonathan-Allen, is older and full of his own life's baggage.

On top of having to deal with all these Big Changes, Jonathan-Allen has one more piece of bad stuff in his psyche. Just five years before, when he was 15, he found his own father, dying of a heart attack. It was a traumatic event for him, as you might expect.

Jonathan-Allen and I have become very close in a short time. He telephones or texts me several times a week, sharing events of his day and asking advice about how he might be more supportive of Mike. He calls me "Dad". I call him "Pappy," because he's such an old soul.

And for some reason, in the midst of a dark crisis of my own, this boy felt he needed to send a text message and check on me. A tremor in the force, Luke Skywalker? An answer to a prayer? Or just a coincidence?

Whatever it was, it acted like cold water upon my soul. I realized that this young man apparently needs me in his life --- to take the place of the father he lost when he was so young. And I realized that today was not the day to be entertaining the kind of dark thoughts I was having.

I went back to my home office and rummaged through some CDs that contained various applications for the computer. I found the one labeled "Windows XP Home Edition" and slid it into the hard drive.

Within 45 minutes, I was back in business on the computer. I was no longer cut off from communication with the outside world. Dawn was breaking in my dark night.

I texted Jonathan-Allen back: "I had a bad time with the computer today. Kind of freaked me out, but I think I've fixed the problem. Thanks for thinking of me."

He called me later and I elaborated on the problem, without going into the really dark stuff or the conversation with George.

And I called the hotline back. I left a message with the receptionist:

"Tell George I found a CD that fixed my computer problem. Everything is up and running again. Crisis averted. He'll know what I mean."