Depression-My Story

What is Depression?

Depression is a serious medical illness; it's not something that you have made up in your head. It's more than just feeling "down in the dumps" or "blue" for a few days. It's feeling "down" and "low" and "hopeless" for weeks at a time.

It is not something you can just pull yourself out of! It is not something that you can just shake off. To read more about the signs and symptoms of depression go to this link: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/Depression.cfm#ptdep3

For many people one tiny thing can set off a huge depression attack. I have suffered from depression now for 8 years, I guess to be truthful I have dealt with Depression my whole life but just didn't realize it till the incident I am about to relate to you.

8 years ago my husband Brent was in the military, he had been having problems with his health for a little over a year and the doctors all said it was in his head and that they could find nothing wrong with him. Our oldest sons were only 1 and 3 at the time and we lived in Olympia Washington. I kept telling him to get a second opinion but being we had military insurance and at that time it wasn't as flexible as it is now, he didn't want to go get a second opinion. We lived in a nice apartment and I love our life, although I was Homesick a lot of times it was the life we chose and so I was happy till the incident I will tell you about.

I woke up one morning your typical morning, get up to pack Brent's lunch and wake him up for PT (physical training) it was 5:30 in the morning. He wasn't in bed which for him was very unusual but I thought he may have just needed to use the bathroom and I missed him getting out of bed. I walked into the kitchen to start making our morning Coffee, and realized that the TV was still on which it shouldn't have been. I then started looking for Brent I went into the bathroom and found him in a coma on our bathroom floor.

I couldn't get a response from him and I panicked. I got the boys up threw them in the car and then dragged my husband from our bathroom to our van to get him to the hospital as fast as I could. Now why didn't I just call the ambulance? To be honest I didn't think about that all I wanted to do was get him some help.

When we got to the hospital he was still in a coma, the doctors couldn't figure out why he was non responsive. They pulled me and my sons out of the room he was in and told me to find someone to watch the boys and get back to the hospital as fast as I could and to call his family as they didn't think he was going to make it.

I was thrown our perfect life, our safe life was in just a few short hours going to change. I can deal with some stress but the thought of losing my best friend was more than I could bare.

We didn't have a Cell Phone at that time so I ran with the kids in both my arms to the payphone to call the only friend I had at that time to tell her what was going on, she was getting ready to move in 2 days but she told me to bring my kids to her house and she would watch them.

I then drove the 20 minutes back to our house dropped the kids off at her house ran Home and called his parents. During that time I got a phone call from his captain that the doctor had called him to tell him to track me down as my husband was dying and they didn't think he was going to pull through. I screamed I cried I just didn't believe this was happening to us!

I got back in the car and smoked cigarettes to try to calm down, we had quit smoking a month before this, my friend had given me her cigarettes while I was at her house. I rushed into the emergency room and the doctor met me out in the hall way and was asking me all sorts of questions