Depressed - ME??

Well, here's a thing: did you know that you can be diagnosed with depression and NEVER FEEL SAD???

I had gone to the doctor last week because of some pain in my hands (they were achy all the time and sometimes going numb), and while I was there I asked about checking my kidney function (my dad has kidney disease and recently asked me to get myself checked out, since it is hereditary). In the process of asking about it, I started to cry, thinking about all the pain that Dad has been through.

Apparently, this sent up a red flag for the nurse practitioner who was seeing me, and she got to asking me questions about depression. I told her that, no, I wasn't depressed. Sure, I was tired all the time, and could barely think a coherent sentence from one end to the next, and got mad all the time, and cried at nothing at all, but what did that have to do with depression? After all, I have been under a bit of STRESS lately!! We are getting ready to move (just to another part of town), and I have a seven-week old baby, and my daughter has been having tantrums that you would not believe (and, no, I can't "just ignore them" - she literally becomes a danger to herself and to our house - not to mention to her older brother and me... She has yet to retaliate against the baby directly), and my Dad - who is supposed to live forever according to my inner child - is on dialysis, and and and.... Well, I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

I just chalked my high emotion-ability to stress. After all, I didn't feel sad, and that was the main qualifier for depression, right? WRONG!! I didn't have time to feel sad, but I was depressed. So I went on Lexapro, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (or SSRI), and have just been amazed at how different life seems. I don't "feel" any differently, per se. No miscellaneous appendages have sprouted on me or embarrassing twitches. But I can THINK again, and I haven't felt like crying since I started taking the meds. I still get angry at the silly things that my children do, but they don't send me into a rage.

So I guess this is a sort of public service announcement: depression is deceptive, and if you are under a lot of stress, you may also be depressed and not know it. I was certainly shocked to learn about mine, but the amazing effectiveness of the SSRI seems to bear out the nurse practitioner's suspicions. Who'd of thunk it? Have a happy day!