Diagnosis Time….
We went to see our GP and after answering some questions and filling out a form he diagnosed me with post natal depression. He started me on a mild Anti Depressant and said we would give it a go for a month and see how things were going.
They did nothing really and I was just getting worse and worse to the point I wouldn’t get out of bed and I would just cry and cry and cry and all I wanted was for it to be all over.
So after 2.5 weeks we went back to the Dr and he decided to refer me to maternal mental health and told me to stop taking the AD’s I was on because I needed to be off them for two weeks before I could start any new ones, and he thought that would probably tie in with when I would see MMH (he was right on the money)
I was really scared about going to see the psychiatrist, I thought he would lock me up and throw away the key or take the children away from me. I built up this picture of a really scary looking man who had a dark and scary office and he would tut tut at me. I couldn’t have been more wrong than if I had tried.
The psychiatrist was wonderful, he sat there and explained PND with me and about what was going on in my mind and body and how they react to depression and anxiety and explained what this first round of medication was going to be, how it might make me feel and he also introduced me to my Case Manager – boy she was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise very grey sky.
So I tried this first lot of medication, and there were tiny dots of time that were a little brighter, so over a couple of months he fiddled with the medication till it was all maxed out. It was at this point we talked about ECT treatment. Given that I was still suicidal and didn’t leave the house and was just so stuck in the bottom of my black pit, Matt and I decided it was worth a shot. So twice a week for 6 weeks I was taken up to Christchurch to have ECT treatment. I had the final two here in Gisborne. So all up I had 14 sessions of ECT. It has effected my short term memory but it did help. Yes it was scary, but the staff were great and you were fully anaesthetised before they treated you.
By the time I came to Gisborne in late November I was still in a pretty dark place and my anxiety was pretty extreme, so my new psychiatrist put me on a stronger dose of anti anxiety medication. By early December he had built it up to the max dose.
I still have quite severe anxiety, and I have days still that I wish it could all be over, as I am sure I am a burden to my darling husband and wonderful children. At the moment I feel like I have dropped right back down to the bottom of my black pit and I can’t see any way out of it.
I hate that I feel so incapable and useless and out of control, but this blackness is so overpowering. Everyday I wake up and pray that today will be a less bleak day. I have become very good at masking how I really feel, because it seems that PND is not understood and is associated with being “feeble minded” and not sound to parent.
It seems to me that depression itself gets a lot of advertising and information pamphlets etc but PND is very much the poor cousin and it really isn’t understood all that well, maybe this blog will enlighten people a bit more if I am lucky.