Posted by Enigma on March 29, 2006, at 10:35:50
Long story short...well, it's kinda long..
I suffer from major depression, bad enough that I'm unable to work.
I started off bi-polar around 8 years ago, and each year the depression got worse, and the hypo-mania (the extent of my bi-polar condition) mostly faded away.
I've been on disability for the past year now, my 2nd time in 2 years, and will lose my job, for good, in about 4 weeks (policy the company has, if you aren't able to come back to work within a year).
As long as I have support from a doctor, I'll be able to get disability for another year, but I will lose my health insurance (next month), so I'll have to pay for it on my own, and that will be *tight* to make ends meet.
If I don't get better in a years time, what am I supposed to do? I will most definately lose my house, which will crush my wife and I, and my 3 kids. This is just about our dream house, town, and neighborhood. It's our 3rd house, that we went through hell to get it.
I have, from what I can see, almost no viable options, in order to maintain my current lifestyle, or even a much "lesser" one, let alone getting healthy! My wife only has a 2 year degree and can't make even 1/2 the money I can/was. I'm a software engineer, and we tend to make near or more that what some doctors and lawyers make. In other words, I'm not greedy, I just can't afford to change careers and keep my life the way it is. We'll have to downgrade severely, and that will make my depression even worse.
I've tried dozens upon dozens of meds. Mostly all useless. Severe side-effects made many of the drugs intolerable. I have horror stories from some of them. Almost none of them made a difference anyway, as far as my depression was concerned.
I even had 10 treatments of ECT, which was, overall, somewhat effective. Of course, it's no cure, and still has not made me well enough to go back to work.
I was off all meds for 2-3 months after ECT, which is rare, as I'm usually on something on a permanent basis. I went back to the doctor Monday and got yet another ssri, which I feel won't do a damn thing. I got Celexa this time. There's only a few drugs I haven't tried, so the list of what I can try now is very short. My *idiot* doctor hasn't even heard of the new maoi patch. Jeez. I've had many doctors over the years, all useless in my opinion. Tried therapy a number of times, and that was useless for me as well.
So, I'm in a fairly hopeless state, as is my wife. Seeing my mood bounce around daily, is killing her. Luckily the kids aren't affected "too" much, but they are missing out on a once "fun" dad.
I don't believe in acupuncture for depression (or much else really.. scientifically, it's basically pointless). I already tried the mineral overloading approach, and that did nothing. Now I'm looking into homeopathic treatments, but I have little faith there, and little money to pay out of pocket for their "medicines".
Can anyone help? Think of something I have though of? (legal anyway). I don't know what to do, and I feel like there's a timebomb ticking away, that being the time until my disability ends. I'm already in the process of filing for Social Security benefits, but they pay crap, even if I somehow manage to get approved.
If you read this far, that's for your time.
poster:Enigma
thread:626022
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060324/msgs/626022.html