Unrest Documentary by Jennifer Brea

Jennifer Brea made a documentary about her illness, but it isn't just her illness. It's an illness millions of us have. The documentary is "Unrest," and it's now streaming on PBS and Netflix. "Unrest" is about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. 

My husband and I were able to watch it last night since Netflix now has it. PBS aired it, but not locally, so we had to wait for Netflix. If you don't have access to either streaming service, you can pay to rent it on Amazon and other streaming sites.

"Unrest" is an expansion of her powerful Ted Talk:




Many of you might prefer her Ted Talk, which has essentially the same information as in the movie, simply because the movie is much more difficult to watch. "Unrest" makes you watch people suffering with CFS/ME up close and personal. It reveals the reality of what being bedridden from fatigue is really like. It's not easy to watch, even as someone who has been bedridden from CFS/ME. I know the illness from the inside, having it myself, but watching it from the outside was still difficult for me. Her Ted Talk has the science and the facts in a more condensed format too, for those who want to learn, but don't want to commit to watching the full documentary.

As someone with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and knows other people with it, I would like to strongly encourage you all to get everyone you know to watch "Unrest." What I hope the movie accomplishes:

1. Breaks down stereotypes about the illness. We are not lazy, we are not just tired, we are not just being selfish. With this illness, willpower doesn't work. We can't just "buck up" and push through. It doesn't work. "Tired" is normal. Chronic fatigue is not. They are not the same thing.

2. Encourages the funding of research on CFS/ME. As she explains, CFS/ ME receives the least funding of all major debilitating illnesses, and therefore very little progress is being made. As it is now, most doctors I've talked to have told me I just need to exercise more or go see a psychologist. The problem is that research that has been done shows that exercise can be detrimental to CFS patients, making their condition much worse. I know this is true from personal experience. And the illness is not a psychiatric one - that's what doctors say when they don't know how to treat you. I would so much rather hear, "I don't know."

3. Helps family members and friends to come to an understanding of what their CFS loved one is going through. It's so difficult to explain ourselves, mostly because people don't listen with the intent of understanding. Most people in my life try to tell me what to do to get better, but very few have asked me about my point of view with the illness. I hope this movie breaks assumptions and encourages real dialog between the patients and friends and family. As it is, it takes so much energy to communicate, and so much recovery time from speaking. It's extremely discouraging to have our energy wasted on words that no one truly listens to.

Please watch it. Help us to get help. Start the conversation that will open up people's minds to the reality of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.


I would like to share a few personal thoughts:

"Unrest" serves as a great introduction to CFS/ME. I really appreciate the overview it gives. But that's just it: it's an overview of people who are bedridden from CFS. There is so much more to learn about it.

Many of us with CFS, like myself, are not bedridden. At least, I'm not anymore - not most of the time. Some days I am bedridden, but I'm mostly chair-bound these days. Not an office chair, a comfy reclining home chair. Yes, sitting up in a chair is a big improvement over laying down in bed. Back in 2013 I was bedridden for months, and then stuck in bed more than 50% of the time over a year and a half. If I didn't get lucky with finding my doctor I may still be bedridden. I got very lucky with finding a doctor who could help me... but he's not local. I fly half way across the country to see him, because all the local specialists I went to told me I was a mental patient and a hypochondriac. One of them did diagnose me with chronic fatigue syndrome after 6 months of going back to her complaining about the extreme fatigue. She also did the Tender Point Test and diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. She also diagnosed me with anxiety and depression after I came back to her to say that the Cymbalta she put me on was amplifying my pain tenfold and made me suicidal. Without running tests, she sent me to a psychologist. She didn't even send me to the ER after saying I was suicidal.  Most CFS patients are not lucky like me. They haven't found a doctor who can help them. They're stuck with doctors like I first went to, doctors that don't know what they're doing. Doctors with no training in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

My doctor is a Naturopathic Doctor, and a rather unique one (HumanNatureNaturalHealth.com) - I've learned that many people automatically dismiss anything a Naturopathic doctor has to say, so I'm careful who I reveal this to now. Someone even told me I'm hurting myself just because I'm seeing an ND and not MDs... as if I didn't already get worse under the care of MDs. But the fact of the matter is, no matter what your opinion on naturopathic doctors is, he's the only doctor who's made progress with me. When conventional medicine fails, I hope you can understand why we seek out the unconventional for help. Please don't dismiss what works. I'm not dismissing MDs either - they all have their specialties and play important roles in health care. They've helped me with other conditions, and I am very grateful for some MDs I've seen in my life. I'm about to go to another MD, a cardiologist. But when it comes to CFS, I couldn't find help from MDs.

Those of us who can work part-time were not featured in this film. I respect that. I understand why she didn't share our part of the story. "Unrest" needed to be convincing by showing the worst of the illness, and I was at that "worst" point for a while myself. I use the word "worst" lightly here, because I don't compare people's suffering. Suffering is suffering, no matter the level of it.

But I also think it's very important that people understand how hard we CFS patients are trying to keep living our lives. I work 12-15 hours a week. Some weeks that's too much for me. Other weeks, as long as I supplement correctly, I can handle a few more hours. Because I'm able to work part time, I find myself in this grey area of illness. Social Security Disability isn't taking me seriously, even though I can't work enough to pay my bills. Many of my friends and professional connections don't take me seriously, and I'm thankful for those who do take me seriously. They see me at my best: when I'm geared up for work, having saved my energy to spend during those hours. They don't see me when I'm back at home laying on the couch struggling to get up to go to the bathroom. They don't see me when I have to crawl up the stairs because I don't have the strength to walk up them. They don't see me when I'm stuck in bed until noon because my body won't wake up enough for me to get up, even though my eyes are open. I call in sick when I'm that weak, and sometimes I get in trouble for calling in sick - how can I be useful and reliable to the company when I call in sick? I have to carefully reserve calling in sick only on days when I'm doing badly enough that I can't drive. If I can drive, I can work, even if it's taking all my strength just to stand up. I hate this, because I believe in being an effective employee - why accept money for doing a poor job? I want to be able to always do my best at work. If I can't drive, then I'm sick enough to call in. I hide the rest of my reality from them, not entirely by choice, but more due to the nature of my illness. I also know how to supplement in order to boost my adrenaline enough to be able to keep working if I don't have the energy to make it, and my co-workers see this, so they know I have the ability to keep going sometimes... but when I do this, I pay very hard for it later. I need a lot of recovery time, and that recovery time can be painful to endure. It can mean I can't come back to work the next day. I'm typically scheduled for 4 hour shifts every other day, sometimes with 2 days between shifts. This works really well for me. Other people with CFS are not lucky enough to find an employer willing to schedule them like this... I doubt I could find another job in this town that would work with me this well. I can't express just how grateful I am for my job, and that's why I haven't quit, even when I've felt to sick to keep working.

And I know people with CFS/ME who manage to work full time, but they don't perform very well at their jobs. They're giving all they have just to be able to afford their home and food, but they make lots of mistakes at work and really struggle to maintain a professional image. Once they get home they can't clean, cook, or take care of personal business. They're drained. Their stories were not told either. I would love to see a follow up documentary to cover the rest of us who are not 100% bedridden.

Thank you for reading. Please share this along with telling people to watch "Unrest." Let's be heard. Let's get funding for medical research on CFS/ME. Let's educate doctors. Let's educate our employers, friends, and family. Let's connect with each other and bring more meaning and value to our sick lives.

If you would like to help take action, please sign the petition to get research funded:
https://www.unrest.film/nih-petition

23andMe.com Testing and Gene Interpretation Services

I really wanted to take time to think through my gene testing results before I shared my experience here. The reason for this was because there was too much to process: the results, the meaning of the results, who can give me the meaning of the results, how to understand the meaning of the results, knowing what to do with an understanding of the results... this is very complicated. For now, anyway. Gene testing is so new that even the best of the best scientists in the field of epigenics don't know enough about what gene results mean. That is not to say that there are not some very valuable things we can learn from the results. What I've learned has been so helpful that it's been worth the cost of the testing.

What I quickly found out is that gene testing is not like standard lab tests. The results don't automatically tell us anything. There's no range to compare your reading to. What I found is that it's best for telling us which lab tests to get. The results are basically a map of your health, and navigating the map can show us what parts of my body's process may not be working correctly, thus pointing us in the direction of specific lab tests to confirm how well that part of the body's process is working. Confusing? Yes, at first.

When I first got my results from 23andMe.com, I expected the experience to come down to either "you have a MTHFR mutation" or "you don't have a MTHFR mutation." I did learn which one is the case, but that's hardly scratching the surface of what I can learn from my results. And that's just the problem. I want to learn as much as possible from my results, but I'm not equipped to study the results.

The problem with the results is that it's information overload. I was essentially handed a textbook about me, but I can't read it. 23andme.com cannot offer interpretation services, they can only give me the "raw data." They now offer certain health reports (what eye color do you have, how well you metabolize caffeine, etc) but they're not that helpful (I will say more about this at the end of the post). So I uploaded my results into a free basic interpretation program on GeneticGenie.Org (they ask for a suggested donation.) This is what Genetic Genie told me (click to enlarge it):



You automatically want to think that red means "bad," yellow means "look into this," and green means "all good." That's not the case. Genes are broken down into SNPs, and each SNP has two parts, one part from each parent. Red simply means that both of my parents gave me a mutated form of this SNP, so both sides are mutated (homozygous.) Yellow means that one parent gave me a mutated part and the other parent gave me a normal part (heterozygous.) Green means that both parents gave me normal parts. It's possible for a gene to have some mutated SNPs and normal SNPs. All of this is beyond me - I'm not a biologist. I just need to know the terms in order to do the research. You might be thinking "red means both parts are mutated, therefore that's bad, right?" Maybe. Just because an SNP is mutated does not mean it's causing problems in the body. Red means it has the highest chance of causing problems, yellow means a moderate chance of causing problems, and green means lowest chance of causing problems.

Basically, red markers tell me to look into what the normal function of the gene is to find out what the gene regulates in the body, and then order lab tests of what the gene regulates. Abnormal tests will tell me if the mutations are causing problems or not. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but this is the basic take-a-way.

So, my GeneticGenie.Org results tell me I have no reason to worry about MTHFR, because my SNPs are not mutated. But I couldn't help being worried about the homozygous SNPs, and wanting to understand what those SNPs do launched me into researching beyond MTHFR. GeneticGenie's results were not enough for me. The site only interprets these core genes, and there are thousands more. What I didn't understand in the beginning was that the vast majority of gene results will not matter. It wasn't until I read this interview with Dr. Ben Lynch (the MTHFR expert) that I understood that only a few gene mutations are worth worrying about.

Even though Dr. Lynch explains that most gene mutations don't matter because only the core genes cause major health issues, I still found it very worth while to dig deeper by uploading my raw data into Livewello.com. The basic service costs $20, but that's cheap for what you get. After that, you can pay a monthly subscription to get additional reports (new reports come out each month) about your health based on your results. Livewello interprets all the SNPs that 23andme.com tests, which is overwhelming. Looking through my results lead me down rabbit trail after rabbit trail, stressed me out, and exhausted me. If you choose to get the testing done, I highly recommend livewello, but I DO NOT recommend stressing over the results. Don't get overwhelmed. Take it in slowly, and then let most of it go. Seeing the livewello results might make you feel like you're dying. You'll scroll through a sea of red and yellow, ignoring the green, and it will worry you. STOP. If livewello's results are scaring you, you're using the tool wrong. Remember: it only shows you a map of your body, where red markers indicate that there could potentially be a problem, but it's not guarantee of a problem.

The best part about livewello is that you can click on an SNP or Gene and it will bring you to a page with all the current scientific data about it. It will link you to scientific studies and explain possible health conditions associated with the SNP or gene. It also has a community forum, where people can discuss their experience with each individual gene or SNP. Again, access to this information can be scary and overwhelming, but you're not dying.

You're not dying. The results simply tell you how your body works. It's a tool to help you understand how to operate your unique body with its specific set of conditions. There's no prognosis associated with a homozygous gene!Okay, now that we're absolutely clear on that point (because, again, you can go down rabbit trail after rabbit trail from fear and worry,) I'll show you sections of my livewello results. I can't show you all the results because there are too many!


This is a section of Livewello's report:



This is another section of their main report:

The greatest part and greatest curse of Livewello, in my opinion, is that anyone is able to create a specific report. I can find a report that will show me all my genes associated with a specific condition, such as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, and see how many of my genes that are correlated with that condition are mutated. The problem is, what if the creator is an amateur and missed some genes? I typically only look at reports made by physicians or based on the rules by a gene expert (you might see something like "Yasko's Detox List" based on Dr. Amy Yasko's research, a leading expert in the field.) And once again, I NEED to stress this point: Just because you have a lot of mutations in your report does NOT necessarily mean you have the condition or will get the condition. It only means you should go get some lab tests.



This is an example of their heath report. They tell you about how you'll react to many drugs, how well you tolerate caffeine and alcohol, etc. With a subscription, you'll get more of these reports each month. I personally found this section to be the least useful for me personally because I don't use prescription drugs (then again, if I'm ever in a situation where I have no option, I know to avoid Warfarin):




(In previous posts I explained how badly I reacted to Cymbalta. The reason why it made me worse, yet can be very helpful for others, might be in my genes! If I were dig through my results I might even be able to find out which genes. This is really cool stuff! I'm incredibly fascinated by this kind of information, and I love all the scientists working on learning more and more about genes.)



Another interpretation site that I liked worked a little differently: athletigen.com. It's free. What it told me is interesting. It's most helpful for people who want to learn how to work out best. I learned that I'm not designed for long runs, but I can power sprint short distances and lift weights effectively. Truthfully, I already knew this about myself, but this is just confirmation. When someone asks me to train for a half marathon with them, I can show them these results and say, "nope, I'm not built for it - not interested." ;)










There are other interpretation service sites, such as promethease.com. It's $5 and it tells you health reports (how likely you are to develop certain diseases, etc.) I have not used it.

I mentioned that I would say more about 23andMe.com's new health reports. While the majority of this feature is only interesting and not very helpful, there is one aspect that some people could find very useful. You can pay doctors quite a bit of money to test to see if you're a carrier of a certain disease or health condition, or you can pay $200 for gene testing and get your carrier status with the results. I am very relieved to find that I'm not a carrier of any of the conditions they test for:





In conclusion...
23andMe.com testing can be very helpful for anyone, whether you're looking for ancestry information (which is a feature I didn't get into on this review, but it's super cool), gene information, carrier status, or health condition information. My motivation was to find answers for some of my chronic health issues, and I'm very glad I did get tested because it has answered a few questions. I do, however, need to work with a genetic expert to understand my results. This is not something I've done, due to financial constraints. It's dangerous to research gene results without an expert guiding you, as it can be very scary looking and make you feel like you're dying. It's also impossible to understand the results without an expert due to how complicated they are. I've learned to limit my research, only seeking out specific answers. Sites like GeneticGenie.org and Livewello.com can help a lay person understand just enough about their results to make some decisions on lab testing, possible supplementation, dietary changes, or exercise routines. 

I will write posts on specific things I've learned, so stay tuned.

A detailed retelling of my break down. What it was like to work while chronically sick.

Every time I go through a period where my gut is irritated and unhappy, I'm reminded of how horrible my health was just over a year ago. I didn't know it back then, but my gut health was one of my most significant problems, causing issues in the rest of my body. I haven't detailed just how terrible my health was on this blog because it's not a time in my life that I like to revisit. I've only said as much as I needed to in order to make my point in that post. I think I will revisit it, to some degree, in this post as a way of connecting with my readers who are currently suffering. The best time to write about this topic is when I'm not feeling my best, because I want to express the pain in some way. (I'm okay- don't worry. What I'm experiencing at the moment will pass in an hour or two. I knew something was wrong when I woke up this morning because my dreams were very hostile and angry, and sure enough, my gut isn't in good shape today.)

Most people would assume that when you're deeply suffering you have two options: you either fight to survive, or you break down in tears and give in. What if neither option works for you? That's where I was at for a few months in late 2013. I simply didn't have the energy, strength, or mental capacity to fight or cry. I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep living, because I couldn't see the point when I was a total vegetable. Crying wouldn't have helped because it would have taken up the tiny bit of energy I needed to stay alive. I was blank. My brain didn't work right: I couldn't think well, my memory wasn't working, I didn't feel time passing, and my dreams were so weak they couldn't even form a story. My body wouldn't respond to my will: I spent my days mostly in bed because I couldn't support myself, getting up and going to the bathroom felt like I was training to run a marathon, cooking and eating felt futile and unimportant because of how much energy it took, and everything hurt all the time.

Some days were better than others. I was at my weakest after 13 days on Cymbalta. It made me so much worse! Before that horrible anti-depressant experiment, I was functioning on some level. I was still going to my 30 hour per week secretarial job, but I wasn't holding myself together. I couldn't remember the names of people who came into the office regularly, my eyes were crossing as if I hadn't slept in days, I took much longer to complete a basic task than I should have needed, and I just couldn't get excited about things happening in the office that I should have been excited about. During the year I was at that job I got worse and worse. When I first started the job in 2012 I did feel exhausted, but capable of working. Shortly after starting the job, I got a MRSA abscess on an area of my body with extremely delicate skin and tons of nerve endings. I took 2 weeks of sick time to recover from that (much of that time was spent in the doctor's office and in the ER screaming at the top of m lungs in sheer pain.) A few months after that I lost all motion in my right wrist and thumb, finding myself in a splint and brace for 4 weeks. I had to do my job with my left hand, which wore it out. I then found my left hand in a splint and brace for 4 weeks. By that point, my exhaustion had turned into physical pain, and after several months of seeing doctors, I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It's a wonder they ever put up with me - I'm shocked they didn't fire me for being too sick all the time. It was then that I was put on Cymbalta, which forced me to be bed ridden. I missed about 3 weeks of work because it was impossible to get out of bed, even after I quit the Cymbalta. That's when my parents brought me out to New Hampshire to see a naturopathic doctor who could help me, and he's been the greatest blessing for me (along with my husband and parents, who I love very very much!) I quit my job after I came home from seeing him, because I finally learned, in detail, just how poor my health was. I knew I needed to put all my energy into recovering, not working. And frankly, I no longer had the strength to work. It was no surprise to anyone that I quit my job.

What was it like in detail?
Oh my goodness. Try going to work every day with a foggy cloud wrapped around your head and your eyes. I was always a bit dizzy. My speech was mumbled and slurred, and I couldn't find the right words to say. I had a difficult time focusing my vision because everything I looked at was a little on the blurry side. My legs and arms had a constant dull ache which would turn into sharp jabbing pains when I moved them. I had to go to the bathroom every 5-20 minutes because my bladder muscles felt too weak. I was nearly constantly clenching so I wouldn't leak. My gut gurgled and churned on a regular basis. I could often feel it pulsing (the same type of feeling as when a nerve twitches under your skin.)  My skin was almost always icy cold and pale, and I hated touching my body because it felt achy and cold. My brain refused to work, even when I tried as hard as I could to focus it. Every thought I wanted to have turned into a blurry, floating, dreamy image that would linger for a second then fly away, leaving my brain blank. I found myself thinking out loud to people, because I really didn't have the ability to think about my response before responding to them. I'm sure I said a lot of things that made no sense to people. I caught myself not breathing fairly often, and when I was breathing it was very short and shallow breaths. I caught myself staring at my computer screen for minutes at a time, having no clue how much time had just passed while I was zoned out. My coworker/ office mate would often start talking to me and I would be so zoned out that I didn't even notice. I got scared very easily, and my adrenaline and heart rate would sky rocket when someone unexpectedly walked into my office. I was also growing more and more dyslexic, in that I was often typing the last letter of a word first, or writing a number different from the number someone told me to write down. I couldn't trust that I took accurate notes. Oh my goodness, then there were the times when I was teaching Faith Formation classes as a substitute or even leading the classes of 1-8th graders through the hallways or to the church - I found myself sweating and panting from all the stairs and long hallways through the church education building. It was embarrassing to look like I was working out at the YMCA every time I needed to physically work with the kids. 

When I could no longer work and I quit my job, the time I spent my days laying in bed was miserable, but better. I didn't have to work, didn't have to impress anyone, didn't have to think straight, didn't have to be coherent to anyone... I was free of the burden of being a functioning member of society. The problem was that it allowed me to focus only on my pain all day long. I couldn't see anything other than my own misery. In a way I felt better because I wasn't spending my energy on things other than my health, but in a way I felt worse because I wasn't using my body anymore. It was a true "break down." I laid there with my whole stomach and gut churning and throbbing, my legs and arms aching and stabbing, my muscles building tension like they were violin strings getting tuned, my bones cracking and swelling with every motion, and my brain lost in the twilight zone.

I didn't know how to fight.
I didn't have the energy or care to cry.

A year a few months later, I'm writing this post while feeling about 50-60% better on average (though I have occasional periods of time where I feel 70% better.) I now have the knowledge and tools I need to fight, and so I'm spending every day fighting. The effort is paying off. I now have the energy and care to cry, but I haven't felt like it. The feeling of hope that has developed has me too happy and excited to want to return to how dark and painful those times were.

I sincerely hope that my story reaches your heart and helps build a sense of empathy within you. It's so easy to make assumptions about people who are sick. It's so easy to say, "Gee, maybe he'd feel a lot better if he didn't eat fast food all the time," when in reality that person is overweight and lethargic even though he's eating only whole foods and goes for daily walks. It's so easy to say, "Well you know that person just wants attention and isn't trying to do anything about their perceived pain; I mean, if you're in pain, go to a doctor and fix it," when in reality that person has spent $10,000 on doctors who haven't been able to help. It's so easy to say, "That person is useless to society, look at the way she brings everyone around her down with her depression and weak body," when in reality that person might be desperately trying to hold on to friendships and a social life so she feels like she does have meaning in her life, despite her constant pain. Please, avoid judgment. While many people do actually make themselves miserable by eating a stereotypical fast food diet and refuse to see doctors, many people are sick despite their best efforts to be well.

I ate mostly organic non-processed foods before I got that sick. I did get some regular exercise in (in that I wasn't a couch potato.) I did see doctors. I did try to get help. I still had a complete break down.

You should know that my memory was very bad during the time when I was my most sick. There's a lot that I simply cannot recall because my brain wasn't healthy enough to form memories. This post is probably lacking a lot of detail because of this. I sincerely hope that you cannot relate to this problem, but as I've been reaching out I've been meeting many people who, unfortunately, can relate. If you're one of the people who can relate, do not give up. Healing is possible. You probably won't find the help you need through western medicine, surgery, or drugs (as you probably have already learned,) but help is out there in other forms. That is what this blog is about. Don't give up.

R.I.P., Robin Williams. May your story help us take a stronger stance against depression.

Last night, a terrible tragedy shook the world. Robin Williams was found dead by suicide. It has come into light that he struggled with alcoholism and depression, and he finally gave up the struggle.

I was deeply saddened by the news, as I've always been a fan of Robin Williams. He played some of, what I consider to be, the most important roles in any Hollywood movie. He played Peter Pan in Hook, a character struggling deeply with adult responsibility, parenthood, and loss of childhood. Peter was a character any parent can relate to, and therefore could remind parent of what is most important in life. Life is a great adventure. He played a mental health professional in Good Will Hunting. His character wasn't just speaking to Matt Damon's, he was speaking to everyone watching the film. "It's not your fault." Robin played a high school teacher in Dead Poet's Society, inspiring students in the film and watching the movie to truly live for something. He also played a doctor in Awakenings, based on a true story and actual people, who made a tremendous discovery about music and reflexes healing patients who were "stuck" and could no longer use their bodies. This list, clearly, is not comprehensive.

How could an actor who regularly chose roles which inspired the audience to appreciate life and desire to really live get caught up in a depression that caused him to take his own life? Doesn't he value life?

This caused me to spend time reflecting on my own situation. About this time last year, I was beginning my descent into the worst episode of my life. I laid in bed all day, surrendering to pain, but also giving up the fight to live a normal life. Fatigue had completely taken over. I wasn't capable of doing anything. My internal medicine doctor tried to send me to a psychologist, believing my pain was just a manifestation of mental health issues. I knew better - I carefully observed my brain slowly shutting down the worse the condition of my body became. I also experienced the effects of Cymbalta deadening my thoughts, making me believe that death would be better than going on living through the "nothingness" each day. I longed for an end to the suppression of my mind and body. I either wanted my ability to live back, or I wanted to be dead. Death felt like the easier route. I, a Roman Catholic woman with a deep faith in God and a love for His creation, seriously considered suicide. Thankfully, I didn't have the mental or physical energy to bother with any sort of attempt.

I never saw the psychologist. I am an advocate of mental health care, as I saw first hand how wonderful therapy is when I worked at a mental health clinic as the secretary. I wasn't against going to the psychologist because I didn't believe psychology heals, I was against going because I knew that psychological healing takes work. Work takes energy. I had no energy, and I didn't want to waste my money on a therapy I couldn't actively participate in.

My story eventually drops me off in the office of an out-of-state naturopatic doctor. He asked me one of the most important questions I've ever been asked in regards to my mental health: "If I told you that I had a magic pill that would make you better upon taking it, how would you react?" My eyes lit up, and I grew excited. He said, "You're not depressed. You're sad. A depressed person wouldn't care about getting better. You do care, and you're just sad because you're suffering." He was right. I was never depressed after all. I sure felt depressed, but the mental health condition of actual depression was not my enemy. This gave me much needed hope. I wasn't crazy, I was just compromised with terrible health! The sadness, however, was still a very powerful force that caused me to consider suicide. If depression is any worse than what I was feeling, it's a wonder that depressed people survive.

I can't speak about Robin's condition, as I know very little about his personal life. I can, however, understand and sympathize with the desire to escape life, even with a strong conviction about the value of life. When the brain is compromised, the whole person is affected. In my case, my whole body, including my brain, was compromised. I could no longer think clearly, feel emotions, or have the energy to care. In Robin's case, if he suffered true depression, he wouldn't have been able to make good choices either. It doesn't matter how much he valued life if his brain wasn't capable of functioning properly. A lack of sanity makes people do things that they would not do when sane.

While there are many schools of thought on how to combat depression, whether through pills, nutrition, therapy, or other alternative methods, the most important part of the process is recognizing depression. A depressed person will not take care of him or herself. A depressed person is a very big threat to him or herself, and should not be left alone. A depressed person will fight getting help. Get that person help. Don't assume that person will "get over it."

There is always hope.