Sidenote-Overcoming Depression and the Even Uglier Side

Up to this point, Kiki and I have had some great feedback from our collaboration of giving advice then anecdotal evidence on how you might be able to overcome depression and incorporate health, fitness and wellbeing into your lives. It was going great until Kiki had to suffer through something that I wish no one else would ever have to face.

First, I’d like to mention how strong this girl is, and how impressed I am with her for keeping up with parenting her lovely child, and being a great wife to my brother. She shared her story on her blog at 350 if you want to read it all and see where she’s coming from.

I’ll do my best to do a quick explanation here, however, and why we haven’t posted the next steps forward. Basically, Kiki goes to see a psychiatrist, who doesn’t appear to be very good at their job. She feels increasingly anxious whenever she has an appointment, and is worried about what might come next. And this is where it gets even stickier…this Doctor tried to switch Kiki’s medication to something that in their mind, might work better, as this previous medication seemed to not be doing it’s job. What the psychiatrist didn’t consider is the effects of taking a person completely off a drug cold-turkey. This led Kiki to experience severe withdrawal symptoms, causing her to become very ill for the past week. I don’t know enough to go much into it, so you’ll have to check out her post for more information!

Basically what I’m trying to say here is that we can’t take the next step forward when her psychiatrist just caused her to take 5 steps back. The thing about depression is that it’s not always a straight line forward. There’s stairs, mountains, cauldesacs and even some crevasses thrown in. So right now, we’re on a stand still until Kiki can comfortably try the next step, and feel as though she’s ready to plunge forward again.

Until then, stay positive, stay fit, and keep grinding everyone.