Depression - Part 3 - Date with the Doctor

Now that my friend had left to go back home and my wife had went back to work, I had made an impromptu appointment with my general physcian.

As I sat in the waiting room filling out paperwork, my chest was sore and I was slightly scared. I had always heard that the symptoms of a heart attack started with a little numbness of the left arm and maybe a little twinge of pain, but it was my chest that was killing me, still just under my sternum, feeling a shortness of breath and unable to get comfortable.

Finally when the doctor came in to see me, I started to tell him how I physically felt and while I was speaking I could feel the water in my eyes starting to well up and before I knew it I just began spilling raw emotion. It felt as if weeks if not months of pent up energy began spilling out of my soul and I was unable to stop. I was overwhelmed with both feelings of relief and extreme embarrassment. Here I am, a large guy who usually keeps to himself is balling and babbling incoherently to the physcian who just sat back and listened. I give him a lot of props for his bedside manner. He just....listened...as I continued to pour out my inner grief and explained about my pain, my lack of sleep, my lack of breath.

He began to took my blood pressure, which was slightly elevated and concurred that I looked a little tired, distracted, and agitated. He spoke with me for a few minutes regarding the brain and chemicals inside it. He spoke to me about stress and diet. We spoke for 10 or 15 minutes as as I shyly regained my composure he gave me a few pieces of paper:

1. Prescriptions for Ambien to sleep.
2. Prescriptions for Clonzapen, to help alleviate the panic, pain in the chest, and to calm me down.
3. Lexapro, 5mg to help with seratonin levels.
4. Finally a referral to see a counselor.

I thanked him for the Kleenex, collected my scripts, and headed to the pharmacy.

What went through my head was: What am I going to tell my wife? My parents? Am I crazy? Am I losing it? Am I a candidate for a breakdown, or worse a heart attack? How will people perceive me now? Am I to become pill dependant? Is there something wrong with my head? Has my body stopped making essential chemicals? Am I more flawed than I once thought? Where is God in all this?

To be continued.....