I quit my job in February of 1998. Things went well for a while. I was much happier without the stress of the work I had been doing. My family seemed happier too. It was rough making it on my husband�s salary but he assured me that we would be fine. He had been working a second job for a good while before I quit mine. Well, after a few months of not working I suddenly began to feel as if I was a burden on my family. I wasn�t doing my part to keep us financially sound. My husband continued to assure me that we would be ok. My �rollercoaster� kept going downward and with it my feeling of self worth. In September of 1998, I reached one of the lowest points I had ever been in my life. My husband and I got in to an argument. I don�t even remember what it was about. All I remember is saying that I was leaving. I got in to my car and drove off. I drove around most of the evening trying to figure out what I was going to do. I sat along the road and wrote my husband a letter telling him that I didn�t feel I loved him the way he deserved to be loved. I have regretted writing that ever since. I waited until my husband left to take our daughter�s to my Mother�s on his way to work and then I went back home. When he got home from work the next afternoon, I was there. We did a lot of crying. I asked him to take me to the doctor to get help.
My husband and I went to the doctor. I was put on a new medication, Effexor. The original dosage did not seem to help much. The doctor increased the dosage, but the new dose seemed to make me more of a zombie than anything. I started to take the medicine every other day, which seemed to work. By this time my husband had started commenting that he did not believe in depression. He thought that doctor�s overused that diagnosis. That made me feel like I had let him down by being one of the people that was diagnosed with something he didn�t believe in.
By April of 1999 I decided I needed to do more to help my family. I drove to Winchester and was hired by a temp agency to work in a factory. A couple of months later I was hired full time by the factory. Over the next several years I thought everything was ok with my husband and I. He continued to make comments once in awhile about not believing in depression, but rather than saying anything about this I just withdrew a bit. I didn�t take my medication regularly because it was very expensive and I felt that since my husband didn�t believe the disease existed I shouldn�t need the medication anyway. I convinced myself that I could manage without taking the medicine. I would only take it when my head began to feel fuzzy. After a couple of days I would stop taking it again.
The combination of working rotating shifts, lack of sleep and depression was taking a toll on me. I didn�t realize this until it was too late. I continued to plug along thinking things were fine with my husband and I. August 1, 2004 my �rollercoaster� derailed. My husband had a stroke. I was scared to death. I thought the man I loved was going to die. While I was with him I was �strong�, but when I walked out of his hospital room I fell apart. I would try to talk to someone on the phone and all I could do was cry like a baby.
After my husband�s stoke I began to see signs of depression in him too. He was much moodier than he had ever been. He wasn�t sleeping well. He worried all the time about having another stroke so instead of adding to his worries I kept my mouth shut. I knew he wouldn�t believe me anyway because he didn�t believe in depression. Like an idiot, I didn�t even open my mouth when the doctor did an assessment for depression. I just kept plugging along on my own rollercoaster ride thinking that after he passed the one year anniversary of his stroke things would even out for him.