A VERY MOVING RESPONSE

Dear Ken:

Thank-you for posting this. The story comes as no surprise as my husband and I have gone thru it, though a little less extreme. The tears are running down my face, as I think what has been going on in my wonderful husband's mind. I thank GOD daily for your book, as it has given us the strength to keep working at our marriage. Now that my depression has lifted, I think that if I had not become ill with depression, and Panic disorder, I wouldn't have met all my good friends-Ken you are one, and become a fuller , more compassionate person. It has also done this for my husband who before living with me, wouldn't have understood or cared about people with our disorder.

Thank-you Ken.

Shelley

This letter was written in response to another letter in which the support person was having difficulties.

Hey Doug...

Wow... If you have a clone somewhere, it would have to be me! I have the same problems just as you described yours, with a few exceptions. Let me lay them out for you.

I live in a very small community in the western US, and I don't live "in town". I live several miles from town, up a mountain and through the woods. We both work at a small hospital in town. Very political organization (which causes MUCH stress all by itself). I moved here a few years ago in my mid 30's and very single. I met my wife and what can I say... I just popped and fell head over heals in love with this wonderful, caring, beautiful, sexy, smart, sensitive woman that just does it for me (apparently she must have felt the same cuz she married me, thank God).

When we first met, she was seeing a counselor and taking medication for this panic/anxiety thing. At the time, I never noticed any strange (to me) behavior or anything out of the ordinary except that she was mildly co-dependant and was afraid to drive on the highway. No problem, I thought. I love to drive and when the blizzards come in, we shouldn't be on the road anyway.

About 2 years ago, we purchased a "mini" ranch and decided to live our dreams. We got horses and chickens and dogs and all of the standard ranch stuff. We live kind of remote, and a very basic lifestyle, without many of the frills and benefits that most of you take for granted, but we didn't care. We love to look out the front window and see the elk grazing, and the foxes that come in to steal our chickens and not seeing any neighbors or cars or honking or yelling. Its quiet except for the sounds of nature. Very relaxing when you get off work.

After we bought our dream we decided that because we were rapidly approaching the big "40's" and we wanted to have a child, everything was right with our world and we had better get started. First, she had to get off the Xanax because of possible birth defects. No problem, we took it slow and before long it was over. No more Xanax and it didn't seem to bother her to get off them and I didn't notice any real personality or emotional problems.

She got pregnant in July and carried our child through the worst winter ever recorded in our area with blizzard-after-blizzard and times when it was 40 below for weeks at a time. Nobody plows our road and sometimes there were drifts of snow that were 20 and 30 feet high. We mostly went around them and for months we made our own roads to get in and out, depending on which way the wind was blowing. Many people that lived near us just moved out because it was too much, but we stayed and I got a book on home birth/delivery just in case (by the way, on the humorous side, I asked our OB doc where I could find a good book on home birth and she said "in the trash").

Well the time came and I cranked up the Dodge during a horrible blizzard and the snow was over the hood of our already "monstorized" (high off the ground) ram charger and we made it in and the baby was born in our little hospital in march. The delivery was incredible and very simple (even my wife said so) and we took our new BEAUTIFUL son home. Life was, and still is, good and we were blessed and still are.

When our son was about six months old, something happened and our son started having a focal seizures. I remember the first time when my wife called me at work and was out of control. She was holding him and he went into a seizure and then went limp and she thought that he stopped breathing and was turning blue. She dropped the phone and jumped into the jeep to fly down the hill to our hospital, and I jumped into the truck and met her halfway and we flew to the hospital and he was admitted.

Turns out that the limp and color was due to the seizure and he was just sleeping after the seizure because they are so draining. He seemed fine after he woke up and had a blast at the hospital and got tons of attention. We work with all of the hospital people everyday, so he got extra fun grabbing glasses and pulling earrings off of the nurses that were constantly holding him. Smiles the whole time.