How it started...this time

I got very sick.  That's what depression is.  Only this time, it showed up in a way I didn't recognize.  I started throwing up, had fever and chills, couldn't eat, felt weak.  Basically, I thought I was just physically sick.  When I tried to rest, my brain wouldn't shut down.  It kept yelling at me to keep working, that I couldn't get behind, to be careful that I don't lose my job in a bad economy. I got sick far from home.  In a hotel room.  While working.  I was booked for another few weeks on the road.  I had already been on the road for several months.  I just couldn't keep going. I've been depressed before, and I've been on medication, so it didn't occur to me that it was depression at all.  I just felt ridiculously anxious; my stomach burned all the time.  I thought I was just burnt out and overworked/overwhelmed, which, let's be honest, I was.  I rested for a week and came home.  But my brain still kept telling me the awful things it does when I'm depressed: you're lazy, you'll never finish anything, you're worthless, what's wrong with you....It's not until I tried to go back to work again and found myself hoping to just stay underneath a desk that I realized I was really sick.  I found a new doctor. I gave myself the name depressiontini on here because I feel like I'm finally in the "cocktail" mixer stage of depression.  I used to be fine on just one medication at a time.  Apparently, medications can stop working.  Or stress can trigger bad episodes. In my case, I finally realized I also wasn't on a high enough dose of the meds I was on in the first place.  Stupidly started taking the wrong dosage when I switched from a brand name to a generic where the conversion was 1:4 and not 1:2. I feel like I'm marking time.  I have gotten better in the past and reading other people's desperate sadness, I've found strength to cheer them on because it's happened for me before....somehow it gives me hope that it will happen for me again too.