Hear Hear Carey,

I don't know cs personally, but I can also relate. It is a good thing that he has expressed himself as he has. He probably needed badly to express all these feelings that he has held in for a long time.

I can speak about depression in my life because I feel it is am important subject, something most don't want to discuss or acknowledge. Major Depression is a very difficult place to be. I call it my deep dark abyss. So dark at times that it is hard to see the light even if it may be shining very brightly down upon you. It is also a place where when you can find you way to the surface, you may be hanging my your finger tips for a good while before you can haul yourself out of the pit and into life again. But it is possible to haul yourself out...but it is also very hard work to do so.

It is even harder when you have no one who will provide you a physical, albeit a listening-ear, helping hand.

I have visited that place so many times in the past 45 years or so. I know I have shared this before, but I will share it yet again. Prior to my recent clinical trial surgery, I had spent each and every year since 1994 living with PD alone...emotionally and physically...with the exception of my PWP friends, all of whom are members of this forum. And, they will all tell you that I am not a complainer, although it would probably have been a good thing for me to do from time to time.

My sisters, regardless of how many times I have asked them, did not care to read or listen to my attempts to discuss PD, my daughters didn't ignore it, but I appears so healthy...good meds...for so long that it was easy to ignore the PD. It wasn't until I passed out in the bathroom at Pennsylvania Hospital and went back to ICU the day after surgery that they both had a wake up call, and quickly came to my rescue as advocates, especially my oldest daughter. The irony of this is that my eldest daughter, whom I live closest to, has already asked me if I was going to go back to school and then back to work. SAY WHAT!!!

Prior to my surgery I was in horrible despair and depression at the prospects that I would literally have to go into surgery alone with no one in the waiting room. But, my son in laws mom, my co-grandmother and next door neighbor, just couldn't deal with the fact that no one would take the time out of their busy lives to go, so she ended up being my waiting room person. She came to me in tears on Friday prior to tell me she couldn't allow me to go alone. She and I cried together. She is 74 years old, uses a rolling walker with a seat attached to it and is not in good health, but damned if she didn't manage to ride the train with me, and stay an extra four days while I was in the rehab unit.

Oh yes, and it isn't as though my oldest daughter didn't understand the magnitude of the surgery, since she was the one that went with me to review the 22-page Informed Consent document.

After my collapse that day, my mother called me daily, but I never heard a word from my sisters until I asked my mother if my sisters even knew. Of course they did, haven't they called you she asked, the very next day my oldest sister called to inquire about me. When I spoke to my oldest sister she asked me...and this is a quote I will never forget..."Do you still have that shaking?" When I hung up the phone I had to laugh about the question.

So ultimately, it is possible to live a satisfactory life with PD, as I and so many of us have done, but it is not easy to live a satisfactory life with depression, especially when you "feel" you have no one to turn too.

I know that some who know me probably consider me a bit "nuts", oh well, I suppose everyone has to have a label of some kind. Although I do have my depressive moments, and only ONE authentic anxiety attack in the past couple of years, say what you want, I am not "nuts."

Sorry to sound so morbid in my reply and to say such not-nice things about my daughter, but the truth is the truth and sometimes it is not pretty. AND depression is a horrible thing...and ugly beast...as ugly as PD is!

to everyone!