SSRIs are options that work for a lot of folks.

Welbutrin is the only one I can take and it does help me with pain....interesting as the many of SSRIs are contraindicated in CMT or HSNs....check out the list of 'bad' meds for Charcot Marie Tooth Disease, which is a weird name for Hereditary Neuropathies of many types....the definition has been broadened, and there is wrangling over what to call what and who 'owns' what.

To think one can have a chronic disease and not have some depression is absurd....I don't even call it depression in those cases....

I call it 'adaptational affect'. Same as PTSD....of course, you are not going to come out of a traumatic experience 'normal', you get an 'adaptaional affect' or way of dealing with what happened to you.....life events change things.

It is fine, it is NORMAL. If you have chronic disease and are Pollyanna all the time I think you are more likely psychotic. When you look in your linen closet and see Miralax, enemas and a box of gloves, it does not put a smile on your face....unless you are really, really wierd.

Chronic disease, especially when it starts to shut down what you never thought about what your body did by itself when you were healthy, is not uplifting.

There are things one can do to alter the way you frame things.....You can use remedies, and of course, as you all do, make merry over small accomplishments, and appreciate, that effort and courage went into those accomplishments.

Treatments can be natural, synthetic, it can be light...light helps me, but I live so dang far north, and my genetics indicate I should really sleep all winter...wake up now and then and chew on reindeer marrow, 'down' a caribou eyeball, and go back to sleep....and then wake up ready to wear a swimsuit around the first of May and party 24/7 until Halloween, upon when I should simply fall asleep again. I do not understand why the modern world does not work like this.

Every winter I get into a funk, and it takes until mid June to get myself going...I have avoided this funk only a few years by exercising...too much....worked on the depression-killed the joints and muscles....then we all know about my adventure with the kite and skis...(an attempt to not get winter depression) even before I knew I had neuropathy.

This year I wanted snowshoes for Christmas, but my family nixed it due to global warming....'You won't get to use them" Right....I think we have had at least 3 feet of snow....I can still see my mailbox, but it is on a slant now.

I swear that plow guy just loves knocking off boxes. I bet he has stickers of mailboxes on his truck....one for every box he did in...like some military pilot.

I gave up on skis...that foot flopping would probably work OK on skis, but the balance thing....not to mention getting up when those skis are crossed and the tips in your armpits and you are on your back like a turtle....it isn't pretty....Lord you can't even reach your cell phone...especially when your arm is broken (been there-done that). For those few moments I was not depressed...I was invigorated...that lasted a few hours until after I left the ER, in a cast.

Depression---it is not a dirty word....'Depression' indicates to me, that if your world is all fine and dandy, and you are still sad.....you are depressed.

If your world is not fine and dandy, for whatever the reason---being sad, anxious, irritable, sleepless, overeating, undereating, unsocial etc, is kind of what happens......it is not a state of being to be ashamed of or to hide...

That said, you have to fight it...or it gets worse. You may not want to use some of my more controversial methods....I am getting old enough that those methods could land me in a nursing home, and I don't think I would ever get over that 'depression'.

If you can't change your circumstances (most of us can't) we can only reframe what is happening in a different light....and take what steps we can to assist ourselves.

Movement, music, vitamins, church, social activities, lights and meds all work to some extent.....sometimes even just 'committing' to doing something about it works.

That said, I still can't get to the swimming pool....maybe when it gets above 15 degrees, I can contemplate getting that wet, and going outside to a cold car....but I know it would help my 'depression'.

Oh, and there is that matter of not looking like one of those dream 'avatars' in my swimming suit.... I am amazed at where certain anatomy has migrated to. Rather than getting depressed I can see if I can get it to migrate back. Geese go back and forth every year...

I will just have to use my imagination, and get over the reality of what is.....I am what I think I am, right??? I think I have a stability ball in my closet somewhere....maybe what migrates down can migrate up again??? Hope springs eternal.

All of us have the right to be 'depressed' what ever that is....sad, mad, grumpy, irritable, hungry, not hungry, sleepy, sleepless etc. If a doc asks me if I am depressed, now I answer him/her, 'if you were me would you be and if so, what would YOU do about it?'

Life is not a bowl of cherries---at least not without the pits.

I don't even think 'Life is like a box of chocolates'....at least what you get is sweet each time, even if you break a tooth on a nut, it was sweet and yummy.

Life has been more like eating a banana with salsa, or oatmeal with corn nuts mixed in....none of it has been easy ever, and if it was, I think I would not know how to cope with it.

Life is an unhill climb, with scary downhill slips, bumps and bruises, hanging on for dear life, being out of breath, scared to death of falling, and not looking down or back.....

and if you are not discouraged, and scared at times, you are just not in touch with reality.....

The point, and you all do it, and know it, is to keep climbing....each plateau along the way, gives you a new view of the big picture...and a sense of where you have been....how far you have all really come!!

Billye---Congrats on the driving!!! I am in awe of that----next, the Indy 500!