As they used to say about Mad Stan (and if anybody knows that reference, I owe them a gluten-free cookie) once she gets on a rant, she's unstoppable.

Seriously, there is much to be said for the idea that if one is NOT at least a bit depressed when hit with chronic, painful, "idiopathic" conditions as so many of us have been, then one is far more unbalanced than one who does experience depression. The trick becomes where does one go from there--does one respond adaptively.

The sad truth is that most of the doctors we go to have litttle training in psychology/psychiatry, and are so often divorced from their feelings and intutitions by the day-to-day grind of modern medical practice, they assume that such feelings of depression are pathologic. The scandal of women entering into physicians offices and ASSUMED to be suffering from degree of clinical depression if a "smoking gun" for their symptoms is not immediately found is far too enraging for me to even BEGIN to discuss.

Life may not be a box of chocolates all the time, but I feel comfortable in asserting, especially when hit with these "no-see-um, no-know-what-they-um" conditions, that life becomes much like a septic tank--what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. And that decision to be adaptive, to be proactive, is as good an indication of mental health as there is.