Dealing With My Daughter's First Heartbreak — And Depression

Dealing With My Daughter's First Heartbreak — And Depression

The only thing worse than suffering through your very own first heartbreak is experiencing it a second time, through your daughter. And it's been a pretty wild ride through the wake of The Boy's exit from K's life. Starting with a terrifying five hours in the emergency room.

The night before, she had crawled into bed with me at two in the morning. She hadn't done that since she was about 10 years old. She was clammy to the touch, sobbing, unable to tell me what was wrong. I held her, murmured sweet platitudes in her ear until we both fitfully fell asleep.

The next morning, she told me she couldn't go to school, she felt nauseous, couldn't breathe. A few hours later, in a near panic, she told me her heart was racing — and she really couldn't breathe. By the time we got to the doctor's, she couldn't walk or talk either. When the doctor tapped her knee with that little rubber hammer — nothing happened. He sent us to the ER, looking grim.

I was way beyond frightened, looking at my youngest daughter: pale, motionless, laying on a gurney with electrodes attached everywhere, looking for all the world like Ophelia, floating away, fading into the next world. The doctors and nurses were doing every test imaginable, but were clearly not worried. It took me a while to pick up the subtext.

She wasn't dying — she just thought she was. Sure enough, this turned out to be a textbook case of a full-blown panic attack.

And this is just from The Boy leaving for college.

The psychiatrist at the hospital was pretty shrewd. "I won't discharge you unless you agree to go into therapy," he told her sternly. K has always been the private one, never letting any of us into her inner sanctum. But she reluctantly agreed.

Fast forward two months. Her therapist assured me that K "wasn't suicidal or homicidal, but really, really depressed." Translation: time to start drug therapy.

I was really conflicted on this one. I've been through a number of rough patches in my life. Recall a depression so severe that when I first learned I had breast cancer in the middle of it, more than a decade ago, my first thought was "thank God — if I die, then I won't be depressed anymore." How's that for depressing?

And thank God, I didn't die and Prozac saw me through those months, but in a fog, like my brain was on Novocain. Is this what I wanted for my daughter?

Of course not. But I sure didn't want her in That Other Place, so I agreed for her to start to a mini dose of Prozac along with .5mg of Xanax.

She got even more anxious.

The doctor switched her to Cymbalta ("Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does depression hurt? Everyone." K at least got a kick out of the hokey ads). The doctor assured us Cymbalta was the gold standard — worked fast, took care of anxiety and depression.

Except that now she was a zombie. I'd get home from work and find her passed out in bed. It would take me an hour or so to rouse her for dinner. Then of course, she couldn't sleep at night.

We switched to Lexapro, tapering off on the Cymbalta first. K's nightstand was starting to look like a drug store. When she went to her dad's for the weekend, I packed a zip lock bag, bulging with all her meds. She looked at me and laughed "Mom — I'm really messed up!"

I'm hoping that the laughter a good sign.

But she is still wearing The Boy’s lifeguard sweats. And dreaming of him every night.