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Peggy's Story

© John McManamy

"...it took months for her to reunite her soul and her body. Well, that's how it was for me."

She doesn't seem to fit the mold. A best-selling author, successful salesperson, traveler, mother, and grandmother, married thirty years, Peggy describes herself as always having been a joyful person. Certainly she had everything to live for. But in mid-1996 the darkness began creeping in. Then, one day in 1997 she was taken to the hospital with what the doctors thought might be a heart attack. It wasn't, but nevertheless it turned out to be something nearly as deadly - depression. Peggy tells her own story:

My first experience with depression came in 1985. I used to work at a bank, and I can remember not being able to add two plus two and get four. It was like my brain was in a fog and would not work properly. I handled it by simply getting through it, and ended up being off work for three months.

My next experience came eleven years later, in July of 1996, and lasted until early 1999. It was a doozie. I had moved to Toronto to start a business with my brother. He ended up having a massive heart attack and needing open heart surgery, and the business didn't work out. There were so many things happening at the time that I just got overwhelmed. My single daughter became pregnant, my mother was dying, my mother-in-law had just died, and crazy things were happening.

I usually handle things well, but not this time. There were nights I was not able to sleep, and then there were days when that's all I did. The most frustrating thing was that all the tools I had been using for years to deal effectively with my life just didn't work. I tried to tell myself that, "this too shall pass," or, "look, you've handled worse than this." But to no avail. Then we came back to my home town, and my brother and I started a tea room/kitchen shop.

It was a disaster. I began to exhibit all kinds of symptoms, and in the summer of 1997 I ended up in hospital with chest pains. They thought it may have been a heart problem. I had suffered through a year of no help of any kind because the doctors (and me, also) were still not thinking in terms of depression.

I just kept getting worse and worse. I had absolutely no energy, and I sometimes would have a hot flash that lasted all day. The doctors began thinking menopause. First I'd be hot, then freezing, then hot again. I was also having night sweats. We just kept focusing on this menopause thing and I just kept getting worse.

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