Looking back, it is difficult to believe that it has been nearly thirty five years since I first walked into a psychologist's office to see if there might be something wrong with me. I felt very different and out of sorts. I was in my twenties. It was at the counseling center at my local university in southern Ms.



I entered therapy and went to a number of sessions. Things were getting worse, not better. I decided I may have made a wrong diagnosis, that maybe I was overracting to the regular stresses of life. I was very very wrong.

Then I decided that if I could land a decent job with a great salary, all my maladies would suddenly disappear I landed a job as chief writer and editor at a major network in Washington, D.C. At age thirty six. By age thirty seven, I had read enough about depression to know I had it. I immediately took action and visited a local psychologist who brought a psychiatrist aboard to try a combination of talk and medicine therapy. Year after year I religiously attended my therapy meeting and took my myriad of pills, combinations of pills, changing pills, increasing dosages of pills, etc. Nothing worked yet the medical community continued to applaud me for doing so much better. I begged to them that nothing had changed (I knew how I felt inside my body a lot more than they did), but they insisted the changes were so subtle, I would surely notice if I stopped taking my medicines and discontinued therapy. I did just that. No difference whatsoever. By then, I could barely work much less get out of bed. I made myself do it. I still don't know how, but felt I needed to.

By 1994, I had moved to the west coast to pursue screen writing as I theorized that if I could just land one box office hit, happiness would land upon me and my (by then) severe depression and anxiety would be conquered. Anyone with any sense knows the outcome of that loser's game. And I lost. After taking a number of seminars and workshops on screen writing, and even writing several full- length motion pictures, I fell yet into a deeper depression. I went back into therapy and continued on the newer SSRI drugs, which the medical community told me were "nearly foolproof". I am glad they mentioned the keyword "nearly" as they were anything but. I remained a fool, thinking I would find an answer in a pill. It had not worked in the past, why would it now? But they assured me this new Prozac and family of similar meds worked when nothing else did.

Later that year, the Norhtridge Earthquake occured and wiped me out. On top of that, a week later my mother called to tell me she had cancer. She was living in my home town of Hattiesburg, MS. I went home to care for her.

One afternoon in 1997, I was reading New Yorker Magazine and I read an article on something called the Vagus Nerve Stimulator (VNS). It is a tiny computer chip device about the size of a silver dollar, implanted directly under the skin and wiring running up to the mood centers of the brain, emitting a magnetic impulse that allegedly had amazing effects on depression. Again, I was a bit skeptical but this time there was a big difference. Even though it was not yet on the market for depression, (had been for awhile for epilepsy), in clinical trials, it appeared people who had tried every other modicum of therapy were seeing dramatic improvement with this device. It was made by a small medical device firm in Houston called Cyberonics.

My mission to follow the activities of Cyberonics became obsessive. I knew this was my only hope. It taught me a great lesson in patience. It was not approved for another eight years.

By then, I was diagnosed with TRD (treatment resistant depression) which explained the history of no results. While Cyberonics and the heavy-hitter lobbyists fighting the VNS were slugging it out, I continued to suffer and I would find out about 10 million cases a year similar to mine were suffering (and dying) as well with the same horrid disease called TRD.

Since I continued to "be punished" in my hometown (was very disenfranchised by then), I started to research. My search was focused on towns with low cost of living, high quality of life, and an advanced medical community. I was not finding any of that at home. Surprisingly Hot Springs, Ar became a top choice. The major medical community was in Little Rock, less than an hour away and UALR Medical Campus was considered one of the most advanced in the country (to my surprise). It's name was and is up there with many more familiar names like Sloan-Kettering, M.D. Anderson, and Johns Hopkins.

In September of 2005, I finally heard that VNS therapy had been approved by the FDA for treatment of TRD. To my knowledge, it was the only medical modicum that had been approved for such.

Now the problem was how to "get my name on the list". So I called Cyberonics and they turned me over to a nurse/caseworker, who got right on the case. She found the (very few) surgeons who performed this one hour procedure, and she had to talk my insurance into covering it based on my medical history of years of no results.

On January 25, 2006, almost nine years after I first started following the news of the VNS implant, I received the procedure in Little Rock, Ar. at St. Vincent's Hospital.

I remember waking up and feeling very light. Something had happened, but I was not sure what. I knew almost immediately that I'd gotten the procedure. I asked a nurse if "it was in" and she assured me it was.

For the first time since I was about twelve years old, I felt no depression? I still had some anxiety but it was based on thinking "my mood is about to swing any minute and there is not a damned thing I can do about it". Minutes passed by and then hours. No mood swing. I felt like a child playing in the sandbox in kindergarten My worries and stresses were minimal.

Every month, I continued to go to Little Rock for a computerized non-invasive "tune up"; the doctor merely turns up the frequency another notch. It is at a point now where it is every three months and by the end of the year, the depression will be in total remission.

How is my progress? Amazing. I can remember like yesterday that I could not get out of bed, it was a huge chore to clean my home, studying was a brutal task as was work, and all that changed. I love what I do, I do it well, and do it joyfully. Today I am a cartoonist and etailer and full time student, have a wonderful girlfriend, and all kinds of doors opening that were closed, due to my having a undiagnosed disease, and at that, one that was not only socially-unnacceptable but one that a lot of people do not believe exists.

My faith is back and if others have problems with my disease and recovery, I believe it reflects more on them than on me.

Is the depression cured? Heaven's no. But today, I can easily call it "temporary blues", the type any person could get.

Many friends encouraged me to stay hush-hush about this story, that it might come back to slap me in the face.

My reply is "So what? Let them use it. If one person reads this with TRD and learns about it, and is fortunate enough to receive the implant, people can use it against me all they want. Doesn't matter in the least. Let one person get well from this most dreadful disease and it's all worth telling the story. Really. Well, back to work. Have a great day!