Last week in this space, I talked about my experiences with Parkinson’s and anxiety. I have often heard that anxiety and depression are both parts of a single spectrum. Two turds in the same toilet, as I believe the French say. Since the two are so closely related, I figure it just makes sense to cover depression for this week’s Thymptom Thurthday.

Lemme tell ya a story. Several years ago, I lived in Longmont, Colorado. Several years before that, I lived in Fort Collins, Colorado. Several years after moving to Longmont, I decided to drive up to Fort Collins and spend a day revisiting the ol’ town. (Great story so far, eh?)

As I wandered around “Fort Fun” I soon began to feel different. But it was a familiar feeling: empty, hollow, moist. OK, not moist. It’s very hard for me to describe; I guess I’d say it felt like the contents of my head and chest had been removed and replaced with a dark, dense mass of pessimism and anger. As this feeling grew, I realized why it seemed familiar: I had felt this way nearly the whole time I lived in Fort Collins.

That evening, as I was leaving town, the radio started playing a song from my college days in Fort Collins – I believe it was “Would” by Alice in Chains. This song triggered one final wave of emotion, and with this one it suddenly occurred to me: Depression! I had been experiencing depression for nearly the whole ten years I had lived in Fort Collins, but I had no idea at the time. Why? Because I didn’t feel “sad”. And sadness was the only thymptom I knew to be associated with depression. So, do yourself a favor and take a look at this article. Who knows? You, too, may be depressed without even knowing it.

Which brings to mind the age-old question: If you think you’ve got hypochondria, does that automatically mean you don’t?

Over the last couple of decades, my depression and anger have not been nearly so prevalent as they were in my younger years. But they seem to have been replaced with anxiety, which I honestly think is worse. The only times that I’ve experienced depression in recent years were when I was making changes to my medication regimen, especially when trying to wean myself off of pramipexole. But I’ll save my tales of pramipexole woe for another day…