Introducing myself...

Hello :)

My name's Lexie. I'm a 20 year old medical student who is currently taking a year out and intercalating in Medical Humanities.

I wanted to introduce myself, and about a minute ago I was all set to tell you everything about my life and my "illness" (if you want to call it that) but now I seem to have come up on a blank. But I'll give it a shot.

I was diagnosed with clinical depression in November 2010. Almost a year ago to the day. It was a difficult time. To be honest, all of the last academic year (my second year at medical school) was shrouded by, and influenced by, the depression, and I think I've only recently made it to a place where I can look back on it objectively and see the positives in it. Don't get me wrong, I still go to the dark places sometimes. But since starting this academic year, doing a different degree at a different university, living with different people and being in a brand new town, things are definately on the up.

One of the things I've found helpful over the past year is writing about my feelings and reading the stories of those who have been in a similar situation to me. It's sounds quite sadisitic but knowing that someone has felt the same things you have, and has gone to the same "places" as you have, sometimes helped me to put things in persepective, and maybe feel a little better about my own feelings. Sometimes it didn't help at all and just convinced me the world was rubbish. But I hope that I can share my story here, and maybe help others in the process.

I should say that I'm not an expert, and I'm not a professional, and you should NOT, under any circumstances, take anything I say to be gold or gospel. I'm just trying to tell my story.

I thought I would blog about the different aspects of my depression, so the diagnoses, the mediciation, my experiences with counselling, how I got through it, how I'm still getting through it. Does that sound like something you'd like to read about? Let me know :)

So that's it for now. If all goes well I'll try and blog (probably next week) about being diagnosed. I do have my own personal blog (http://complicated-it-is.blogspot.com/ ) where I post about general things (somewhat hapazardly), including my studies and my illness. I also have a twitter feed (@ComplicatedItIs) so feel free to add me!

Toodles

Lexie