Change Your Brain Every Day - Health Diagnoses: Always Take a First Opinion with a Grain of Salt

Episode Date: November 19, 2020

In this week’s series of the podcast, we are sharing more of the stories featured in Tana Amen’s upcoming memoir, “The Reluctant Courage of a Scared Child”. In the previous episode, Tana reflected on what it felt like to shut everything in her life down when she was diagnosed with cancer. In this episode, she and Dr. Amen discuss the depression that followed that awful diagnosis, and why one of the most important lessons she learned during that time was that doctors can make mistakes, and if you don’t do your own research, the effects can be devastating.  For info on Tana Amen's upcoming free live virtual event, visit tanaamen.com/event  

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to Brainmd.com. Welcome back. So you can totally see why I married her. Feeling a little exposed at the moment. Smart and beautiful, adventurous, but suffer.

Yeah. No, I went into a wicked depression after that. So now I think in the last episode we talked, we left off with the treatment, the second treatment for thyroid cancer. And I went into a, just a wicked depression. And that your mom had to have my mom had brain surgery. So now not only do I not have a support system,

but my fear over losing my mom, like that, that fear when I was a child, like came back, it was almost like the panic attacks came back and I just felt crippled with, you know, anxiety and depression and I couldn't get out of bed and I just, I started wanting to die and it was pretty crazy.

So. How else did it impact you? Depression is not like anything else. And I don't want to minimize cancer for people because I know people who suffer horrifically with cancer. My cancer was a little different than most people's. I knew I wasn't going to die from it. I just wanted to die from it because it was, I felt so miserable. Um, so for some people they, they really, I mean, it's really terrible for me. Depression was worse. It was the one thing I

can actually say was worse than finding out I had cancer was the depression. I just could not get away from the feeling. I couldn't crawl out of my skin. The world was black. There was no hope. I was just completely hopeless. I quit my job, quit school. My mom had brain surgery, couldn't pay my medical bills, lost whatever hope I had for this future, getting a little bit of money to get ahead. And I ended up filing for bankruptcy. And it was like, why am I on the planet? Why am I breathing? Like, it didn't make sense. And I didn't have spiritual, like, I didn't have any spiritual connections in my life at the time, really. I was kind of bankrupt in that department. So I didn't have a bigger sense of meaning and purpose. And so whose idea was it for you to see a psychiatrist? Mine actually. So I was walking, my mom was, and that was the other thing. Please don't do this

to people who are depressed. Please, please, please. If you were listening to this, don't do this to people who are depressed. But my mom didn't really understand what I was going through. She was so relieved that I wasn't going to die. She was so relieved that she didn't die from what she had to go through with her brain surgery, that she didn't understand why I wasn't going to die. She was so relieved that she didn't die from what she had to go through with her brain surgery, that she didn't understand why I wasn't grateful. And she was getting annoyed with me for not snapping out of it. And so she's like, you know, I'm tired of you laying around. She got sort of kicked my butt. You're getting out of the house today. She was getting annoyed with me. So she drags me along to go shopping. And I see this book listening to Prozac or something like that. And it was at a secondhand bookstore. And I'm like, it said something about depression on the title or on the subtitle. And

I'm like, what? Maybe there's hope. Like I'd never, I didn't think there was any hope. I didn't know that there was medication for depression at the time. I didn't know anything about, I didn't even know what was wrong with me. So, but when I saw that title, all of a sudden I read something about darkness, you know, coming out of the darkness. I'm like, Oh, my gosh. So I read this. And I instantly knew I needed Prozac, like I knew I needed Prozac self diagnosis, I was sure of it. No one was going to talk me out of it. So I call, you know, to make an appointment with psychiatrists, it was pretty expensive. And I didn't have insurance, I filed for bankruptcy. So I start calling around and I find, you know, um, basically a resident psychiatrist who would see me and I get in and I am not even letting him talk, which you guys, I mean, look at you, you're just sort of

like listen anyways. But so, so I tell him, I'm like, I know I'm not going to sit here for years and bang my head up against a wall. I know what's wrong with me. I know I'm not going to sit here for years and bang my head up against a wall. I know what's wrong with me. I know what I need. I need a prescription for Prozac. Like I was very clear and he was, he wasn't budging. He wasn't saying anything. He just kept staring at me. So I start word vomiting, everything going on in my life. Cause I realized he's not going to give me a prescription unless I sound screwed it up enough. So I made it sound screwed up enough, which wasn't very hard to do. No, not hard. So he gives me this prescription for Prozac. And within a few days, I'm like, oh, I don't want to die. This is good. It's progress. I don't want to die. So this is good.

And, but all of a sudden I start to, I don't even know the feeling. Cause there wasn't much feeling like over time. I don't want to die, but I don't really care about much. I just didn't really care about much. And I became, I'd always been very anxious. So even though I didn't make always good decisions, I didn't always make good decisions. I made some, you know, not necessarily smart decisions, but I was anxious about making decisions. I was cautious.

Now I was wildly impulsive. Like I was dangerously impulsive. I just suddenly became dangerously impulsive. Do you want to share? Well, there's, I mean, Saul, it's in the book. It was a pretty wild ride for a few months. It was like, it was like six to eight months of pretty wild ride. So then you actually go back to the doctor and you go, I told him something's not right. I don't think this is working this. I don't feel right. I don't feel like myself. Um, I'm not cautious about making decisions. I don't care about anything. He actually told me that I needed to increase my dose. He said, well, you don't want

to die. And that's a good sign. I think we need to increase your dose. He doubled my dose. And then he doubled it again. And I sort of argued with him, but then I'm thinking, well, what do I know? Like I should have listened to myself, but I didn't listen to myself. And I thought, well, he's the doctor. Like some Doogie Howser, you know,

I should have listened to myself and gotten a second opinion, but I didn't. And so I, so on the medication, which was not right for your brain, you end up in Costa Rica, the whole story people can read about in the book. But yeah, I dated some crazy people. I mean, I was crazy. I was acting crazy. So. And what we've learned. So if you have no thyroid, so from a psychiatric standpoint,

you have a family history of depression, you grow up in stress, chaos, unpredictability, and you have no thyroid. So I mean, trauma, trauma, trauma on a genetic foundation of vulnerability to depression. And you assume depression is one thing. So I need Prozac, which is a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which increases the availability of serotonin. At this time, it was a very popular drug. Yes. Listening to Prozac was a monster bestseller by Peter Kramer.

But what Prozac does is it calms down the circuits in your brain. It wasn't until I had been telling people for years after I finally took myself off the drug, I had been telling people for years that Prozac made me act crazy, not like myself. It changed my personality. No one really acknowledged that. It wasn't until i met you and saw my scan and you you said to me did you ever take an antidepressant and i told you yes and you said well i hope it wasn't prozac i was like why you're like because that's not what i

would have prescribed for you because you have sleepy frontal lobes and i was like ding ding ding ding just explain my whole life. Yeah. But Wellbutrin, which stimulates your frontal lobes, has been incredibly helpful for you. So it's not a bad idea to look at your brain before you go about changing it. That's what we try to do at Amen Clinics. And I think, you know, after we met, you got scanned. You're like, oh, well, this sort of makes sense because you're bright. You're logical. Well, I'm a neurosurgical ICU nurse. So technology makes sense to me.

Why wouldn't you look? And so that's why I often say, first of all, don't do what I did. Don't go off of a cold turkey. Please don't do that. Get help and go off of it with the help of a trained, skilled professional. But it's really important. We are not anti-medicine. We are just against the indiscriminate use of it.

That's why I often say that. That's why I'm such an advocate for people understanding what medicine does being on the right medicine. So because it can it can literally affect your life in ways you don't want to be affected. My life was literally like some crazy cross between Carrie and nine and a half weeks. It was insane when I was on Prozac. So you don't want to find yourself in that position and you don't have to. So if you have the right help. And also I think part of getting well for you is you got connected to Chrissy.

So a mentor. Huge part of it. So a lot of things happened. And then you started going to church. So the really exciting thing is just like the negative stressors can stack. Well, positive stressors, not stressors, positive events can stack as well. And so all of a sudden, I mean, I really started praying like something's got to happen. And I didn't really know if I believed in God because I'm like,

if there's a God, he doesn't love me. When I was depressed, I was like, you know, I'm not on the top of his list. So I sort of had disconnected also because of my dad. My struggles with my dad led me to sort of disconnect from faith. But all of a sudden, like one positive thing happened, it attracted another positive thing. And then these positive stress events began to stack and like life changed really fast. Like it wasn't slow. It happened fast. Like it wasn't slow. It happened fast.

So it wasn't overnight, but all of a sudden good things began happening really quickly. And it of course was with the help of someone very special in my life, a mentor, a guide. Mentors are so important. But I reconnected with my spirituality. So you can find relentless courage of a scared child at relentless courage.com. So I reconnected with my spirituality. So you can find Relentless Courage of a Scared

Child at relentlesscourage.com. So I'm feeling a little exposed, but if it helps anybody to understand you are not alone. Well, compared to Playboy, this is like nothing. You just had to go there. You just had to go there. We also have an event December 12th, Overcoming Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, and Grief. You can sign up. It's free at tanaehmann.com forward slash event. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.