Natalie’s Story- Becoming a runner

I was so excited to attend my first event as a NAMI employee. It was called The Heroes In The Fight and was downtown at the Omni. The event was a wonderful experience and helped me to come up with the idea of this blog. As I was listening to the featured speaker I was so moved and impressed with how strong and determined she was to not let her depression take over her life. Her name is Natalie and since then I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with her and learning just how amazing she is. She helped me come up with the idea to have this blog for NAMI Indiana to support others who are experiencing mental illness. I hope this blog will be a great resource tool and place to share and learn about others stories experiencing a mental illness. The vision for this blog is: –To create an online forum within the NAMI website where people experiencing a variety of mental illnesses can share their story and thereby give others a positive outlook on their own illnesses by removing the stigmas associated with mental illness. Thank you Natalie for helping fight the stigma on mental illness and sharing your story!

I met my passion, my best friend, my worst enemy, my (free) therapist, and my strongest medication about five years ago.  I was 22, and just graduated from college with an excellent education, great GPA, a member of the golf team and I was even a newlywed.  To top it all off I lost about 50 pounds my last two years of college and I couldn’t have looked any better.  I thought I was in the best shape of my life.  I lost the weight by dieting and doing the elliptical at the local gym.   I thought I had it all together, but little did I know I had a marathon of a challenge ahead.

I landed a great job right out of college.  Everything seemed to be going okay, but I was having headaches so bad I couldn’t sleep.   I spent a lot of time in bed because of the headaches.  I saw my family doctor for it, and that is where it all started.

My doctor started to talk to me and ask me about my personal life.  She dug into my soul until I started to cry.  At that point she told me that I didn’t have a problem with headaches, that I had depression.  I was confused.  My dad had depression, but how could I be depressed?  I just had headaches.  She suggested I take an anti-depressant, but I was resistant.  She gave me some samples to try, and I went home.  I thought about it for a while and decided to take the medicine.

I did some research and found out that exercise was one of the best prevention methods for depression, and I knew I needed to get out of bed and on with my life.  I was an adventurous woman and my husband was a runner, so I decided that I was going to train for the half marathon they have in my city.  I started running with my husband every night after work.  Even though that I started running I never considered myself a “runner”.  I didn’t think that I fit into that crowd.  I was just a woman who ran every day but as I ran with my husband, I found that it freed my thoughts and relieved my stress.  Running was there for me.

As for the depression, I started to feel better and started running more and more.  Soon I found myself waking up the day of the half marathon.  I was nervous because I never ran that distance before, but I knew I could do it.  I ran that day as hard as I could and finished in 1:49 which was well under my goal of 2 hours.  I was ecstatic and found myself running again just a few days later.

As the days went by, I found that my medicine wore out quickly because my body was used to it.  I went back to the doctor and she gave me a different type of medicine and I took that for a short period of time.  I repeated this process for about 2 years until my doctor told me that she couldn’t help me anymore.  By that time, I was training for a full marathon and doing everything I could, but the depression was consuming me.  My family doctor finally referred me to a psychologist and a psychiatrist.

In the time between the visit with my family doctor and the specialists, I ran the Chicago Marathon.   I wasn’t feeling the greatest.  I was a little depressed, but knew I had to do it because I trained so hard.  The marathon was really difficult compared to the half marathon, but I finished it in 3:56.  That was four minutes better than my goal.  I was happy that I did it, but a little disappointed because I felt like I could have done better if I wasn’t depressed.

When I returned home from the Chicago Marathon I started to see my psychologist.  She was a perfect fit for me.  She was gentle, easy to talk to, open-minded.   I unraveled the secrets of my depression with her.  I found out many things about myself.  I found out that my childhood wasn’t as happy as other children.  In the weeks that I figured this all out, I was upset and I started to run more.  I had signed up for more and more races and regardless of what was happening with my depression, I ran.  I was training for my next half marathon.  I put in so many miles, I couldn’t even count them.  It wore me out enough so I could sleep, because that was one of the worst symptoms of my depression.  The next thing I knew, my husband and I traveled across the country to run the Big Sur Half Marathon in California.  I was feeling pretty good at the time.  I was relieved to be away from the Midwest where my family resided.  I was relaxed and amazingly confident in my abilities, but I only set the bar at 1:45.  That day I ran a 1:41, and after the race a woman behind me came up to congratulate me.  That very second, I went from a woman that ran everyday to a “runner”.

As we put in more and more miles, we decided to also sign up for the Tucson Marathon which was about a month away.  We traveled out there from our home in Indianapolis and it felt great again to get away from my problems.   At this point I wasn’t in contact with my family.  I decided I needed time to myself to figure it all out.  Fortunately I was able to put all these thoughts aside while I ran the marathon.  I wasn’t trying to put pressure on myself, but I really wanted to qualify for Boston.  I had improved over the year since the Chicago Marathon and with a downhill course; I thought I could do it.  That day we had perfect weather for me to run a 3:40, but the downhill sections seemed to be hard on my quads.  I ran a 3:44.  I just missed my time.  I was disappointed, but happy at the same time.  I improved by 12 minutes from the last marathon.

The next part of my life was probably the most difficult.  It turns out that the hills of Tucson took quite a toll on my knees.  I ended up in the doctor’s office of our local sports medicine clinic.  They diagnosed me with IT Band Syndrome.  I struggled with it for 5 months.  I couldn’t run on it because of the pain, but the pain of my depression was the worst.  I got really down on life.  I was still going to therapy and started going to my psychiatrist more often.  He prescribed many different drugs and the side effects were unimaginable.  I even found myself suicidal at times, but the important thing was that I was getting help.  I was weak and could hardly go to work, but I did anyway.  I would go to work and come home to bed.   I would sleep the days away.
After a month of this and no medicine helping I knew I needed to start running again.  The knee doctor I was seeing was really reluctant to do surgery so I went to another surgeon in town.  I told him that I tried everything:  shots, massage, physical therapy and nothing worked.  He told me he would do the surgery for me.  I had surgery 6 months after the injury and within two weeks I was walking 4 miles around my neighborhood.  In about 2 more weeks I was running those 4 miles and soon after that I was back to normal.  I was a “runner” again.  I was happy again.

That fall I ran in a half marathon a couple hours from my hometown.  I was disappointed in my performance, but still was happy that I finished.  This time I did it in 1:49 again.  I was sad that I didn’t run a PR, but I was only back to running for 4 months since surgery.  I should have been ecstatic that I finished without pain.

Since then, I ran one other half marathon in Green Bay.  I ran my second best time of 1:44.   I have been training and running smaller races now for 5 months.  I’m getting ready to run the full marathon at the P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n Roll Marathon in Arizona on January 17, 2010.  I also am running the 2010 Illinois Half Marathon on May 1^st.

Overall, the key is that I am running and I am happy.  I have my passion, my best friend, my worst enemy, my (free) therapist, and my strongest medication back and I know that I am a runner.

We are going to try to update the blog weekly with interesting articles and resources. Every month we will try to feature someone who is experiencing or affected by someone who is experiencing a mental illness and if you would be interested in sharing your story like Natalie please email me @kemkes@nami.org.

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