November started badly.  First, the time changed and that always is hard for me.  Since I decided to give up riding my bike home in the dark, I went from parking below my office window and leaving at my convenience to waiting for a bus on a windy corner. 

On top of that, I got sciatica.

Unless you have had sciatica, you cannot imagine the pressure and pain that runs down your leg. Colleagues at work took one look at me and recommended a chiropractor just minutes away.  I walked there stopping every few moments in agony.

That weekend, I could barely move off the sofa.  I was miserable.

This, I told myself, is what depression must feel like.  I had a sense of hopelessness and Why-bother? I pictured myself lying on the sofa on Thanksgiving, shouting directions about how to roast our turkey.  No one would want to be around me. But especially me would not want to be around me.

I stretched and iced and, with three more visits to the chiropractor, somehow made it through the following week. I began to believe I might get better.

And I did. 

I know that one is not considered clinically depressed until some time has passed with no relief.  So when I realized just before Thanksgiving that I felt much better, able to cope even if not at my best, I knew I had turned it around. I had dodged the depression bullet.

But it was a near miss.