I feel whole. I’m put together.

My name is Brian B. and I am a chaplain. I first realized about seven years ago that that something wasn’t going right. I didn’t realize how much my heart was racing and how often I was experiencing and what were really kind of mild panic attacks. I always attributed to other things. I was down on my work and my life.

For my wife, I became somebody that she didn’t marry. I withdrew; I would come in and I would just sit in the chair and she just said that I just wasn’t who she knew that I was, that I just in some ways disappeared.

My primary care provider wanted me to try Paxil and I took one dose and it was just a bad experience. I tried, I think four other meds and every time it was just a bad experience. So I thought, well this is just the way life is; this is how I have to live life. She said your body just doesn’t like anything. She said there’s a gene test that we could do that will tell us what medications match your genetic makeup and will tell us what medication might work best for you, and I said “Let’s do it.”

I’ll never forget, she pulled it out and she said “Everything, basically, that we’ve tried is in the red column. Those are the worst that’s for you to take, but in the green bin there’s actually a med that we can try.” And that was the first time they that I felt some hope that maybe something work.

The second day on Pristiq, I was like I actually feel okay. And the third day, I was like I can do this.

The first person who noticed the change in me was my wife and she said to me “Brian, I see the Brian coming out that I knew when we first got married.”

The GeneSight test nailed it the first time. I feel whole. I’m put together. I do a lot of hobbies. Right now, I’m building some wooden ship models. It’s fun to take bits and pieces and make them into a whole.

I’m in a place now where I know my illness and I know what I need to do to remain healthy.