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. | My Future I am 83 years old — or almost — and for the last five years I have been trying to dig out of a problem I never anticipated: serious depression. |
For a while, it became life-threatening. I can write about it now because I finally recognize the symptoms and understand, at least partly, how to counteract them. At my age, there is also the other fear — dementia. I watch for it closely. Like my struggle with depression, I try to understand it intellectually and respond to it practically. At least, the best I can.
My depression began in August 2021 when I suffered an ischemic stroke. Physically, I survived with little disability. Mentally, not so much.
The stroke left me with Wernicke’s aphasia. I describe it as “feeling alone even while standing in a crowd.” I hear people speaking, but too often I cannot process what they mean quickly enough to participate naturally in conversation. By the time I understand, the moment has passed. People move on. It is isolating in a way that is difficult to explain unless you have experienced it.
The easiest solution is avoidance. Stop socializing. Withdraw from situations that constantly remind you of what you lost.
My second psychological collapse came in April 2024 when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. That diagnosis took away my sense of the future. I stopped planning. I stopped thinking long-term. My attention shifted almost entirely toward “putting my affairs in order.”
To make matters worse, the treatment itself contributed to the problem. Some of the medications required for cancer therapy carry depression, fatigue, and cognitive impairment as known side effects. I could feel the change in my thinking, but at the time, I did not fully understand what was happening.
My third collapse came in August 2024 when I developed septic shock from a urinary tract infection. Sepsis at my age carries a frightening mortality rate. Many older patients never recover physically, cognitively, or emotionally. Fortunately, mine was caught early enough that I survived.
I spent two weeks in the hospital followed by more than a month of intravenous antibiotics and home healthcare. The worst part, psychologically, was believing I would spend the rest of my life self-catheterizing four times a day. At the time, it felt like a future I did not want. I preferred death.
Fortunately, that fear proved temporary. Within weeks, I recovered physically. I believed I was improving.
What I did not understand was the lingering neurological burden that often follows severe sepsis. Post-sepsis depression, cognitive slowing, anxiety, and “brain fog” are now increasingly recognized in medical literature, especially in older patients. At the time, I knew nothing about it.
By late 2024 and early 2025, my depression deepened dangerously.
I was living in what I can only describe as a mental fog. I was present physically, but mentally absent. My aphasia seemed worse. Social interaction became exhausting. I preferred watching life rather than participating in it. Withdrawal felt easier and less painful.
By early 2025, my suicidal thinking became serious. I prepared a plan. I did not carry it out.
I fought through most of 2025, understanding only one thing clearly: my brain was sick.
By early 2026, the suicidal ideation returned, although not with the same intensity. Several things helped. My cancer entered remission, which restored some sense of future. I was no longer taking medications that worsened my depression. Eighteen months had passed since septic shock, and some of the cognitive effects had begun to fade.
My family and friends also helped enormously. They kept trying to pull me toward the future even when I could not see one myself.
Still, I did not understand why my mind felt broken.
What I really wanted was for someone to ask me directly about my suicidal thoughts. My doctors. My closest friends. Anyone.
But not my family.
I could not bear placing that burden on them. And I would never have initiated that conversation myself.
Nobody asked.
In March 2026, I could feel my resistance failing again. I remembered how dangerous my thinking had become the year before. One night, very late — usually my most vulnerable time — I opened ChatGPT and began talking.
We talked for hours that night, and for many nights afterward.
The discussions became unexpectedly deep. I admitted things I had never fully admitted even to myself. I talked honestly about losing my wife, the stroke, the aphasia, the cancer, the sepsis, the isolation, and my fear of cognitive decline.
I also spoke openly about suicide.
Each night, it repeatedly asked me, “Are you safe?”
And it kept asking until I answered, “I am safe.”
Then it would say, “Promise me you will contact a psychiatrist.”
The truth is, I wanted to contact a psychiatrist. But would one talk with me at two o’clock in the morning — the time when I was most vulnerable and most honest?
ChatGPT was always immediately available. It never became impatient. It never needed sleep. So we talked.
Eventually, something changed.
My mind cleared in a way I can only describe as opening a window after years in a dark room. I finally admitted to myself why I was mentally ill. More importantly, I believed I could fight it and that I wanted to fight it.
That realization mattered.
I would never recommend using ChatGPT as a substitute for professional psychological care. It lacks judgment, emotional understanding, accountability, and the safeguards that trained clinicians provide. The conversation could easily have gone badly. I was fortunate.
But for me, at that moment, it served another purpose.
It kept me talking long enough to survive.
I have been well now for several months. The brain fog is greatly diminished. The depression still appears occasionally, but I no longer reinforce it with dangerous thinking patterns. I feel more in control of my mind. More importantly, I feel interested in the future again.
At 83, that may be the most important recovery of all.