I'm Janet.

On April 18th, 2016 my sweet husband Joe had a physical.   The doctor said he was great. He said he had a little stress at work but nothing he couldn’t handle. That was my guy. The next week we found our retirement home on the golf course of his dreams. We were going to get a boat, travel and have fun. We had already booked our 30th anniversary cruise in Europe for next year. He was giving notice that he was retiring on July 8th. We were in Croatia on a pharmaceutical awards trip. He was named region director of the year. He loved me and loved his kids. He was my best friend.  

On April 25th our offer on this home was accepted and we came back and put our home on the market. On May 4th he called the doctor and said his stress was going to be a little higher with buying and selling homes at the same time. He was not depressed.  He was anxious.  He was put on Lexapro (escitalopram).

Soon he had become paranoid, wasn’t sleeping and had changed  rapidly. When he told me he was taking escitalopram it was like a light bulb clicked in my mind. I knew he was having a bad reaction. It explained so much because he had been on this before. Once four years ago and the other time was probably 10 years ago. The second time we ended up at a mental hospital but he wouldn’t go in. He asked me take him home. He said he would get off the meds and would get healthy. I just didn’t connect the dotted lines to Lexapro until this time and had no idea that it would come to this. I begged him to start weaning off of it. He said he would but I didn’t watch him take his pills. Because he wasn’t able to sleep, he was also taking Ambien. I was hopeful our trip to Italy would relax him and he would have fun in Croatia.  I was wrong on both points.

On 13 June 2016, five weeks  after being put on the escitalopram, he jumped off a balcony.