ECT #33
Every third Monday is ECT day. Today's was good but hectic. The nurses usually have everything laid and ready. Not so today. The setup is four bays all ready to receive patients, each bay has a dedicated nurse and each bay has all of its consumables. The material for the IV, monitoring supplies, ambu bags, and IV medicines. It takes about thirty minutes for each patient to be readied for the shocking. This morning all of us in the bays but no supplies. The nurses were frustrated, harried and late. The shocking happened about thirty min late. I felt for the poor nurses running around and frustrated.
The ECT will stave off depression for a few weeks
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Hoping will work to decrease in the long run~~ ya nursing and doctoring really are not professions that are easy these days...one hopeful note...yesterday was the First Day in NYC of No deaths due to virus! Amen! Take Good Care, ml
I hope the ECT works Thor, How many sessions a year? Is it better than meds? Wishing you the best.
I’ve had about 25 this year. It is better than meds. I was on meds when I went in hospital for depression and suicidal intentions.
I’m so afraid of ECT. But I’m glad it helps you
Kisses - I’m afraid every time they hook me up. It has been good for me.
I follow your ECT story with care, Thor, not just for you but also because it may serve as a role model for me. I write often here that I came here in June of 2012 because after having been on PTSD and depression meds since 1995, kidney disease took me off of ALL of them. Talk therapy and support group talk were all I was left with. I've got PTSD from 3 categories, so I was frightened.
I never knew anyone up close and personal who did ECT's as an alternative to medication, so your taking me behind the scenes of it is really helpful in my keeping up my belief that there will be some non-medication treatment for my PTSD out there should it take a negative turn. It's done that twice now since my first 1995 diagnosis, once in 2000 and again in 2010, so it's good to be prepared.
Thanks for being willing to talk about ECT's.
Muji - I would recommend it. It has helped and the side effects are low and also your brain does grow back is you do suffer some side effects. My doctor does mono-pole ECT so the shock is only to one side of the brain (left temporal lobe). There is a line out the door for this ECT program. I get there an hour early so I get either the first or second ECT bays. Doc runs the place like an assembly line. It's not violent, only your ankle goes into seizures as you are paralyzed. Oh, and I am taking medication still. So this is not in lieu of meds but in addition.
Oh, I misunderstood, I thought the ECT program for you was in place of medication, not in tandem with medication. It's good to know that it's not an either/or situation. I didn't know there was mono-pole ECT, either, with shock to one temporal lobe only (in your case left). All in all is sounds like there's a lot of good calibrating of ECT treatment to each patient's individual needs as much as possible while at the same time work to create an assembly line so as to make it as widely available as possible. That's heartening. Thanks for sharing such hopeful insider insights, Thor.
Thor, just curious, did you try TMS (Neurostar) first? Or did you go directly to ECT? I wanted to try the ganglion nerve block but it is still in the trials phase. My doctor was going to check and see if there were any local trials as it shows really good reluts.
She outa - TMS is not at this hospital. He wanted me to try ketamine but that’s not covered by Tri-care. So yep straight to the electric lobotomy’.
Both my dad and uncle had this. Uncle got well after his treatments but Dad never really did completely. He did get better though. Unfortunately the meds he got on were slowing his system and then things got complicated and stupid dr did surgery for stomach gas. Dad died because of that idiot.
Mary - thanks. Sorry about your dad.
Thor, you mentioned here that an ECT could stave off depression for a few weeks. Seems like 3, huh?
I hope you don't mind, but it led to me to a question, if it's not too personal, since you have an ECT every third Monday. Do you feel an "arc" between treatments, as in being depression-free for the first week, ok in the middle week, then have depression returning in the third and last week before the next ECT? Is that how you experience life between ECT's?
Muji - That is about right. It is a slow slide down into depression. The first week is good, second is OK, the third is bad. As I do more ECT, I should be able to extend this out to every four weeks then five. I started at doing ECT three times a week and now it is once per three weeks. Are you thinking about doing ECT? If so, we should talk and I can answer any questions.
In my own depression back in the year 2000 when I went through divorce and bankruptcy I didn't have ECT but I did have medication, and I would have an "arc" of when it was effective at first and then got less effective weeks later. So that what why I was asking. I'm ok re depression now, but since 2012 I've had chronic kidney disease from Seroquel. 60% of my kidneys are permanently gone now, so all meds but liver-processed Prazosin are forbidden now due to my kidneys. I've been dealing with any depression since 2012 without anything at all except taking therapy. Prazosin's great but it's for nightmares, not depression.
So for me to hear that there's an alternative to medication that works in a similar way that's available to guys like me with kidney damage means a lot. I was ordered to do kidney dialysis immediately back in 2012 when I got my kidney diagnosis. which would have meant half a day on a machine 3 days a week, ending my full time job. Others here suggested that even though I accept that I only had 40% kidney function left, maybe I could change my lifestyle around to live on 40% and keep my full time job without dialysis half a day 3 times a week.
At another, bigger hospital and hour away from my hospital in my town I found another kidney specialist who was willing to go for it. I had to radically change my lifestyle to live with 40% kidneys and yet stay off of dialysis. For one thing, I had to lose weight: I lost 111 pounds. I had to begin exercise (I post every day about it on the Walk A Day thread here that our DS PTSD member Rizen started). I had to stop all bubbly drinks, meaning all sodas, beer, etc. I had to go off of caffeine and alcohol, too.
For me at first doing all of that was tantamount to promising I'd become a saint. I had walked on a cane for 8 years, I weighed 350 pounds. But as a hospital chaplain for 10 years in Chicago and Kansas City I had been paged many times to sit through kidney dialysis at our machines with patients, so I had seen it up close. It was extremely time and energy consuming for them and became their life's main event three times a week, with everything else taking a back seat. And once begun, it could not be stopped without the patient dying. I had a couple of patients I worked with personally who came to that decision, signed legal waivers to let the hospital off the hook legally, and actually did choose to die rather than continue.
So I took finding an alternative seriously even if it meant losing over 100 pounds, getting off a cane for the first time in 8 years, giving up soda and beer, and living the life of some saint, and I did it all. I learned I can really change for my health's sake. That's why I'm following your ECT with such interest, too. When I was depressed so badly for a year in the year 2000 during my divorce back then, it was the second time I'd been that depressed before, the first time being 15 years before in 1985.
Having had depression that badly twice for a year at a time each time reminded me of the saying that lightning can strike twice. So even though I haven't been as depressed again in 20 years now, I may be about overdue.
The last interval between my year long depression in 1985 and my year long depression in 2000 was 15 years, and I've gone 5 years longer than that now. I'm facing a big life change next year, not a divorce, but retirement, which is a big thing to adapt to. It could bring on depression just because it takes away the job structure in life I've known for 40 years of teaching. That's why I'm following your ECT regimen and its success with admiration and interest, because it looks like you could be the role model for me next time.
I'm deeply grateful to you for being so open about it, stigma or not, because it's really educating me about something I myself may need and it gives me hope for getting through the next time I may been depressed for a year again.