Posted by Katgirl on November 21, 2009, at 10:30:34
In reply to Re: Dangerously close to the end of the road. Help » Katgirl, posted by floatingbridge on November 18, 2009, at 15:47:36
OK, here is my experience with rTMS:
After severe and protracted withdrawal to paxil (lesson here: if you are on a drug that works, don't go off of it!!) I ended up with treatment resistant, suicidal depression that swung between severe agitation/anxiety or all the way to the other end of the spectrum with psychomotor retardation. (The wide spectrum of symptoms may have been due to the all the failed drug trials and subseqeunt withdrawals I went through because of the failed drug trials).
As I've stated previously the rTMS, after a few days left me very overstimulated, but they said this was the "Prozac" effect and that I would probably be a responder after I returned home. They also indicated that the two weeks directly after treatment I would feel worse. Boy, were they right. I cried for two weeks. BUT after those two weeks ALL of my suicidal thoughts were GONE. I can't tell you how huge that was. Killing myself had been in my thoughts literally every second of everyday for two years. It was horrific.
And after that I slowly started to get better. At the time, I think it was hard to gauge just how much it had helped for several reasons: 1)I had expeced rTMS to be like a medication, I was either going to be "all better" (like when I first took paxil) or it was going to fail. I didn't know you could land somewhere in the middle. And so my dissappointment at not being "all better" for awhile made me not fully appreciate some of the benefits I had received. 2) when the trial didn't make me immediately "all better" my now ex-husband left me (he is the one that pressured me relentlessly to go off the paxil. Nice, huh?) So then I was dealing with the stress of a divorce, which doesn't do the most for mental stability.
Upon reflection, I can say that rTMS was the only thing that helped me. It removed the suicidal thoughts and while I wasn't "all better" I at least had enough biochemical stability so that other long terms fixes like therapy, exercise, meditation could actually be helpful. When I was so biochemically messed up therapy etc didn't do ANYTHING for me. I guess you are really bad off when you are too biochemically messed up to be helped by therapy!!
Am I all better today? Not by a long shot. Am I so much better than I was a few years ago. YES YES YES. Is it constant work to get better. YES YES YES. (BUT as I stated previously, WITHOUT the biochemical stability that rTMS gave me, all the "practices" I do now would not work.
So, rTMS helped my depression enough that other things could then be helpful for me. Unfortunately, rTMS did nothing for my anxiety, which continues to plague me horribly. My concentration is also still very poor and I still have mild depression.
Like I stated before, I don't have the life I want, but I DO have a life, which I didn't have at all for five years. I hope that I continue to slowly get better (If I could just get some help with sleep and anxiety, I know it would make a huge difference in my quality of life!) and that maybe in my lifetime some new medications will come out that I can take.
Hope this was helpful! K
poster:Katgirl
thread:925800
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20091117/msgs/926426.html