Posted by bleauberry on January 1, 2010, at 17:55:10
In reply to Re: ECT » bleauberry, posted by morganator on December 31, 2009, at 21:26:01
> >Life is not the same after ECT
>
> Can you elaborate on this? I'm just curious. I considered ECT once this past year when a psychiatrist I was seeing said that it may help with my bipolar depression and mixed episode. I'm glad I did not do it but I'm still interested in hearing more about it from people who have been through it.Well, how about start another post maybe? The author of this thread really didn't want anything negative in it. I have some positives to say, but also some negatives.
By saying life is not the same after ECT, I can't think of a better way to describe it. It's hard to elaborate. Not necessarily better...but hopefully, and not necessarily worse...just different. It is like a new chapter. For me, I suffered severe memory loss which is permanent. But in a strange way, that is a good thing. Most of the horrible days, weeks, months, hospitalizations, pre-ECT meetings, actual ECT sessions, car drives to and from the hospital...all that stuff...I have no memory of. That's good. I don't want to remember those things. I also don't remember a lot of the difficulties I was having with failed meds, so that is good. It is like a different chapter. The old is gone. For me it was kind of like wiping the slate clean and starting again. Maybe the journey I'm on now is a horrible journey, but it is the beginning of that journey. That's a lot better than being deep into a horrible journey, which is where I was pre-ECT.
The biggest benefit I see in ECT is it can give the one thing we all need more than anything else, win or lose.....hope. There is hope before ECT, hope that it will work. Even if it doesn't, there is now new hope that something else will, hope that had been totally exhausted prior to ECT, but somehow ECT restored it.
That was my experience.
poster:bleauberry
thread:931793
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20091227/msgs/932032.html