Posted by ShelliR on February 22, 2003, at 11:36:56
In reply to Re: Must get ECT. How explain to boss?, posted by Greg A. on February 20, 2003, at 12:31:44
Hi Greg.
"Worth it" was probably not the right phrase to use. I don't mean that it did me any good, just that the odds are really good with ECT, so it did feel for me like the logical next thing to try. And cross off my list. I think I got ten or twelve bilateral frontal treatments. I'm not sure whether it affected my long term memory; there are things definitely from those weeks that I'll never remember, but that's not a big deal to me. My short term memory was already bad before the treatment--mostly recall of names (people, movies, etc.). And I do feel foggier than before, but because I have a dissociative disorder, I tend to be really spacey, anyway.
How many treatments did you get? Bilateral?
I still haven't found anything to rid me of the depression, aside from methadone. And my doctor hates when I go up on the meth, but it is habituating, so that's going to be inevitable. I'm hoping I'll reach a plateau though. Without the methadone, I'd be dead now for sure. The pain (physical and psychological) was unrelenting and unbearable.
I'm still trying new things, mostly because I would love to get off methadone. Besides lexapro, I also did trials with straterra and abilify and my body had that horrible internal shaking. My doctor just gave me cogentin for the shaking and I've felt a lot better in the past few days. I may try again with the abilify, combining it with cogentin.
When I'm working, it's so hard to do drug trials. I haven't worked for the past ten days because I felt like I was crawling out of my skin and couldn't focus. So I'm reluctant to try the abilify again, but I'm running out of ideas. So far with this pdoc, I'm the one who sort of decides what the next step is. My doctor always knows what I'm talking about, but for some reason he's not the one who comes up with the ideas. Like even though I told him how horrible my body felt, he didn't suggest the cogentin. Thank goodness for this board; it's an amazing source of info.
When did you do ECT? What are you on now?
Shelli
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> Greg
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poster:ShelliR
thread:201088
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030215/msgs/202812.html