ECT, VNS, the terrifying DBS -- and more
Thanks to Herb S. for sending me a link to Maria Luisa Tucker's Village Voice article about so-called experimental treatments for depression. I can't begin to describe how much I relate to the woman who's profiled in the article, who, like me, is chronically suicidal. Her experience with ECT also resonated for me, though her memory loss is more devastating than my own (I had fewer treatments):
Kelley began getting three treatments a week. Her suicidal depression was replaced by a mindless stupor. After the first treatment, a nurse wheeled Kelley out looking disheveled and disoriented. She was sent to the cafeteria, where she sat "drooling milk out the sides of her mouth," [her partner] Deb said. At home, Kelley couldn't empty the dishwasher because she couldn't remember where the dishes went. The only thing she was able to do was veg out on the couch watching football.After 33 sessions, Kelley pulled the plug on the treatment when it was apparent that the side effects were lasting. She had lost 20 years of memory. Everything she knows about her life from the years 1979 to 1999 comes from photographs, medical records, and overheard conversations. After her mother died last year, friends and family tried to console her by saying that she would always have her memories, but she wasn't able to admit to them that she actually couldn't remember much about her mother. "I have a photograph of the two of us, but I can't emotionally connect," Kelley says. "I don't recognize my mother, and I don't recognize myself."
Nevertheless, she was alive and no longer suicidal. "When you get knocked senseless by a two-by-four, you're not thinking about how depressed you are," Kelley wrote. "At this level of depression, most doctors are elated that you are still alive after they treat you. They congratulate themselves on saving another [void-of-quality of] life" (her aside).
Kelley stopped the ECT in April 1999. By November of the same year, she was already searching for something else.
Comments
Dear Liz,
I wanted to add that while I have known and collaborated with Colleen for almost 9 years I am the one who admires both she and you as well as my spouse and others for your amazing courage and perseverance in battling the travesty, pain and anguish of these unrelenting and devastating illnesses also affecting loved ones.
While you only shared the downside in your brief narrative what I consider important is the need to be educated and the encouragement to remain hopeful and persistent. What should also be carefully cited is the fact that Colleen, my spouse and others have known wellness and long-term remissions as noted in the quotations below which were taken from the same article although in her case she has relapsed.
"It was a complete remission," she said. Meanwhile, Merdinger was improving at a much slower pace. "It almost crept up on me," she said. "There was never one day where I could pinpoint—I just remember being able to look back and say, 'I feel a hell of a lot better today than I did a couple months ago.'"
“Both women were among the 29 percent in the study who felt their depressions melt away within a year after surgery.”
In my over 4 decades of battling my spouse’s serious mood disorder I’ve learned there are no guarantees or any panacea in terms of treatment but I’ve also learned the importance of availability to make choices of treatment options. What may work for one may not work for another and with each treatment are its own unique and potential side-effects but in my proactive advocacy and activism I am against those who would deny the choice of any of these treatment options from an educated patient in collaboration with his/her trusted, caring, knowledgeable and licensed physician(s) to make informed and un-coerced medical decision(s).
Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com
Posted by: Herb | September 20, 2007 05:14 PM