Here She Comes Again

It’s been a while…..

Early June 2009, determined to get rid of the debt chokehold and the daunting prospect of a mortgage that eats up my total income, I started to prepare my condo for sale.  All I could manage to think of is that, my thoughts went no further at this point.  When people asked what will you do, where will you live, I said that I did not know.  The one worry came from the realization that things would be very difficult with a dog.

My condo sold very quickly and at a very good price.  I was upbeat for about a month.  And then I started perusing Craigslist for a place where I could stay month to month with a dog.  Nothing in any safe/urban DC area that was much less expensive – if at all – than my mortgage.  I really did not think I could risk the far out suburbs.  I knew that I’d be guaranteed to be depressed if far away from “people.”

Slowly, the Beirut option started gaining status.  I wasn’t doing a rational list of pros and cons.  I felt like going to Beirut because that is where I let my hair down and my feet up.

In All This Time

I’ve been writing much less, here and in my other blog.  I want to pick up the other blog again, penseesnocturnes.blogspot.com.   This one was just about ECT.

I had needed the ECT again probably, after I stopped, but money, the headaches I was getting from anesthesia, the addiction I quickly developed on the opiate pain killers, made it not an option.  So, time passed while I was very depressed, hardly ever getting out of bed.  With family and friends, we decided that the best option would be for me to go stay at my mother’s in Beirut.

I have been in Beirut a year and a half.  The depression is still there but it is not depression which leads one to go for ECT.  I have a good psychiatrist here but no psychotherapy.  I don’t make any income so can’t afford it.  Ok, I tutor some.

The psychiatrist had me on Lithium and a small dose of Zyprexa.  On my insisting (because those weren’t enough), he put me on Lexapro.  I feel slighly better without any hypomania symptoms.  One new problem I have is insomnia, treatment-resistant insomnia.

The sun is very important.

I think that I will be going back to the States but in due time.  I miss it, miss my children, a lot.

What Next

My head is killing me.  I took Imitrex and Naproxen in vain.  Next….  narcs.  I still have percocet and hydrocodone, if not barbiturates.  I will try my best not to do it.

Yesterday, I saw my old psychiatrist/psychotherapist, the one I can’t afford anymore.  Nor can I afford a two-in-one talk and med management anymore simply because they are so hard to find.

She encouraged me to try ECT again.  She said I sabotaged it with the addiction.  I have a hard time believing it would not have left any beneficial effect on me once I got clean.

I am so depressed I can’t think clear.  I am under pressure to dispose of my condo and my belongings because my child support payments stop in July.

All I do is lie in bed.

Emotional Lability

I haven’t been writing, I don’t know what to write.  I am still very depressed.  I lie around a lot.  I have been numb.

I gotta break the stalemate.

Lifeless

My biggest fear had not been what ECT could do in terms of side effects.  My biggest fear was that it not work.

It is 9:40 in the morning.  I woke up at 6 am.  I am still in bed lifeless.  I’d like to spend the day in bed, as lifeless as possible. 

I have so much to do as in major decisions, selling condo, moving countries…  As when I was/am depressed, it all feels overwhelming.  I don’t imagine that I can handle anything.  That is depression.  Along with sadness, lack of motivation, and other symptoms, what hits me in particular is the difficulty to take on things.  Everything seems insurmountable.

I have felt hope duing ECT.  I have seen things in a different light.  I am hoping that hopeful attitude will be back.

Depression Before and After ECT

I think that should be the title to my blog.  ECT was an indulgence in experimental science.

Or I could call my blog “depression and chronic pain.”  And have a half a million other people blogging about same.

Weary

I woke up, not only with my head in its usual distinguishing pain, but with my lower back and my sciatica making it impossible to move.  A few hours later, and Advil (ha ha ha ha ha), I was beginning to think of my options.  Had I any support, I’d have gone to the ER.  I made an appointment with an orthopedic doctor for Monday, wore my corset, and took narcs.

Sick of being sick with one thing or another.  Sick of being alone.  I was going to a Church early dinner then my DBSA meeting, but no way I could stand up.  I showered.  Hurray!

I am more and more convinced that the back pain was a result of ECT, although this is not the first time my back flared.  Heck, what a coincidence.  Another call to the shock doctor tomorrow.

The wanna-be therapist is silly.  He’s one of those cheerleaders therapists.  He has no idea of the severity of the pain and of the resulting despondency.  He suggests things on calendar monthly pages.  I need empathy, even with no direct solution.  The worst part is he did not pick on the urgency neither during my session nor when I said that I want to come twice next week.  For some protocol shit — the kind with paper not white gloves — he pushed me till Thurday of next week………

I wanted to die today, many times.  I contemplating admitting myself to the hospital psych ward.  Can’t even walk.  The condo is extremely uncomfortable, something in my wildest dreams I never imagined (who, when they move, moves stuff from their kitchen cabinet).  I am someone to whom home, a calm, serene home, a home where nothing changes, is very important.  I do like I. and I certainly don’t want to hurt K. but there is an immaturity that surprises me.

I couldn’t go to the hospital with the condo like that.  I am not beyond control.  I don’t want to hurt my children and my dog.

ECT?  Huh? What’s that?  What is it for? 

Oh, that….  It lasts an hour or so after a session.

NO MORE PAIN!!!!!!!!!!!

Please?  No more pain?  Please?  Now, it’s not just my head, but my spine, my sciatica.

My head, will it ever stop hurting?

Anyone think there is a point in me still living, in me getting better, is a fool.  I won’t kill myself, because of everyone else, but it is not fair to me.

I have had all the pain I can take and I see nothing ahead but more pain.

As For Memory Loss

I can’t say that I feel I had any.  Sure, I was out for rent when I was high, but I don’t have any memory loss of the events or decisions I was contemplating right around when I started ECT.  I remember a lot of detail, in fact.  If I’m not going to have permanent benefits, I’m quite grateful I did not have memory loss.

Contact With The ECT Doc

I called my one time electrocutor yesterday.  I told him that I was depressed and that I even had death wishes.  I said that at some point I had felt benefits from the ECT.  I asked, would they come back?  Once this ordeal of withdrawal and headaches is over, will I feel positive and upbeat again?  He said, yes, the benefits are not lost.

The guy is an ECT zealot.  There is no way he can give an unbiased opinion.  I have a very hard time imagining I will feel the way that I felt on those few days.  I remember waking up without immediately thinking of all the chores ahead of me and ailments and decisions and financial problems.  For a while, with ECT, I woke running those things through my head, and running strategies of how I’d handle them confidently.

Was that placebo?  How else to explain that there is no trace of it?