Hi everyone,
I have just discovered this forum today and thought that it would be a good opportunity to share my experience with ECT.
I have had a very positive experience. I don't think that I am necessarily an anomaly in having had a positive experience either. However a lot of other peoples experiences I have heard about have been negative, especially in the media. My heart hurts for the people who have had/are having negative experiences with it or who haven't had the benefit they were hoping for - but I am not one of them. I am not here to convince anyone that ECT is a "cure all" or that it always works well for everyone, or that it doesn't have risks or can't be misused - I won't because that isn't true. But I can say with complete honesty that it has helped me and I have no regrets. ECT may not help everyone but it helped me and I am so very grateful I did it.
So - my story.
I am 28 years old, and I have had severe depressions since I was 12 and started having manic episodes when I was 14, all of which went untreated until I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 23 years old after I hit what I thought at the time (and looking back would have to agree,) was the very bottom. Since then I have tried too many mood stabiliser, anti-depressant and anti-psychotic medications to count. Only one of these medications has ever helped at all (I still take it everyday,) and only to a limited extent. The rest were a mixed bag of awful side effects and disappointment. I never got used to the pain and emptiness of the depressions or the consequent shame from the manias, but I had nearly given up hope that things could be any different and I nearly gave up on life altogether a handful of times. Those memories are scars now though = healed. No longer painful wounds but always there to remind me how far I have come.
About three years ago I found a tiny bit of hope and I decided to try again (something, anything) with a new doctor. I live in a very small rural town so getting to see a doctor who wasn't here just for a week or two or I had to travel atleast 3 hours to see was hard. Mostly you just saw whoever was there when you went in and hoped they would read enough of your file to not prescribe something you were seriously allergic to. Getting someone who actually planned on sticking around was rare, even less likely was someone competent.
I got very lucky indeed. I found a really good GP who stuck around for a couple of years and actually wanted to help me and see me get well. I saw him nearly every week and I tried several medications I hadn't previously (in the end they weren't helpful,) but he didn't give up on me or hand me off to a Psychiatrist I was only going to be able to see once or twice until a new one came along I would have to start over with - he kept trying and so did I. Eventually he suggested that I look into ECT.
I was at a point where I would have done anything to get better. If I had been told that to get better I would have to forget everything that I had ever experienced I wouldn't have thought twice about it. I was desperate. I wanted to live, I wasn't living - my existence just felt like a very slow and painful way of dying. So the risks barely even registered. I read about them and I guess I hoped I wouldn't be too badly damaged by it, but honestly they were all worth it if there was a tiny chance I could get better and apparently there was something so I went for it.
It took about two weeks from when I asked my doctor to help me make it happen to when I was admitted into hospital and my treatments began. I had a total of 12 treatments (6 over two weeks, a month break then another 6 over another two weeks.)
The actual treatments were strange to say the least, but not bad. I got woken up early each morning I had a treatment by a very cheery nurse and taken to get prepared for the procedure. If it was a good morning I would go straight in, on a less good morning I would need to wait for a while. When I did get taken in I was asleep in a matter of minutes (general anesthetic,) then all of a sudden waking up to another very cheerful nurse checking on me. By the time I worked out what was going on I would have a choc chip muffin in my hand and a tv in front of me showing some polyanna BS early morning news show. Definately not a normal morning, but far from what I would call traumatic.
I felt pretty tired for the rest of the day after I had the treatments, and a few times I got a headache on those days but nothing too serious. I have some difficulty remembering things that happened during the time I was getting treatments, the month in between admissions and a few weeks after I left at the end, but I have no other memory loss. It is like I just wasn't able to form new memories as well around that time. It is odd when I think about it but not too concerning for me.
Ok so now the good part. When I first got home I was still in a bit of a haze and I wasn't sure straight away if it had "worked". However as the weeks went by I realised I wasn't constantly having intrusive thoughts about how everything about me and my life was bad in some way. I started laughing more often. One afternoon I found myself sitting out the front of my house being in awe of how beautiful the sky was and how warm the sun felt and how wonderful it was to be seeing and feeling that. I realised I was living and i like it.
Since then I haven't managed to achieve anything fantastic you would have read about in the news, and I don't always think everything is wonderful about myself or my life or the world in general, but I get up every morning and by the end of most days I will have found something that makes me smile deep down. I look forward to things. I don't hesitate when I say I am O.K. It has been a good year and I am hopeful next year will be too.
I don't think that would have been or be the case if I hadn't of had ECT. I don't have any guaruntees about next year or ten years from now, but I do know that I will fight to hold onto this and if I did get to the point where I was back in that hell I would do ANYTHING it took for the chance to be well again.
All the best,
Me.
