Dr. wants me to go through ECT.

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I've been under treatment for bipolar (mostly depressive) for over a year. No meds have seemed to work and now my doctor wants me to try unilateral ECT. I was wondering if anyone here had experience with this treatment. I'm mostly afraid of having permanent memory loss and reduced cognitive functions, though he assured me that those only happen with bilateral.

About a year ago I had ECT after two years of failed med trials and severe depression which at the time was believed to be bipolar. Now I know my psychiatrist misdiagnosed me because she had little experience with treating and recognizing autism spectrum disorders. She saw the AS symptoms as bipolar, and attempted to treat them through meds in a way that was very counterproductive. I did have depression, and ECT helped that a lot. I started out with bilateral, but it caused a lot of cognitive problems, so I switched to unilateral. I still had a lot of noticeable cognitive and memory impairments for a while. Even after the treatments were done. Everything is back to normal now as far as functioning, but there are still memories that are gone. I don't expect to ever recall them again, but it's mostly stuff around the period I was receiving treatments. I think it's important to weigh out how much you might benefit from this with the side effects. It's kind of a compromise.

This is what happened to my mother. Her memory loss was not just of recent things like the psychiatrist told her -- she forgot huge chunks of her life and things that had happened years before she went through ECT (things she remembered immediately prior to ECT) and she lost abilities. It didn't even help her depression. I don't know what kind of ECT she had.

IMHO, I'd run like hell in the opposite direction! ECT is a barbaric, so-called "treatment" left over from the Dark Ages. Sticking electrodes on someone's head and then plugging them into a light socket is nothing more than crackpot "medicine", reminiscent of something Dr. Frankenstein would do. Of course people react differently afterwards. Who wouldn't after they fry your brain cells? ECT, along with frontal lobotomy, should be banned as pseudo science. (On second thought these procedures are trivial compared to what they do to people at JRC.)

I have seen the results of this process first hand in a friend of mine, who underwent the "treatment" twice, and the results were frightening to say the least. Their personality was definitely changed, but the fundamental problem of depression was still there along with what appeared to be long term (several months) memory loss and loss of the ability to make decisions and solve even simple problems (cognitive loss).

It doesn't seem like something I'm willing to risk. I have other problems which may make me harder to treat (ASD, anxiety, OCD), but my doctor insists that antidepressants will ruin my sleep cycle and make me irritable (adderall makes me this way). He has put me on an MAOI and it did screw up my sleep schedule, so I dunno. I've only really been treated with mood stabilizers and an antipsychotics. I'm just so tired of being depressed and bored with my life.

I have generalized anxiety disorder and OCD, as well. Those were a lot easier to deal with in therapy after the depression was treated. I don't think the ECT helped with that, but I thought I'd throw that out there. I can't tolerate anti depressants, so I am on mood stabilizers. Everything else seemed to cause a bad reaction somehow as far as moods. I agree that no matter how you treat the depression that the AS and anxiety disorders will make it harder. ASD and depression seem to be particularly hard to treat. And, if you do decide to seriously consider ECT, there are things that can help the memory and cognition while you're getting treatments. Keeping a journal of day to day activities, logic puzzles, reading, and really anything that exercises your brain. I got a cognitive test before and after treatments also, and they helped show me what I needed to work on to get back to where I was at before treatments. Side note- modern day ECT does not include light sockets =/.

Oh I know. I've seen what an actual procedure is like. Still scares me. Thanks for the tips, though. I like to write down my thoughts, so I'll definitely do that if I do end up with the treatment.

Now you know why I don't like psychiatrists. If the can't perform a lobotomy chemically, then they use electricity to do the deed. Failing that, then they go with the knife.

Now you know why I don't like psychiatrists. If the can't perform a lobotomy chemically, then they use electricity to do the deed. Failing that, then they go with the knife.

MAOI sounds a little old school, or for bipolar. Have you thought about SSRIs or SNRIs just for the depression, and trying a variety of different ones, which is sometimes necessary.

There was an article from the Los Angeles Times a couple of years back about a newer treatment of magnetic stimulation of the brain for depression. And it was a series of treatments used.

Hopefully, this will give you one more good option. (will try and find link)

No offence to anyone on this thread, but does anyone actually have a clue what it's like to be in the situation where you might have to go ECT? But of course, if anyone here has been in that situation and felt so unbelievably s**t, been psychotic and guilty from the last manic episode which pretty much wrecked havoc on your life, do please inform me of your opinions on the "barbaric electrical lobotomy." Because trust me, it is possible to get to a point where you don't care about the side effects that it could have, and life isn't worth continuing the way it is at the time, and you'll try anything...and I mean, quite literally ANYTHING. ECT is sometimes the only option if medication doesn't work.

Then again, a lot of bipolar meds make me feel as though I've had a lobotomy anyways.

He tried the MAOI because it wouldn't screw up my sleep cycle. He believes that SSRIs and SNRIs will do that plus make me irritable. I'll asks again when I see him on Tuesday.

Hi, I like the idea of winding to a place where it's several good options. I think you would be going into ECT with your eyes wide open. And then it's a question of how rather than whether, maybe keeping a journal, maybe having a variety of positive activities available afterwards, etc.

Or, politely just telling your doctor, I'd like to get a second opinion before taking this step. And hopefully, he will accept this. In fact, it's kind of a test and a poker read of how reasonable an individual he is. And in no way, shape or form would you be firing him for all time. You would simply be getting a second opinion. Perhaps a little bit like temporarily sitting one quarterback on the bench while you try out another.

Like with my OCD (which I'm going to talk more about in a later post), if I can get to the place where it's okay to do the precaution and okay not to do it, that's a pretty good place to be. I mean, I'm not a bad person for doing the precaution.

Okay, some of my struggles with OCD. Well, there's my old nemesis carbon monoxide. There really was a poisoning incident in the middle of my 10th grade year when I had just turned 16. I mean, there was a teacher lying passed out on the floor. A coach had to walk in and pull her out. So, it isn't just all in my mind. And riding home on the bus that afternoon, my friend Robert* said, yes, it does cause brain damage. And then weirdly didn't seem that concerned. Now, he is technically right, but it's all dose dependent. Years later, I decided no where near did I get a big enough dose. But the teacher who passed out may have. The next day my parents let me sleep later and miss the first couple of classes. The next day after that when I walked into first period chemistry, the teacher said, "And ________'s back" in a happy voice. Almost like trying to use me in what felt like a cover up. Or . . . she was waxing optimistic because it looked like her friend was going to be okay. And the school never talked about any of this in any kind of public venue

At boy scout summer camp when I was 14, they would drive us in the back of a covered pickup truck to a swimming hole. And the drive took a good thirty minutes. One boy hyperventilated or was affected by the vehicle exhaust, he was moved up to the front part of the truck. But what about the rest of us? This boy was not treated like a canary in the mine giving an early warning. The adults did not seem that concerned.

And people kind of sort of understand about carbon monoxide, but not in the tight way I do. They seem to believe in the plenty of fresh air hypothesis and/or they seem to believe safety rules are BS (sometimes are but not always). Whereas in fact, carbon monoxide has a greater affinity to the hemoglobin in blood than does oxygen. So, also a time factor. Even exposed to a low source, it can build up in the blood over time.

Then when the health teacher talked about vd when I was 15, and they only talked about gonorrhea and syphyllis. The other kids seemed to take it nonseriously, embarrassed at times giggly, and a chance to blame others. And then finding out about herpes in 1980 when I was 17. If the other kids aren't constructly matter-of-fact about gonorrhea, how are they going to handle this? Even more opportunity to blame and label others. And how in the world to initiate this conversation with a potential date? (I've since decide to initially ask her to lead a conversation about health, safe sex and all this embarrassing but important stuff)

And our home got flooded when I was 16 and a half, even more conflict between my parents, and low-level feuding, people not in favor of each other.

So . . .

hour long showers with ritualistic rinsing

buying new soap, shampoo, comb, before each shower. So really, a three or four-hour shower procedure,

basking myself dry afterwards,

Putting off showers for three days or more, being embarrassed and outcast by my greasy hair,

washing my hands so much, whitish with red cracks,

checking doors

worried about the car

(controlling what I can, I guess)

=================

So what has worked at times:

1) different lessons from zen, in a thoroughly half-assed way. I mean, is there any other way to do zen?! !

2) accepting that I will sometimes have health worries, making friends with my OCD, maybe viewing it as a kind of balast

3) Learning health information that I'm not embarrassed to talk about. For example, with influenza, a person usually just feels crappy, but it sometimes leads to pneumonia. The obvious sign is if a person starts having trouble breathing. But there's also a non-obvious sign and that's if a child (or presumably an adult) seems to be getting better and then relapses with high fever. That relapse may be bacterial pneumonia. And you know what? Most people weren't interested in this either! Even during the whole news coverage of H1N1 swine flu. Maybe a lot of people decided it was hype and turned off. Or maybe I don't have to work that hard to get conversations. Or, people not interested in talking with me because I'm not perceived as popular enough are not going to be won over by the quality of my information.

4) Winding to a place where it's okay to take a precaution, it's okay not to. More of a light approach.

5) In theory. Accepting that all of this and more, sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. And that's okay. More of a percentage baseball or percentage poker kind of approach.

ask your doc about local trials of transcranial magnetic stimulation instead. no side effects with that treatment other than localized discomfort over the application site.