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Category Archives: depression

back home again

I left hospital on the 12th feeling exhausted and very low. The TMS psychiatrist told me I have to “just live with the depression” (yeah, thanks heaps). The psychologist focussed on making major changes in my life, ones that have nothing to do with feeling depressed! I swear some of these people make it up as they go along. Snap judgements made after talking to me for no more than 20 mins.

My own psychiatrist disagrees with them and has changed my main antidepressant from Cymbalta to Effexor XR.

Coming home was difficult. I felt so safe in hospital and coming back into the real world makes me more aware of being depressed and being around people who don’t fully understand. What an awful illness this is. So debilitating.

leaving hospital

Well, today I saw the hospital psychiatrist and he told me TMS hasn’t worked so you may as well go home. Like, hey it was a failure so piss off. I think he is only interested in his TMS study. I told a nurse this morning that I was feeling suicidal and having self-harm thoughts so I am now confined to the ward and am constantly being checked on. Yet I can drive myself home Wednesday! Go figure!!

I am feeling so lost. Like everyone has put me in the too hard basket. I’m not going to take any stupid action but I am having bad thoughts and dreams. I will be seeing my own psychiatrist on Thursday. He has no idea what to do next either. Depression upon depression.

the end of treatment

My TMS treatment has not worked. I have four more sessions but I’ve been told it would be rare for it to work now. Consequently I am still very depressed but am now also frustrated and disillusioned with treatment in general. My psychiatrist in here has suggested going back to a medication that I took successfully years ago. It stopped working after some years but he says it is worth “revisiting”. My private psych is simply frustrated and has suggested that I may benefit from intensive  psychotherapy with someone else three days a week. I really couldn’t bear going through my history again with another new person. It would make the fifth time.

I feel a lot of pressure on me to get well. I’m probably imagining it, as one does in this depressed state, but the results are the same: anxiety and concern for others feelings.

TMS ends on 12th May and then, I assume, I can go home. Part of me wants to go home to my life and my beautiful dogs, but part of me feels unready to leave this cocooned environment. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t have to make a decision today, so i won’t. I will just spend the weekend in this quiet, peaceful place where most people have gone home for overnight leave

I’m still smoking too which is a problem. how stupid to start again after so many years. However it is done now and i will have to cope with quitting when i leave

more from hospital

Well, I can’t say I’m a fan of TMS. Seven treatments and no change at all. I’m still very depressed and more anxious thatI’ve ever been (but that could be just being in hospital). Tomorrow I start three days of unilateral TMS whereas I have been having bilateral. If there is no glimmer of any change after that I will probably drop out of the study I’m part of while on this treatment. My private psychiatrist has recommended that I don’t continue with a treatment that is not working.

tms continues

So endeth the 5th session of TMS. It really is a strange sensation having this treatment. I find it hard to explain exactly what it is like. The low intensity stimulation trains are not too bad… just like a tapping on and below the scalp with some facial twitching. The high intensity stimulation is more like a rapid rat-ta-ta-tat machine gun fire. This causes greater twitching and is slightly unpleasant. To anyone contemplating treatment I’d say have it because it is not painful in any way apart from a slight headache and not everyone gets that apparently.

More importantly though, there has been no change in my mood and I’m still feeling very depressed. What has happened is that my anxiety levels are very high. Yesterday I ventured out of the Unit for a short trip to the shops and I intended to stop for a coffee break. This did not go well and I had a nasty anxiety attack and had to quickly return to hospital. Maybe the wrong neurons in my brain are being stimulated!

I now have two days off from treatment before starting week 2.

Hospital is not a great place to be although it does feel like a safe cocoon. I have, unfortunately, started smoking again after 7 years off the ciggies so I’m not too pleased with myself. When I get out of here I’ll be back on the patches as soon as I can! I was told by the nursing staff that I must socialise and not be a “mouse” and so many people here smoke so the triggers are strong. I could come out of here worse than before in some ways.

TMS begins

I have just finished my first Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation session. I spent half an hour with the overseeing psychiatrist who  administered TMS to the muscle area of the brain to measure excitability. This allows him to work out where on the head to place the magnetic coil and to determine personalised settings. He moved over my head looking for the spot which caused my hand to twitch. Later a nurse administered the TMS treatment. This consisted of a 40 minute session during which pulses were applied to my brain. On the right I received single 15 minute stimulation trains and on the left short bursts with breaks inbetween. Throughout the procedure I had to remain still with the enclosed magnetic coil touching my head. I wore earplugs for the loud clicking sound the machine produces.

The stimulation trains on the right caused my eyebrows and the corner of my eyelid to twitch. The sound was like someone hammering nails into a wooden fence. The feeling was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but strange. A bit like being tapped on the head with something metal but feeling it deeper than just the scalp. It made me think of a big stapler! The more rapid stimulation bursts on the left also caused twitching which extended to my jaw. The speed is more like a machine gun.

I have a slight headache but other than that i feel ok. I do feel a bit nauseous but that is because two of my medications have been ceased (in order to have TMS) and I am going through the effects of that.

At least I was told today that I only have to have the TMS once daily not twice as previously thought. I will be having it everyday until Monday when I can have two days off.

the call has come

I saw my psychiatrist today and he rang the hospital to see what was happening. So now I have a date to be admitted … this Sunday. I was told that if I am suitable for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) I can expect to be in hospital for 4 weeks. This really shook me up. I can’t handle the thought of being away from home and my dogs for that long. I’m not even used to going away on holidays, so I have never been away from home for that long and I’m a homebody at the best of times.

Once I got off the phone with the hospital I fell apart. I could not stop crying. I think it was shock. I rang my psychiatrist’s secretary and asked for him to call me. He did and I explained my worries. He said “let’s take one day at a time and if you need to come out sooner you can”. I get scared that once I’m in there I will be trapped. It is probably an unreasonable worry but I keep thinking that if I don’t improve the resident psychiatrist may schedule me and make me stay.

I’m depressed, and now I’m scared too. I have a massive headache and I feel sick.

Is this how everyone feels when they are referred to a psych hospital? Or are others happy to go because it can mean getting better? For me it is always a double edged sword. I hope that they will allow me out to keep my weekly appointments with my psychiatrist because I’ll need those to be able to cope.

I’m taking my laptop into hospital so I hope to be able to update this blog with posts about the TMS treatment.

try to maintain hope

I took a long break! I’ve been on the meds merry-go-round again with Avanza added and dosages adjusted up and down like the proverbial pair of drawers. It is doing my head in rather than improving it!

In the long run it may turn out ok but for now it is painful. I have been super-low — thinking about suicide all the time — not that I am going to, but that is where my head is at. Nasty images. My psychiatrist wanted me to go to hospital today or soon but the “other half” says we can’t afford it, so I’ll just have to cope. I’ve been crying so much I’ve had an asthma attack. It is bad that this comes at Easter holiday time. I’m never any good at holiday times though.

My appointments with my psych have been changed too. I have been lucky because I’ve been able to see him twice weekly but he is now going to cut his hours to three days a week. This means I have cut down to once weekly from next week onwards. It is the only decision that could have been made but I feel as if I have taken one hand off the lifeline and I’m scared. There is no one else I talk to who listens to me. I am usually the one who listens. So it helps me a lot to have a psych who will listen to everything and not insist on staying on a particular track.

I don’t know how I am going to go over the next week. My mum is coming to stay too so that means I have to hide my feelings really well. It is stressful. But, unless I have a windfall, hospital is out so I have to be here regardless.

I hope I survive.

my circuit-breaker

I came home yesterday after twelve days in a psychiatric clinic. My psychiatrist had given me the choice of going in voluntarily or being scheduled. Of course I chose to go voluntarily.

Twelve days is a short stay considering I could have stayed for a month to have ECT. However, the clinic psychiatrist decided that I am the wrong sort of candidate for ECT (oh no, I can’t even get mental illness right!! joke). So my stay was more of a stabilisation and regrouping.

I was able to get into a healthy sleeping and eating pattern, and to improve my med taking routine. Not that I don’t take my meds, but my timing is often less regular than it ought to be. I also found it useful attending group sessions and socialising with other patients. It is so nice talking to others who “get it”.

The therapy the clinic uses is ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy http://www.actmindfully.com.au/acceptance_&_commitment_therapy

Coming home was not exactly easy. It was great being greeted so enthusiastically by my two labradors because I had missed them lots, but actually being here is weird. Suddenly there is no routine I have to follow and I’m on my own again. It is surprising how quickly you adapt to a schedule organised by others. I am feeling emotionally wobbly, not very strong, as if it could all happen again.

My psychiatrist has noticed that I always improve when I go into hospital, even if it is for physical reasons such as a knee operation. To this end he has suggested I may need several “circuit-breakers” a year to get away from everyday life and to stabilise myself in an organised setting where I have no stress. So that is the plan for now.

new year

A bright and shiny new year?
Is this the year when my belief in pharmacotherapy and in psychotherapy will be fulfilled by stabilising my moods, especially the deep depression that is constantly with me?
The depression takes on different physical symptoms each day. Singly and in multiples they take my body on unwanted journeys. I feel like I am on a roller coaster, rising up knowing there is a fall on the other side, and then plunging downwards experiencing that stomach-left-behind feeling.
Most days I have a dull headache and I’m so tired that I have to sleep several hours on top of my 7 hours of nighttime sleep. Other times I sleep to escape from the despair. I feel “things” crawling on me and I see movements in my peripheral vision that are not there. Dissociation has become part of my usual day. Often it is the only way I think I survive.
I’ve not made any New Year resolutions as such. I will try to achieve the behaviours already on my list:

  1. Regularly take my medication
  2. Attend all therapy sessions
  3. Know when I need extra help (ie phone support, hospitalisation)
  4. Develop realistic thought patterns and avoid negative automatic thoughts
  5. Get enough sleep
  6. Eat healthy food and lose weight
  7. Exercise
  8. Find the confidence I have lost
  9. Cease to worry about others’ opinions
  10. Accept that I may have self-harm and suicidal thoughts but that I choose not to carry them out

Then, maybe, my year can become bright and shiny. I’m hoping.

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