I might be wrong, I might be wrong, I could have sworn I saw a light coming on

Thursday, 03/16/17, 3:43pm

Well. Perhaps I picked the wrong day to blog, but I'll do it anyway. Today, and last night, have been rough, but honestly, in general, the past week has been a little better. Possibly getting some improvement signs from the TMS, but then this morning, I was feeling full of despair again. It sounds like I'm not feeling grateful that I've been a little better, but it's hard. When you go through a several decent day stretch, and then it all hits again, just as hard and pulls me down just as far. The TMS doctor said that's normal. As you start to improve, those dips still tend to be as severe, but further between. Eventually they don't dip as low. So yeah, I suppose I'm on the trend to getting better. Time will tell, of course. I have to say when you fall into some hope that you're getting better, those dark days really humble you again.

Last week saw some changes/improvements to the TMS. After my Wednesday appt with the doctor, we started adding pulses on the right side of my brain. On this side, it's one pulse a second, at a lower intensity than the left-sided treatment, and only lasts about 5 minutes, for me. Interestingly, the right-sided treatment targets the anxiety symptoms and actually depresses brain activity, while the left-sided treatment targets depression symptoms and stimulates brain activity.

So after a couple days of the additional right-sided treatment, we also got to the target intensity level for the left side. Friday, for a decent portion of the appointment, we were treating me at 120% intensity level. I feel like it took awhile to get here, I'm now almost 4 weeks complete, but the lower intensities were still treating me, so it's probably not something to worry about. I'm due for 6 weeks of TMS, but the doctor already mentioned the possibility of adding more days. We'll see. Really, it's going ok, so I'm not counting down the days until treatment completion or anything. Plus I've had a friend there everytime; today two showed up!

There haven't really been reasons for the depressive breakdown today, but I guess that's also the way of depression. The reason is the illness. And yet I still look for ways to blame myself for it all.

This evening, Nasser is going to drive RG to his choir practice. He's been doing this a lot for me over the past couple months, but I really wanted to try and take on this responsibility again. And yet, today the depression hit, and getting through doctor appointment, TMS treatment, lunch with friends, and getting RG from the bus was about all I had energy for. I've been a wreck off and on today. Tears, anxiety, self-hatred, fatigue, hiding in my room while I give the kids Minecraft time, and now blogging. I can do this. Thankfully, Nasser can take over this choir rehearsal responsibility tonight. And I can let the tears flow when I need it.

Until next time, dear blog. Hopefully it won't be as long this time.