"there must be some way out of here" said the joker to the thief. "there's too much confusion", I can't get no relief

Saturday, 05/06/17, 7:31am

Hi blog. It's been awhile. It feels like a long while.

I haven't wanted to blog the last several weeks because it doesn't feel like there's much new to share. I mean I suppose there is, psychiatric care speaking, but my mood has been down for a long time now. I suppose this is what you'd call, medically, a major depressive episode. It's lasted for a month and a half or so now, with very little relief.

It's been hard. And discouraging.

I've been on ketamine for about 3.5 weeks now, with little to show for it. We added a new antidepressant a week after starting the ketamine, but I guess we wouldn't expect much from that for a couple more weeks. Last week, Nasser and I met with another new doctor, to get the conversations started about ECT (remember, electro-convulsive therapy?). So, yeah. The current plan is to get ECT started next month. The reason we're waiting to start it, well, I suppose there's a few reasons. We have a trip planned at the beginning of June, with my family, to Alaska. And if we started ECT now, the treatment would still be going on then and I wouldn't be able to go. As of now, I'm still not willing to give up Alaska. Additionally, I had a sleep study consult scheduled this past week, and we want to get all that figured out. I'm not sure if I ever shared about this. Earlier this year, I did a nocturnal oximetry study, which is simply a test to measure the oxygen levels in my blood throughout the night. I did the study at home, with just a pulse oximeter on my finger. The test was basically inconclusive, but I did have a really weird event that night, around 2am, when my oxygen levels dropped to around 85% suddenly. And it took awhile to recover. Plus my levels, in general, had a lot of ups and downs. They weren't necessarily indicative of sleep apnea, but we do suspect that. I've always snored, and Nasser has noticed at various points in our marriage, times where I seem to stop breathing briefly. So, of course, if I do have sleep apnea, that could be a contributing factor to the depression. I'm scheduled to pick up all the equipment for a full at home study next Thursday, and I'll be doing 2 nights of it.

The other reason to wait to start ECT, is I do want to see how this new antidepressant goes. We know that TMS could have changed my brain chemistry to make me more receptive to antidepressants, so there's some hope. But then again, I feel like I haven't had much hope in quite some time. And even despite the good odds with ECT, I'm not feeling hopeful about that either. It sucks.

I've been trying some deep breathing practice, coloring, reading, distraction methods, getting help from friends and from Nasser. And I feel like nothing works. I feel defeated, discouraged, and I'm scared that I will never find relief again in my life.

I hate to cut off this blog post so quickly, with so little hope in here, but then sharing about how much I think my life sucks right now also doesn't feel helpful. I guess it's back to some distraction methods after this.