Well. Today I'm working on it. I'm hanging out at my brother-in-law's house (he works from home) this morning (lately I've been hanging with my parents a lot, since Nasser had to go back to work, but maybe I've already mentioned that? my memory can't handle much, sigh). One nice thing is he does a 2-ish mile walk after walking his boys to school down the street from their house, along with their pet dog. But, woah, they walk a bit faster than I'm used to. Definitely good for me though. It's nice being here today because there's no expectations of being social with others, haha. And I think I need some of that.
We're back, from the walk now, and I had some more coffee, with a fabulous, and perfectly appropriate for me, for today, mug.
Isn't that just lovely????
I'm feeling a bit, I dunno, determined to feel better today. Other than the walk, I'm keeping things fairly low-expectations and low-energy and low-social or whatever for today. I'm spending time on my Chromebook, blogging, planning to do some reading, I have some intentions of catching up a little on my "blog title/ song lyrics" spreadsheet. Did I ever tell you I have a spreadsheet for keeping track of those blog titles that are song lyrics, you know so I don't repeat them or something? Cause, yeah, I am a bit of a nerd, which is fine by me. But I also figure, catching up on that spreadsheet, which I haven't been good about keeping up with for a long, long time, might be kinda good for going back and looking over some older blog posts. I've re-read a few older ones in the last day or two, and it's kinda therapeutic in some respects.
I have treatment tomorrow, it feels like finally. And it'll only have been nine days since the previous treatment. That's not that long, and I feel a bit like a failure in having so much trouble getting through until the next one. I know it's not really a reflection on me, but I can't seem to stop myself from thinking like that, ugh. So frustrating. Cause that's the thing, depression and anxiety are mental illnesses. Illnesses. ILLNESSES. Like seriously, an illness is NOT a reflection on somebody, mental or physical. And yet, a lot of people with mental illnesses, as well as a lot of the people in the world who don't have any mental illness, just maybe know people who do, have this stupid effing stigma about it and think that to some extent it's our fault. Blech. BLECH.
I don't really want to talk a whole bunch about stigma today. That can often just put me into a crappy mood. No thank you.
I know I've talked some about my brain, and the short-term memory stuff, and the cognitive side effects, of you know, the regular seizures I've been having with this electro-convulsive therapy. But just a little more about it. Last night, I had trouble trying to read a book, a kids book, mind you, to TK before bed. Like I was stumbling over the words and couldn't handle more than a page or two. Maybe it was partially the reading aloud aspect, but it felt a bit like my brain just couldn't handle it. And that was kinda tough for me to accept. Then this morning, Nasser and I were talking a little about therapy, and how I haven't had it in a long time. Then he remembered, oh yeah, the last appointment, you had some trouble with not having remembered the previous appointment, and we decided to wait a bit until your brain was doing better. Which I didn't really quite remember, so yeah, another short-term memory thing. We decided I'm doing a bit better, cognitively and memory-wise, lately, that it may be worth scheduling another appointment. But then I had some trouble remembering my therapist's name... OH... MY... GOSH. I remembered it but I kinda questioningly said it to Nasser so he could confirm I had remembered it correctly. I still didn't remember her last name, although when I found her in my email and saw it, it made sense at least. Man though. It is not totally easy having all this brain trouble and memory trouble. I just keep reminding myself, these are side effects, known side effects, it's ok. You'll get through it, Alisa. You will. And someday, eventually, I will be done with ECT treatment, someday. And there's still the possibility that a lot of those lost memories will come back, with help. So I've been frustrated lately that I can't remember having seen Wonder Woman in the theater with Nasser, which I apparently really enjoyed too. It helped when my brother-in-law told me, "what are you talking about? that's a good thing- you get to see it in the theater, again, but for the first time all over again!" Hahaha, true. At least that works with the movie, but it certainly doesn't work with all the experiences I forget, sigh.
I have to say, I'm kinda surprised with how much more I've been blogging more recently. For a large portion of the ECT treatment, certainly the acute phase, I had no interest in blogging. It definitely felt too difficult for a lot of the time. I suppose it's a sign my brain is getting better that I'm blogging more, and successfully finishing posts and not just leaving them as drafts that I never look at again. But maybe there's also an aspect of me getting better with the interest in sharing more? I mean, not necessarily, since I've shared plenty when I've not been doing well at all. So who knows.
I also can't figure out if I'm sleeping better with the CPAP. I mean, yes, I think I probably am, most of the time, at least. But I'm also waking up a lot more, it seems, and I'm often having some trouble getting comfortable. Like, I'm kinda trying to sleep on my back more, since that puts the least amount of pressure on my nose with the mask. And when I am sleeping on my side, I'm trying to, like, angle my face outward more to, again, put less pressure on my nose. And the last few nights, both with the new mask I got on Friday and these sleep techniques I've been trying, I haven't been getting the weird bruise on the bridge of my nose. And that makes me feel a bit better about it. I've also, I think, been dreaming more. I'm not sure if it's an effect of the CPAP; I was thinking it could be that I'm simply remembering my dreams more because I seem to be waking up a lot throughout the night. Most of the time I'm able to fall asleep again quickly; sometimes I need a quick trip to the backroom, or a sip of water, or an adjustment to the mask or something. But a couple times, maybe literally twice so far, I've woken up and been awake for about an hour or so. And some of it could be the anxiety I'm getting from the "OMG, I'm awake and I feel totally awake and I'm never going to get back to sleep." But, whatever it is, it's frustrating. I hope that stops happening soon. The first time it happened was at 4am Saturday morning, so I suppose that could have contributed to the depression this weekend, but then the second time was last night at 11pm, and I ended up waking Nasser up for some melatonin, which got me back to sleep and I slept well until like 6:45am this morning (which is on the late side for me!).
You know, sorta a side note, I'm on this 24-7 supervision requirement thing, right? I don't know what you all assume about what that means. So I'm going to explain just a little. So it means I need to be within supervision of another adult at all times. So, like, I can't leave the house and do a walk on my own, I can't walk from our house to a neighbors' house to go under the care of someone else, like Nasser would have to walk me directly to the other person. I can't get myself my own medications, right, so like, Nasser has to get me my daily medications every evening. Whoever I'm in the care of on a treatment day has to give me my pain medications, between normal advil/ibuprofen and tylenol/acetaminophen and the special strong stuff I get through the ECT Docs (the one they only provide a Rx for qty 6 each time, and sometimes the headache is bad enough I take the max allowable of 3. during the acute phase, Nasser would have to get a new Rx after dropping me off for treatment each Mon/Wed/Fri and go get it filled during my treatment so that we'd have it for the rest of the day. but that's a different story). Let's see, I can't walk the kids to the bus in the mornings or pick them up on my own in the afternoon; oh and with the morning bus walk, Nasser can't walk them on his own, I have to go along so that I'm still in his care. I'm not allowed to drive, which means I have not driven since the middle-ish of June. So weird. Someday, whenever treatments are far enough apart, and maybe there's some amount of checking that my cognitive and memory abilities are back to normal enough, I'll be off the 24-7 supervision requirement and I'll be able to drive again. I'll still need to be in someone's care and won't be able to drive on treatment days, but just for that day alone. Man, that'll be something else. And, I feel like I've explained this before, but, you know, I don't quite remember, we're working towards the true maintenance phase of treatment, where I go in once every 3 to 5 or 6 weeks, and we continue that for a good 6 to 12 months beyond the acute phase. So I'm still in for a lot more seizures, really, heh.
My brother-in-law and I were discussing, while getting ourselves some lunch, mental healthcare and how, like, imprecise it all is. Like he was asking about my treatment and whether it's more experimental or what. And it's funny. So, electro-convulsive therapy (this is worth reading if you don't know that much about my treatment) has been around, in some fashion, since the 1930s (I had estimated for 50 or 60 years, I guess I was a little off). Of course, it's changed, a LOT, since it first started; if you've heard the term "electric-shock therapy", that's what it used to be. But since it's been around for so long, I'd say they know decently well what they're doing. The idea of that maintenance phase for treatment is all based on data, it's used because that's when they get the best results. But then I brought up this other part. Every time I go in for treatment, I have this double-sided questionnaire to fill out, kinda about how I've been doing for the last 2 weeks. So there's questions about how I'm sleeping, about my eating, various ways to kinda rate my depression and anxiety, there's at least one question on there about how much I've thought about suicide. But the thing is, over the course of my depression, I've filled out several versions of this form with various doctors and treatments. And even, a few weeks or so into my ECT treatment, they switched the form they're using. I would expect, although I don't know for sure, that different ECT doctors use different versions of these forms. And when I get rolled into the treatment room each time, right before they put me under, I talk briefly with my doctor, about the form, and about how I'm doing, we decide when to schedule the next treatment. Really, the course of treatment and all that, and this is true with just about any treatment for a mental illness, like determining how well a medication is working, is all based on the conversation between the patient and the doctor. Right? Like there isn't a very concise, non-biased method for determining how well the patient is doing. You can't draw someone's blood and have that tell you, oh this person has had x number of anxiety or depressive episodes this week, therefore, we need to up this medication by this much, or whatever. It's not that simple, ever, with mental illness. And maybe that's part of the reason that stupid, effing stigma pops up all the time. I mean, really, I think psychiatric care has come a long, LONG way over the years, but I hope it continues to improve. Because the "talking about it" aspect of mental healthcare makes it more difficult, more complicated, maybe easier to screw up.
Anyway, since writing all the rest, I've had a stressful afternoon with my kiddos, and the family has made plans to get together for dinner tonight to celebrate my brother's birthday, which sounds nice, but it is a social thing, which hopefully will be ok for me. I think it will be, and again, I have treatment tomorrow, which I'm feeling quite good about now that it's evening.
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