It's been... a little while since I last wrote. And part of the reason for that is... I haven't been doing quite as well. I did a bit better for almost a week there, then the majority has been crap again.
It's been really really frustrating. And it's kinda like a whole bunch of years of frustration all built up into a "why the hell am I not better already?" feeling. For awhile there after the ECT acute phase, I was saying this has been life changing, I'm finally finding relief from my depression. But then the last month/month and a half or so, I've been questioning all that. It's exhausting, discouraging, frustrating, incredibly disappointing.
We're at a point that things just seem to be pointing more and more to the possibility of bipolar type II, which looks just like depression and is misdiagnosed fairly often. We're now weaning me off the antidepressant I'm on (since we started wondering if the increased dosage might have actually made me worse, yet another sign for bipolar), and I'm starting to take a mood stabilizer, used for bipolar. Unfortunately this medication has a good 8-week ramp up to the full dosage, so it'll likely be awhile before it starts helping, you know, if it does. Because of that, we did decide to do a 3 ECT treatment burst, right after Thanksgiving, to hopefully jump-start my mood. And then I ended up adding the Monday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving as treatment days.
Man, I've even been rather good about working out every day, and it's incredibly frustrating to not be noticing any clear benefits from that. I feel like I used to get a nice high from working out; now why can't that be happening now, when it feels like I need it the most???
On a separate, happier note, the week that I was doing a little better, I got a really nice surprise one day when I opened the front door to go to the bus stop. There was a note waiting for me on the front porch... it was something that completely made my day, and probably several days after. And it still makes me tear up to re-read the note, and I've been wearing the bracelet every day since.
It's all from a woman in my neighborhood who I had recently told about my illness and treatment and blog, and she was interested in reading the blog. And honestly, I never really know when I do share my blog with someone new, whether or not they'll actually read it. Or if they'll read one post and just be turned off to all of it. Just like how I never know if I tell someone new about my depression if it's just going to turn the conversation into awkward silence. Apparently my blog meant enough to this woman to write the kind kind words in the note and to pick up the lovely MantraBand for me.
I like wearing a reminder every day that I am Enough. It's a good, daily reminder for me.
And now I've completed the burst of treatment- today's Friday and I had 3 treatments this week, 2 last week. Whew. It's been exhausting, and my brain is feeling all the taxiing effects. We decided to schedule the next one for next Wednesday, so not too long away, but hopefully a good amount of time to recover.
I've had a lot of help from neighbors and friends and family this week. Having 3 treatments in one week is a crap-ton of coordination for rides, care post-treatment. It's not easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment