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sketchyfeelings:

I am having the most bizarre experience at the moment. It is four days after I had my final ‘dose’ of electroconvulsive therapy treatment in my first course of it. This came after many months of struggling with severe suicidality and depression- hopsitalisation, many different medications-this was also probably my fourth or fifth major episode, I seem to have one every two years or so. It was suggested that because of the urgency, the lack of drug responsiveness that ECT might be helpful. For three weeks, three times a week, I went to a day surgery centre and was admitted to hospital. They place a little plastic bracelet with your id information around your wrist and ask you come into the waiting suite, you can watch tv in the big comfy chairs for a little while but they eventually call you in to lie on a gurney on a bright red plastic sheet and place a warmed blanket over you. The patients are lined up in order of treatment down the ward so they can start churning through you all one after another efficiently. When it is your turn a nurse wheels you through to the theatre, your head rest is folded down, pillow taken away and the team start working on you. Nurses wipe and dab little spots around your face, head and chest. The psychiatrist on duty says hello and checks that you are aware of what procedure you are getting, they almost always promise to take good care of you. The anaesthetic nurse introduces themselves and begins to look for an appropriate vein to insert the canula. This is the most painful bit of ECT and in all honesty it is nothing, before you know it you have a face mask full of oxygen, a cool flush coming up your arm, strange taste in your mouth and you’ve fallen asleep. I would wake up back out in the ward most times not realising the procedure had already happened. The only giveaway would be the little plastic IV still stuck to your arm or hand and a nurse gently smirking as they remind you that it’s already over. You stay in the centre for another hour so they know you’re all okay before sending you home. 

ECT was a game changer for my mood, it honestly was the fastest thing to bring me out of despair I have encountered so far and it may well have saved my life. It has not been without it’s drawbacks however.. As my psychiatrist has pointed out, this is not a cure but a tool we have used in managing my symptoms. 85% of people relapse into their depression 6 months after ECT treatment without maintenance treatments. I am not even sure that I have successfully found something that will act as a maintenance therapy for me. We shall see if my current medication kicks in. I am already starting to feel a slip from where the ECT had brought me back up to, the grey is sneaking back in. In addition to this I have had pretty significant memory loss, cognitive impairment. I have forgotten basic things about myself (things I like, movies I’ve seen, names of people I know), memories of recent events have been erased, I am having trouble making new memories too, am repeating conversations with those around me. Most interestingly so far, I bought myself a skirt that I saw and felt drawn to for some reason, just really liked it. I wore it to a friend’s house and they laughed, said ‘Nice skirt’ later in the day they reminded me that I had helped them pick out and purchase the very same skirt for them but obviously had no memory of. I also had some stories told to me about things I had done that were not very nice that I had completely forgotten about, it was horrifying and shame inducing. Useful to know the full context for my relationships but really confronting to have darker parts of yourself represented and revealed. 

I feel so lost at the moment, kind of blank, like I’m inhabiting this body of a foreign person. There’s so much that I should I know about this person, information everyone that knows me knows but I’ve suddenly been left in the dark. Cast in a method role I have no context for, being asked to improv my own life. 

I will do my best to uncover and remember who this person was(is) and steer the ship in the direction they would have wanted… 
I wonder how much of me is still me without these memories… 
We will see.