Another Day Another Treatment

I’m feeling petulant this morning. Part of me wants to be a troublesome patient, but the rule-follower in me just cannot let that happen. I completed a behavior and mood survey so the doctors have more than my personal anecdotes in judging my rate of improvement between treatments. The ECT is working, that much is clear to everyone. Now the process of spacing out the treatments begins.

While waiting on my eighth treatment I am struck by how blasé I’ve become about this entire process. Sign on the dotted line. Get my blood pressure taken. Have an IV inserted. Get wheeled into the operation suite. Chat with the doctor. Then have some really potent drugs pumped into my body, and I’m off to dream land.

Later, I’ll wake up, not certain where I am at first, and then the memories will return. I’ll be groggy, slow, and wondering if I’ll be feeling better once the anesthesia wears off. So far, I’ve been impressed by this treatment. Wish I had it earlier in my life; it might’ve saved me and my loved ones considerable grief to have gotten this more powerful treatment as a younger man. But, the past is a tapestry that cannot be unwoven. I must look to the future.

I’m hopeful that this treatment and the intensive therapy which I’m receiving, will be the last major lift of my life in dealing with depression. I feel drained this morning; more than just weary of living with mental illness. This illness has taken much from me. It’s impossible not to wonder what my life would be like if I had a less severe form of depression or no depression at all. Sure, I’m strong. Despite its best efforts to shorten my life, I am still here and still breathing. But, as Pierce Brown wrote in Morning Star: “life is not just a matter of breathing; it’s a matter of being.”

I cannot say I’m pleased with where I am in life at this moment. I constantly feel as if my legs are getting cut out from under me. That makes it almost impossible to establish any kind of firm footing from which to build a life. I know now what I didn’t know when I was younger - that one can regain one’s footing at any time in life, and that there is no giant clock in the sky tracking how far behind I am from every one else.

I hope younger readers don’t despair at my words; this is what it is to live with a brain at war with itself. Instead, I’d rather them see me as a man who continues to rise regardless of the beating he receives. It’s not an easy life, but it is a worthy one. One that demands I fight, almost every day. That may not be what some want to hear, but it is the truth and it’s the only one I know.