ECT

I would try anything. Over a dozen times I ended up trying anything. Trying for a chance to feel better.

For me, though, it stole part of my soul. My very being. I lost so much of my soul. My very being “

I went in willingly, but paid a steep price for the chance.

My treatment for major depression was not going well. The medicines had been changed several times and the therapy had been going on for years.

I was severely depressed and sliding backwards. I was at a point where my career and marriage were both in jeopardy.

I’d spent so many years covering up and pretending that everything was fine. I had exhausted myself in an ongoing effort to make the world believe that I felt good. I used humor and my work to cover my true state of mind.

I worked at a job I had trained for years to get and put my whole self into doing. If I was focused on work, it helped keep the thoughts of death away.

I also used humor to mask my true state of mind. I was known for always having something funny to say. It was exhausting to keep up that fake mask of happiness while wanting to die on the inside.

I had two close friends whom I had gotten very close to in college.

My psychiatrist told me that a doctor at one of our local hospitals was doing outpatient ECT for persons with treatment resistant depression. I’d seen videos about people getting ECT back in the old days. They’d have the electricity applied to their head and go into a convulsion. They had to be strapped or held down and something placed between their teeth to keep from biting their tongue off or breaking bones during the convulsions.

For many of them they seemed to find relief from their depression following the treatment. In todays medical world it was much more civilized. They would put you under full anesthesia in the hospital. It helped keep you from flailing around as the convulsion scrambled your brain waves.

The cat finally got out of the bag with these two close friends in a most unanticipated manner.

The husband was a game warden like me and his girlfriend became a registered nurse. After graduation they had gotten married, but we continued to stay close. I helped the husband on several occasions to get jobs in the wildlife and parks field. We had worked together at several seasonal park ranger jobs and had lived together in the park ranger house over 2 seasons.

Later we had game warden districts next to each other and continued to be close friends.

I’d gotten very adept at covering my depression with work and humor to such a degree that even close friends didn’t see it.

You see the wife was a nurse and was working in the very surgical department I was receiving Electro Convulsive Therapy in.

Apparently, they wheeled my gurney into the recovery room where she suddenly was looking down at her good friend who was still unconscious. She later said that it shook her so bad it took her breath away.

She and her husband had no idea of what I was trying to survive every day.

I had jumped at the chance. I was desperate for a cure. Something that would help me feel “OK”.

All I ever wanted was to feel ok. I wasn’t hoping for happy or ecstatic, but just plain old “OK”. I just wanted to get back to an even starting point.

The doctor told me that there would be some memory loss in the short term, but nothing serious. To me that didn’t seem much of a price to pay for the chance of feeling “OK”.

I went in for the first of three treatments a week for two weeks. I ended up doing 5 weeks.

We got there at 6AM each day and I undressed and put on the hospital gown. The nurses would put me on an IV and wheel me down to the surgical department. It was a big hospital so there was a lot of activity and I remember that the surgical room was cold. They would then give me the medicine which immediately put me under.

The first time I did ECT, I woke up in the recovery room. I was very groggy and disoriented. After several minutes they wheeled me back to another room where my wife was waiting.

I looked up at her and asked where I was at. She told me that I was in the hospital.

I then asked her why I was there. She told me it was because I was depressed.

I then asked her, “I have depression?”

My wife began to cry.

She thought it had worked and I had completely forgotten I ever had depression.

That was 27 years ago. There are still large blocks of my life I don’t remember after all this time. The convulsions definitely scrambled my memory, but other than that it didn’t work.

If you’re taking Electro Convulsive Therapy or have already done it and found relief, then God bless you. I’m happy you made it.

As for me, there was a suicide attempt and hospitalization.

I’m currently trying a new type of treatment and drive an hour either way 2-3 times a week.

As for me……I’m still just chasing that “OK”. I’m not expecting bliss or even happiness. I just want to feel ok.

If it’s my last day on this earth, I pray for “OK” as I depart…