Reports from the battle in my brain.

A year ago, I was excited to come home and take a proper shower again. The idea of hot water and a vast array of soaps and shampoos available to me was seriously something that I looked forward to as I packed my bags to leave Honduras. A few days ago, I was happy simply because I finally had the motivation to take a real shower and not just jump in fast enough to make sure my hair doesn't turn into a grease ball. You see, ordinarily I love showering. I love being clean. I LOVE the smell of soap. But lately, showering seems like so much work and so pointless. It's strange the things that depression takes from you, like the motivation to simply shower.

So I guess you're probably clever enough to understand that I'm still not feeling well at all. I've been pretty quiet about this since after I got out of the hospital, but lately I have felt that perhaps writing things out would be therapeutic...so here I am. I had hope when I left the hospital. There was suddenly a light because my medicine had finally been adjusted by an expert and maybe, just maybe, that would give my brain the opportunity to level itself out. I held onto that bit of hope for the recommended 6 weeks that they tell you to give the medication to do its thing. Time passed and that hope began to fade. 6 weeks went by and there was no change. There came a night that was so dark that I literally gave up on everything, I was so upset to wake up the next morning. For weeks after that I struggled with processing this and coming to terms with the fact that I had failed even at giving up on life. I'm still trying to come to terms with it, really. But I just kept on living after that.

Then one morning I woke up and I felt great! I woke up the next day and it happened again; I was so happy to see a change. I thought things were finally turning around. After a week and a half of feeling great, things went down hill again. Now I feel like I'm back at square -5 and still falling all the time. One thing that never fails to upset me is seeing and knowing other people that get better. It certainly makes me feel like a terrible person, but I can't help but hate it when someone else tells me that medication helped them almost immediately. Here I am on huge doses and still surrounded by a cloud of depression.

I feel as though I have lost most of what makes me me. The neat freak in me has apparently gone to sleep as my house remains unclean and my dishes pile up in the sink. The independent part of me has come to rely on my mother to bring me groceries as going shopping alone causes me huge amounts of anxiety. I've quit doing anything besides going to work and sleeping. Oh, once a week I manage to drag myself to the therapist for an hour but that is only out of obligation, not because I feel like it does any good. Watching movies, doing puzzles, reading, coloring, spending time with people, etc. have all become things that feel like monumental amounts of effort that I simply cannot muster. A full day of work tires me out to the point that 12 hours of sleep never even seems like enough anymore. But there's one little glimmering ray of terrifying hope on the horizon and that is ECT.

On December 19, I will begin Electroconvulsive therapy as basically a last ditch effort to make my brain work right again. ECT is the process of sending an electric shock through your brain and inducing a short seizure. This is done several times over a span of 2 weeks. The idea is basically the same as turning a computer off and back on again. It's uncertain exactly how it works, but this therapy is said to be effective in about 80% of people versus the roughly 40% that medication helps. It is terrifying, to be certain. I am scared  out of my mind. Even though it's much safer than the old versions of shock therapy, it seems like there's so much that can go wrong when playing around directly with your brain. But as I have told my family, my brain and the thoughts that it produces are far scarier to me than even the idea of lost memory or any other unfavorable outcome. For now, I will hold into this last little bit of hope and maybe, just maybe, I will get to actually start 2017 fresh and not in this deep dark hole which I have lived in for so long now.

I kept living.

About 2 and a half weeks ago, a big thing happened in my life; I was hospitalized for a week. I know your first reaction is to be really worried and quickly ask what happened and if I’m ok. I also know that when I tell you why, your reaction will likely not be one of concern. You probably won’t know how to react. Most likely the only thing you will come up with to say is something along the lines of, “ok…are you better now” and when I tell you that I’m not better now, you won’t know what to say and it’ll just be weird for both of us. So I don’t really talk about it and only a few people know. But I want to talk about it, I want to scream and shout and ask question. I want to have deep conversations about very real things and not freak people out. I want to feel like I’m not alone in the world. I want the stigma that keeps me quiet and makes things weird to disappear. I want people to talk about things freely and not be ashamed of what they’re going through. I want to talk, so that’s what I’m going to do.

You may not know much of my story, so I’ll back up a bit for you…last April things just kind of changed. My brain began telling me all sorts of terrible things. Unfortunately, those terrible things were an unbroken stream and I started believing the lies that my brain came up with. I began self harming to cope with hearing all of the terrible things all the time. It was a tough time, but I had something to look forward to; I was moving to Honduras in August to live my dream of teaching in a foreign country. There were days that I questioned the choice to move forward with Honduras. I was terrified that I would be stuck in the lies of my mind and that it would be tougher to face them when I was all alone and so far from everything that is familiar. Other days I thought it would be better for me; perhaps the change of pace and scenery would actually be what cured me. Long story short; Honduras was amazing, but it did not make me feel better. I got worse and worse until I decided that I needed professional help. As it turns out, Honduras essentially doesn’t have mental health care. When I got to the point that I couldn’t see myself living until the end of the school year, I decided to move home early. I made the move back in December and had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for the beginning of January.

My first doctor’s appointment was terrifying for me. I was so nervous to talk to a complete stranger about my depression and how I thought maybe medication could help me. Luckily, my doctor is one of the kindest people I have ever met and she was extremely caring about everything I was going through. She went through a series of questions with me to find out how bad things were. A score of less than 9 is considered normal and I scored a 21. So basically, things were very bad. I was prescribed my first antidepressant which I stayed on for a month. That first medicine did absolutely nothing for me so my doctor decided to change it up. The second medicine seemed to help a little bit. During this time I was also visiting with my second counselor since I’d been home; I didn’t feel comfortable with the first one and waited months to get in with a different one at Mercy. This second counselor suggested upping my meds to see if they could help even more. I liked the idea of feeling even better, so I talked to my doctor about it. Unfortunately, I ended up having horrible panic attacks on the high dose of my second medication. I also had to cancel a few therapy appointments due to work. When I received a letter from Mercy saying that my therapist had the option to drop me for cancelling, I decided to look outside of Mercy for a therapist. Luckily, I found one who could get me in on a regular basis and was much closer to home and my day job so it was easier to make the appointments. I started seeing my new counselor and taking a new medication that didn’t give me panic attacks.

I was on my new medicine for a while and becoming very frustrated with not feeling better. During this time, I was doing some research on mental illness and came across something called borderline personality disorder. I really thought the symptoms described me, as did some of the people who know me best. I discussed this possibility with my doctor who added a medication that might help boost my antidepressants if I did, in fact, have BPD. This new medication is classed as an anti-psychotic which still kind of bothers me, but I suppose it’s really just a name and doesn’t mean all that much. After 3 weeks on this anti-psychotic, I sent a very honest check in message to my doctor before it was time to refill the prescription. An unfortunate truth that I had to share with her was that there are times that I am suicidal and I am very afraid that one day I will have trouble seeing the truth beyond the lies of my brain. I got a call from my doctor that night, she said she wanted me to try inpatient care because we had tried so hard to make me feel better and nothing was working. (I forgot to tell you that she had referred me to a psychiatrist earlier and Mercy Springfield was booking for next May, Joplin got me in sooner but still not until the end of November) My doctor felt that the way things were going; I might not make it until the end of November. She told me to go to the emergency room ASAP and let them do a psychological evaluation and hopefully admit me. I was terrified, but told her I would think about it. I asked my therapist what she thought and also got a call from her. My therapist wouldn’t get off the phone with me until I agreed to go straight to the hospital after work. The rest of my night is sort of a blur, but my mom and I sat in the emergency room all night until she eventually had to leave to take care of my nephews. Around 6 am, the psych nurse came and talked to me. Shortly after, she returned to tell me my doctor had placed a call to the on call psychiatrist to get me admitted. They decided to keep me at the Marian Center (Mercy’s psych ward).

I was absolutely terrified and shell shocked as 2 nurses and a security guard escorted me from the ER to the Marian Center. I started to feel slightly more at ease as I became acclimated with my surroundings. One of the staff members, who I would come to trust wholly, told me that they would keep me safe while I was there. I immediately felt somewhat better because when self harm is your coping mechanism, you always feel as though you’re in danger from yourself. I must admit that it was nice to know that I was constantly being watched and checked in on. What I found at the Marian Center was community that I can’t have anywhere else. I was surrounded by people that, like me, suffered with mental illness. Everyone was so real. There was no pretense. When things felt terrible, we talked about it. People were real about everything were dealing with. No one was trying to hide. Smiles and laughter were always genuine. Not a single person told me to smile or think more positively or accused me of doing things for attention. That week was something that I absolutely needed, in fact; I think I left too soon. My meds had been tripled by the time I went home and were to be upped even more in a week. I’m now on medicine that is quadruple the dose I used to take and a couple other medications to assist. Right now, I don’t feel any better, but maybe one day soon I will. Unfortunately, antidepressants take about a month to take hold and the waiting period is absolute hell. For now, I have a small sliver of hope because there is still time for this medicine to do what it is supposed to do. Mostly, I still feel the same. It’s a lot of being very tired and feeling all alone in the world. It’s a lot for hopelessness and hurt, but despite all of that; I will keep living.