Posted by dragonblack on July 31, 2011, at 3:28:50
In reply to Re: Giving up on Parnate: what's next before ECT?, posted by emmanuel98 on July 28, 2011, at 20:46:34
> Bileteral ECT did nothing for my depression, but it did blow holes in my memory. It took about six weeks before I started remembering things. I'm not talking about forgetting one major event. I'm talking about forgetting how to drive from my home to work, forgetting my neighbors names and how I knew them, forgetting almost everything that happened during the ECT treatments. Furthermore, talk about side effects. Parnate gives me insomnia, which I can control with other meds, and gave me hypotension which went away. ECT left me a complete and utter basket case for 24 hours after treatment, with a headache, nausea, not knowing where I was.
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> Bilateral ECT has to be done inpatient. All the friends in the world (and I have a lot of friends) aren't going to be able to take you home and stay all day with you until you know where you are.
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> I know some people swear by ECT, but I have had both unilateral (which can be done outpatient) and bilateral (which must be done inpatient) treatments and had no change in mood whatsoever.
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> Not to talk you out of it. If parnate isn't helping, ECT is something to try, but it's no walk in the park.Thanks for posting your experience. I'm not anxious to try ECT, I'm pretty afraid of it, to be honest, but I am also pretty frustrated with going nowhere, feeling like I am watching myself slowly become treatment resistant, and just throwing years of my life into unsuccessful drug trials. I wonder how long I can do it before I opt for a more drastic intervention, if ECT can be called such. I feel like it's such a gamble, I have absolutely no way of predicting whether it will be worth it, unlike with drug trials, where I don't have that feeling of complete uncertainty. Anyway, it's still a year or more away for me, I think, so I'll cross that electric stream when I get to it.
poster:dragonblack
thread:991723
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110728/msgs/992369.html