December 9th, 2019
I truly feel like ketamine infusion treatments have been the biggest success I have ever had with treating my bipolar disorder. Life feels more manageable. The future doesn’t fill me with hopelessness. I *want* to be here, to be a part of life, to make something of myself. I feel capable and hopeful that I might be able to get control of my life again in the future and start turning it into something I will actually feel proud of.
The thing I want people to know about the treatments:
– Infusions last between 1-1.5 hours. Even after doing them every month for the past year and half, they are still generally very intense and pretty unpleasant. I do not look forward to them. They suck. 🤷🏻♀️
– I usually don’t feel better right away after the infusion. It takes me several days to notice the results.
– Some people are able to get more time between boosters. Unfortunately, my mood drops drastically right around the four week point. I have tried waiting five weeks, but toward the end of that time my depression was back and it was aggressive.
Unintended consequences:
Depression feels one billion times worse once you’ve realized what life can be like without those symptoms. While I’ve always been frustrated by my illness, I’ve never felt truly angry about it. Once I began the ketamine treatments and felt what life can be like without that disability holding me down, it became SO MUCH MORE frustrating . I found myself angry that I have to go to such lengths to achieve a level of functionality that most people probably don’t have to think twice about.
That being said, my therapist told me to try on optimism this week. So here is my attempt-
If it was not for my success with this treatment, I would have never known it was possible for me to have those moments of true wellness. I would still be stuck in the cycle of those days that turned into weeks that turned into months of suffering, hopeless, emptiness. A zombie version of myself that had started to become what felt like my true self. Dull, slow, void of emotion. Instead, I am now very aware that there are options beyond what I thought possible. Even as a last resort for someone (since it is so expensive), it can still SAVE A LIFE. It can bring you back from your zombie state. It can reintroduce you to the idea that you are not your illness. Often times with mental illness it’s very difficult to tell what parts of you are your personality and what parts are your sickness. It all starts to blend into one shitty blob until you’re certain that you’re just shitty and that’s that. But ketamine has allowed me to separate the two. I am not my illness. My illness lives along side me and it always will, but it is not me. I am so much more than bipolar, depressed, anxious.
New treatments are being born and developed each day. Mental health treatment may finally be starting to catch up with the rest of science and health. Instead of a guess and test method with medications — “this may help or this may make it WAY worse. Let us know” — they are finding new solutions with less side effects and less uncertainty. Ketamine and TMS therapies are showing promising results, and we can hope that the future will uncover even more options. [Boom, optimism!]
My next infusion appointment is set for this Wednesday, December 11th. The fight continues.
