Tag: ketamine infusion

Round 2 = Resiliency

November 15, 2019

It has been a few days since my second infusion and I wanted to give a quick update. The infusion itself was much less intense and much easier this time around, which was a relief.

I am already noticing positive changes. My first thoughts in the morning haven’t been about how I wish I could sleep forever, how I don’t think I can get through another day, how I don’t see the point. Instead, I feel this little spark of resilience. A little flicker of hope in my chest that is beginning to fill up that hallowed out, empty space that was there before. I’m looking ahead to this week, rather than being stuck trying to figure out how to just get through the hour.

This is why I keep going with the ketamine. When I do finally get that boost, it gives me a foundation to stand on so that I can then use my other resources (therapy, help from friends/family) to continue my recovery. It doesn’t cure or end my depression, and I still have to put a lot of work into getting better. It’s a daily battle, but I am now feeling much more equipped to continue the fight. Depression had the upper hand for a while, but this double treatment of ketamine has helped level the playing field. I am glad to be back in the fight.

– Kristin
11/17/19

http://thesadghostclub.com

Mini update

11/14/19

Thanks to the major support of my mom, I am going in for a second infusion treatment tomorrow morning. Fingers crossed it does the trick and helps pull me out of this. 🤞🏻

Thank you to all my friends and family and everyone who has reached out to offer their support after my last post. Knowing I’m not alone in this fight is tremendously helpful.

Depression tricks you into thinking you’re all alone, that nobody can understand the struggle or can actually help you. It tells you that you are worthless, that you are a lost cause and not worth fighting for. Don’t listen to it. Reach out, ask for help. Fight that voice in your head with everything you can. People need other people. You are not alone.

11/11 What It Feels Like

The Appointment
Yesterday’s appointment was a rough one. People have often asked me what the actual ketamine infusion feels like, and it is pretty impossible to explain. I’m sure it is different for everyone, but I’ll try my best to describe how it feels for me.

During the infusion I often feel like I’m Alice in Wonderland but in a medical setting (not quite as fun). The room grows, shrinks, transforms. I feel at times both weightless and like I’m sinking into nothing. Objects feel heavier, I can’t really move and I feel super disconnected from both my mind and body. My eyes feel as if they are spinning but I don’t feel dizzy. It’s hard to focus on any one thing. The music I listen to melts out of my earbuds into my brain and feels unbelievably intense. I sometimes want to speak but it’s impossible to get the words out. It becomes difficult to distinguish between what is really happening, what is my brain reacting to the drug, and what is a mixture of the two. Since it is in a medical office, I am hooked up to machines that measure my heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels. A nurse comes and checks on my stats every 15 minutes or so. While they are incredibly considerate and discrete, that can add to some of the confusion or fear. Once I had an infusion appointment shortly after watching Netflix’s show Maniac (highly recommend). During the treatment I briefly felt that I was being part of some crazy medical experiment. That is one example of how all your thoughts, along with anything you hear or see during the process can all influence your experience while you’re “tripping”.

Amidst all of that, there remains a small part of my brain that is aware. It is telling me this is all part of the infusion, trying to figure out what is real, trying to help me get a grip. That part of my brain is what sometimes sends me into a panic. I’m trying to figure out what’s going on and ground myself but when I can’t discern what is real and what is not anymore, my body goes into panic mode. This wave of intense panic usually happens towards the end of the infusion, when things are most intense. Luckily with the comfort of my mom, the incredibly kind staff, and some anti-anxiety medication, I can get through it. The intense panic doesn’t happen every single time, although I usually get some bouts of anxiety during each session.

Thoughts/Next Steps

With everything going on externally in my life, plus the intensity of this particular depressive episode, Dr. Patel suggested I would benefit from another infusion booster in quick succession (within the next week or so). He said that it might be the extra kick I need to get myself back. In a perfect world, I would choose this option in a heartbeat. I have been missing work, feeling incredibly hopeless, and my will to fight has dwindled considerably. But each infusion is costly – $500 per treatment. It is frustrating that I have to seriously consider whether I can afford to get myself the help I need.

Dr. Patel also brought up an interesting point – ketamine treatments keep people from having to be hospitalized. When people experience this intense distress, lack of functioning, and debilitating hopelessness, they are often treated in-patient at a psychiatric hospital to keep them safe. Since ketamine treats intense depression and suicidal thoughts/ideations, it often can completely prevent someone from having to go through that. As you can imagine, in-patient treatment at a hospital is considerably more expensive than ketamine treatments. Our healthcare system is broken and seems to always be more reactive than proactive – and that’s why these treatments may never be approved by the FDA. As someone who will be dealing with this their whole life (there is no cure for bipolar disorder or depression), that thought makes me want to scream.

I would like to try to end on a positive note. This treatment works for me. It exists in my lifetime. I am fortunate enough that I have people in my life willing to help me afford it, wonderful and selfless people who think that I am worth the investment (thanks Mom ❤ ). I have some hope that whether I get this second treatment soon or not, I’ll be back on my feet in the near future. Until then, I am just trying to survive.

Ketamine Update

November 7th, 2019

I haven’t updated in a long time. I’ve been trying to reflect on why that might be and came up with a few things.

I have been doing ketamine infusion treatments for almost a year and a half now. While there have been some major improvements, it’s also not exactly what I had hoped it would be. I’ll start with the biggest victories: I am off all medication for bipolar/depression (I still take medication for anxiety and sleep). Being off meds was a huge goal of mine from the beginning. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers all come with their own slew of side effects and long term effects. They can be harsh on your liver, cause weight gain, diabetes, and a have long term effects we are not even fully aware of yet. While I think medication is a great thing and something I will likely be back on in my lifetime, it has felt incredibly freeing to be able to be off medication and still be a functional human by treating my illness with just the ketamine.

Now for some of the challenges: I had to stop the at-home ketamine treatments. Ketamine gives me migraines, and taking it at-home 3x/week meant getting migraines essentially three times a week. Those headaches were affecting my way of life more than the depression was at that time. We weighed the options, and decided to see if I could still maintain my mood and current infusion schedule reasonably well without the at-home doses. So that was a bit disheartening. The other frustration has been that I am still getting depressive episodes. Nobody said ketamine was a cure – but I had hopes that maybe my episodes would be fewer and further between. Yet I’m still pretty regularly finding my mood falling quite a bit right before I need another booster (which currently sits right at every 4 weeks).

Back to the good news: I’m managing okay without the at-home treatments. The ketamine infusions DO improve my mood and help tremendously with functionality. Even when I start getting depressed again, I’m still mostly functional – keeping up with my responsibilities, maintaining my self care, sleeping well.

Overall, the ketamine is still the greatest treatment I have found for myself. It allows me to feel hope. It allows me to keep fighting. It shines a light toward the future where if I squint, I can almost make out a better version of myself. So for now I am sticking with it.

I also think it’s important to address that you have to still work *with* the ketamine. You have to use those “ketamine superpowers” I have talked about in the past and put them to the test. Make yourself stronger. Use that boost in order for it to reach its full potential. That is something I will definitely have to work on more. When you are so used to living life with something constantly dragging you down, it’s hard to make that change even when you’re feeling good. The ketamine lifts you up, but you still have to be the one to take those steps forward into the light.

Note: I debated with myself on writing this update right now. Having lost someone close to me to suicide at the end of September, my last few ketamine infusion “results” have been skewed by grief. My depression has been deeply compounded by that grief and I have not been functioning well or taking care of myself as I should be. Taking all that into consideration, I really can’t imagine where I’d be if I didn’t have this treatment plan to keep me from completely going off the deep end. I have my next infusion Wednesday, November 13th. I will try to update after that.

What A Bummer.

I feel like my superpowers have dwindled. It has been about three and half weeks since my last infusion. This past week, I have been feeling depressed. My mood has been low, the hopeless feeling has crept back in, and that bright and shiny future has faded. It’s still there, I can still see it, but the picture is blurred. I’ve found myself drawn to this quote from Sylvia Plath:

“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”

Falling back into a depressive state after treatment feels like one of the biggest bummers of my life. After treatment, I now know what it really means to feel good, so when I began feeling low again it felt so much worse. I also felt like I couldn’t talk about it. I didn’t want people to know things were bad-I felt that I had failed them. There was so much time and effort and money and kindness put in from everyone involved, and here I was just a few weeks later feeling like a failure. 

But I can see that it is different. I am not back to how I was before I started treatment, and I recognize that a new baseline has been set. How I experience being depressed has changed. 

Before treatment, depressive episodes had me majorly incapacitated. I often couldn’t work. Things like showering and eating right were a major struggle. The inability to concentrate and focus made it impossible to read or enjoy movies and shows. I was constantly battling intrusive thoughts. It was just incredibly difficult to participate in life. 

While my mood has been low this past week, I have been functional. And that is a huge difference. I am working, showering, taking care of my apartment and taking care of myself. I finished a book and started another. I’ve been catching up on movies that have been on my list for ages. It’s undeniable the ketamine has made a difference and continues to improve my life.

My first booster appointment was set for July 30th. While I’m disappointed that I couldn’t make it that long, I’m hopeful that in the future I will be able to get some more time between treatments.

 At the recommendation of my doctor, I will be going in tomorrow for an infusion. I’m looking forward to feeling better, and trying to keep in mind it’s all a process. It is not a cure. Even with all of my advocacy, my personal experiences and my education, I still fall victim to feelings of shame. I know it is not always going to be easy or pretty or convenient. I have to share the bad along with the good if I want to paint an honest picture. 

Kristin

Infusion No. 6 (Last of the Series)

July 5th, 2018 – Infusion 6

Monday was my last infusion of a series of six. The past two and a half weeks have been physically and mentally exhausting, but have given me something I never expected- something Dr. Patel described as my “new normal”. 

There is still a lot of work for me to do, a learning period where I get used to what I’m calling my “refurbished brain”. Dr. Patel said that for some people, it can take six months to a year to really acclimate to this new normal. Like any other patient with a chronic illness, there’s a big question of “what’s next” following the remission of that illness. You have learned to live with your illness for so long that it is a major learning curve to to learn to live without it. 

Something that took up a huge amount of space in my life is now something I might not have to give much thought to anymore. A ton of limitations, both bigger picture and day-to-day, have been erased. There are parts of life that are suddenly accessible to me for the first time. Now I get to learn how to take advantage of them. 

So what is next? 

I will go in for my first booster treatment in 4-6 weeks. After that appointment, we will re-evaluate and see where I’m at. The hope is I will be able to stretch out the time between boosters, and hopefully taper off some of the medications I’m still on. The thought of being able to get off medication is both thrilling and terrifying. It’s something I never even took the time to consider, even after starting the ketamine infusions. It seemed so far-fetched, but now it’s a strong possibility. 

It still feels like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like the changes being made in my brain can’t possibly be real. But I do feel it. I feel hopeful (without feeling grossed out by that hope). I feel more resilient. For the first time, talking about the future doesn’t make me groan or think “I don’t want to be here for a future”.  If this is the best it gets, it’s a freaking huge win. Even if it gets bad again, just knowing it’s *possible* for me to feel this way is a game changer. 

Kristin 

Infusion No. 4

June 27th, 2018 – Infusion 4

My treatment saga continues! Corey and I met with Dr. Patel this morning and agreed that there have definitely been some improvements. 

While some lucky individuals feel a difference from day one, most ketamine patients experience a more gradual effect. Dr. Patel assured us that I was right on schedule for that second type of patient- most of the changes become noticeable at some point in Week 2 of treatment and will become more pronounced with each additional infusion. 

With that good news I completed infusion number four and am feeling very hopeful! It’s still all very subtle- at this point I’m still mostly taking others people word for it that they’ve seen a difference. There’s still a long way to go. 

Some little things I have noticed- it’s easier to wake up in the morning and my brain isn’t already exhausted by what the day might bring. I’ve had a significant reduction in nightmares (I used to have them almost every night!). I feel less drained by conversation and the thought of leaving my house doesn’t make me want to scream. The other day I had to get gas and it wasn’t even a whole thing! (That one might sound odd but little things like that used to be so stressful). 

This treatment is *work*. It is draining, often scary, and the most intense experience I’ve ever had. But the outpour of support has been incredible and has given me so much strength – thank you to all my friends, family, and everyone else who has been kind enough to keep me in their thoughts. Hopefully things continue to go well- two more infusions to go!

Kristin

Infusion No. 3

June 25th, 2018 – Infusion 3

Today was my 3rd infusion. Typically, most patients see some sort of change by now. After today, the hope is that we will be able to determine there has been some positive change and we will continue treatment as planned. If the doctor determines the ketamine infusions don’t seem to be working, he may advise we stop treatment. 

Ketamine is not FDA approved, and is not covered by insurance whatsoever. My SAINT of a mother, who continues to believe in me with such intensity and love, and who continues to fight for my health after all I’ve put her through over the years, is paying for everything herself. Let me tell you, I will be gladly in debt to my mother for the many many many times she’s given me another shot at health and happiness at great expense . 

From the start, we knew this was a gamble. The next few days sort of determine how much more we put on the line – not just with money, but with hope.  Bebe, the very warm and kind office manager at the Ketamine clinic talked about how false hope can be incredibly damaging. And that’s something we have been gambling with as well. 

 It’s super hard because they have said that I won’t notice change. In fact, they have let me know that I will be the *last* to know. So it comes down to Corey and my mom and other people in my life. Looking for something new, something shiny maybe, or some part of me that hasn’t seen the light in a long time. A warmth behind my eyes, a lightness in my spirit, a subtle hint that those changes in my brain are taking place. 

Kristin

Infusion No. 2

June 22nd, 2018 – Treatment 2

Throughout my treatment they will increase the dose of ketamine at each infusion until we start seeing some changes. Because of this, my experience today was much more intense. I’m so thankful that my mom and Corey were able to be there for me, and for the incredibly kind and attentive staff that do everything they can to keep me as comfortable as possible. 

Thank you to all my friends & family checking in on me and encouraging me 💜

Kristin