Different Hats

I am a very open person and I like to share my own personal stories and experiences. I don’t know why but for some reason it’s just programmed into my DNA.

With that being said, here’s a shocking story to talk about…

Electroconvulsive therapy, sometimes referred to as “shock treatment” or just ECT, is a medical procedure that involves inducing a brief seizure in the brain using controlled electrical currents for a variety of reasons.

In my particular case it was used for treatment-resistant depression.

It was recommended to me after it was made clear to my old psychiatrist that prescription medication wasn’t working out.

So, like the fool that I was, I listened to him and said yes to the stress.

10 rounds of shock treatment.

Really, it doesn’t sound like much but it was.

When I first was giving this treatment option I was blown away because I thought this was something that doctors performed back in the day and it was obsolete now. It’s not.

The process of going through this was a bit intense.

I had to have medical examinations and x-rays of my brain before I could really begin getting shocked.

You arrive very early in the morning, If I can remember correctly it was around 4:30-5 A.M. and knock on a door waiting to be allowed inside.

You enter the room that is filled with other patients dressed in gowns and hidden away by the curtains of separation and prepare.

You do a lot of talking with doctors, nurses, and financial service representatives before entering the room where the procedure takes place.

You sit and wait and listen to the machines in the back do it’s job.

When it’s finally your turn they escort you to the back room via stretcher and begin the process of hooking you up with electrodes and wires and fire up the machines.

The psychiatrist begins to explain the details of the procedure, what will happen and how you may feel when you wake up.

There is a bunch of medical professionals that are in the room with you, not just the psychiatrist.

They tell you open wide and they insert a mouth guard.

Someone was holding both of my feet.

General anesthesia is then administered and you count down from 10.

The last thing that I saw each time was those stone-cold brown eyes of my psychiatrist watching me go to sleep.

All of a sudden everything is black and then you wake up again back in your curtain hideaway with a pounding headache.

You cannot drive home, someone else has to do it.

Then repeat until you reach a breakthrough.

Now, the big question – did it help at all?

Yes and no.

Yes because I actually did start to improve on my depression and how I was feeling after a few rounds.

No because I had short-term memory issues for quite a while and experienced a lot of confusion, memory loss, forgetting the words of the sentence that I was saying in the middle of a conversation, oh and headaches.

Would I do this all over again? No. No freaking way.

When you are struggling with mental health it feels as if nothing can save you anymore, you become vulnerable and insecure which allows for easy manipulation from doctors, friends, family, strangers, and whoever else makes the cut.

I did this to myself I guess others that know me would say.

Yes, I did do this to myself. I was struggling for a long time and other people who were close to me enjoyed it.

The downward spiral of Meghan as she descends into madness.

I did whatever I had to do and with the available resources and options that I had so I could make myself feel better.

People put me down for that.

Thought I was a crazy person as usual.

Well yes, I may be in fact “crazy” but who’s not?

I say this to myself all of the time –

I actually live with mental illness and deal with it each day because well God said so. The difference now is that I am fully aware of what is wrong with me and now deal with those issues myself with much healthier behaviors than before.

So now that I’ve made it to this point with a lot of hard work, I can see other people who most likely do suffer from some form of mental illness and how they refuse to acknowledge it.

It’s like when I meet people who are on medications that I’m familiar with already, like Xanax, tell me they’re not addicted but have to take an extra dose without notifying their doctor about it.

Some people just have a hard time coming to terms with reality. I used to be like this too.

One of the most incredible and important lessons that I’ve learned is to be honest with yourself. Don’t hide what others cannot accept. Some people are truly afraid to show the world who they really are and put on a mask to hide. Again, like I used to do.

I used to pretend a lot to make it appear that I was semi-normal and people liked that.

For some reason or just with my experience, people don’t like the real you. They want you to be miserable with the rest of society.

Maybe I was never meant to be like the rest of society.

Maybe I was destined for my shocks so I could get a recharge of life itself and see the real picture.

I just can’t fake it anymore,

And I never will again.