ECT is a GO

Well, y'all, the ECT is a go. First treatment is Wed., and I'm scheduled for 6 treatments. I've been keeping a journal about how I feel about it, thoughts, things I anticipate possibly forgetting (like email password, SS#, and such). I think I'll just call it a Memory Book--you know, like put pictures of my sons in there, and write, "These are your children. You love them very much." Or, pictures of a beer bottle and a bottle of pills, with the words, "These are drugs and alcohol. They are bad for you. You don't do them." Speaking of which, in discussing the subject of memory loss with the doctor, I asked her, "I don't suppose there's any chance I'll forget that I'm an alcoholic and drug addict, is there?" I was actually only half-kidding. But she said no, that that's not how it works. Too bad.

So I asked her for an example of what the memory loss will be like, cuz that's my biggest fear, and she said, "Well, for instance, you won't remember having been here, in my office." She told me she's done over 10,000 of these treatments, so I would tend to believe her, but that seems like a pretty specific thing for her to know--I would guess it's a pretty frequent occurrence with her ECT patients, then. I asked what the procedure will be like, and she told me. It was a bit unsettling (like the fact that they will be paralyzing my body), but I am determined to go ahead with the ECT anyway.

I just keep thinking that anything is better than the way my life is now. Just the idea of "happy" is seductive in itself, considering I have never been happy in my whole life. Isn't that tragic? I have never known what happy is. I guess it's like trying to explain the color blue to someone who has been blind their whole life. And now I'm being offered an opportunity to have the very thing I have longed for. So what if I have to pay a small price for it with my memory? Most of my memories aren't exactly great, anyway, and I'd gladly trade them for anything even close to happiness. Gosh, I can't even imagine what that will feel like. Other people take it for granted, but truly, I have spent most of my life depressed.

And I have been constantly depressed, crying every day, since my sister killed herself in April. I talked to my brother-in-law the other night, and he said it's about time I started living again. He's right--I still haven't gotten over her death, I haven't had any kind of life, I haven't "moved on" with my life. I've just been kinda stuck in April 15th, like a bad episode of Twilight Zone. Hopefully, the ECT will shock me back into reality, and give me a fresh start on life. That would be awesome.

Maybe I'll even be able to fall in love...something else I've never experienced. Do you believe it? 47 years old, and never been in love. Married, yes. In love, no. Dare I even hope?

I know I'm putting alot of expectations into the ECT treatments as a kind of salvation for me, but it's really the last hope I have of having any kind of a normal life...of having any happiness at all...of ever experiencing love. So, yes, I am expecting alot out of ECT. Maybe my hopes will be dashed, but at least I had the courage to hope, something I haven't had in a very, very long time.

Here's hoping,
Michele