Week 23 of Working on Us: Medications

Genevieve1 Comment

Working on Us is a wonderful series over on Beckie’s Mental Mess, where each week has a new prompt meant to get people talking about mental health topics. Check out the original prompt for week 23 and click around to find participants of previous weeks’ topics!

mental health matters

When you first were diagnosed with your mental illness/disorder, did it take a while to get used to your medications that were prescribed to you?  If you answer the question, (YES), How did you feel initially?

It took me a while to get used to the idea of taking medications for my depression, but the first antidepressant I tried had very little effect on me. So, from a physiological perspective, no- nothing wild happened at first. But from a psychological perspective, it definitely took me a while to get used to it. I was a college student when I sought psychiatric help, and I had all kinds of negative beliefs about what it meant for me to be taking medication. It took me a while to accept that I was depressed, instead believing that I was simply not working hard enough. I even believed for a while that I was taking resources away from other students who really needed them by going to my appointments at the student health center. That’s a sad memory.

Depending on how long you have been on medication, how many times do you think it has been adjusted to make you feel stable?

Gosh, I don’t know. Dozens? Counting each medication I’ve tried, there’s been a lot of adjusting. Ketamine infusions have been the most effective treatment for me, but I still take my medications to keep me stable.

Have you ever had a bad reaction to medication?

Twice.

A couple of years ago, I started taking Wellbutrin and almost immediately felt my depression improve. Unfortunately, I also almost immediately had an allergic reaction and had to stop taking it. I developed an intensely itchy, blotchy rash on my chest that spread to my face, back, stomach, and eventually started to cover my arms.

Somewhat recently, I tried adding Abilify to my other medications. I didn’t notice any improvement to my mood, and it made me incredibly shaky. Going down stairs started to feel a little dangerous because my legs were like jelly!

Have you ever suffered withdrawals from a certain type of medication, and if so… What type was it?

No, I was worried about coming off of Effexor because I had heard it could be difficult, but I didn’t have any withdrawals from that or any other med I’ve stopped.

Do you work closely with your doctor in regards to your medication intake?  (In other words, do you have a good relationship with your doctor?)

Yes! Finding a provider I really like has helped enormously. I had such a hard time speaking openly about my symptoms with doctors, so the first year or so of my medication treatment was tough. Once I switched providers and found someone who helped me be honest and upfront, medications have been much less intimidating.

Since your diagnosis, have you ever tried to not take medication and see if you can handle your symptoms of mental illness/disorders on your own?  If so, how did that work out for you?

Nope. I recently tried to decrease my lithium dose and didn’t get the outcome I wanted. I think I’ll be leaving my meds alone for a while.

Tell us briefly how medication has affected your life?

While medications haven’t helped me nearly enough that I would consider myself fully functioning, they have helped me way more than I could do on my own with talk therapy. That is, they haven’t been wildly successful in treating my depression, but they have saved my life and continue to allow me to live with my symptoms and find other treatments.

nighttime time lapse of mountain road curving and car lights driving around pine tree

Sensory Processing Disorder and Driving

Genevieve2 Comments

Table of Contents

  1. Proprioception in Cars
    1. a. Peripersonal Space
  2. Visual Challenges
  3. Driving with Dyspraxia
  4. Practice, Practice, Practice

Ah, driving. The ultimate achievement of teenage freedom (in the US, at least). For anyone learning to drive, teenage or adult, the convenience and independence of a license is powerful motivation. I’ve been driving for years, now, but it wasn’t an easy process to get my license. At the time, I wasn’t as cognizant of my symptoms, but looking back, I can see why I struggled so much with having Sensory Processing Disorder and driving.

Proprioception in Cars

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) makes it hard for me to interpret sensory stimuli, including proprioceptive information. Proprioception is the sense that tells you where your body is located in space. I struggle with motion sickness on buses, boats, even escalators, because the movement doesn’t match my brain’s sense of where my body should be. Initially, this made driving a car incredibly stressful; relative to your body, the car is not moving, but relative to the ground, it’s moving a LOT. Coordinating the movements of driving with the interpretation of how the car responds took a while to become natural. Once it did, though, it made my motion sickness in cars much better, as long as I’m the one driving.

Peripersonal Space

When you’re driving a car, your “body” sense expands to include the dimensions of the vehicle. This is called “peripersonal space”- the sense that expands and contracts to include the objects in our immediate surroundings. In The Body Has a Mind of its Own, authors Sandra and Matthew Blakesley explain,

“When you drive a car, your peripersonal space expands to include it, from fender to fender, from fender to door, and from tire to roof. As you enter a parking garage with a low ceiling, you can “feel” the nearness of your car’s roof to the height barrier as if it were your own scalp. This is why you instinctively duck when you pass under the barrier.”

Learning how to manage Sensory Processing Disorder and driving took me a while, in part because it was a challenge for me to get a sense of the dimensions of a car. Now that my brain has established it as effectively a part of my body, driving with SPD is much simpler. However, there are additional layers of difficulty that, no matter how much I learn, might always be challenging.

car side mirror with city and other cars in reflection
Photo by Onaivi Dania on Unsplash

Visual Challenges

The visual tasks involved in driving can quickly become overwhelming. Monitoring the movement of cars around you, watching for signals, brake lights, and obstacles in the road is already a lot to handle. Add to that the stress of driving in an unfamiliar area and attempting to read street signs and highway exit signs while managing the rest of your visual tasks, and you have a veritable mountain of sensory stimuli to deal with.

Driving with Dyspraxia

I think that the processing power I dedicate to handling visual stimuli while driving leaves little for planning complex movements, known as praxis. I have symptoms of dyspraxia, meaning I have trouble following sequences of actions and, even more so, planning the steps involved in getting from A to B by myself. If I can prepare ahead of time, I’m fine, but I really struggle to make decisions in the moment because I feel like I can’t process all of the information fast enough to take the right action.

Driving with dyspraxia makes me an anxious planner. If I’m going somewhere new, I study Google Maps obsessively, considering the factors I do or don’t like in each route. Is there a highway involved? Can I take a route with fewer lanes? If I miss a turn, how easy would it be to fix? How early should I leave to account for any mistakes? As I’ve become more comfortable with the other aspects of driving- the sensitivity of the pedals and the steering wheel, the dimensions of the car, predicting what other drivers are going to do- I can dedicate more mental energy to handling praxis. I still plan my routes in new places, but I’m more confident in my ability to get back on track if I get lost.

Sensory Processing Disorder and Driving Takes Practice, Practice, Practice

If you’re struggling with Sensory Processing Disorder symptoms and driving, an occupational therapist can help you identify your particular difficulties and come up with ways to make them easier. Whether you work with an occupational therapist or not, the best way to get comfortable with driving is to practice. When you have sensory overstimulation in the car, the last thing you feel like doing is getting back in the driver’s seat, I know. Trust me, I rolled my eyes so hard at everyone who told me that practicing would make it feel more natural; I felt like I just wasn’t made for driving and no amount of practice would change that. I admit- I was wrong. Practice does help, and I find that now that I’m adept at each aspect of driving and can better regulate my nervous system, my sensitivities probably make me a more mindful, safer driver than I would be otherwise.

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Setbacks in Depression Recovery

Genevieve4 Comments

Lately, I’ve been excited to begin going in the other direction with medications as part of my depression recovery- reducing rather than adding. Through years of treatment, it seemed like I was always either increasing a medication or trying a new one. I never got much relief from antidepressants (except the one it turns out I’m allergic to), and lithium, the mood stabilizer that has probably saved my life, comes with the risk of kidney damage if the levels of it in your blood creep too high. I still take an antidepressant, two mood stabilizers, and Deplin (because I’m a mutant). These drugs help me function, and although they don’t kick my depression completely out the door, they are important.

I have a love/hate relationship with lithium. It dramatically reduces my suicidal thoughts, and that’s amazing. If I were to describe how it felt when I was at my highest dose of lithium: it’s like you’ve been gritting your teeth for years, and then all of a sudden you realize you’ve stopped. All of that pressure, the wear on your teeth every single day as you work your jaw muscles without cease, suddenly vanished. Like the peace you feel when static background noise shuts off, and you’re left in silence. When I got to a high dose of lithium, I was floored when I realized that I hadn’t thought about suicide all day. In fact, lithium makes it a little bit difficult for me to think about suicide in the same way I do without it. Focusing my thoughts on the idea feels a bit like trying to push the same poles of two magnets together. But when I had to reduce my dose because of the risk of lithium toxicity, the suicidal thoughts started to come back. Not to the degree that they once were, but it was clear that the change in my lithium dose was to blame. Still, I’ve enjoyed a lesser degree of suicidality than I experienced without lithium.

Lithium restrains my thoughts from straying into suicidal ideation, but it comes with some unpleasant costs. Because it’s processed through your kidneys, it has a tendency to make people thirsty. If I go too long without water, I feel like I’m shriveling up like a dry sponge. It also makes me feel absolutely exhausted, napping excessively (even more than I normally do when I’m depressed). So although it does some wonderful things for me, I’ve always hoped that I wouldn’t need it forever.

Overall, I’ve been enjoying a recent improvement in my mental health. This is because of IV ketamine infusions, which treat, among other conditions, treatment-resistant depression. When I started to feel better and my depression recovery seemed to be on track, the spark of hope that I might someday be able to come off some of my medications began to grow. I was excited- why stay on meds that are only half-working if you have something better?

I talked to my psychiatric nurse practitioner about reducing my lithium dose by about a third. Within a week, the consequences of reducing my dose were becoming clear. I started to feel less interested in things again, tearful, and guilty about my depression. The slip was minor; I wasn’t feeling much worse, but it was compounded by my thoughts about the situation. I was looking forward to reducing my medications so much that when it went badly, I let disappointment carry me into catastrophizing. I thought that I’d never be able to leave lithium behind me, and would always rely on it to keep me safe from myself.

I quickly went back to my previous dose and waited for my symptoms to subside. Honestly, if it turns out that I do need it forever, that would be okay. There’s nothing wrong with needing medication. For now, though, I’ll tell myself that I was just too hasty, and try again someday soon.

It’s tempting to beat myself up for “losing progress,” but that’s all just part of life. When I feel trampled by my mental illness, I try to reframe the “progress” I think about as being more about the time you spend living and the things you learn along the way than about the state of your mood. Progress is existing each day and surrounding yourself with ideas and actions that keep you going. You’re living along the course of your own life- whatever that might be- and that’s progress.

Several luminescent blue jellyfish deep underwater in dark ocean

Skeletons and Jellyfish: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 7)

Genevieve1 Comment

“Remind me that we need to go to the store after this,” my mom said as we pulled up to a stoplight on our way to my eighth ketamine infusion. We came to a stop, looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

“I’m not making any promises,” I replied.

This was the last of my initial series of ketamine infusions, which are treating my severe depression. After about the fourth infusion, I started to notice a significant difference in my mood, which has steadily improved since then. I feel lighter, happier, and constantly find myself marveling at how simple it feels to just get up and accomplish a task. Before I go take advantage of my newfound enthusiasm, I have to tell you about this latest infusion. Buckle up.

A Wild Ketamine Ride

Immediately after my IV was put in, I started an album by the Swedish Chamber Choir and quickly decided that, while beautiful, it was far too dramatic and would likely lead to an unpleasant infusion. So, I hurriedly found a playlist of gentle classical music and set it on low volume in my earbuds. “Are you ready?” Dr. G asked.

“I’m ready,” I said, arranging the blanket on my lap and settling in.

Dr. G pressed a final button on the machine next to me and then leaned back in his chair and put his hand over his mouth as if holding a loudspeaker microphone. “KKshSHhSH. Thank you for flying Ketamine Airlines. This is your captain speaking.” We all laughed, and that’s the last thing of the real world that I remember with clarity.

Is it Working Yet?

I closed my eyes, determined this time to keep them closed the whole time. Usually, I leave them open until I begin to feel it, but this time I shut them immediately. I watched the darkness behind my eyelids, wondering if it would be obvious when the ketamine started to kick in. It’s easy to tell when my eyes are open because things around the room start to look blurry and soft. At some point, I remember noticing a sensation of tilting to the sides. When I breathed in, I tilted to the right. When I exhaled, I tilted left.

Soon after, I began to see vibrant blue against deep, deep black. From above, still in black and blue, was a mountain lion picking her way along the snowy banks of a winding river. The image disintegrated and the blue fell away like grains of sand in an hourglass.

Vibrant blue plant leaves and flowers against a dark, black background.
Photo by Fabrizio Conti on Unsplash

How Music Impacts My Experience of Using Ketamine for Depression

The music played an enormous part in what I saw. Each new song produced new scenes and images, and I remember thinking, somewhere far away, that I wanted to remember which song went with which vision. Alas, I was too captivated to do anything but be carried along with the music.

One song produced a sensation of being underwater, surrounded by jellyfish. They moved with surprising energy, but were peaceful and delicate. The song ended and as another began, I was transported to what I can only imagine were the steppes of Siberia. Nomadic people stood on the striking landscape, dressed warmly in furs, observing their herds. I then sank below the permafrost, light receding upward until I was in darkness.

A cluster of bright LED lights in long, pole-like shapes against a dark background.
Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash

Suddenly, light appeared and brightened until it was blinding and white. People came into view, carrying a large, rounded container. I knew that this was a funeral, and as they put the container down, I felt as though I were being pressed firmly into soft earth. All around me were mossy bones and skeletons that looked at me. They seemed like they had been kind people. Another song began, and the blinding white light returned. As it dimmed slightly, I realized the light was reflecting off of vast landscapes of ice. Strangely, I felt my clasped hands begin to pull apart, and at the same time, I saw an enormous ice floe crack down the middle and start to separate. There was tremendous weight on each side, and volumes of icy water were displaced as the ice floe crashed down into two.

Real-World Disorientation

Throughout all of this, I would occasionally become aware of the room around me. At one point, there was talking, and although it was distinctly english, the words didn’t make sense to me. It sounded a lot like this video. Although I felt incredibly immersed in my ketamine dreams, when Dr. G bumped into the door, my eyes flew open. As soon as I realized there was nothing to worry about, I closed my eyes and returned to my skeleton/jellyfish/ice floe visions. When the infusion was over, I left my eyes closed until I could tell that I was seeing normal darkness rather than  a d v a n c e d  darkness [cue Spongebob clip].

Post-Ketamine is Mundane

When we got in the car, I pulled out my phone and began writing down as much of the ketamine infusion as I could remember. This resulted in notes like “skeletons everywhere” and “SHARP blue shapes.” I’ve done my best to interpret them, but I’m sure there’s more that I can’t remember anymore. When I got home, I slept for five hours, woke up at 9 PM, ate a banana, and went back to bed.

As this was the last in my initial series of IV ketamine for depression, I now have two weeks until my next infusion. This blog series will continue, but with less frequent posts. If you have questions about what treatment with ketamine for depression is like or about anything I’ve written about here, please leave them in the comments or contact me directly. I’d be happy to answer them!

If you’d like to read more about my experience with ketamine for depression, start from the beginning of The Ketamine Chronicles or visit the archives. Click here for mobile-optimized archives of The Ketamine Chronicles.

lamb sleeping in profile against wooden boards

Let Yourself Dream

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Months ago, I made a draft document full of blog ideas. One of those ideas simply read “Let Yourself Dream”, with a brief list of my own lifelong dreams. It sat, unused, for months until, two days ago, my therapist suggested that I let myself dream this week. The words stuck, niggled in my brain for a few hours, and finally clicked. I had already written it down as a blog idea!

My depression is finally starting to lift, thanks to IV ketamine infusions and my rock-solid support system. Over the last few days, I’ve found myself thinking about all of the things that I want to do, now that I’m feeling better. Actually wanting to do something is an unfamiliar feeling, and is honestly a little overwhelming. There’s so much I want to do! Where do I start, and will this newfound mental health last? Rather than getting bogged down in all of the what ifs, this week, I’m going to dream.

1. Train and Certify Stella as a Therapy Dog

This is a goal that I’ve had ever since I adopted Stella, and maybe even before then. I think it would be so rewarding to volunteer with her in retirement homes, physical therapy treatment facilities, and hospitals. When I was a patient in a mental health hospital, we were delighted when a therapy dog came to visit us. To be able to bring a little bit of happiness to people in a difficult situation I have experience with would be beyond gratifying.

2. Hobby Farm

THIS has been my dream for a good decade or so. I love animals, and there’s something about having a house with spacious property and a chicken coop, barn for some sheep and goats, maybe a dairy cow, and some alpacas (so my mother can have their wool) that just sounds perfect. I love routine, and the hard work of caring for animals every day and maintaining a garden and home seems like it would be therapeutic for me. This is a lofty goal, but hey, we’re dreaming, here.

3. Make Writing a Career

Yeah. Not sure how to go about doing this or even if I would do okay at it. But doesn’t it sound nice to wake up, go take care of my farm animals, then spend time writing in my sunny home office before harvesting some home-grown vegetables? Sounds wonderful to me!

4. Have a Regular Social Calendar

This is maybe not so much a “dream” as it is an eventual necessity. Depression combined with introversion has made me very isolated. The thing to do now is to find some groups that interest me and actually go to them. Not just bookmark it or download an app, but actually go to an event and meet people. Easier said than done, but the best things are worth working for.

5. Run a Half-Marathon

Yet another thing I bookmarked and set aside. I used to run almost every day, and at times, it was really beneficial to my mental health. Unfortunately, I stopped running entirely for a while, and since then, have picked it up only in fits and spurts. If I’m going to reach my goal of running a half-marathon (let’s be reasonable- a full marathon is too much for me) I need to run with more consistency and pick a race to train for. The good news is, it’s always easier to get back into than I think.

 

These are just a few of my dreams, and although some of them are distant, it’s nice to remember that I’ve already achieved so many of my old ones. Getting my own dog was number one on my list after college, and now the single greatest joy/irritation in my life is watching my canine friend slam her paw down on my keyboard when I’m not petting her enough. It’s so endearing.

What are your dreams? Have you thought about it lately? Maybe take a moment this week to revisit those goals that seem out of reach and reassess; how would you go about achieving them?

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What’s in a Diagnosis? MDD and SPD

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This post first appeared on Mental Health @Home in Ashleyleia’s Emerging Blogger series.

Many thanks to Ashley for hosting me!

Diagnoses are a contentious topic. Logistically, they’re important for clinicians and insurance companies who need proof of your conditions. But for the individual, they come with pros and cons. I carry the well-known diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder and the less well-known diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder. The effects of the diagnoses themselves feel very different to me, and I’ve spent some time reflecting on why.

Well-Known vs Little-Known

A diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder made me feel much less alone in my suffering. Depression is astoundingly common and increasingly talked about. Stigma remains, to be sure, but awareness surrounding depression is thankfully improving. I can be pretty sure that when I tell someone that I have depression, they’ll know what I’m talking about. The same cannot be said for Sensory Processing Disorder.

Insecurity in a Diagnosis

Having a diagnosis of MDD, maybe more than making me feel less alone, makes me feel understood. Simply saying the word “depression” makes most people, I think, picture the same constellation of symptoms: low mood, lethargy, loss of interest, etc.. This is not to say that I haven’t encountered stigma or innocent ignorance- I have. But when I tell someone that I have depression and they tell me that their brother or friend or significant other has depression, too, it connects us for a moment, and I know that on some level, they know what I’m going through.

This is not generally the case for my diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder, at least in my own lived experience. A person with SPD has difficulty processing the information that comes in through their senses, including the usual five (touch, sight, sound, smell, taste) as well as the less well-known senses of proprioception (where your body is in space) and interoception (internal body sensations like hunger). SPD can make you over-sensitive or under-sensitive to these stimuli. I’m over-sensitive to most, just plain bad at proprioception, and relatively unaffected when it comes to taste. Sensory Processing Disorder is overwhelmingly common among people who have Autism Spectrum Disorder, but you don’t have to have ASD to have SPD. They are separate disorders that have a TON of overlap. Despite the growing body of literature from occupational therapists, scientists, and doctors, SPD is not included in the DSM V.  It is, however, its own diagnosis in the ICD 10. This discrepancy is what throws me off. I know that SPD is real. And yet, when I try to explain to someone what it is and how it affects me, I flounder. It’s challenging to describe how I’m affected by a diagnosis that not everyone agrees upon. It leaves me feeling vaguely defensive, or like I’m grasping at straws to explain my symptoms. In this sense, the label of SPD does not make me feel secure in my experience of the disorder.

Feeling Alone with SPD

While it is incredibly validating and relieving to have an explanation for symptoms that aren’t frequently talked about, the very fact that it’s not often discussed makes for an isolating diagnosis. I feel much more uncomfortable when I have to explain SPD than I do while explaining MDD. Once you grow up and leave behind the allowances of childhood, you’re expected to conform to a lot of social and institutional rules. I think this is why kids who have SPD grow up to be adults who hide their symptoms with willpower. They put themselves into situations that cause them distress because it seems like they “should” be able to. The problem here is not that you might push yourself to do uncomfortable things – that’s how we grow. The problem is that people with SPD often hide their discomfort and end up feeling alone and wrong for feeling how they do. It also leads to overstimulation and meltdowns, chronic anxiety, and exhaustion. Ultimately, I am so glad that I know about my SPD, not just because it explains all those sensory symptoms that make me think “why can’t I be like other people?”, but because it offers me room to advocate for others who feel alone in this diagnosis, too.

How a Diagnosis Can Hurt

For me, whether the diagnosis is well-known or not, simply having a name for what I’m going through is incredibly helpful, and I believe outweighs the downsides of having a label. That said, there are some potential dangers of diagnoses.

Mental Health and Identity

I’ve heard lots of discourse about the risk that you might allow diagnoses to seep into your identity until there’s no room for anything else. I enjoy writing about mental health, and at the moment, a lot of my focus is placed on managing my depression. Our experiences shape us, so it’s natural that I find parts of my identity rooted in depression and Sensory Processing Disorder, but I know that I am a whole person without them.

Is a Diagnosis Confining?

The risk that I don’t hear much about when discussing diagnoses is the ease with which a label can trap you in a definition. It’s subtle sometimes, but having a diagnosis of depression can make you perceive even mundane things as attributable to your disorder. For instance, I recently read a book for the first time in a long time, a hobby I abandoned when depression settled in again. The book was humorous, but I didn’t laugh out loud or even pause to appreciate the jokes. At first, I thought it must be because I’m still depressed. I didn’t even consider the possibility that maybe the book just wasn’t that funny. Feeling confined within my diagnosis, the sub-par experience of reading that book became a product of my depression.

A new diagnosis can, understandably, push you to look for information online. Reading case studies and statistics, while informative, might be discouraging. I think it’s very easy to slip into a set of criteria and forecasted outcomes because a diagnosis feels official. It’s easy to forget that a diagnosis is an explanation of symptoms, not a set of imposed rules. Not only is this likely to feel suffocating- like a diagnosis of depression means that any end to an episode will inevitably be followed by another episode (something I struggle with all the time)- but it makes any attempt to counteract it feel futile. I constantly need to remind myself that a diagnosis does not confiscate my agency over my life.

There is Always a Choice

Even within a diagnosis with symptoms outside of your control, there is always a choice. You can always take action, be it reaching out for help or making the choice to take your medications. I take solace in the fact that I’m not alone in my diagnoses, even if it sometimes feels that I am. At the same time, I work to recognize that I am an individual with my own course through life and my own opportunities to fight.

Tall stalks with tiny purple flowers and a blurry background

Feeling Better with IV Ketamine Treatment for Depression: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 6)

Genevieve2 Comments

In Part One of The Ketamine Chronicles, I said that I don’t remember what it feels like to feel better, so it’s hard to imagine it being worth the effort. Well, thanks to IV ketamine treatments, my treatment-resistant depression is improving and I’m feeling better. For future reference, it is absolutely worth the effort.

When I got up to the dog park one recent morning, the skies were clear and there was fresh, deep snow on the ground. There was nobody there, so we had the place to ourselves. I let Stella into the empty park and swung my boots through the heavy powder. A gentle honking made us look up to find a flock of geese passing by on downy wings. With one glance, Stella took off after the flock, bounding through the snow with unbridled joy. My breath rose in clouds as I whooped, urging her on and clapping my mittens in the sharp morning sunlight. I felt like I was on a different planet. A new one, with bright, saturated colors and crisp air. This is what ketamine has done for me.

How IV Ketamine Treatment for Depression Has Helped Me

No antidepressant I’ve tried has had an effect on my treatment-resistant depression like IV ketamine has. With one infusion left in my initial series, I thought I’d check in with how it’s been progressing. I’ve been going to Boulder Mind Care for my infusions, and it’s been a wonderful experience. For a process you begin while feeling absolutely terrible, Dr. G and Sarah make a huge effort to make you feel comfortable in their clinic.

Incremental Positive Change

I think my strategy of detached curiosity was successful; I started to feel discouraged when it didn’t work right away, but I tried to just accept the process at whatever point I was at. It was subtle at first. I didn’t wake up and feel cured, but gradually, small things became easier. Getting out of the house, running errands, and just holding a conversation with someone became manageable, sometimes even enjoyable. I read a book, I went out to dinner, I bought more art supplies, and I even looked up the location of a support group.

For the first time in a while, I find myself thinking about the future in a positive way. It seems like surviving – maybe even conquering – depression is possible for me, something that even a month ago I would not have said. The fear that it won’t last is still there. The feeling that I shouldn’t commit to anything in case I can’t follow through is still there. But I feel strong enough now to push those worries aside and challenge myself to grow.

IV Ketamine Treatment #7

Ketamine infusion number seven went well. Rather than decrease the dose from last time, we did the same dose but slowed down the rate of the infusion. It hit me so subtly that for a while, I could barely feel it. I kept thinking that it wasn’t affecting me yet, but then Dr. G got my attention and reminded me to close my eyes. When I did, I saw beautiful, delicate golden bubbles that turned into raw corn kernels.

I guess it was affecting me, after all.

A hand holding an ear of shucked yellow corn in a cornfield on a sunny day with blue skies.
Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash

The corn multiplied and moved until it was an ocean of golden-yellow kernels with people swimming in the sound of it shifting and pouring. I adjusted the volume of my music with the buttons on the side of my phone and noticed that my fingers felt like they were coated in suede. Someone knocked on the door in the waiting room, and Dr. G leapt up. I think maybe the door was not supposed to be locked, but I honestly have no idea. I was too busy with my visions of corn.

I know that I saw other things, but I don’t remember them at this point. I think it’s fascinating to guess why my mind comes up with certain themes during my ketamine treatments. On the way to my appointment, I thought about popcorn while my mom and I discussed seeing a movie this weekend. I can’t help but wonder if that influenced my ketamine visions of corn oceans.

Just before my first infusion, I suggested to my mom that she bring her knitting in while she sat with me. That ketamine infusion was heavily saturated with images of knitted materials and quilts. I think there’s something to this theory, and I wonder if you could deliberately seed your short-term memory with certain things that you wanted to contemplate during a ketamine infusion. Or maybe it’s a strictly unintentional process. That’s an anecdotal experiment that would take me a long time since I have one infusion left before my initial series is finished. So, if anyone is starting ketamine treatment for depression or anything else, do me a favor and read this post beforehand. Then let me know if you see lots of corn. 😉

If you’d like to read more about my experience with ketamine for depression, start from the beginning of The Ketamine Chronicles or visit the archives. Click here for mobile-optimized archives of The Ketamine Chronicles.