Category: TMS Therapy

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If You Think Nobody’s Given You A Gift, You’re Just Plain Wrong: Part 2

Skitter is like Mom: Her eyes are sensitive to light, so she tends to wear sunglasses indoors quite often. Skitter is wearing Bow Tie o’ the Day shades this morning. You’ve seen these sunglasses on Mom, on me, and now on The Skit. We share well.

All the gifts in all the universes can’t save you from a mental illness like bipolar depression. Depression doesn’t care what material gifts you have been given. It doesn’t care about the gift you’ve received of being loved and wanted. It does what it wants to your head and, therefore, to your life.

I have mentioned before that I decided to do TMS to jump start my depressed feelers and level my mood. I had been “not feeling” for a while. Simultaneous to my “not feeling,” I was in a crippling depression. It might seem like a contradiction to “not feel” while also drowning in depression, but I assure you it’s possible. I have been there more times in my life than I’d like to count. This time was significantly more debilitating and dark. I honestly believe my mental illness was getting close to being terminal, if you get my drift: Bye, bye, Helen Jr.

Anyhoo… It’s been two weeks since I completed TMS, and I want to tell you what I’ve noticed. There’s been no bigly cookie at the end of the TMS rainbow for me, but I see and “feel” a trail of crumbs which will add up to at least half a cookie when I gather them and put them all together. As I wrote yesterday, TMS has been a smallish welcome gift– despite 36 treatments that felt like a woodpecker beak knocking at my skull.

I got part of my appetite back, which is probably good cuz my weight went down to 7th-grade level. I have been unable to focus my attention enough to read for the last year, and I didn’t even care about it. Not reading is sooooo not me. But I’ve been back to reading for the last month. My moods are back to being lighter, though not as light as my usual, weird “normal.”

I can’t say my “feelers” are back to feeling, but I get little bursts of feeling, so I’m confident TMS has helped to get that coming back to me. Until feeling shows up more often, I’ll stick to knowing what I anticipate I will feel in the future. Suzanne says I am talking more, which is a bigly change back to my true self– since I am a chatter-er like Mom. I’ll let you know when/if I notice other changes I think are TMS-related. TMS wasn’t magic for me, but it helped pull me up a couple of rungs on the slippery ladder in my depression pit.

Before TMS, aside from thinking it would be best for everyone if I jumped off the planet, the worst idea I ruminated over was…. hold on to your bike helmets…. are you sitting down?…. I told Suzanne I was going to shut down TIE O’ THE DAY. Forever. No more website. No more Facebook posts. I didn’t care about it or my stoopid neckwear anymore.

And I ranted to Suzanne about how I’m too old to write these stoopid posts about my stoopid, uninteresting life. And I ranted about how this stoopid tie/bow tie thing makes me look like a stoopid fool, and I should feel embarrassed. And I ranted about how nobody cares about my stoopid ideas about living better lives. And nobody thinks my writing is funny. Blah, blah, blah. You know… all that prattle, which is kinda true.

The tragedy! The tragedy! Junking TIE O’ THE DAY might have actually thrown me off the runaway train. Sticking with writing my posts– despite not caring about the venture for a while– anchored my depressed and sunken days with a purpose. I somehow convinced myself my readers would miss TIE O’ THE DAY to the extent that their souls would lose a wee bit of joy forever. Oh, if I were to quit writing and posting, it would destroy y’all’s lives! I told myself I had to keep TIE O’ THE DAY up and running, for the good of all mankind. I’m SuperBowTieLady, patron superhero of all neckwear!

Seriously, TMS has helped. Mostly, I am still here, and here is where I want to be. I’m not positive I would be here on this blue-skied day in June if I had decided against doing TMS.

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If You Think Nobody’s Given You A Gift, You’re Just Plain Wrong: Part 1

If you’re reading this post right now, you are enjoying a cornucopia of gifts. You’re probably not even thinking about them, but they’re yours. You’ve got your sight, your scrolling coordination, your friends on Facebook, and you can read. There are plenty more gifts you’re experiencing right now, but you get the idea. You are floating in an ocean o’ gifts. Just notice them and say “thanks.”

Bloom-y pink and white Bow Tie o’ the Day is a gift I received from Bishopette Collette last Sunday. I’m sure it’s from Bishop Trav and baby Gracie as well, but you know darn well who probably found it and bought it. The Blackwelder’s have had the courage to gift me two pieces of neckwear in the last year or so– something Suzanne won’t even do, for fear I already have the same of whatever neckwear it is. Both neckwear gifts from the Blackwelder’s have been pieces I didn’t already have. Amazing. Their family clearly has good instincts about giving me neckwear. Having good instincts is a gift too. And always remember that a material gift is an embodiment of the true gift: someone wanted to show you affection.

Clearly, I’m thinking about gifts today. It’s been two weeks since my last Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation treatment. I’ve been giving my head a little time to settle itself down and cogitate about the whole experience and any changes I might have noticed after the entire round of 36 treatments. I decided now is a fine time to give you my verdict on the TMS. TMS was a gift. It wasn’t one bigly gift. The gift is coming in tiny waves, here and there, at random times.

The entire round of TMS treatments significantly decreases bipolar depression 50% of the time. Suzanne said I should take the chance I’d be in the lucky half, so I jumped in. I only noticed one negative side effect of the treatment itself: for a few minutes after each treatment, my vision was blurry– as if I had forgotten to put my glasses on to drive. But that was it for the negative effects of TMS treatment.

Some things from that time were a pain in the butt. By the time I drove to the University Neuropsychiatric Institute (UNI) for treatment and back home, it took a two-hour block out of each day. I didn’t like having to commit to stay around SLC for two months of weekdays. And I didn’t like paying for the TMS, which I believe my insurance should have been responsible for. But those negative things have nothing to do with TMS itself.

What I could not see as I was going through treatment were gifts accompanying the same irritants I listed above. I see them now when I look back. I got to drive to SLC for treatments before rush hour, so I enjoyed beautiful mornings. I enjoyed the gift of listening (and singing) to weird music I can’t play if someone’s with me, cuz nobody else likes it. Having to remain “up north” for over two months, meant that I was able to get a lot of domicile work done which I wouldn’t have been able to do if I’d been gallivanting across the state and/or continent. And I am grateful to have health insurance that kicked in for a bigly chunk of the TMS cost. Yes, I’m saying health insurance is a gift.

During the last week of my TMS, I experienced a day throughout which I felt lighter and more alive than I had felt in the last decade. The next day, for whatever reason, the lightness was pretty much gone. If that one day is the only big change to come out of my TMS, I will remember and treasure that singular gift.

FYI Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post topic, tomorrow. I’ll let you in on some specific changes I have noticed as a result of going through the TMS.

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“Cost” And “Worth” Are Two Different Things

Yesterday I went to an appointment to check in with one of my crazy head docs. I see Dr. Day sporadically, for meds maintenance and talk therapy. I see her probably a half-dozen times per year. My last appointment with her was a couple of months ago, before I began the TMS. In fact, she is the one who told me– months ago– about a number of brain therapies for bipolar drepression which I might want to check into, one of which was TMS. She hasn’t been involved in any aspect of the TMS itself.

Anyhoo… The last time I visited with Dr. Day, I was flat and affectless as could be. Of course, that’s the reason she brought up TMS in the first place. But yesterday, before I could sit my butt down on the couch in her office, she said, “You have some life in you today! You’re looking alive!” I said, “I only have two TMS sessions left.” And then she said, “Oh my gosh! I forgot you went forward with the TMS. Do you feel like it’s helping?” It must be working if she noticed a difference in me. That was exactly what I needed to hear.

The truth is I haven’t been sure TMS is working. I don’t know how I’m supposed to be feeling while I’m going through the treatments. I do know that whatever’s going on (or isn’t going on) is happening gradually. It’s like that pesky ten pounds that somehow makes its way to your gut: It creeps on. You don’t see every tiny blob of fat as it decides to make its home on you, but one day you go to button your shorts and you finally notice ten pounds somehow showed up under your very eyes.

My potential brain change, however, would be a welcome change. But mostly, I think I’m too close to my situation to really notice TMS effects. I’m with me 24/7. I’m looking so closely at every little thing I do, every thought I have, and every hint of emotion that I don’t know if I’ve improved or not. Is my depression really improving? Am I starting to feel authentic things deeply? Or is it just my wishful thinking that I see some progress?

But Dr. Day’s reaction to my simply walking into her office yesterday eased my worries of TMS failure immensely. Her reaction makes it pretty clear to me that I’m probably doing noticeably better than I was before the TMS.

When Suzanne and I first discussed the possibility of me trying TMS to combat my evil bipolar depression, one of the minuses of going ahead with treatment was the high cost. Insurance covers only a wee bit of it, and that’s after the Treatment Resistant Mood Disorder Clinic @ UNI did much begging with the insurance company on my behalf. I think I’ve been trying to see more bang for my buck, so to speak. If I’m payin’ bigly bucks, I expect to see bigly positive change. But I’ve decided it’s kinda selfish and demanding of me to think that way. The desired outcome would be one enormous emotional change, but I’m thinking the non-flashy, simpler, thousands of tiny changes might add up to a longer-lasting, more thorough mental change.

If you think about it, you’ll see that’s how most change happens. Need a cinderblock fence around your yard? That’ll happen one cinderblock at a time. Teaching your kid how to walk? That’ll be one step at a time. Teaching someone to drive a car? That’ll be one driving skill upon another. Need a doctor to hack out 2/3 of your stoopid pancreas? The hours-long surgery officially begins with one cut. And then the next thing happens, and then the next, next thing happens. And so on.

It’ll probably take some time for me to truly analyze how effective the TMS has been. Patience is better than fretting about it. Since Suzanne is the person I’m around most, she’s the one whose opinion on the treatment’s success or failure is most crucial. She’s not ready to offer up her vote yet.

When we talked about cost and time commitment for the required 36 TMS treatments, I asked Suzanne, “If, after the boatloads of money and eons of time spent, TMS ends up helping my loony head improve only 1 percent, will it be worth it to you that it cost us our emergency fund?”

Suzanne is famous for being silent while she completely thinks through every word of her answers to even the simplest questions before she speaks. (Sometimes it’s annoying.) But she wasn’t silent at all after I asked her that question. Her head cogs didn’t turn. They didn’t even creak. She just immediately said, “Yes. It’ll be worth it.”

See why I agreed to give it a try?

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TMS Is The Happiest Place On Earth. Not. But Sorta.

Be ye not afraid. Askew wood Bow Tie o’ the Day is here to assure you that Hairs Thursday #14 will post this afternoon.

In these photos, you see me and Bow Tie and my TMS technician, Tenzin. Tenzin has made the treatments almost a pleasure to go through. She gets my humor and my fashion. And she is a hoot, herself. I will actually miss her.

One day at treatment, I noticed that if you turn my electromagnetic TMS coil on its side, it resembles Mickey Mouse ears– even more so when placed atop my TMS beanie. Tenzin humored me when I asked if she’d take the apparatus apart, so I could get a TIE O’ THE DAY selfie with the “ears.” She was ecstatic to do so. I handed her a prop bow tie I always carry with me in The Saddle Purse, in case I need it. She loved the whole set-up and was proud I thought enough of her to let her pose with her own borrowed Bow Tie o’ the Day.

Y’all know how I find significance and humor in coincidences. Of course, it’s happened again. I should have known the TMS equipment would have a component which resembles Mickey Mouse ears. My TMS doctor’s name? Dr. Mickey. How did I not notice this connection earlier? Coincidence? I think not.

34 TMS treatments down, 2 to go. Both are next week.

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The Return O’ The Posts

TIE O’ THE DAY is on its knees, begging your forgiveness. We shirked our entertainment duties, and we know how y’all get when you don’t get your daily dosage of neckwear and too much information about me. Bad tblog!

So today I found my redneck Hat o’ the Day and paired it with a lovely argyle Bow Tie o’ the Day. We figured the look would help us get back into our readers’ good graces.

Here’s our true excuse for our absence: I went to my TMS appointment early Friday morning. Now remember, last week was my first week of tapering the TMS from 5 to 2 sessions per week. After I got home, I wrote the day’s first post. Immediately after I posted, my crazy head went weird on me. Now, I know you’re saying to yourself, “This dame is bipolar, so she always has a weird head. What’s the big deal?” Well, this was a brand new territory of weird head. My head had never before been in this particular zone of crazy. For three days, I was forced to explore the new universe spinning in my noggin. That’s how I spent my Memorial Day weekend– with a new kind of weird head.

I’m sure it had something to do with tapering off the TMS. I suppose that at least shows TMS has done SOMETHING to me. I wish I could tell you whether or not my weekend crazy head was positive or negative. I’m not sure. I think my noggin was more level, but I’m still too mystified about the experience to make a judgment, myself. One thing I do know is that I wasn’t in a frame of mind to write posts, and that’s an odd thing.

I tried to describe to Suzanne how my head’s soul felt, and the best I could do was the following: I felt like the “dumb blonde” in the dumb blonde jokes. Oh, I felt intelligent as ever, but I felt like if you put a tire gauge up to my eardrum, you could test the air pressure in my skull. And it would be high. See why I can’t tell if the feeling was positive or negative?

After TMS this morning, I felt a little more like my abnormal normal self. Not to worry, folks.

33 TMS treatments down, 3 to go.

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An Electromagnetic Headbangin’ Update

I got to sleep-in past 5AM on this weekday morning. No TMS treatment today. Yay!!! But Suzanne began to snore promptly at 5:01 AM, so I didn’t get to sleep in as much as I got to lie there and “curse-in” about being awakened when I didn’t need to be up early.

I’m not quite finished with the TMS regimen. I had treatment #30 yesterday morning. I’ve got 6 to go, but I am now in the tapering-off phase of the treatments, so I will have treatments only twice per week from now on. I want my TMS-every-weekday schedule back! I will follow the rules, but it really ticks me off that it will take 3 weeks for me to complete the last 6 treatments.

People who have never experienced a major depression cannot fully comprehend its complexity. My experience has been that most of the lucky people who have been blessed to skip the depression quagmire have the idea that to be depressed is only to feel down and hopeless. They don’t have a clue that major depression can manifest itself, not just in negative feelings, but in the total absence of feelings. When I began TMS treatment, I had experienced an extended period of time feeling nothing. Nada. Zip.

When this “not-feeling” happens, I still KNOW what I feel, but I don’t really FEEL it. For example, I know I love Skitter, but right now I don’t feel it in the marrow of my bones. I take care of her out of loving habit, knowing that the love still lives in me somewhere– and hoping I will surely feel it again. It helps me that I was raised to be a nice person, whether I’m feeling like it or not. “Nice” is my default mode of being.

Here’s another example of my being disconnected from my true, feeling self: A few weeks ago, Suzanne said, “Let’s buy you a new truck.” If I’d had my normal feelings working, I would have picked out a new truck and parked it in the garage within an hour of Suzanne’s words. Instead, I shrugged it off and said, “Nah. I don’t need one.” What mentally apt gal says NO when someone tells her to go buy a new truck? What feeling person doesn’t jump off the couch and speed to the auto dealership when someone basically tells you to buy a new truck you know you want? That right there proves I’m off my feeling-rocker.

And thus, I go through the motions of daily life, completely aware of what’s going on, but not really feeling like it has anything to do with me. I don’t even feel my “me-ness.”

I know all this sounds weird. It sounds impossible. But trust me, it’s possible. I’ve gone through the “not-feeling” thing a few other times in my life. My head has always righted itself, so it hasn’t alarmed me when it’s happened. But this time, I have “not-felt” for longer than I am comfortable with. That’s why Suzanne and I decided I should try the TMS treatments.

How’s the TMS working for me? I’m not sure. But I think I see a positive change in my psyche here and there. Suzanne says I don’t stare out the windows into nothingness as much as I did before. I would like to report I’ve felt a bigly, flip-of-the-switch change for the better, but I haven’t. On the other hand, I have not completed all 36 of the TMS sessions, and perhaps the last 6 are the charm. I can report that when I visited baby Grace last week, I felt inklings of joy stirring up in me, fighting to get out. So there’s hope.

BTW Wood Bow Tie o’ the Day says, “Follow your arrow. Or your arrowhead, if you don’t have the whole arrow.” Got the point?

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Every Once In A While

Just to be daring, I do try to blend and match and dress in solid colors sometimes. It’s my idea of dangerous! Even a slim, diamond-point Bow Tie o’ the Day can’t make this plain outfit appear interesting. I looked like a walking solid color. A fashion blender and matcher, I am not. In fact, my solid-color shirt and bow tie made my eyes bored.

I stood in the cold outside the locked door at the TMS clinic for about ten minutes this morning. The clinic folks wouldn’t buzz me in for my treatment because they did not recognize me dressed thus. I finally got buzzed in when I held The Saddle Purse up to the security camera. My purse is apparently an official form of ID for me.

I hold no ill will toward my clinic people for keeping me locked outside for ten minutes: Heck, I did not recognize me either. Must. Have. My. Clash. Back.

FYI 29 TMS treatments down, 7 to go.

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A Sunny Day, I Hope

Got some swingin’ clash going on today. Bow Tie o’ the Day has already helped show off my outfit at my TMS treatment. (26 sessions down, 10 to go.)

It’s looking like an actual Spring day outside. Plenty of sun. A touch of warmth. I can wear my shorts– the style of which Suzanne and I have referred to since the 80’s as my “big, fat, ugly” shorts. I have a pair of pants like them too. Both are way too big for me, but they have lots of bigly pockets. They hold as much as a carry-on suitcase, I kid you not. That’s why I never needed to own a purse. I’ll do a post with my big, fat, ugly shorts/pants soon. I didn’t even think of it until I wrote this paragraph.

The hat I’m wearing in this snapshot is too girly for me, which means it’s Suzanne’s. I bought it for her last September when we were at the beach on Dauphin Island, AL. It is a humongous sunhat. It has the “wingspan” of a bald eagle. Just guess the most memorable thing about Suzanne’s hat on that trip. Yup, you’ve come up with the correct answer if you guessed the hat highlight was getting it onto the plane to come home. Did you hear me when I said it is a large hat? It is officially sombrero-size. The hat couldn’t go in a suitcase, and we already had the max of what we could carry onto the plane with us.

So Suzanne wore her hat onto the plane, where we hoped no airline person would tell us the hat was just one thing too many. When we walked down the plane’s aisle to our find our seats, that dang hat brim touched both sides of the plane. It nearly decapitated a number of passengers as Suzanne passed by. And then when we found our seats and sat down, the hat had to go somewhere during the flight. We tried to put it under the seat in front of me. It didn’t fit, of course. I kind of hovered my feet above it to hide it when the flight attendants walked by.

Suzanne and I made it home to Utah. The sunhat made it home with us, where it now lives in the closet with my gangster fedora, hogging half the closet. And the closet is a walk-in. Since the sunhat moved in, all of my hats (except for the fedora) had to move from the closet to The Tie Room. I’m so “glad” I bought Suzanne that hat.

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Grrrrrrrr!

In this morning’s post, I admitted I might be having some TMS side effects, cuz what I did yesterday does not resemble how I am, in the least. When I started writing TIE O’ THE DAY a couple of years ago, I said I would always be as honest as possible about my circus life– good and bad. And I’m here to tell you I embarrassed even my neckwear yesterday. Only Suzanne and I know first-hand I was a jerk, but still… I was wrong.

So….. yesterday afternoon Suzanne and I had a minuscule non-Mother’s-Day-related tiff about when to binge-watch IN PLAIN SIGHT and when to do serious napping before going to dinner. Yes, the set-to was that stoopid! But you know how it goes: One of you says a kinda not nice thing; and then the other person says a kinda not nice thing; and pretty soon you’re both swept up in a huge tornado of immaturity. (Do not pretend you haven’t done it too.) I blame the TMS, cuz I don’t want to blame myself.

Before I knew it, I was in my car alone, driving to SLC to the restaurant where I had earlier in the week made Mother’s Day dinner reservations for us.

I sat and ate dinner on the patio at CURRENT all by myself, crying in my halibut. (The halibut was excellent, BTW.) The whole time I was there I kept looking at the Find Friends app on my phone to see if Suzanne’s phone had left the house to come eat with me. Nope. She and her phone stayed home. I understood. Heck, even I didn’t want to be around me.

Thus, today I chose my world map Bow Tie o’ the Day as a way to express my current title of Official Ass Of The World. And I felt my offense yesterday was so childish and egregious that I also deserve to be awarded 1/2 of a trophy– to memorialize my Official Ass Of The World title.

This fine trophy is actually my 1980 Miss Liberty 1st Attendant trophy, whose top statue has long since broken off. I don’t know why this little treasure hasn’t been lost in my life’s moves. I have lost important documents and photos in almost every housing move I’ve made, but this broken trophy always finds its way to wherever I live, making itself at home. Perhaps it has stayed with me since 1980 just to fulfill its ultimate destiny as my Official Ass Of The World trophy, which I’m sure will stick around until the minute I die. I might as well get it re-engraved with my current title.

Stoopidist. Lovebird. Tiff. Ever!

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A Solid Color. Don’t Get Used To It.

Today I’m sporting a velvet, floppy butterfly Bow Tie o’ the Day. It’s blue and blue, as you can see. I do not own many neckwear items in solid colors. They have a tendency to be matchy, and you know how I feel about attire that matches. Solid colors make me feel like the Not-Me.

Speaking of “Not-Me,” I think I’m having some minor, but weird, side effects from my TMS treatments. Again, there’s nothing to worry about, and I have no proof it’s even related to the treatment anyway. But when Suzanne and I were at Walmart buying dog food on Saturday, I began to experience a jittery manic episode– the exact likes of which I have not felt before.(I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Doesn’t everybody feel manic when they walk into a Walmart?” Har, har, har.)

This particular soul-fidget was nowhere near the worst I’ve ever gone through. It was actually quite manageable, though even the smallest bout of mania is always a bit dangerous and scary. We came home, and I got through it. Suzanne spied on me wherever I went in the house for the rest of the day, to make sure I wasn’t going to do something crazy-headed like throw all my Sloggers in the garbage. (Minor mania means I do minor weird stuff. Bigly mania means… you don’t wanna know.) My car keys somehow disappeared from their key hook for the rest of the day, as well. Suzanne, too, moves in mysterious ways. I thank her for that.

Yesterday, Mother’s Day, I still couldn’t focus enough to write posts. And then I did a thing– which was really done by my Not-Me. It was a thing so unlike anything the “real me” would ever do. But y’all will have to wait until the next post to read about my transgression. I’m still trying to figure out how to write about “my bad” in such a way that I don’t end up looking like an ass– if that’s at all possible.

Being bipolar sucks.