Category: TMS Therapy

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Too, Too Tired

Bow Tie o’ the Day sits in the TMS reception area with me and my droopy eyelids. You know all those naps you wouldn’t take when you were a kid? I now regret not napping every chance I was told to. I think I wouldn’t have to take naps all the time now, if I had just closed my eyes as a kid. I do like my naps, but I have things to do. I don’t want to “have to” nap– as an adult.

I also wish I had eaten ALL the food off ALL the dinner plates that were put on ALL the kitchen tables in front of me when I was a kid. I gotta watch what I eat at this point in my life. As a child, I could have eaten anything and burned it off immediately, and my arteries were clear as could be. But no! Kids have to be stubborn. “Hey, parent! You want me to eat this yummy cheeseburger? Even though I want to eat it, I refuse to do so. For no good reason, except to get on your nerves, I refuse to eat.” I know I’m not the only one who did this. What were we thinking?

The TMS treatment most certainly jolts me awake. The woman behind me in the second photo is my TMS technician, Tenzin. She gets my electromagnetic coil started at the right intensity and for the correct amount of time, then she drinks her coffee and watches me go through my session. She’s like my own personal lifeguard. She makes sure I do not go into seizures during treatment. Zapping awake the brain’s mood area– good. Having seizures– bad. I don’t worry about it. Tenzin knows what she’s doing.

Tenzin is as chapped as I am that somebody rearranged the furniture in the TMS room without our approval. There used to be a chair just a few feet away from my feet, where I could put The Purse and keep my eye on it during my treatment. But early one morning, Tenzin and I walked into the room and the chair was gone! Also, these two recliners were moved to the far side of the room. The Purse now has to sit in a recliner so far away from me I can hardly see its saddle on the horizon. I need binoculars. Tenzin can no longer see it at all from her desk. I have to squint so hard to make The Purse come into focus from so far away that I think I might yet have a seizure from which Tenzin, my personal lifeguard, must rescue me.

22 TMS treatments down, 14 to go.

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Here’s My Fave Wood Mustache Bow Tie

Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are preparing to iron our fancy shirts this morning, as is evidenced by the iron atop the ironing board beside me in this photo.

Although Bow Tie sports the same style of mustache as the bow tie I wore yesterday, the design is interestingly different. This is one humongous bow tie– taller and wider than the usual bow tie by more than an inch. Also, I think the detail of paired up, in-line bow ties on the bow tie itself is a fabulous touch.

Bow Tie was designed and created by a dude I found in Kearns whose hobby is making wood bow ties. He designed this one in honor of his elderly neighbor named MAX, who has worn a bow tie every day for decades. (Sound familiar?) Feeble Max has a collection of hundreds of bow ties, but his collection does not even come close to rivaling mine. I didn’t tell him that though. I thought it would be kind of me to let the dapper, ancient Max think he’s assembled the most populous bow tie collection on the continent. Kindness rules!

BTW   19 TMS treatments down, 17 to go.

 

 

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Hairs Thursday #11, Plus TMS Treatment #18

I don’t know what’s wrong with you people. Y’all seem to relish seeing my ugly hairs. You know how I can tell? Hairs Thursday tends to get the week’s highest number of hits from the website followers, and the number of Facebook responses are always robust. Get your fill of my horrendous hairs over the next few weeks, folks. They are doomed.

I can’t take it anymore. Even the ties and bow ties are tense about being around my coiffure. I can attest that it is horrifying to even sleep under my hairs. In fact, I noticed Suzanne is sick enough of the mop that she’s put her pruning shears on her nightstand. I think she’s trying to muster the courage to hack my hairs as I sleep. I’m smart enough to know that if she actually does the deed she will act completely innocent and claim she must have been sleep-haircutting. Suzanne’s a wily one, I tell you.

Anyhoo… Mustache Bow Tie o’ the Day got me thinking it’s about time to kinda have a neckwear theme, so I’m going to be wearing my mustache neckwear and accessories for the next week or so.

In one photo here, Bow Tie and I are simply showing you the clinic waiting room. Yeah, it’s not that exciting. I’m guessing there must be some kind of HGTV donation deal with the clinic though, cuz all of the televisions are always on HGTV. Plus, the waiting area has a zillion HGTV magazines. But I say, “Hey, if donations from HGTV help keep a mental health facility going, donate your little channel out.”

The other picture shows me and Bow Tie taking the purse for a walk and some sightseeing outside the Utah State Capitol building. We stopped there on our drive home from treatment this morning. My Diet Coke went along too, but it was too shy to be photographed.

FYI   This morning, I completed my 18th TMS session. I have 18 more ahead of me. It feels good to have half of the entire series behind me. 36 seemed like a zillion treatments at first.

After this many treatments, I’m a little discouraged that I am not feeling significant improvement in my mood-leveling. I am still stuck in a tar pit of depression, unable to swim out. Suzanne and I think we are seeing some small changes, but so far they are so tiny that we might just be seeing through our wishful thinking-colored glasses. I talked with my TMS doctor yesterday about my discouragement. He thinks I’m probably about where I should be, mid-TMS, but we decided to lengthen each treatment from 20 minutes of electromagnetic head-pecking to 25 minutes, for the duration of the remaining treatments.

I still have hope.

 

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Yes, There Will Be A Quiz After This Post

Green grassy Bow Tie o’ the Day presents y’all with a post you might find a bit on the boring side., You only need to read it if you want to know more about rTMS and how it works.

rTMS is based on the theory that some of the neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of the brain (known as the mood center of the brain) are misfiring or not firing at all, which can be a cause of depression. rTMS sends electrical charges into that part of the brain, hoping to hot-wire the neurons.

TMS is sometimes called “shock therapy, lite;” “brain zapping”; and ” jumper cables for the mind.” Sounds fun, right? Researchers refer to the science of this treatment as “electroceuticals.” I suppose that makes it sound more therapeutic. I don’t give a dang what it’s called if it can help me level out the extreme moods of my brain’s soul.

Here’s how the treatment works: An electromagnetic coil gadget is attached to the left side of the victim’s, er… the patient’s head, as you have no doubt seen in some of my photos. The coil delivers magnetically generated electricity to the mood center of the brain. The magnetic field travels through the hair, skin, and skull because they don’t conduct electricity. When the magnetic field reaches the surface of the brain, it interacts with brain cells, which do conduct electricity. The brain’s neurons act as a pickup coil and turn the magnetic field back into electricity, which forces the neurons in the mood center to fire.

The bigly number of 36 treatments is because rTMS hits a patient with such a low “dose.” Shock therapy (ECT), on the other hand, gives you mega-strong jolts all at once which are supposed to cause seizures– to push the brain’s mood center into doing what it’s supposed to do. The goal of the therapies is the same: git the mood center’s neurons to do their job. The bare bones of how ECT and rTMS work are the same. Both therapies have about the same success rate. But the thought of following a treatment regimen in which the point is to try to induce seizures is kinda freaky to me. With rTMS, pretty much the worst that can happen to me is that the thirty-six tiny treatments don’t help. Unfortunately, if they don’t help me, I will seriously consider doing shock therapy.

When my “crazy head” doctor first told me about TMS, I immediately thought, “Oh, a mysterious coil– called a wand– attached to my head; magnetic fields; electricity; and a humongous price tag. Well, here’s a scam!”

But then I read the research, test reports, test results, yada yada yada, talked to my doctors, did some more yada yada yada research. I guess I’m just silly like that: I like to know “what’s what,” not what some talking head or salesman says is “what’s what.” My mood center neurons might be struggling, but my thinkin’ brain cells’ neurons still want to know factual stuff.

When I got to the point that I decided the treatment wasn’t bogus, I told Suzanne I would do it if she wanted me to. Heck, I’m not the one who as to live with me. And she hates to see me struggle to stay on the planet. If it were just me hermiting around by myself, I’d save the rTMS money and drive myself to Traverse City, Michigan to see the sights. But I’m not just me. I’m my whole family.

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It’s Called TMS, Not PMS

Actually, the specific type of TMS I’m being administered is called rTMS– short for Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. At 7AM every weekday, I’m sitting like this in the treatment chair at the Treatment Resistant Mood Disorders Clinic, located in SLC at the U of U’s University Neuropsychiatric Institute . Even that early, and even for a medical treatment, I wear my trademark Neckwear o’ the Day. It reminds me exactly who I am, and it amuses the doctors, nurses, and technicians. The patients and staff in the waiting room are always more interested in The Purse though.

Some of you have expressed concern for me about doing rTMS. I hadn’t heard of it until two months ago. But rest assured, I did my research. It is a relatively new treatment for depression. It is a treatment which is only used in cases of depression where standard treatments have not worked. It is not generally used to treat bipolar individuals, but my wacko head lives mostly on the depressive side of my bipolarity. And that’s where I’ve been in quicksand for the last year. I needed to try something new.

So I am officially “treatment resistant” and I, therefore, qualify for rTMS. “Treatment resistant,” in terms of rTMS, means meds and/or therapy have not worked well enough to level out my mental situation, or to at least stabilize the moods.

Meds have always “worked” for me, sort of. Each med I’ve been prescribed has helped me stay more level to some degree– for a while, sometimes even for years, but it would eventually lose its effectiveness. When it quit working, my docs would switch me to a different anti-depressant or mood-leveler. Again, the drug would definitely help me, but not for the duration. In addition to taking meds, I have simultaneously been in some kind of talk therapy since I was diagnosed bipolar. Therapy has helped, but clearly not enough. I was 36 when I got my diagnosis, although I have no doubt I have been bipolar my entire life.

In future posts, I’ll write more specifically about my diagnosis; about what TMS is and how safe it is; about what it means to be bipolar; and about the idea of being “mentally ill”.

Posts about these topics and issues are tougher for me to write than I thought they would be. But I figure things out by writing about them, and I need to figure out this complex stuff. Stay tuned, as always.

16 TMS sessions down, 20 to go.

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I Joke, Therefore I Am

I take my mental health seriously, as we all should. But part of what allows me to keep trudging along through my bipolarity issues is poking fun at myself and my “crazy head.” If I can’t laugh about it daily, no matter how precarious or smooth my state of mind, I can’t survive it. In fact, my ability to joke and snark about almost any hard time in life is a great comfort to me. Being playful with words helps me be patient and firm with whatever is at hand. Humor is one of my self-defense tactics. I’ve been told my vaudeville act has helped others keep their heads healthy on occasion. I hope so.

Anyhoo… To be silly for my TMS technician this morning, I put together a hypnotic, googly-eyed Bow Tie o’ the Day (complete with matching Cufflinks o’ the Day) and a googly Shirt o’ the Day. (I did the best I could with the hat. Paisley will have to do.) My attire symbolizes my dizzy, goofy, insane, wacko, loony, mesmerizing “crazy head.” When I use these words– and others like them– in my quest to be comedic about my bipolar travels, my purpose is to take away any power they might have to mock mental illness. I own the words, so they don’t own me. I work to transform them into my zaniness.

Hey, it works for me.

15 TMS treatments down, 21 to go.

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Right Place, Right Time?

All through our thinking lives– especially during the tough moments– we sleuth around to find meaning in what we do, and in how we’ve decided to live. Pink Panther Tie o’ the Day (it’s just a squirt gun he’s packing) sometimes assists me in my sleuthing to figure out how it all fits together. I’m a puzzle piece, and so are you.

When I parked my car at the TMS clinic this morning, there was one parking place left– just for me. As I swung open my car door, I realized the cow Sloggers shoes I was wearing matched the car right next to mine. It’s not a paint color you commonly see on vehicles. In fact, I believe this is the only time I’ve seen this sea foam color on a car. [Trust me: the color is not light blue, it is sea foam.]

Anyhoo… You could call it a mere coincidence, and that’s probably all it was. It was just a car and a pair of garden shoes, sharing pigment. But what if this minuscule meeting of the colors was something more than coincidence?

That would actually help me out. You see, I’ve been feeling like my TMS treatments haven’t been accomplishing their purpose of jump starting the mood section of my brain, so I can level out my depression. I haven’t felt the change I expected to notice by this point in the series of treatments. I’ve been doubting. But what if the simple meeting of these off-beat colors is the universe trying to tell me I’m doing the right thing? Maybe it’s a sign I’m right where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly the right thing for my stoopid bipolarity. That might be stretching the idea of “signs,” but maybe it’s not. Maybe we should look less for bigly signs and answers, and look more at the small things we come across in our everyday existence. How is believing in the “messages” of small things a sacrilege?

In the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter if the universe is speaking to me, or if I’m speaking to myself– about the TMS treatments or the meaning of my life or whatever. If thinking I’ve experienced a profound encounter– whether I have or haven’t– gets me through a day, that’s a good thing. If it’s just made-up meaning but it makes me a better person, what’s wrong with that? What’s the problem if we all do that?

And do you know what? After today’s treatment ended its pounding– after I’d completely forgotten about the car/shoe thing– I felt the first twinge of peace and hope. I hadn’t even left my treatment chair yet. It was only a tiny blip of peace and hope, but it was there. I’m not making it up just to make this a better story. It happened.

Once I left the clinic building, I saw that the sea foam-colored car was gone. But I remembered it had been there. Its earlier presence meant something, if only to me. I carried my little ray of peace and hope home with me, and I’m thinking I’m one step closer to fitting myself–the puzzle piece I am– into the cosmic puzzle. How is your puzzle piece doing?

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Sealed With A Lipstick Kiss (S.W.A.L.K.)

As opposed to regular ol’ S.W.A.K.

Here’s the same bigly, jumbo-ly Bow Tie o’ the Day as this morning’s post photo offered up. In this snapshot, my hairs and I were getting ready for today’s TMS treatment. In fact, it was my TMS technician, Tenzin, who finally mentioned the lip print I had on my cheek. Doh!

When Suzanne told me goodbye as she headed out to work this morning, she told me to NOT forget to wash the goodbye lipstick off my face before I went out into the world of neuropsychiatric treatments. And what was the first thing I promptly forgot to do right before I, myself, left the house for my appointment? Yup. Off I went, feeling just slightly more loved on my left cheek than on my right cheek– but unable to come up with the reason for the strange imbalance I felt.

Vonnegut Grace Vibe was gas-less, so I gassed her up before hitting the freeway. The woman I chit-chatted with at the 7-11 gas pumps didn’t point out my cheek’s lip print . Jack, the dude who seems to work at the Centerville 7-11 24/7, didn’t clue me in about it either– even as I stood at his register gabbing with him and buying a bottle of Diet Coke. The two office assistants I spoke with in the reception area at my TMS clinic spoke nary a word about it either. Finally, Tenzin commented on it.

Looking back, none of these folks seemed fazed by what was on my face. Clearly, you don’t have to know me well to figure I must have meant to do whatever I did, fashion-wise. To know me even a little is to expect to view an odd style. I decided to wear the lip print for the rest of the day, and the people who assisted me as I got a new phone at the Apple Store didn’t bring it up once.

So far, nothing unpleasant has happened to me or my cheek. In fact, the whole lipstick faux pas is generating ideas about what else I can get away with putting on my face– causing people to notice, but not tell me about. I see it as a new challenge. And I think Suzanne needs to invest in a bunch of much brighter lipstick than she already has. Like she says, “If you’re going to wear lipstick, make sure people see it.” Amen to that.

I’m positive anyone who saw me noticed my smooch print, but I think they were jealous. I was lucky enough to have a kiss on my cheek, while their cheeks were kiss-less. I think the red remnants of the kiss I received actually made some people feel unloved. Sorry. But not.

Hey, humans, kiss your people goodbye each day as they go out to conquer the world. They are going out there for YOU, you know.

BTW   Yes, I do have another pair of paw print Sloggers just like this at home.