Friday was my last day of dealing with the half-deaf psychiatrist who was covering while my regular doctor has been away. Half-deaf dude was fond of asking about the tedious minutiae of events from 15 years ago, and wanting me to come up with hypothetical what ifs also related to things from 15 years ago. It made me want to pull my hair out. He wanted to have a “long phone call” with my brother, but I didn’t want to subject my poor brother to what would probably be an hour of irrelevant questions about stuff from childhood. I considered lying and saying my brother didn’t have time, but decided to just say it didn’t make sense for him to talk to my brother when he was never going to see me again.
This week I’ve got a different doctor covering, as my regular doctor. She’s talking about options for med changes. She mentioned a tricyclic antidepressants, but those can cause fatal cardiac arrhythmias in overdose, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to have something like that on hand at home. Lamotrigine is another option she brought up, although the evidence for it in unipolar depression is much weaker than for bipolar depression. My blogging friend Genevieve has found the MAOI antidepressant selegiline (Emsam) helpful; it comes in patch form and doesn’t require a tyramine-restricted diet like other MAOIs do (and I’d have a hard time motivating myself to take an MAOI that required me to stop eating cheese, which contains tyramine). Has anyone tried selegiline or any other MAOI?
My ECT has been changed from bifrontal to bitemporal electrode placement, as that’s been most effective for me in the past. It’s also more likely to have memory-related side effects, but I figure that’s just part of the process.
My brother brought my niece by on Sunday to take me home on a pass. It was nice to see her and the guinea pigs. The guinea pig boys have always been scared of her for some reason.
We also picked up lunch from a take-out place, and either I got food poisoning from it or I picked up the GI bug that my niece had. Yesterday morning I fainted while walking from the bathroom back to bed, but luckily didn’t hit my head on anything when I fell.
The computers are in the ward dining room, where there also happens to be a tv. Often, the tv is on, and sometimes, the person at the other computer will also have something noisy going on on that computer. My concentration is lousy to begin with, and trying to concentrate with noisy stuff going on is particularly challenging.
Thanks to everyone who gave input on advice and resources for newly diagnosed people. I’m working on putting the page together, and it should be ready to publish later this week.
Thanks also to everyone for your ongoing support!